First the good news.  At least I think it’s good, but it’s hard to say.  The Border Patrol has, at least sort of, announced a “new” National Strategy, it’s first since 2004.  That may mean it is discarding some of its disproven concepts, tactics, and policies along our borders for better, field-tested ways to perform its vital and difficult job. Or not.

But since it’s the Border Patrol, they did not really announce or unveil their new strategy so much as transmit it, sort of, to Homeland Security Today.

The Border Patrol also published a document targeted at their own employees which was released to the public, sort of, last Fall. Then two months ago in a report that the media mostly ignored the Border Patrol published “A New Strategy on the Border”.   Filled with beltway jargon, wannabe military terminology, and stilted, rhetorical language that my High School English teacher Ms. Margret Tuck would have blistered with her red pencil, “A New Strategy on the Border” is virtually incomprehensible to most Americans.

It’s not just that the Border Patrol seems reluctant to reveal their “new” National Strategy, it’s also that their own reports appear at best manufactured by a committee of illiterate tax accountants enthralled by cursory readings in a required high school ROTC program.  So along with the Washington circumlocutions, there is an ever increasing military jargon mired in bad grammar and intentional obfuscation.

On Tuesday Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security that one of the primary concerns of the Border Patrol’s new national strategy is, “Increasing and sustaining the certainty of apprehension for illegal crossings between the POEs by expanding Border Patrol’s situational awareness and employing a comprehensive and integrated whole-of-government approach”.

Well, that certainly makes it clear what the Border Patrol has in mind for the next five years, doesn’t it?

What in fact does the Border Patrol’s “new” National Strategy for 2012 to 2017 really say and mean?  That will take some time, given an apparent reluctance by the Border Patrol to say what it means and mean what it says, to figure out.