Ben Carson Wants to Use Drones to Drop Bombs On American Soil To Protect the Border
GOP hopeful Ben Carson has decided that Donald Trump’s outrageous and extreme positions on immigration aren’t sufficiently Trump-y enough. Therefore, Carson has decided to out-Trump him:
BREAKING: GOP Presidential candidate Ben Carson open to using military drone strikes on American soil to secure the border.
— Dennis Welch (@dennis_welch) August 19, 2015
Behold, let’s carry out UAV strikes on US territory to secure US border.
You get the feeling that Carson has never heard of the Posse Comitatus Act? But certainly Carson does appear to be aiming to create and maintain a police state, complete with airstrikes against undesirables within our borders.
He’s hit the daily double for derp with this.
It’s yet another reason why the GOP is so completely off the rails and can’t be trusted to govern.
More context:
Ben Carson when asked about drone to secure the border: “I’m suggesting we do what we need to do to secure the border whatever that is.”
— Dennis Welch (@dennis_welch) August 19, 2015
This is no one-off the cuff claim that he’s going to be able to easily walk back. He’s talking about doing anything possible, up to and including drone strikes within the US, to secure the border.
I can’t help but think of the movie Escape from LA and how it portrayed a US that was turned into a theocracy following a natural disaster and put up walls to secure the border and deported or killed undesirables. This is the very kind of dystopian future that the GOP is reaching for.
Additional context would seem to leave the door open to using drone strikes and that Carson is pointing to the use of drones (UAVs) to secure our borders as part of a broader tech solution.
The problem is that we’ve already been trying the technological solutions, and they’ve been a big failure. We already use UAVs for monitoring the border but their use has been ineffective.
For nearly a decade, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has touted its drone program as an “effective technology to further enhance operational capabilities,” but according to the agency’s 2014 end of fiscal year report, the results are anything but impressive, fueling new calls for the program to be grounded.
The program has a fleet of 9 Predator drones and the Department of Homeland Security is planning to spend another $443 million for more aircraft to help secure the Mexican border. But a Jan. 6 report from the agency’s inspector general is advising against the expansion.
“Notwithstanding the significant investment, we see no evidence that the drones contribute to a more secure border, and there is no reason to invest additional taxpayer funds at this time,” said DHS Inspector General John Roth. “Securing our borders is a crucial mission for CBP and DHS. CBP’s drone program has so far fallen far short of being an asset to that effort.”
