By John F. Di Leo –
The news of the day concerns Iran, a country that shot down a hundred-million-dollar American drone in international airspace… and the question of how the United States should respond to such an act of war.
This occurred a week after the same country attacked foreign-flagged oil tankers sailing in international waters.
And a week before that? And the week before that? Well, this country – Iran, as ruled by the mullahs who have run it since 1979 – has been spreading terrorism all over the world, developing client states around the middle east, and declaring itself to be at war with the United States (which it calls “The Great Satan”), for forty years now. Every week, there’s another provocation, either against the USA or against others.
It’s just what they do.
Persia was once a friendly, western-facing nation, friendly with Europe and America, a nation with western attitudes about education, commerce, and culture. But then in 1979, the mullahs deposed our friend the Shah, and they turned the clock back 1400 years. The psychotic Ayatollah Khamenei has now ruled Iran for thirty years, following a decade of rule by his fellow tyrant, the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The world has therefore had to deal with this problem for forty years now. We never know what they will do next: sink a ship, fund terrorism, spread their hateful ideology on the internet, direct their client governments to attack our allies again and again… we only know that it’s what Iran does. All the time.
Our Southern Border
Our border with Mexico runs some 2000 miles, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. It goes through wild green country, hot deserts, hills and rivers. And as a border, it is breached constantly.
The United States – being one of the most desirable countries on earth to live in, for economic opportunity, personal freedom, and a proud and enlightened culture – must therefore have constraints on immigration. Not because we’re xenophobic, as opponents claim, but simply because there are seven billion people on earth, and if they all came to the USA, the USA would no longer be the comparable paradise that that is, and was meant to be.
So we have limits. People who want to come here must apply at an embassy and wait until they have permission. Sometimes that permission takes years; sometimes it’s never granted. We simply don’t have room.
But for fifty years now, the illegal immigration problem – border jumping, along with other methods – has grown constantly, flooding our country with tens of millions of illegal aliens. Some of them are generally decent folks who just wanted an opportunity to participate in the American dream; some are lazybones who want to take advantage of our welfare state programs; some are active criminals, here to engage in gangland drug dealing activity, terrorism, or petty crimes on their own.
As the flood continues – hundreds of thousands per year, the vast majority coming in over our southern border – our citizens endure the competition at the workplace from cheaper non-citizen jobseekers, our taxpayers are overtaxed to fund the welfare state costs of this burden, and our healthcare and criminal justice system must contend with those addicted, those injured, and those killed by these criminals.
And as long as we leave this border porous, these constant threats and burdens continue to pour in.
The Jarhead Motorcycle Club
On June 21, 2019, a group of U.S. Marine veterans known as the Jarhead Motorcycle Club were heading to a fundraiser at an American Legion Hall in Gorham, NH when a new driver for Westfield Transport, driving erratically, crossed into oncoming traffic and crashed into the motorcycles, its trailer whipping around to cause the maximum damage: seven riders were killed, and three more were injured.
At first glance, one might wonder if it was just a tragic accident – an inexperienced driver on an unfamiliar road.
But upon closer inspection, government and media determined that this driver – Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, age 23 – has been driving for a long time, and has had problems driving ever since he first got behind a wheel.
He has had drunk driving arrests for seven years, in both New England and Texas. He’s been arrested for possession of a crack pipe, and heroin paraphernalia was found when he was arrested for this crash.
An immigrant from Ukraine, he’s not a citizen of the United States, so he could have been deported for these drug and drunk driving crimes. He could at least have had his license pulled, so that he couldn’t get a job as a professional driver. But our generous system – our kind, forgiving system, in criminal justice, in transportation, in immigration – gives second chances. And thirds. And fourths.
And we keep on giving more and more chances, allowing problems to fester, allowing crimes, assaults, and injuries to continue to pile up, because we choose not to make the hard choices and act on these clear and acknowledged risks.
Until eventually, seven patriots are dead on a highway, and three of their mourners will be confined to their hospital, unable to attend their funerals.
The Risks of Inaction
When the news hit the airwaves about Iran’s attack on a US unmanned aircraft, the spin was to focus on the risk of doing something about it. What if retaliation killed some innocent Iranians? What if retaliation started a full-scale war? What if a retaliatory strike made the Iranians madder, and they did something else to us or to our allies?
Similarly, when we hear of illegal aliens taking jobs away from American citizens (which includes legal immigrants, remember), or when we hear of illegal aliens distributing fatally dangerous drugs in our neighborhoods and schools, or when we hear of illegal aliens driving without licenses or insurance, causing wrecks and killing innocent drivers, passengers and pedestrians, again the media spins the news, to focus instead on the risks of action.
Again and again we are told, if we turn them away at the border, we’ll be returning them to the poor countries they came from, or we’ll be keeping them from the potential opportunity that only America offers.
We are told that it’s unfair to build a border wall, or to raid employers to round up illegals, or to deport criminals caught while dealing or doing drugs. We are told that it’s dangerous to retaliate against rogue nations like Iran and North Korea and Cuba when they foment revolution abroad or sponsor terror around the world.
We are told that there are risks to taking action.
But we must also remember that there are risks to inaction. Failing to respond to a known danger almost guarantees that the violations – be they thefts or crashes or the spread of drugs or terror, or wholesale acts of war – will continue, growing in number and severity as the perpetrators keep pushing their luck.
President Trump, to his credit, has had the courage, again and again, to direct his administration to act on many of the “third rails” of American politics. From foreign policy confrontations to the economic threats of overtaxing and overregulation, from the crisis at the border to the crisis in education, this administration has been willing to face the issues we have long left unaddressed.
The administration isn’t perfect, and choosing to act will sometimes result in an error or two. Not every outcome is predictable.
But this administration does deserve credit for recognizing, more than any administration in memory, that – while there are certainly risks in taking action – there is also a price to pay for inaction.
Just ask the thousands of victims of illegal alien crime every year. Just ask the African churchgoers who mourn friends killed in Iranian-sponsored church bombings. Just ask the friends and families of those seven Marine bikers, killed last week by a drunk driver who should have been deported years ago.
The costs of inaction can be severe indeed.
Copyright 2019 John F Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based Customs broker, writer and actor. His columns are regularly found in Illinois Review.
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