I’m glad President Bush seemed to put border security at the top of the list, but until the border is secured nothing else should be on the table. The “promise” of amnesty — and any process that let’s illegal aliens obtain legal status without first going home and applying to come back legally is a form of amnesty — is going to encourage more and more illegal immigration.

I agree with stationing troops on the border until sufficient fulltime Border Patrol agents can be recruited and trained — but not the National Guard. Use regular forces. (Considering the burden the part-time troops in the National Guard have endured in Iraq it’s time to let them return to their families, jobs and businesses.)

It would make better sense to designate several brigades as “border troops” and permanently station then at existing bases along the boredr where they can rotate internally forwards to the Border and back to their nearby bases. While the US Army has never had “border troops”, there’s a long tradition of US Cavalry in along the western frontier. As we slowly withdraw units from Iraq, Germany and the Korean peninsula why not redesignate one light division for “frontier service”. And let them get trained for that duty, learn the terrain, and develop close relationships with their specific Border Patrol-partners and the local residents. THe more they know the rythyms of the local area, and the inhabitants and landowners along the border, the less-likely another young teenager gets shot while herding his family’s goats or cattle like that poor Valenzuela kid a few years back.

And having skillled, trained US troopers with helicopters, Strikers and Bradleys might deter the local drug smugglers and “renegade” Mexican Army units at the same time. Since this is an international frontier, the Posse Commitas restrictions for the use of regular US Army troops should be satisfied.

If you are going to send military troops, no half-measures this time. Send several 8,000-man brigades deployed along the border, and plan that they will be there the next 6 to 10-years. If someone’s imaginative, they could combine it with the Desert Training school and offer it as a route for hot-shot officers. The US Navy is developing a whole new Littoral Ops doctrine and career-path for it’s members. We now have plenty of troops and officers with real-world experience at desert combat and recon ops experience..let’s put them to work. Not the part-timers of the Guard who will spend half of their two-week deployment just driving to the Border.

According to this reaction round-up (hat tip Hugh Hewitt) - Andrew Sullivan, whom Mort identified mistakenly as a “conservative blogger”, found almost nothing to criticize in the President’s speech.

That, right there, should tell you the President’s approach isn’t principled, conservative nor workable.

Thanks for your spirited and well-thought out defense of the president.

Let’s face it, until the sirens of the Right started a screaming mantra at screeching decibles about illegal aliens, it was NOT and issue on many policymakers’ radar screen. The ceaseless din from Fox, Dobbs on CNN and the MSM sensing a moving issue with gravitas, these matters would still not be even a blip on the radar screen.

From a compassionate, balanced perspective, I think GWB made the first needed steps. Does it solve the problem? Not likely. Will Congress and state governors get into and make it a spending and throw more money at the problem affair? Sure, you can bet on it.

The problem I’m having more with our right-tilting base in the party is that they’ve become enamored of the notion that the perfect should trump the pragmatic and the possible –complete with dewy-eyed longings for another RR. Politics is about leadership for sure, but it’s also about compromise.

The outline of GWB’s plan doesn’t answer all the questions –but it’s a good first step. Congress will likely muck it up.

Let’s not make the reach for the perfect stymie the possible or pragmatic.