Blame Canada!

Sometimes I wonder if Gen. Victor “Gene” Renuart, chief of Homeland Security’s Northern Command, wouldn’t be writing for Hollywood instead of doing his job. Ok, I understand that his job is stressing. Fair enough. Basically it is all about seeing risks where others just see safety. That’s it, basically it’s all about calling wolf all the time. All the time.

Usually it is enough with some wood to feed the fire of fear of what Michael Moore talked about in Bowling for Columbine. But everybody knows a fire needs constantly wood, and that people get scared less and less. That’s why they have to increase every time a bit more the fear sense. These have been the latest words from Gen. Renuart [the bold emphasis is mine]:

July 24, 2007: “"I believe there are [al Qaeda] cells in the United States, or at least people who aspire to create cells in the United States […] To assume that there are not those cells is naïve, and so we have to take that threat seriously." It is not like Gen. Renuart has proof for it, but he added: "Am I concerned that this will happen this summer? I have to be concerned that it could happen any day."

March 7, 2008: But "we need only to look at Spain and see that [terrorists] are certainly willing to try to do something that is significant that could effect an election process," Renuart says in the middle of Obama-Clinton fight. Not that there's any specific intelligence pointing to a pre-election attack. It is just that "it would be imprudent of us to let down our guard believing that if there's no credible threat that you know of today, there won't be something tomorrow." Or the day after.

December 17, 2008: "It would make news for a terrorist element or rogue element to interrupt that event," Renuart says of President Obama's inauguration. Again, there are no specific warnings to that effect. But "it is prudent to plan for the possibility of that event and to deter it or to respond to it."

January 27, 2009: At the end, it didn’t happen. Renuart said that a Department of Homeland Security warning of a Somali terror strike on the inaugural proceedings turned out to be bunk. Buuuut… he warned "that ongoing security concerns still face the Obama administration during its early days," according to the Associated Press. The proof? "If you look back in our history, every time we change an administration there has been some event seen to challenge the new administration," he says. "So “I wouldn't let down our guard to say we are past the period of vulnerability“." Whatever that means.

Of course, according to the latest press release from his office -and here we reach the point of the post-, we still aren’t safe. Not for now. And not only the US is not safe enough, but the threat comes from his neighbor -and 51st State: Canada.

Gen. Renuart crossed the border between a healthy vigilant attitude and a paranoid obsession when he stated that Canada, because of its too liberal immigration policy, is letting get into the country bad people from “Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt”. And that “huge population” so called “Special Interest Aliens”, or SIAs, represents the "greatest potential for foreign terrorists' access to the homeland”.

Maybe, and just maybe, as Spencer Ackerman notes “xenophobia directed at Muslim immigrants” is more dangerous than Canada’s immigration policies.

But, come on... When all else fails, make like the South Park moms, and blame Canada.

PS. By the way, talking about threats from US neighbors... Not too much ago, the new axis of evil stated Mexico’s narcos as the #2 threat to the US. Well, hands up the ones who know from whom they get their guns. Right! As the Spanish journalist Iñigo Sáez de Ugarte says, “Thanks to the Second Amendment of US Constitution and the liberalism of the markets, Mexico has now enough guns and ammo to dive into blood for many years”