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Obama To Decide On New Weapons
krou writes "Buried within the New Start treaty, which saw the decommissioning of nuclear warheads, was an interesting provision as a result of Russian demands: the US must 'decommission one nuclear missile for every one' of a new type of weapon called Prompt Global Strike 'fielded by the Pentagon.' The warhead, which is 'mounted on a long-range missile to start its journey,' would be 'capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour. ... It would travel through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, generating so much heat that it would have to be shielded with special materials to avoid melting. ... But since the vehicle would remain within the atmosphere rather than going into space, it would be far more maneuverable than a ballistic missile, capable of avoiding the airspace of neutral countries, for example, or steering clear of hostile territory. Its designers note that it could fly straight up the middle of the Persian Gulf before making a sharp turn toward a target.' The new weapon is in line with Obama's plans 'to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons,' and rather focus on conventional ones. The idea is not new, having been first floated under the Bush administration, but was abandoned, mainly because 'Russian leaders complained that the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones.'"
He's just Bush with a tan...
Continuous and unbroken policy record in every single, meaningful area. Except where it really doesn't count - you know, the non-Constitutional stuff.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
FTFA: The idea is not new: President George W. Bush and his staff promoted the technology, imagining that this new generation of conventional weapons would replace nuclear warheads on submarines. In face-to-face meetings with President Bush, Russian leaders complained that the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones. Mr. Bush and his aides concluded that the Russians were right. Partly as a result, the idea “really hadn’t gone anywhere in the Bush administration,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has served both presidents, said recently on ABC’s “This Week.” But he added that it was “embraced by the new administration.”
First time I've seen something like this, where Obama is more hawkish on a military matter than Bush ? Man that seems wierd...
After all, if the warhead contains more than 3 ounces of fluid in any one container, or won't fit in a one liter zip-lock bag, there is no way that the TSA will allow the launch...
If the TSA's word isn't sufficiently reassuring, we could always stencil "No nukes here, we're saving them for Ivan" on all conventional ordnance...
The US does not want to build nuclear weapons that can only be used defensively (for political reasons), and therefore which act primarily as a deterrent. It wants to build weapons that can be used now.
The US does not only want other countries to be scared to attack the US; it wants other countries to be scared not to do what the US wants them to, as the US may attack tomorrow.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Russia really needs to be put at ease about nuclear attack. We simply aren't going to do it. We develop advanced weaponry, but for all intents and purposes, these weapons are just stockpiled, never to be used.
Agreeing to decommission existing missiles is an easy agreeable point. We don't need them anymore. Realistically, there isn't a country in the world that America is politically ready to bomb back to the stone ages. We just like having this stuff because it makes us feel better.
This type of concern isn't new, either. Russia was worried that Reagan's Star Wars missile defense shield would allow America to attack with impunity, but we never had good reason to bomb anyone, much less Russia.
My sincere hope is that Obama can navigate these treacherous waters. It's really his first true test of foreign policy on a global scale. If he can soothe the Russians here, he'll have made huge progress that future generations will reap the benefits of for decades.
After all, if the warhead contains more than 3 ounces of fluid in any one container, or won't fit in a one liter zip-lock bag, there is no way that the TSA will allow the launch... If the TSA's word isn't sufficiently reassuring, we could always stencil "No nukes here, we're saving them for Ivan" on all conventional ordnance...
Only problem is that the TSA will want to scan the nukes first... Then we'll have pictures of naked nuke internals getting passed around the 'net!
The problem has never been that we blow too much shit up. The problem has been that we don't blow up ENOUGH!
I have always been a proponent of the Master of Orion foreign policy theory. You live in peace ad harmony with your neighbors, until they do something to piss you off. You know, they attack your colonies, steal too much technology, crash their star cruisers into a couple of towers, whatever.
You then send your fleet to bomb your enemies from orbit until their land is clear of any buildings, population, dogs, pine cones, or ants... then you simply bring in your own colonists to settle the area and call it good.
Once the other countries learn that you're serious and not screwing around anymore, they don't dare pick a fight with you.
Where's the problem?
