Building a southern border wall will keep out illegal immigrants, terrorists, drug cartels, and sex traffickers today. It will also provide a defensive infrastructure to keep Americans safe for decades to come. Wars are certain in human life. Technologies shrink distances. North America isn’t as far away as it used to be.
Countries declare boundary lines into the oceans. During World War II, the Germans annexed neighboring countries to serve as buffer zones in case they were attacked by land. Even a wall on the Mexican border would have a vertical radar extension to protect against airplanes and spacecraft. The same applies to the earth beneath the wall where tunnels can be drilled.
The strategic military vision for a southern wall has recently been articulated by a key US Army general, now retired from wars in the Middle East. Anthony J. Tata is the former deputy commanding general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He has battle-hardened experience with figuring out what it takes to keep out the most dangerous and vicious enemies.
Now a FoxNews correspondent, Tata knows that no wall or other technology is a 100% guarantee against a determined enemy, but we should always strive for the most protection we can get. Lives depend upon the wartime experience we accumulate. According to Tata, the more the better:
“In Afghanistan, we had thousands of combat soldiers operating from dozens of forward operating bases along the nearly 1,500-mile Pakistan border with the sole mission of preventing infiltration through means of killing or capturing the enemy. We employed every available technology—drones, ground sensors, multiple intelligence methods—and to be sure, our troops killed and captured significant numbers of enemy, but not all. Those that made it through, fought to destabilize progress in Afghanistan.”
Wikipedia reports that in November 2018 “he defended President Donald Trump’s decision to send troops to the southern border to block access by Central American migrants” and that by December 21 Tata had become even more convinced of the soundness of Trump’s military savvy: “I think the President is making the exact right move in Syria. All the geniuses who are protesting the withdrawal of troops from Syria are the same geniuses who cooked the books on ISIS intelligence and gave rise to ISIS.”
Tata is in a unique position to validate the President’s military plans for the American people: “President Trump is right when he argues that drones and technology are not sufficient to stop illegal immigration. Of course, our border patrol forces armed with technology and drones are a lethal force but that combination alone cannot totally prevent illegal immigrants or hostile forces from entering the United States.
“By way of example, as a commander in operational combat zones in Kosovo and Afghanistan, I had thousands of troops and the latest technology arrayed along the borders with Macedonia and Pakistan, respectively. Despite having the best soldiers in the world and the most advanced technology, we still couldn’t completely stop enemy infiltration.”
In short, says Tata, “we can fully anticipate more land infiltrations by terrorists” on the Mexican Border.
There is no better way for a combat veteran to keep the minutiae of his wartime experiences forever fresh than by writing novels. Tata has written more than a dozen, reminding some readers of Tom Clancy’s fast-paced bestsellers. One Amazon commenter sums up Tata’s unique writing style:
“Many of today’s military thriller writers need to use their mind’s vocabulary of descriptors and a good thesaurus to describe battle. Writer, A.J. Tata, is both blessed and cursed by leveraging his own military experience with the sights, sounds, and smell of war coupled with his vivid imagination. Foreign and Domestic[one novel] gives readers a uniquely authentic ride to the front lines, and a view within the minds of our nation’s heroes and global adversaries. The novel is rich with characters and events and is as brutally cold, at times, as the corpses he leaves behind on the pages of attrition and terror.”