The main concern surrounding ISIS, at least before the US launched a war against them, was that when the Syrian Civil War ended, was that the Americans and other foreign fighters would return with international terrorist ties.
US officials eager to cash in on that fear claim it’s already happened, with one unnamed official claiming that there are “some who’ve come back and are under active – the FBI is looking at them.”
But is it a real threat? It’s not clear at all. The putative 100 Americans that are cited mostly didn’t join ISIS in the first place, but included everyone who went to Syria. The Pentagon conceded earlier this month that out of the 100 US passport holders, more like a dozen had actually joined ISIS.
The US doesn’t really know who’s who, and conceded that they don’t have any intelligence surrounding any specific plotting against US territory by ISIS at all, let alone by the phantom returnees.
Officials seem to be trying to sell the escalation of the ISIS war with the claims, unbacked by anything in particular, that a domestic attack might conceivably be imminent.
Confusing, isn't it, all that switching sides. It's like the McCarthy era if these ISIS joiners are prosecuted. After all, in WWII it was cool to support Uncle Joe Stalin and pro-Soviet propaganda was sought in Hollywood.
To bring down the Assad regime, rebels were armed. While there has been an attempt to portray ISIS as uniquely evil, it seems those very rebels delivered victims to ISIS to further their own cause, which makes them and ISIS pretty tight buddies.
Yup, USG has to spy on 300 million Americans to find the twelve Islamismist Evildoers who are so powerful they can destroy the entire society by themselves. We are so powerful we can destroy any enemy anywhere on the planet, but Eek! We're afraid of a mouse!
The truth of the matter is that the U.S. government doesn't have a clue how many ISIS terrorists are running around in America. The government has know about ISIS for several years, yet still refuses to secure our borders. It's almost like the government wants a terrorist attack here in America to have another excuse to trample on our rights. Now that we have started bombing the hell out of ISIS, we can expect ISIS to carry out it's threat to strike right here in the homeland. Even after ISIS blows up a mall or some other place packed with civilians, I'm betting that the government still will not secure our borders. Any takers?
It's highly unlikely that the 95,500 miles of US border and coastline could ever be meaningfully "secured" against people looking for jobs, short of near 100% taxation coupled with 100% conscription of all military-age mails. Not that the taxation and conscription themselves would work. It's just that they'd make the country so crappy that Mexico would look sweet by comparison.
Now if we're talking about securing the borders versus ISIS and al Qaeda types, that's cheap: Just announce that the borders are open to all non-criminals who are willing to walk/drive over said borders in plain view. Then you know that the people trying to sneak across in the middle of the night are the bad guys.
But I doubt American Know-Nothings would go for something like that. "Border security" is mostly just code for "EEK! Brown people!"
Luckily, we only have to secure roughly 2000 miles of that border to make a major impact on the invasion currently happening to the United States. If you want to include the entire Gulf of Mexico, then that will make it 4000 miles to be secured. The northern border is fairly secure and two oceans provide a great deal of security.
Since the only "invasion" is in your imagination, "we" don't even have to do that much.
I beg to differ. We have much to do.
America's borders could easily be made secure sir, if the government was serious about it, your straw-man argument notwithstanding.
Yes, they could be made "secure" — I even described how. Just open them and voila, actual security increases greatly.
But the Berlin Wall bullshit advocated by most of the idiots who like to talk about "border security" will never make them "secure." And thank God for that — because a Berlin Wall to keep people out is just as good at keeping them in.