One variant of the "schizoid defense" (against the inherent violence of the world) involves dissociating one's self from violent sentiments or tools. One stops watching violent movies, for example, stops getting angry, and relinquishes ownership of any weapons.
The mind tells itself a story that by distancing one's self from violence in every ostensible form, one protects one's self from having a violent encounter.
Of course this story is false. The violence finds you. Criminals retain their weapons, and their violent inclinations, and further they actively hunt down and seek easy prey (like, you know, people who don't have weapons, and who are likely to surrender without a fight).
This whole "mutual disarmament" business feels like a grand schizoid defense. The civilians fear the presence of weapons of mass destruction (especially since they have no personal means of defending against them), so they pressure their governments to get rid of all such weapons and to find a way to make other governments to the same. The weaker governments fear the greater ones, and are willing to give up some of their (mostly useless against the 'big boys') weapons if it means the 'big boys' are willing to weaken themselves too. None of this actually makes war less likely or less horrible when it does happen.
In fact, the case can be made that it makes violence MORE likely, since specific targets have just made themselves more vulnerable, and specific types of response are less likely. As anyone with military experience can tell you...the single greatest deterrent to actual violence is a credible threat of equivalent-or-greater response.
This whole mess is just a big exercise in fear, futility, and self-exposure.
Needless to say, I disapprove.
It would travel through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, generating so much heat that it would have to be shielded with special materials to avoid melting...
Wouldn't that make it an easy target for a heat seeking ABM? Even as fast as it's moving?
Nuclear arms have formed the backbone of US deterrence strategy for six decades and although the strategy worked during the Cold War, military leaders say they need weapons in their arsenal to deter adversaries who assume that the United States would refrain from taking the extreme step of ordering a nuclear strike. Now the Washington Post reports that as the White House pushes for cuts in the US nuclear arsenal, the Pentagon is developing a powerful nonnuclear weapon to help fill the gap as a new form of deterrence against terrorist networks and other adversaries. Military officials say their current nonnuclear options are too limited or too slow because unlike ICBM's, which travel at several times the speed of sound, it can take up to 12 hours for cruise missiles to hit faraway targets and long-range bombers likewise can take many hours to fly into position for a strike. "Today, unless you want to go nuclear, it's measured in days, maybe weeks" until the military can launch an attack with regular forces, says Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "That's just too long in the world that we live in." The new missile system, known as Prompt Global Strike weapons, could strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour. However military officials are struggling to solve one major obstacle: the risk that Russia or China could mistake the launch of a conventional Prompt Global Strike missile for a nuclear one. To alleviate the risk of an accidental nuclear retaliation, defense officials have described how a land-based missile could be configured so it is incapable of carrying a nuclear payload and use a trajectory to its target that would not threaten other nuclear weapons nations.
It took us nearly a week to export Democracy to Iraq, now we could do it in less than two hours. Sounds like a good deal.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
This idea is bad on many levels.
1. It looks like a nuclear ballistic missile launch. Every time you fire one, you're risking nuclear war. Russia, China, and any other enemy will see the launch and has to make a very quick decision on what to do. Chances are, it probably wont' be misidentified as a nuclear first strike. Do you really want to take that risk though??? If you have to notify them first, the entire quick strike goes out the window and the entire point of the technology is lost.
2. It's fucking expensive. Having a 1 time use ballistic missile is going to cost 100s of millions to a billion dollars a shot. That figure doesn't even count the R&D money for the program. To allow for quick strike capability, they have to be manned at all times, and ready to fire, so the ongoing "maintenance costs" on it are very high. This is going to be an insanely expensive system.
3. Why? Who are you realistically going to strike with it. Anywhere in the middle east, North Korea, and most of Europe is currently within fighter range and can be hit in relatively short time from conventional fighter/bombers.
>>>Our efforts to blow stuff up in Iraq and Afghanistan have only worsened our image in the Middle East and created even more rabid terrorists
I could have told you that on 9/12.
In fact I did tell people that, saying going to war is not the solution,
but at the time people were thinking like animals. All they could see was "red" and revenge.
If you're going to risk billions of dollars and millions of lives, you don't do it for just 1 or 2 criminals. That's just ridiculous and totally disproportionate. Plus all it did was create a lot of orphaned children who will grow-up and want to kill Americans & Europeans. The problem is now worse, not better.
A wiser course would be to mirror what we do in our own homes. Get better locks to keep out criminals. i.e. Close the borders, in order to prevent another Bin Laden from sneaking through, unless they first had permission (visa).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There are lots of high tech workers that read slashdot. I'm one of them. I decided, while at university, that I was not going to spend my life building weapons. Working on weapons certainly was an opportunity that presented itself when I was getting my degree in the late 80s. I do not want to create weapons because I would have no direct control over whether those weapons were limited to truly righteous causes.
Do you work on weapons? Do you share my concerns?
Only capabilities matter.
If the US can nuke Russia, Russia has to plan for the possibility that the US will nuke Russia. If the US launches missiles that could be aimed at Russia, and that could have nuclear payloads, Russia has to assume that they are and they do. Because they're fucked if they assume good faith and are wrong.
Better never to launch such a missile and best not to have them at all.
The problem comes when your civilization declines, and you no longer have the resources to smash your neighbors into oblivion. The Roman Empire successfully used your strategy (kill all troublemakers/) for ~600 years until they eventually reached a stage where they no longer had enough strength to do that. Then their enemies invaded & took the remaining pieces of the crumbling empire.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's amazing how many political problems become trivial if you have an air force and killing civilians en masse doesn't bother you...
Where's the problem?
Assuming you're not kidding, there are two major problems with this approach. The first is a matter of morality: "bomb your enemies from orbit until their land is clear of any buildings, population, dogs, pine cones, or ants" may be a lot of fun in a game, but in real life it's mass murder on a scale that not even the most bloody-minded conquerors in history have ever attempted, and that is really not a contest any sane nation wants to win.
Okay, let's assume that the morality of it doesn't bother you (and it probably doesn't, although I suspect if you were ever confronted close-up with the results of such an action, your opinion would change.) The second problem is practical. Could we do what you propose to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iran? Maybe we could ... but we are not the only country in the world with the capacity to do such a thing, and be assured, the rest of the world will take notice. We get too close to the borders of Russia or China with such a campaign (BTW, take a look at a map and notice just how far west China's borders go) and we are pretty much guaranteeing an all-out nuclear exchange of the sort everyone was more than halfway expecting all through the Cold War. You may be too young to remember what living under the nuclear hammer was like, and just how high the level of mutual paranoia was. Me, I was stationed in Europe when the Wall came down; trust me, we don't want to go back there.
And Russia and China aren't the only major powers we'd have to worry about if we started down that road. Japan, the UK, Germany, India, France ... they're all pretty friendly to us these days. That would change in a heartbeat if the US turned into a latter-day version of Genghis Khan's Mongolia. And all of them either have nuclear stockpiles or the ability to produce them quickly, along with delivery systems. The US, or any other country that tried this approach, would quickly find itself isolated in a hostile world full of countries just itching to scorch its cities to the ground, and willing to take the risk of receiving the same treatment in return.
The US is unquestionably stronger militarily than any other country, but we aren't stronger than everybody, and this is a good thing. There will never be another Alexander, another Caesar, another Genghis Khan, another Napoleon, another Hitler, and this is also a good thing. The rest of the world will not allow it, and for the first time in human history, the concept of "the rest of the world" makes a difference in the thinking of those who would follow in the bloody footsteps of emperors. Not because the human race is any wiser or more moral than it used to be, but because there is no other choice.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I haven't gotten around to reading the Rome entry on wikipedia yet, so I'm curious, what happened to rome's strength? Poor leadership? poor training? bad morale? lack of loyalty? too many occupying troops and not enough economy to support it?
600 years is realistically about 6x as long as the US has been a world power, so I'd say that Rome sets the bar there.
It's so easy. All we have to do is give up our remaining freedom (because it would require a police state to protect us from this form of terrorism), and problem solved. I think we've been making a bit of a mistake in Afghanistan, in that we haven't done a good job of laying out why we're there (that is, keeping it from being a place where our enemies plan and train against us), and haven't closed down the enemy's sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan. But I don't think it's reasonable to treat this as something we can just wall off. That was true before WWII. It's not true now.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Then again, the Romans didn't have the weaponry to destroy the entire planet several times over. I think "world wars" are pretty much history for the human race until we actually start having wars *over* worlds...
capable of avoiding the airspace of neutral countries, for example, or steering clear of hostile territory.
