After years of being told that troop strength is too low, US President George W. Bush is finally sending in more soldiers.

To Iraq, where murderous insurgents just last week killed scores of Iraqis and Americans, and shot down a US helicopter?

No.

American soldiers are heading to Mexico, where the desperate and ambitious surge across the border, under threat of capture or death by dehydration, snakebite, or vigilante bullets. They come not to suicide-bomb us or take away our “freedom,” but to flip our burgers, fry our eggs, pick our lettuce, pour our cement, clean our toilets, and burp and diaper our babies.

Last Sunday in Texas, my son and I watched as no fewer than five swarthy, tough-looking Mexican hombres in fastidious white shirts and aprons rolled out the dough at Shipley’s, our favorite Texas donut shop, for kolaches, a delicious Czech pastry ubiquitous in Central Texas where a century ago, European foreigners crossed many borders to settle on these grassy prairie lands.

The brown-skinned foreigners at Shipley’s skillfully folded up the cheese and sausage pastries as though they’d been born in Prague instead of Juarez.

These Mexicans work.

But Bush’s plan to keep them out of Texas won’t.

I don’t ordinarily find myself agreeing with the Texas Minutemen (the armed vigilante ranchers and supporters who self-police the border in jeeps and on horseback). But Al Garza, their national executive director, is right when he estimates that Bush’s plan to police the border is feasible only if he deploys “two soldiers per mile” and posts them “around the clock,” meaning at least a 30,000 to 40,000 troop deployment. Anything less, Garza says, would be “pointless.”

And so it is. A pointless, empty gesture for a presidency grown pointless and empty.

Rather than stem the tide of brown, burger-flipping, kolache-rolling humanity streaming in from our nearest neighbor to the south, Bush really seeks to halt the rising tide of national anger headed his way.

The US border with Mexico is vast — 2,000 miles long and hedges four US states. Bush proposes to place 6,000 National Guard troops along a 200-mile strip.

The plan’s relatively low cost reflects what will surely be its low effectiveness.

Policing the strip just means Mexicans will find more inventive ways of getting in. Policing the strip will just push the burger flippers and kolache rollers out the other ends.

Bush has made a symbolic but also frantic gesture to appease the growing cacophony of party line-crossers who vote for him not because of tax cuts, but because of deep ideological reasons that arose out of the 9/11 atrocities, but have taken quite a shaking in the Iraq war. Bush’s “tax cut” Republicans — his “base,” as he once infamously joked at a Heritage Foundation event, comparing himself to Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda — will never leave his side as long as he keeps pushing tax cuts.

I recently lunched with a prominent Republican woman who admitted, “None of us think W. is the equal of his father, but we knew that when we voted for him” — meaning that as long as Bush continues his policy of protecting wealth and privilege, his base will remain loyal.

But will the Country Club Republicans be enough to secure the White House for the Republican Party in 2008? Can they save Republican control of the House and Senate in the approaching midterm elections?

My Republican woman friend — call her Mavis — selected the Mexican restaurant where we ate lunch in Central Texas.

It’s a lively and popular place. While waiting for service, I mentioned that Mexican border-crossers were like terrorists in just one way — they select themselves. There’s no predicting who they are, or who they will become.

But they select themselves for their arduous journeys not just across the border but across every other border of American life — racism, hatred of foreigners, language barriers, and discrimination.

Mavis stared at the manager who’d taken our order.

“Don’t I know you?” she asked.

He smiled.

“Yes, ma’am. I used to wait on you in the country club dining room. How are you?”

That Mexican Bush wants to run down at the border?

Today, he’s a Spanish-speaking busboy. Tomorrow, he’ll be a waiter speaking halting English. Just wait -he’ll soon incarnate into a manager with a health plan and a mutual fund.

What next? Maybe he’ll join your country club. Maybe someday soon, one of his children will join the most exclusive country club of all.

Like Bush, he’ll have to be elected for that. And that Mexican-American may not be the equal of his father, either. But unlike Bush, selected by pedigree, the first Mexican-American president will come from something — not a pedigree but a process that builds and rebuilds America.

Now that’s a heritage that’s a true foundation!