MISSION CREEP - A HOUSE BILL TO ALLOW THE MILITARY TO BE USED TO PATROL THE
BORDER IS MISGUIDED AND DANGEROUS

Memorial Day is an apt moment to reflect on a decision made in the House of
Representatives last week: Members passed House Amendment 648, which allows
the military to be used to patrol U.S. borders to help other agencies and
serve their goals.

The amendment authorizes: "The Secretary of Defense may assign members of
the armed forces to assist - 1) the Immigration and Naturalization Service
in preventing the entry of terrorists, drug traffickers, and illegal aliens
into the United States; and 2) the United States Customs Service in the
inspection of cargo, vehicles, and aircraft at points of entry into the
United States."

We question the wisdom of this idea for a very basic reason: the military
is trained to perform one kind of job, while the police, INS agents and
customs investigators, quite another.

The raison d'etre for military personnel is aggression and defense,
strategy and tactics, one person acting in concert with a unit. In
contrasts, a police officer has a depth of training that covers many of
those areas and more - psychological, conflict resolution, behavioral.

A police officer serves a community and treats its members accordingly; a
sergeant looks for enemies and is prepared to engage them.

So the missions are different, the training is different and so is the
approach to the job.

The danger of deploying the military as police was shown just a year ago.
On May 20, 1997, Marine Corporal Clemente Banuelo shot dead Esquiel
Hernandez, Jr., an 18-year-old high school student with no criminal record
who was shooting a .22 rifle while tending goats on his own farm in Texas
near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Farmers commonly fire rifles on their own land. Certainly, such a practice
is not illegal. Corporal Banuelo isn't to blame because he was trained to
storm beaches, not police a border. The military patrols along the border
were cancelled after the killing of Mr. Hernandez. But due to House Amdt.
648, such fatal errors could become more likely as the wrong kind of force
- - military instead of civilian - might be deployed even more extensively.

Unfortunately, all six Orange County representatives voted for this
amendment. Proponents of the amendment say using the military on the border
would be an option, not a mandate. Nevertheless, the amendment opens the
door.

"If nothing else, the primary goal of the federal government is to secure
our nation's borders," Rep. Dana Rochrabacher, Republican of Huntington
Beach, told us Friday in defending his vote for the amendment. "If it takes
military troops to secure our borders, then they should be permitted to do
so."

Another problem is that such an approach would stretch even thinner
America's over-deployed military. Despite being reduced in size by 40
percent the last eight years, the U.S. military has been given new
commitments in Bosnia, Macedonia, Haiti and the Persian Gulf. The U.S.
military now has personnel in more than 100 foreign countries.

"The U.S. military machine is sputtering along like a WW11 tank that's made
too many invasions," recently reported retired Army Col. David Hackworth,
America's most decorated living veteran in his Internet "Defending America"
column.

If existing units already have been depleted, how are they going to take on
the vast new mission of patrolling the border? The overall defense bill to
which this amendment is attached authorizes $270.4 billion for defense for
1998-99, virtually the same as for the 1997-98 budget. So there won't be
any money to ease the military's existing personnel and equipment
shortages.

California's two senators, Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer,
who is running for re-election, should act to make sure H. Amdt. 648
doesn't survive in the Senate version of the defense spending bill.

The appropriate agencies should find civilian responses to these civilian
concerns.

Checked-by: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)