So if it will avoid neutral countries, and steer clear of hostile territories, by process of elimination that leaves the target to be our allies?
I beg to differ. While it may have hurt relations a little, the fundamental problem between the US and the parts of the world filled with fundamentalist terrorist-happy Muslims is that the US is friends with Israel. That's the elephant in the room, the root cause of 9/11 (did you listen to a thing that those guys actually said?) and, honestly, I think the problem won't go away until someone nukes Israel (though I admit conventional warfare could do it too). And that's a tragedy, by the way.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Where's the problem?
I'm sure those were the same words used when planning the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Bang Bang and Austria will have a new leader, that's all.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Rome's problems...
Poor leadership because you could kill your way to Emperor. So every new Emperor was a target of the Army leadership, family members, etc
Slavery took away jobs from entire classes
Unhappy classes because there were no jobs had to be kept happy with massive spending on things like games, tax free holidays, free food, etc.
Lack of technological progress, the Western Empire stagnated under constant attack and couldn't progress, the Eastern Empire did better but again it was hammered by attacks on the frontiers.
Over expansion and under population in the provinces.
The United States could have gone the same way, if the expansion to the west had been coupled with constant warfare from massed Indian Tribes, Canada and Mexico all at the same time the American Civil War through Spanish-American War happened.
Also, Rome wasn't a world power. They were a European and west Asian power, the Han Chinese didn't have to make treaties with Rome, the Roman's couldn't project power to South Africa or the Americas.
The Aztecs in 1400 didn't care one bit about what the Eastern Roman Empire was doing.
Is there a place on Earth that the Americans, Chinese, French, Russians or British can't affect?
But in the broader context, what you're talking about is a continuum of engineer responsibility: engineers who design guns have no control over whether people use them to shoot people, engineers who design cars have no control over whether people use them to run over people, and engineers who design garbage bags have no control over whether people use them to asphyxiate other people. Unless your job is designing large shapeless soft foam objects, you're always going to risk someone using your creation to hurt someone else, and at each point along the continuum from plastic bag designer to nuclear weapon designer, at least a few people are going to say they're not comfortable with doing that, and at least a few people are going to say they are. I'm not sure how one would draw a line at any given point and make a decision that beyond that point, other people were Bad People for continuing to work on those designs.
With all THAT said, I've noticed that a couple of friends who work in weapons systems drink. A lot. A lot more than most people, and a lot more than they used to when they were working on launch systems for satellites or modelling asteroid impact crater formation.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Which is basically what I've been saying locally for about a decade. The people we're having the most trouble with internationally don't just hate The West, they hate ANYONE that doesn't actively join their crusade. It's not enough to leave them alone, if you don't actively assist them in their genocidal goals you're going to be considered a target.
Basically extremist islam right now is pretty much the same problem with US right now, "You're with us, or you're against us."
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Well, nowadays we consider it good style to hold people responsible to their words and actions, not those of their forefather. What point are you trying to make by criticizing his quite rational stance on grounds of his ancestry? Besides, while the settlement of the Americas undoubtedly was accompanied by a genocide, it hardly was a total war on the scale the GP proposed by making a political argument from a game.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Very good and well-thought out post. However, there is one point I disagree with:
There will never be another Alexander, another Caesar, another Genghis Khan, another Napoleon, another Hitler, and this is also a good thing.
You can never say never. While the world has become a much smaller place thanks to technology, that does not mean some future person won't attempt (and succeed) in utilizing that technology. In addition, the real challenge is to get people to follow you - if you can build up people, everything else just falls into your hands. (For example, look at Hitler. In any "normal" environment, that would not have happened. But the people of Germany were discontent and he played to that and, as such, received FAR more power than he ever would have otherwise.)
That would be Poe's law, from Nathan Poe on the christianforums.com talking about christian fundamentalists.
As a student of war, I cannot agree more: even as a participant of these recent hostilities, I recognize, and have been taught, that the purpose of war IS NOT revenge (or retaliation). War occurs in many forms, but the one's involving "killing people and breaking things" tend to get folks all (rightfully so) upset.
War is a way to get somebody (a leader/and its people) to do something they refuse to do otherwise.
ps: let's please stop getting all sniffy about war hurting civilians, it hurts pretty much everybody.
jp
Considered again under Obama because...?
1. Obama negotiated with Russia to deactivate nuclear weapons if deploying these and to allow Russian inspections to show they weren't nuclear armed. Bush wasn't willing to.
2. The planned technology changed from the Navy's Conventional Trident (which would look exactly like a nuclear Trident) to a hypersonic cruise missile or new ballistic missile which would have a different launch signature from existing ballistic missiles and be based in different locations (which the Russians could inspect). That would mean it couldn't be mistaken for a real nuclear missile launch.
Scandinavia does produce some damn good metal, I'll give it that.
This brings up an interesting point. I'm starting to suspect that the reason why the United States is bending over backwards of copy write lobbyists (an pressuring everyone else to do the same) is because that's rapidly becoming the only thing they have. they've gone through their natural resources, all of their manufacturing is going to China (including high tech), they've just conclusively proven that they can't be trusted with finance, their car companies were pretty much built on the assumption that they can continue to convince people to buy a new car every five years.... I suppose they'll have agriculture for a while, but it looks like their largest export will be imaginary property.
disclaimer: IANA economist, and probably have no idea what I'm talking about.
404: sig not found.
"but in real life it's mass murder on a scale that not even the most bloody-minded conquerors in history have ever attempted"
Never heard what the Romans did to Carthage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage#Carthaginian_Republic/, have you? They were only limited by the technology available at the time.
Oh, and regarding this statement: "There will never be another Alexander, another Caesar, another Genghis Khan, another Napoleon, another Hitler, and this is also a good thing. "
Keep dreaming.
Necron69
Something is not the right order of magnitude here. 12,500 miles/1 hour = 12,500 mph = Mach 16. To me, 16 is more than "several".
I don't know of anything operational (SCRAM isn't) other than a rocket that can propel something that fast. And a rocket with enough thrust and low enough weight wouldn't be able to fire for an hour.
From that I suspect the entire flight profile isn't in the atmosphere. Something like: an ICBM delivers a ramjet-powered cruise missile somewhere in the vicinity of a target. The missile then flies the rest of the way.
As someone else pointed out...jeez. How expensive is that? Why not fire a missile from a B52 or a ship? Last I heard the US still had lots of both of those all over the globe. A Mach 5 ramjet could go 3840 miles in an hour so your platform wouldn't even have to be that close. Way out in the middle of the Indian Ocean is within that distance from Kabul, for example.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
and it's hardly a unique situation. With the exception of the people involved in each first migration, every piece of land on the planet was colonized in the same way by waves of people slaughtering the previous inhabitants. The people we often call natives, weren't.
I'd further what you said by saying that we should have never armed Al Qaeda, Hussein, or engaged in the 1953 Iranian coup de tat. Britain failed in Iraq trying to do the same crap we're doing now, and Britain has many more centuries of experience trying to expand empires.
We lost the supposed "War on Terror" the day we we're willing to give up our freedoms in the name of security. Ben Franklin, yada yada...
Our founding fathers said to ally with no one, and trade with anyone. The constitution also says we can't go to war unless we're invaded. I think some people should be thrown in jail for violating the constitution given that they took an oath to uphold it.
And inbreeding, so as long as a clan from West Virginia or southern Utah doesn't assume the leadership of the US, we'll be better off than the Romans.
The problem has never been that we blow too much shit up. The problem has been that we don't blow up ENOUGH!
I have always been a proponent of the Master of Orion foreign policy theory. You live in peace ad harmony with your neighbors, until they do something to piss you off. You know, they attack your colonies, steal too much technology, crash their star cruisers into a couple of towers, whatever.
You then send your fleet to bomb your enemies from orbit until their land is clear of any buildings, population, dogs, pine cones, or ants... then you simply bring in your own colonists to settle the area and call it good.
Once the other countries learn that you're serious and not screwing around anymore, they don't dare pick a fight with you.
