Sipsey Street Irregulars: Brian Terry memorial service marred by insincere promises and pious platitudes

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Brian Terry memorial service marred by insincere promises and pious platitudes

U.S. border official vows to 'finish the job' started by slain agent in Arizona.

The nation's top border and customs official promised Friday to "restore the rule of law" to the U.S.-Mexico border and prosecute those responsible for the slaying of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in southern Arizona.

"We will bring the murderers to justice, and we will support the federal law enforcement authorities and the United States attorney to see that justice is done in this case," Alan Bersin, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, declared at a memorial service for the agent at a Tucson sports stadium. No homicide charges have been brought against the four men arrested in Terry's slaying, and a fifth suspect remains at large.

"We will finish the job that Brian participated in," Bersin said. "We are determined to restore the rule of law to the United States-Mexico border."

Bersin's pledge contrasted with statements by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano just after Terry's death Dec. 14 that the U.S. frontier is largely secure — a declaration that has elicited anger and ridicule in much of Arizona, where Napolitano served as governor.

When I worked the Mexican border with the Minutemen in the Hachita, NM sector in October 2005, I got to meet more than a few Border Patrol agents. They were uniformly good, even brave, men trying to do a dangerous task unsupported by an administration that didn't want them to effectively do their jobs. My prayers continue to be with the Terry family as they suffer through this agony. But . . .

The spectacle of Alan Bersin promising "to restore the rule of law to the United States-Mexico border" is just too cynically hypocritical by half. ICE's own on-going investigation of the weapon that killed Brian Terry demonstrated that it was one of the ATF "walked" rifles. Bersin knows this. By now he knows all about Project Gunwalker. If he truly wants to restore the "rule of law," he should start with the SAC and ASAC of the Phoenix ATF office, and their bosses in DC who, despite red flags raised by ATF street agents, smuggled the gun that killed a brave man in his country's service. But that would take far more moral courage than pious platitudes at a dead man's memorial service.

Mike
III

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: Mike-OT but watch your back.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/20/faa-warns-of-ongoing-gps-issues-in-southeastern-us-due-to-defens/

FAA warns of ongoing GPS issues in southeastern US due to Defense Department 'tests'; January 22, 2011 at 9:22 AM
1894C said...: Mike said:
..."and their bosses in DC who, despite red flags raised by ATF street agents, smuggled the gun that killed a brave man in his country's service."

Mike, while I agree with the overall sentiment you may want to reconsider the phrase "gun that killed" we all know that the firearm as a properly functioning inanimate object is not to blame here.

Keep up the good work,

1894C
III; January 22, 2011 at 12:42 PM
Defender said...: GPS. A military system we civilians are allowed to use -- just like the interstate highway system.

I'm very interested to see if any of the Powers issue a peep about ATF malfeasance, or if they continue the Reichstag Fire rhetoric about how freedom is too dangerous.
House majority leader Eric Cantor has had two emails from me alone.; January 22, 2011 at 2:30 PM
TPaine said...: Alan Bersin's own feeble attempt to deflect the blame away from where it truly lies. And since he knows the "whole story" it is really treasonous to open his mouth in this regard. Here's hoping his is one of hte many heads that will roll when the truth is out.; January 22, 2011 at 2:34 PM
Defender said...: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/obama-outlines-gun-control-policy

Dated 11.22.11.

I couldn't navigate whitehouse.gov to find it, but CeaseFire is listed as an inspiration. Permanent semi-auto ban.; January 23, 2011 at 1:50 AM
Dedicated_Dad said...: Defender: Google is our friend...

That article is from January 2009....

DD; January 24, 2011 at 1:37 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Brian Terry memorial service marred by insincere promises and pious platitudes

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