Our View - Thursday

LOCAL HEROES TAKE CHARGE
CARSON'S 3RD BRIGADE FOUGHT BACK

 
   Congratulations to soldiers from Fort Carson's 3rd Brigade Combat team, who were primarily responsible for restoring peace to Baghdad after a week-long Shiite uprising.
In six days of fighting in the eastern Baghdad conclave of Sadr City, Shiites battling U.S. and Iraqi forces wounded 36 of our local soldiers. The attacks by Shiites began after the Iraqi government tried to subdue Shiite warriors in Basra.

   Shiites overran four of the eight Iraqi-run checkpoints which control traffic in and out of Sadr City. Meanwhile, they fired rockets from Sadr City into the Green Zone, which houses the Iraqi government and the U.S. embassy. Fort Carson soldiers quickly took back the checkpoints, overpowering Shiites with Bradleys and tanks. As militias worked furiously to reclaim the checkpoints they had controlled briefly, Fort Carson soldiers heroically held their ground.

   Third Brigade commander Col. John Hort told The Gazette the week of violence showcased heroic work. Example: When a 3rd Brigade Bradley was bombed and set on fire, a medic from another vehicle ran through heavy enemy fire, putting himself at grave risk of a painful death, in order to pull nine fellow soldiers from the burning Bradley. After rescuing them, the medic treated their wounds. When his work was done, the medic had worse injuries than the fellow soldiers he had rescued.

   Though U.S. and Iraqi soldiers regained the Sadr City checkpoints, an armed militia remains in the enclave under control of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. For now, a truce has restored relative peace to the area.

   Fort Carson's 3rd BCT was sent to Iraq in December, when soldiers immediately began helping to rebuild the country, primarily by restoring electricity and fostering business growth. This week, it was all-out war.

   Colorado Springs should never forget that members of our community, our neighbors and friends, are sacrificing and risking their lives each day in the Middle East. They live under a constant threat of bullets, bombs and missiles. They are fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. We see their families at work, and stand with them in line at the store. These soldiers are the best Americans we have. They are people willing to rebuild another country, hoping others might live in peace. They're willing to selflessly accept grave danger, always placing the needs of others ahead of themselves. The recent uprising in Baghdad should remind us all that our comfort relies on the extraordinary sacrifice of neighbors who are mostly out of sight and out of mind.

IMMIGRANT WALL: SHRINE OF SHAME

   It's a favorite new mantra of the left: "Walls don't work."

Despite the often sinister motives of the left, the slogan is correct. Walls don't work. The Berlin Wall; the Great Wall of China; Hitler's Atlantic Wall; the walls of Jericho; the walls of Troy. None met expectations, and mostly just fueled hostility. The human will to freely roam is stronger than a wall. Fences and walls are unthinking, with abilities that never exceed their limited height and strength. The human, by contrast, adapts, innovates and overcomes.

   American leftists want our country to coddle and care for an influx of immigrants they view as "underprivileged minorities," or "people of color" with special needs. Lo the poor immigrant, for whom the left wants health care, public education, food stamps and government housing. Equally ignorant, however, are conservatives who think a fence can help resolve immigration problems. They're so confident the fence will hinder immigrants that they've convinced Congress to negate local and state environmental and cultural laws that might slow fence construction. After all, we're told, the fence could turn back terrorists! Suddenly conservative Republicans - long advocates of states' rights and local control - want federal government to run roughshod over local yokels and property rights.

They want a fence right now, regardless of conservative principles that favor limited federal control and spending, while championing property rights, free markets and the liberty to roam.

   Immigrants will pour into this country, with or without a fence, and it has little to do with their own wants and needs. They'll come here because we pay them to. Period. When we no longer need them - and no longer pay them to fix roofs and pick grapes - they'll stay home. A fence is no match against economic demand and human will. The fence will hold out immigrants like a dam of chewed gum would hold back Lake Pontchartrain.

   The symbolic fence will embarrass the United States, because we pay immigrants far more than minimum wage to work here. It's like a pricey ski village erecting a fence, giving the finger to workers who travel from trailer parks to run the ski lifts.

   Smart conservatives will view the fence as a simplistic symbol of animosity. They'll embrace the fact that immigrant workers, in a free market, are assets. They provide labor and therefore prosperity.

   Genuine conservatives should concern themselves not with immigrants, but with welfare-state politics of the left. Immigrant welfare, not immigration, comprises liability. An immigrant in the United States to earn a healthy wage contributes to the collective good. An immigrant on welfare, like any dependant, drains us. Ask not for a flimsy fence, but for laws against immigrant welfare. Public assistance should be reserved for only a few American citizens who've paid their dues - such as veterans who've lost limbs in war.

   If we have an immigration crisis, it rests in the politics of dependency. Don't build a wall of wailing laughter. Instead, counter the work of leftists who desire to convert hard-working, God-fearing immigrants into a parasitic class of lockstep liberal Democrats.

   The border fence is a monument to foolishness. Be smart. Hug an immigrant, then work to free him from welfare lies.