Where's the problem?
I say we lift off and nuke the site from orbit...it's the only way to be sure.
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
While the world has become a much smaller place thanks to technology, that does not mean some future person won't attempt (and succeed) in utilizing that technology.
Not only that, but there is also a very real possibility that our tech will decline some time in the future. We might hit a rough patch in the next 40 years as oil runs out--it's not only important as a fuel source but in making plastics and paving roads. Any number of disasters could wipe out large swathes of humanity and some amount of practical knowledge will be taken with them.
Who knows what things will look like 10,000 or even 1,000 years from now? I would be willing to believe that another Alexander is not only possible but pretty likely given a long enough time frame.
Your brain is not a computer.
I think the largest contributing factor to Hitler's rise to power and world war 2, was the Allies' actions after world war 1. The Treaty of Versailles pretty much placed all blame for WW1 on Germany, neutered them politically, and ordered them to pay 132 billion marks in war reparations. this contributed to hyperinflation in the 20s, and the cost of living skyrocketed. It's not really surprising that the people got pissed off. ironically, most of this was in order to prevent Germany starting another war.
404: sig not found.
...if he'll use his Peace Prize award money to fund them?
A few other things:
- Loss or representative Democracy, which had given the masses a "stake" in Rome's success but after the Senate became an essentially powerless entity, the People no longer cared if Rome survived or not.
- Exclusions from the army. Rome had been strong because of required duty by the citizens in the army, but eventually most of Italy was exempt from that duty, thereby forcing the army to come from non-Romans in the surrounding provinces. These non-Romans had a bad habit of turning against their masters. ----- The army also degenerated in the quality of its armor, its swords, and its training. It was no longer a professional army, which is why it started losing battles.
- Devolution from a free market economy into a Feudal economy circa 300-400 A.D., such that citizens were essentially serfs of the manor lord. Non-free serfs tend not to be as productive as free citizens working for their own wealth. Rome's treasury slowly-but-surely became empty. And then it fell to invasion.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I am an Arizonan, and I am in favor of the new law. That stated, I agree with many of your points. I generally agree with a VERY strict illegal immigration (note the word "illegal") policy, even though some of our leaders are pushing for it for the wrong reasons (racism and xenophobia). I still feel that these laws are a better alternative to what we have now, i.e. nothing.
I am open to better solutions. Better feasible solutions, that is. Hell, if we actually enforced our employer sanction law this new law probably wouldn't be necessary.
Another problem I have with the criticism of this law form people not from the Southwest, is that they really have no clue what it is like here. Phoenix is almost like a Balkan state, with large enclaves of Mexican immigrants (legal and not) who exist autonomously from the rest of the city. Large parts of my city are like Mexican annexes, with no common language, culture, or, increasingly, currency with the rest of the country. Mexico, currently, is a VERY bad place, and by not having any border protection we're importing all of their social, and legal, problems. Arizona is the kidnap capitol of the U.S., because of our wanton importation of Mexican crime. Our hospital and public health systems are being financially crushed due to the burden of non-citizens using their services for free.
Also, for years businesses used illegal immigration to cut down on costs, break unions, and generally force Americans (with their expectations of a higher standard of living) out of the work-force. Our economy has suffered. It is almost impossible to make a living wage as a blue collar laborer now, because you can't complete with the horde of illegal, under-paid, labor.
In the Southwest illegal immigration is a major social problem. Doing nothing isn't really an option.
Watching the pro-illegal-immigration rallies on television is enlightening. Most of the protesters who had flags, carried not the American Flag, but the Mexican flag. There is something fundamentally bizarre about this. Most of our Mexican immigrants would classify themselves as Mexican, and not aspiring Americans. This is somewhat distasteful to me.
I have nothing against most Mexicans, as a matter of fact I grew up in a predominately hispanic neighborhood. Around 60% of my friends have ancestors from Mexico. I am not racist, and I have nothing against Mexicans. But to ignore the fact that the massive tide of illegal immigration causes huge problems is a bit niave.
Yes, this law can open profiling, though the text of it isn't about Mexicans, it is about all illegals. Here, though, the problem is mainly (99%) Mexican, and not Canadian or European.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey