HoodaThunk?

By now you’ve all heard of the “crime emergency” in Washington, DC. There were a number of muggings that took place in the Mall area in DC – that stretch of governmental real estate between the Capitol Building in the east and the Lincoln Memorial in the west. The Washington Monument is there, as are the memorials to the Vietnam War, Korean War, and World War II dead. Flanking much of the Mall is the world-famous Smithsonian Institution. It’s an area of DC that was traditionally quite safe to visit at night. Right up until some armed thugs decided to start stealing people’s wallets.

The Capitol Police and DC Police got into action and started hunting these criminals down, eventually catching them. The authorities have said these criminals came to the Mall from other neighborhoods, riding the Metro to get to and from their crimes.

Now, imagine for a moment that there was a couple of guys who decided, for whatever reason, that they were going to assist these crooks. Not that they knew them, or anything like that, but they were going to assist them in safely getting away from the police by providing, each night, a new change of clothing for these guys to get into as they made their escape so they wouldn’t match the descriptions given to the cops. These guys didn’t make any money off the deal and didn’t accept stolen property in any way. In fact, although they made sure to give the crooks their contact information for later communications, these guys didn’t actually talk to the crooks at all during the commission of their crimes. All they did was to offer needed assistance to these guys so they could successfully break the law and get away with it.

Are these guys part of the “good guys” or are they guilty of aiding a abetting lawbreakers? I would suggest that this is a softball question. Of course they’re guilty. They’re assisting people in breaking the law. In legal parlance, that’s called being an accomplice and that can actually land you in jail.

So, what to make of this puff piece in the Washington Post this morning about a group of people who take to the air in small planes to perform little air drops of water and instructions to foreigners attempting to enter the United State illegally? To read the story, you’d think these guys were dropping in supplies to people who had been hit by an earthquake or a hurricane. They’re just humanitarians trying to keep people from dying in the desert, or so the story would have you believe.

First off, the reason these people are even in the desert to begin with is because they’ve made the decision to break US law, evade our border patrols, and enter the United States, they hope, surreptitiously. No one forced them into that desert. No storm came over them and left wasteland around them instead of the homes they had before. No natural disaster befell that left them stranded with no method of getting the food and water they needed. They went out into a desert – a desert they were fully aware was there – and they did so voluntarily. That they went into it without adequate supplies and while dragging their young children with them changes nothing. They did so of their own accord.

Second, the assertion by these people who wish to enable illegal aliens to penetrate our borders that they “neither for illegal immigration nor against it” just doesn’t hold water (no pun intended) given their actions. Let them tell you themselves:

The first few bubble-wrapped bottles of water burst upon impact, and the intended targets in the desert responded by hurling back rocks. “They thought we were trying to hit them — intentionally,” Alarcon said.

An engineer in San Francisco, who read about the project, came up with a novel idea: Attach small parachutes to the bottles. The engineer bought and donated several hundred 36-inch-diameter surplus Army flare chutes. He also had them silk-screened with information in Spanish on the symptoms of dehydration and heat stroke; the distance from the border to Phoenix and other cities in the West; the local telephone numbers of the Mexican and Salvadoran consulates and instructions on how to signal the plane if a rescue was needed.

(Emphasis mine.) Their flight path takes them directly over the border between Mexico and America. So, tell me, if they’re “neither for illegal immigration nor against it” then why are the only instructions given with these “humanitarian drops” those that tell the recipients how to get to cities on the American side? Why not provide distance and direction to cities on the Mexican side? And if they’re not suggesting that the recipients of these drops should come on in to the US, then why are the phone numbers for the Mexican and Salvadoran consulates given? How about telling them how to contact low-income assistance programs in Mexico once they get back to the Mexican cities?

The implication of the instructions provided with the water bottles is obvious – the pilots want the people below them to press on into the US and are taking actions to enable them to do just that. This is arguably playing the role of an accomplice to a crime. If they’re interested in helping people in the desert, feel free to drop the water and then call the Border Patrol with a report of where they are. The fastest way to help them is to get someone to them that can get them out of the desert. If that’s all they’re interested in doing, if the issue of illegal aliens busting the border is of no consequence one way or the other, then immediately calling the Border Patrol is the only logical choice. That this is precisely the action they are not taking gives lie to all their talk about just being humanitarians.