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Israel, China, Nancy Pelosi's house, Barack Obama's house, etc.
Please.
The Chinese were invaded after the wall was built. Several times.
Israel doesn't have a wall around the nation, which is only the size of Connecticut. It has a wall dividing the city of Jerusalem and some of the suburbs. The others are only walls around city lots or small acreages.
Trying to build a border wall long enough to wall off Mexico is a far, far, far larger proposition than even China's Great Wall. And China chose the easiest and best location for their wall, around 1,000 years ago.
You know- 1,000 years ago. Back before people could fly or move overground at high speed in machines. Or dig massive tunnels with machines. All the Chinese wall ever stopped were horses and carts.
Our border doesn't allow the United States the luxury of selecting such a location as China's. Their wall was mostly built on the plains of inner Mongolia, and it took hundreds of thousands of workers decades to construct it. Drove 2 emperors broke, too.
It all looks so easy on a map, but once anyone actually follows our border from end to end, they will understand the idiocy of this proposition.
I haven't seen most of the border, not more than a couple of days of it, but just the country I saw would demand a wall that would be so costly as to put us all in a deep hole for the rest of our lives.
And while I suppose some parts of it could be engineered to be actually built, I couldn't envision any way a barrier could be made un-breachable. Any wall would be physically impossible in those spots.
Please.
The Chinese were invaded after the wall was built. Several times.
Israel doesn't have a wall around the nation, which is only the size of Connecticut. It has a wall dividing the city of Jerusalem and some of the suburbs. The others are only walls around city lots or small acreages.
Trying to build a border wall long enough to wall off Mexico is a far, far, far larger proposition than even China's Great Wall. And China chose the easiest and best location for their wall, around 1,000 years ago.
You know- 1,000 years ago. Back before people could fly or move overground at high speed in machines. Or dig massive tunnels with machines. All the Chinese wall ever stopped were horses and carts.
Our border doesn't allow the United States the luxury of selecting such a location as China's. Their wall was mostly built on the plains of inner Mongolia, and it took hundreds of thousands of workers decades to construct it. Drove 2 emperors broke, too.
It all looks so easy on a map, but once anyone actually follows our border from end to end, they will understand the idiocy of this proposition.
I haven't seen most of the border, not more than a couple of days of it, but just the country I saw would demand a wall that would be so costly as to put us all in a deep hole for the rest of our lives.
And while I suppose some parts of it could be engineered to be actually built, I couldn't envision any way a barrier could be made un-breachable. Any wall would be physically impossible in those spots.
Other physical barriers that weren't really effective at keeping folks out:
Other physical barriers that weren't really effective at keeping folks out:
The Maginot Line
Hadrian's Wall
The Berlin Wall ultimately didn't do much to protect east Berlin from the rest of western Europe.
I will say that the Korean DMZ has been pretty effective at keeping south Koreans OUT of NK. In spite of how prosperous NK is. And they do seem to have full employment. [/SARC]
The Berlin Wall ultimately didn't do much to protect east Berlin from the rest of western Europe.
I will say that the Korean DMZ has been pretty effective at keeping south Koreans OUT of NK. In spite of how prosperous NK is. And they do seem to have full employment. [/SARC]
Well, of course, the DMZ has heavily armed troops on both sides of the border...
Exercising eminent domain to build something like that and then guard it to the same extent would be even more expensive than building the wall. But if you want a wall that really works, the Korean DMZ is a good current example. Of course you still have to augment it with rigorously enforced and absolute trade and travel prohibitions.
There are several centuries worth of examples in which a border wall has greatly aided with national security.
We're not talking about invasions by foreign warriors (although Trump likes to bandy that word around).
Can you name any time in history that a wall has been erected spanning thousands of miles between two democratic allied countries to protect against several thousand impoverished people trying to go to one of the countries to work?
The Great Wall of China worked for a while. But that was to protect against the barbarians and other warring forces. And that's not the kind of wall we're talking about. Since we're not an empire with a dictator (our private citizens own a lot of the wealth, not one Emperor), we can't afford a Great Wall, anyway.
Israel is protecting itself from terrorists. Despite what Trump says, there has not been one instance of a terrorist coming into the country illegally thru Mexico. Even so, Israel's wall is very short and on different terrain, compared to our border with Mexico.
Trump would be satisfied with a shorter wall. We can't span the entire border, anyway. He just wants a photo-op of standing in front of a wall being built. I guarantee you he wouldn't care if it weren't even finished. But he needs the funding and for the wall to at least start being built. He's all about the optics. He's a tv entertainer.
The wall would do harm to the persons whose properties would be taken for the wall. It also would hurt the wildlife who traverse that area for food and water.
It's a stupid idea and very expensive just to stop a few thousand people who try to get in every year, even if the wall worked. Which it wouldn't. We have over 20,000 border agents. We can increase the number of the agents. There is also drone surveillance and other things that could be done at a fraction of the cost of a stupid wall. If Trump were an experienced leader in govt, he would have been working on a real solution all this time, and probably have completed the funding for it, since the Republicans have had the Presidency and both houses of Congress for two years.
If we don't have money to fund Meals on Wheels, and want to increase the age to receive Social Security and Medicare because "we can't afford it," then we can't afford a stupid wall. There is not going to be a wall. No one with more than half a brain wants it (which explains why Trump wants it).
But Trump very well knows the wall won't ever work at keeping the migrants out.
Really? What slowed down and ultimately stopped the migrants storming the San Diego crossing? Drones? Cameras? Saying walls don't work is like saying buckets don't work.
It has been my experience that they contract everything out. They have played the role of general contractor on nearly every single military project I have been associated with. That is approx. 50 construction projects on over a dozen military bases/instilations. I have never seen anyone from the Corps of Engineers build a single thing so I assume if/when they did build something it must have been during war time. It has also been my experience that they totally suck at general contracting. I would not hire them to supervise or build a dog house.
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