Ready to Get Involved?

That’s the claim of Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding the current Hamas assault on Israel and Hezbollah’s and the latter’s parent, Iran’s, threats to attack Israel should Israel press its response to Hamas’ barbarism, Hamas’ rape and butchery of Israeli women, Hamas’ butchery and beheading of Israeli babies.

This is not what we want, not what we’re looking for. We don’t want escalation. We don’t want to see our forces or our personnel come under fire. But if that happens, we’re ready for it.

And do what, exactly, with this “readiness?”

SecDef Lloyd Austin was a bit more loquacious, if no more specific.

What we’re seeing is a prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region. We’re going to do what’s necessary to make sure that our troops are in that position and they were protected and that we have the ability to respond. We won’t hesitate to take the appropriate action.

What is that appropriate action, exactly? Regardless, what Blinken and Austin might do in the way of acting on their claimed readiness is governed by Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden. Actually, we know what Blinken would do regarding acting, were he left to his own devices. This is what he said on X in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ 7 October butchery inside Israel:

Turkish Foreign Minister @HakanFidan and I spoke further on Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israel. I encouraged Türkiye’s advocacy for a cease-fire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas immediately[.]

Immediate cease-fire. Hesitate. Don’t respond. True enough, Blinken deleted that post quickly, but only under the pressure of the opprobrium he was getting from…mainstream America. And the deletion itself is a demonstration of Blinken’s level of integrity, as by his deletion, he rewrote that history and is trying to pretend it never happened.

However, trumping Blinken and Austin, the Hesitator-in-Chief, Joe Biden himself, has long demonstrated what he’ll “do” in these sorts of situations. Just a few years ago, the then-Vice Hesitator to an only slightly less timid President advised that President not to go after bin Laden when we had that terrorist in our sights in Pakistan. Then, as Hesitator-in-Chief, he cut and run from Afghanistan, abandoning Americans and American allies to the Taliban terrorists, along with tens of billions of dollars worth of modern weapons—many of which, oddly enough, are finding themselves in the hands of Hamas terrorists and Russian barbarians.

And just a few days ago, our forces or our personnel [have] come under fire. We’ve had a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people. And our Hesitator-in-Chief not only has hesitate[d] to take the appropriate action, he’s carefully decided to do nothing at all.

Biden’s empty chit-chat, whether directly from him or through his Secretaries, is the antithesis of deterrence.

Some Border Crossing Data

Illegal aliens are streaming across our southern border in increasing numbers under Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s Open Border Policy.

  • 269,735 illegal alien encounters in September
    • of which 218,763 were encountered entering illegally by Border Patrol agents
    • 18 encounters of people between ports of entry at the southern border were on the terror watch list
  • of those who entered, only 43,000 were processed through ports of entry via the CBP’s Biden’s/Mayorkas’ One app
  • yearly total for illegal aliens at the southern border for FY23: 2.48 million
  • 2.38 million in FY22
  • 1.73 million in FY21
  • 736 terrorist suspects stopped at the border in fiscal year to date
    • 564 of those encounters occurred at land border ports of entry
    • 172 encounters occurred between ports of entry.

That’s almost 25% of the terrorist suspect “encounters” occurring during attempts to enter illegally. How many more were gotaways? How many yet more were between ports of entry and undetected?

And this datum, via the second link above:

  • 2.06 million illegal aliens entering between ports of entry—not including “gotaways.”

These illegal alien encounter data represent the aggregation of those caught and those processed via that Biden/Mayorkas app. What percentage of total border crossings do illegal aliens who enter undetected represent?

The key measure there is “undetected,” and that’s the problem: we not only don’t know how many are flowing in so freely and apparently invisibly, we don’t know who they are, either. Likely the vast majority are just like those encountered—primarily those wanting a better life, with drug mules and human traffickers in the mix, and those on the terrorist and criminal watch lists. The terrorist numbers are quite small compared to the total, but they’re far greater than the number of terrorists who inflicted the murders and destruction of 9/11.

The undetected likely includes more of these types, to our great peril. But they likely also include some—many—explicitly trained to penetrate our border undetected: PLA special forces personnel, Russian special forces personnel, Iranian specially trained terrorists. Each of these types will be fully capable of setting up their separate cells for action at the times the PRC, Russia, and Iran choose, for espionage and/or sabotage.

This is the outcome of Biden’s Open Border Policy. This is what a closed border looks like in DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ fevered imagination. This is the closed border that the press misleads us about.

Update: Corrected some copy/paste errors in the presented data. Bad mouse. Bad mouse….