It isn't that the barbarians are at the gate. The barbarians control the gate. I don't know what else to call a president and attorney general who have opened the U.S. border to literally tens of thousands of "children" -- some described as "sexually active" teens, some even suspected of ties to gangs. This not only breaks laws, it breaks trust. Opening the border this way also opens the most outrageous front to date in what increasingly looks like a kind of war aimed at "fundamentally transforming the United States of America." And the people's elected representatives do nothing.
Children are usually just children, but when 130,000 of them are expected to storm the border in the coming year, they more closely resemble an advancing column, a kind of foreign legion of child-mercenaries raised abroad with cynical promises of booty in the form of cradle-to-grave taxpayer charity.
But who will fight "children"? This is the audacity of this latest Obama "crisis": Trojan horse as "humanitarian crisis." For the literary set, call it "Camp of the Saintlets," a twist on the prophetic "Camp of the Saints," the 1973 novel by French author Jean Raspail envisioning an apocalyptic "invasion" of Europe by successive boatloads of Third World nationals, which is today old news out of Spain, Italy and other nations.
Of course, there is an undeniable genius to this form of border attack. All "the kids" from the rest of the world (do you really think Central America is the end?) have to do is serve as pitiful proxies of the assault. Once vanquished by pangs of conscience, however false, we'll support them forever. We'll have to. Have you taken a look at your local police department's massive and bristling military hardware lately? Just shut up and watch as this newfangled children's crusade turns our border, the concept of nationhood itself, into dust. Welcome to Obamaland.
Of course, even the 17-year-old gangbangers among the youngsters aren't the masterminds or generals. Like American citizens, they are pawns, dupes, lured by promises which Washington may indeed extract from Us, the People. "Go to America with your child, you won't be turned away," one Guatemalan mother told a radio station in the Rio Grande Valley. She is right. Come one, come all.
Once they are over the increasingly irrelevant line, Obama officials welcome the invading junior armies, shepherding them straight into an enfolding and enlarging federal safety net from which they may never have to emerge. These are just the newest wards of a brave new state that bears no resemblance to the republic as defined by those antique documents kept under glass in the dim light of the National Archives.
Meanwhile, "the kids" have hit the jackpot -- that jackpot of socialist programs that separates today's "new Americans" from our forefathers. Not so long ago, immigrants came for liberty and opportunity, not tax-supported handouts.
We are witnessing the betrayal of that nation of liberty and opportunity because there are so few in power with the courage to lawfully oppose it -- not just rail about it all as a mere columnist.
Meanwhile, American citizens are footing the bill. Living costs aside, Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the Obama administration -- i.e., We, the Taxpayers -- will be providing attorneys for the legions of "unaccompanied minors." Holder's non-specific language is telling: "We're taking a historic step to ... protect the rights of the most vulnerable members of society," he said. Historic step is right -- Legal Aid for the world. He continued: "How we treat those in need ... goes to the core of who we are as a nation." OK, so who are we, Mr. Attorney General, as a "nation"? The Western Hemisphere?
Once upon a time, the U.S. staged the Berlin Airlift, mounting an astounding 200,000 flights in one year to keep Soviet-blockaded Berlin supplied with fuel and foodstuffs. Today, a more modest Central American Airlift would do to return these runaways to their families. One thing at a time, though. How about calling out the National Guard? It would even be of some comfort if someone in Congress went to the floor and told peoples of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and the rest to stay the hell home.
So long as all of the government remains complicit or silent, this is nothing less than an unopposed invasion -- an unopposed war, in other words, even if waged by the most unconventional means and by the most unlikely and unarmed "soldiers." Worst of all, though, it is a war that is being encouraged, if not led, by our own president while no one with all of the appropriate Constitutional powers vested in him is doing anything to stop him.
For love of country, impeach Obama now.
(Diana West's new book is "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character" from St. Martin's Press. She blogs at dianawest.net, and she can be contacted via dianawest@verizon.net. Follow her on Twitter @diana_west_.)