This is not Mark Krikorian's toy army

corner:

That and 1,200 National Guardsmen Will Get You a Cup of Coffee   [Mark Krikorian]

At CSIS yesterday, JNap announced that the administration "will station an aerial drone in Texas as part of its stepped-up surveillance of criminal trafficking along the Mexican border." That's "an" aerial drone, as in one. She also announced that "federal authorities also have signed an agreement to allow local police from non-border communities to temporarily 'deploy' to the border region to assist with security" — so, local cops aren't allowed to assist the feds in enforcing immigration law in their own communities, but they can do so in other communities?

And on Tuesday, the administration requested funding for 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents, despite the fact that its original FY2011 budget requested a cut in the number of agents. Put all that together, and it's undeniable that border security is a purely political issue for this White House. In other words, the consideration is not "What do we need to do to truly secure our borders?" but "What's the minimum amount of enforcement we can get away with in order to persuade Congress to finally let us have our amnesty?" It's the spoonful of enforcement to help the amnesty go down.

If you've been reading Krikorian--and I hope you have not--you already know that he is bound and determined to conflate illegal immigration with border security. And nobody is saying that they are unrelated issues. But it's very clear that Obama is drawing a distinction between the two, and it's also very clear that Krikorian deliberately ignores the distinction. I'll write it in short words: 

There is a drug and violence problem on the border. That's why the national guard is there. They are not there to do whatever Mark Krikorian thinks should happen on the border.