Yup, “great,” as in “great boondoggle.” But the Orange Cockatoo can’t see the difference.
Again, the reason that East Germany’s wall was effective was not the wall itself – it was the fact that East German created a militarized zone, a hundred yards wide or wider, along the entire border with West Germany. They tore out whatever was sitting in that zone originally (including homes and farms). Which, of course, as a totalitarian regime, they could do.
Littleman, you may argue that that’s just a semantic difference – that the East German border system still is, fundamentally, a wall. Fair enough. But…that sort of border security has, as far as I can tell, never been what Trump has described when he talks about “his wall.” He (and, I would wager, most of his supporters) envision it as a single, impenetrable, unscaleable wall (steel slat fence, whatever).
So, if you want this “wall system” to be as effective as East Germany’s was, you’d have to go full-in. The U.S. would have to take possession of land along the border, hundreds of yards into U.S. territory, for hundreds of miles. Much of that land is owned by private individuals right now, or public parkland – and, as JohnT keeps pointing out, the entire border in Texas is a river.
And, then, once you take control of that land, and build this extensive militarized zone, you’d have to staff it and maintain it, constantly.
If you were willing to do all of this, sure, it’d be an effective wall. It’d also be massively expensive and disruptive.
Well, the vote only allows one choice. IMHO, three choices apply.
Not a ladder that I carry with me.
So part of the plan is to have guard towers every half mile, land mines between the fences, etc.?
Excellent, now how many guard towers should we have along the entire length, how many personnel in each tower? Throw in a few more numbers for the count of dogs and land mines that we might want, to secure these ladder “choke points” that you find so limiting.
You’re new here, but a google landing page doesn’t qualify as a cite on this board, but many of the links there state the we are in fact more obese. To be fair, this has shit to do with the wall, and was tossed out as an aside to point out that most of those who would climb such walls end up doing jobs Americans don’t want to do, whether fat and lazy and slim and active.
No mention of fat or lazy, but it certainly appears we’re not willing.
Littleman, the Berlin wall “worked” because there was a shoot to kill order. Does Trump think he can do that on the Rio Grande?
Not to mention the land mines. Will we be doing those, too?
The why did they bother with a wall at all?
Why not just guards. Oh because it would have taken 100 times more guards to still make it 99 percent effective.
Carry a ladder all you want, it’s still a choke point. Carrying it somewhere doesn’t make able to have people climb it 20 or 30 or more across.
You still gotta go over it one at a time.
Ok cites on Mexico’s fatness.
https://www.actigraphcorp.com/news-article/mexico-surpasses-u-s-as-worlds-fattest-nation/
Better?
Want to secure well, essentially anything long term?
A wall is basically requisite. Why because it’s an effective tool.
Doesn’t need to be 99 percent effective to be effective.
Whatever you back it up with now determines how effective it is.
Without one, you want to secure a line, you basically need a 24 hour formation of people who can hold hands stacked several deep.
Drop the hijack regarding relative weight/obesity of differing nations.
[/moderating]
Is it 1415?
Are we expecting just a lone wall with zero monitoring, zero enforcement, zero patrols.
Because we all know that would be probably less than 1 percent effective.
So how many guard towers per mile are you envisioning?
I don’t know any such thing. Got math which leads to that 1% effectiveness conclusion, or is it pulled out of the ether?
A wall which is 1% effective should never be built. Let’s shelve this stupid idea. Thanks!
Idk.
If I wanted to secure the border which is an awfully big if ,Hypothetically;
Really depends on surrounding terrain but assuming good usual visibility and wanting a reasonable success rate and deterrent factor, using apprehension and at most less than lethal force as a goal. I’d say posting up every 3-5 miles would be highly effective with a wall and cameras.
You could probably spread that to at least 10-12 maybe more with random patrols.
Assuming you also used drone monitoring with IR equipment to track approaches you might stretch that to 20 miles and still be highly effective.
Beyond that I’d say your rates of effectiveness would start dropping off pretty quick at 30-40 miles I would guess you’re down in the maybe 50 percent range.
Oh, I think I’d take that bet.
Just can’t imagine many people able to get to it with a ladder or snips or sledgehammer or whatever would suddenly be stymied by an unmonitored wall or fence.
If you’re doing the monitoring anyway, the wall seems like a waste of money
Okay, so taht is 400 to 700 guard towers along the length of the wall. I assume manned 24/7, with a minimum of 2 guards each. given 8 hours, that is 42 shifts per week, so at least 10 assigned to each post, to give coverage for PTO or illness.
So, an additional 4000 to 7000 guards need to be employed.
Okay, down to about 200 to 240 guard towers, with only 2000 to 2400 positions open, plus enough for random patrols to cover those 2000 miles.
10 miles (half of 20) means that you are at least 10 minutes away (at 60MPH, a doubtful proposition along the border). How many people do you think can climb a ladder in 10 minutes?
Well, yeah, at 30-40 minutes till interception, I’d say 50% would be a pretty generous rate.
While we are at it, what are ROE? Are they shooting on sight? Are they warning first? Can they shoot runners? If they are running away into Mexico? if they are running away into the US? How close to the wall can people get before they are in the “kill zone”?
Will we end up with a double wall, so that there is a kill zone in between the walls? Maybe put in some mines?
You can accomplish comprehensive border security of this without having to build a wall that will cuase massive ecological damage, will ruin commerce for Texas and most of the southern US, and require the largest government confiscation of property in the history of the US.
If there are places where a physical barrier does not exist that could use one, or a physical barrier that could use an upgrade, then this is a reasonable discussion to have.
The idea of just building a wall along the border is a non-starter.