Counter-drug Operations

Someone once called football interminable stretches of boredom punctuated by ten seconds of frantic action, followed by committee meetings. Navigation can be exactly like that, especially when patrolling a sector off the coast of a South American country waiting like a spider for a fly to dash into its web. We spend fifteen or thirty minutes bored out of our minds, waiting for the chance to turn the ship in our patrol box just to have something to do. A real contact is cause for the kind of excitement displayed by little kids on Christmas morning.

Let me tell you, this, in the immortal words of Bart Simpson, both sucks and blows.

Granted, this is what we've been sent down here to do. We're to chase drug runners, assuming any come our way, but it occurs to me that there must be a better way than this. A single ship, covering thousands of square miles of open ocean, waiting for that single tiny speedboat to zip by us in the middle of nowhere, which, except under the right conditions, we're not going to catch. "Hey, here comes a go-fast." Where'd it go? It went fast, right by us.

Here's an idea. Let's give the Coast Guard ships that can endure more than a week at sea, so that they can act as the sentries that they're supposed to be. Let's actually let the Border Patrol patrol our borders. They have a catchy name, let's give them the manpower and tools they need to live up to it. Let's have the Customs Service inspect ships and cargo coming into our ports. Maybe they'll actually catch somebody smuggling in drugs. You know they'd love to do it, it's theoretically what they get paid for. Unlike us. We don't get paid to be cops. We get paid to kill our enemies and blow up their houses.

Now don't get me wrong. I will do what I am told to do. That was the oath I took, the commitment I made to my fellow Americans. But when I consider the amount of money we spend ($100,000 just in fuel, food, and fees, and that just in the last two weeks, plus training work-up, salaries, and travel costs for people joining and leaving the crew), the amount of ocean we cover with far too few assets, and compare it to the amount of drugs that still illegally enters our country, I have to wonder if it's worth the trouble and expense. We should let law enforcement do their jobs, and allow the Navy to do its job, protect and defend the Constitution against enemies, not criminals.

Go To Page: 1

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic