February 09, 2010
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April 23, 2009

Ideology versus Competence: Janet Napolitano

By Lance Fairchok
Sorry Canada, its going to be a long four years.  In an article called "The Border for Dummies" Canada's National Post asks a salient question:
"Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job?" 

I think I can offer some enlightenment.  You see, Janet is an ideologue.  She is the kind of person who will pursue ideological goals without regard for truth, a person who can be expected to reinvent reality to fit the ideological vision of the administration, which she does with abandon.  She is the perfect Obama Administration appointee.

Madame Secretary has no real security bona fides to qualify her as Homeland Security Secretary other than being a two term governor from a border state and having a political ideology in harmony with the new administration.  She is not particularly competent and she does not articulate policies well, if at all.  She is as gaffe prone as Vice President Biden. During a recent interview by the CBC Napolitano equated the Canadian border with our corrupt and violence plagued pseudo border with Mexico, even claiming that some of the 9-11 terrorists had crossed from Canada into the US.


"Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it's been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there."

When confronted about those outrageously incorrect remarks she said:

"I can't talk to that. I can talk about the future. And here's the future. The future is we have borders."

As nonsensical a comment as can be imagined and more so when one realizes the abysmal job she did in Arizona on border and immigration issues.  But Janet has other problems with the pesky details of her job.  When asked about Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio's policy of actually enforcing immigration laws she had this to say:

"What we have to do is target the real evil-doers in this business, the employers who consistently hire illegal labor, the human traffickers who are exploiting human misery.

"And yes, when we find illegal workers, yes, appropriate action, some of which is criminal, most of that is civil, because crossing the border is not a crime per se. It is civil. But anyway, going after those as well.

"But the notion that you're going to fill every prosecutor's time, every law enforcement official's time, and that's literally what he's talking about, on immigration, he doesn't answer the other question, which he has been criticized for, by the way, in Maricopa County, because he is not going after murders, armed robberies, other more serious crimes, because he is so focused on this one." [emphases added]

Incredible comments, incomprehensible logic, borne of the talking points from the Obama-La Raza disinformation machine.  Since when is it not a crime to illegally enter the US?  Sheriff Arpaio, by all accounts an effective and popular law enforcement officer, is ignoring more serious crimes to pursue illegals?   A national cabinet member criticizing an honorable local law enforcement official and accusing him of criminal dereliction of duty is stunning.   

It gets worse. The Canadian Press reported these Napolitano comments from a recent Brookings Institute Border Conference:

"One of the things that we need to be sensitive to is the very real feelings among southern border states and in Mexico that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border," Janet Napolitano told a Canada-U.S. border conference in Washington, D.C.

"We shouldn't go light on one and heavy on the other," she said of the Canadian and Mexican borders.

"We shouldn't go light on one and heavy on the other," despite the obvious fact that one cannot with any honesty make comparisons between the two.  Mexico is violent and corrupt and its civil society is crumbling. It will milk what it can from the US and continue to feed its population concocted grievances to cover its own ineptitude. Thousands of Mexican Army deserters, including Special Forces fill the ranks of the drug cartels. Mexico has proven incapable of controlling its internal affairs.

Canada on the other hand is an eminently peaceful nation under the rule of law, as fine an ally as any country could hope for, which the US is blessed to have on its northern border.  There are no hordes of Canadians illegally entering the US to find work and send billions of dollars home each year.  There are no brutal drug cartels murdering US and Canadian citizens and fighting the police and army with machineguns and grenades smuggled from Guatemala, Cuba and Venezuela.

Yet in Napolitano's world the same draconian measures absolutely necessary on the Mexican border are also necessary on the northern border regardless of the enormously different situation.  It is a policy so divorced from reality, so ridiculous, it is almost comical, too absurd to be true, but dismayingly, it is.

This is what happens when you hire for ideology not competence, when you wish to stack the deck with inept sycophants and fellow travelers that will follow your agenda lockstep.  At a time when the dangerous problems of our southern border could erupt into a region wide conflagration we have a bumbling fool insulting our most trusted ally and espousing nonsensical policies, failing to understand or address the deadly serious issues facing us.

Sorry Canada, it's going to be a long four years down here in the US, but for what its worth, most of us yanks know Canada is not Mexico and the 9-11 terrorists did not come from your territory.  We consider Canada a friend and neighbor who deserves our consideration and gratitude and to be treated as such.  Secretary Napolitano is an embarrassment, but as I have recently grown fond of saying: You ain't seen nothing yet, unfortunately.
on "Ideology versus Competence: Janet Napolitano"
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