THE OPEN BORDER

“That border is the equivalent of the New Jersey Turnpike for insurgents. They come up, they pay their bribe or even just walk through without that, and they go off to do what they do,” – Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, about a stretch of the Syria-Iraq border. The main problem is that most of the border residents have always made their money by smuggling illegal goods for bribes. Smuggling insurgents is simply a new branch of their ancient business. Disrupt the entire system and you lose the native Iraqis.