Ted Galen Carpenter, Houston Chronicle, February 7, 2009
While U.S. leaders focus on Afghanistan, Iran and other problems in distant regions, there is an alarming security problem brewing right next door. Violence in Mexico, mostly related to the trade in illegal drugs, is spiraling out of control. Even worse, it is increasingly apparent that the drug-traffickers are winning their fight against the Mexican government.
An incident in Nuevo Laredo illustrates just how brazen the traffickers have become and how contemptuous they are of government authorities. Los Zetas, the enforcement arm of the powerful and especially ruthless Gulf Cartel, openly sought recruits to their ranks, posting help-wanted signs and hanging a large banner across a major thoroughfare with the message: “The Zetas want you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer a good salary, food and benefits for your family.”
The cartels have also thoroughly penetrated Mexico’s government institutions even the agencies that are supposed to be dedicated to battling traffickers. In recent weeks, prosecutors charged top officials in the Attorney General’s office with being informers for the drug organizations. They allegedly received payments of $150,000 to $450,000 per month for information regarding surveillance targets and potential raids. Those sums are more than even high-level law enforcement personnel can make in several years and lower-level personnel can make in several decades. With such resources at their disposal, and with the U.S. and global demand for illegal drugs remaining robust, it is no wonder that the cartels are winning.
Indeed, given Mexico’s increasingly precarious economic situation, their power is likely to grow especially in the next year or two. Mexico is suffering badly from the economic recession. For the first time ever, financial remittances sent home from Mexicans working in the United States declined in 2008. As the already meager job prospects in Mexico shrink further, the drug cartels will be one employer willing and able to pay for new hires.
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The carnage is now so bad that the U.S. State Department has issued travel alerts for Americans traveling in Mexico. One such alert warned that the battles in portions of northern Mexico are “the equivalent of military small-unit combat and have included the use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades.”
U.S. tourism to cities on Mexico’s border with the United States, where the bloodshed has been the worst, has dropped sharply. Even the Marines at Camp Pendleton are now prohibited from spending leave time in neighboring Tijuana because it has become too dangerous.
Even more troubling, Mexico’s violence is spilling across the border into communities in the southwestern United States.
Indeed, Mexican drug gangs now operate in numerous cities throughout our country. Cartel enforcers have published lists of Americans, including police officers, who are targeted for assassination.
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Original article
(Posted on February 9, 2009)
Comments
All this goes away with a real border wall. The drug gangs will gradually go out of business because they don’t have the American drug market to access. BTW, I slightly disagree with the wording of this article: The violence is spilling across the border from Mexico into Aztlan.
“The Zetas want you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer a good salary, food and benefits for your family.”
I’m beginning to wonder how much these people pay!! and benefits?? wondering about those too.
Gee, isn’t diversity grand? I can’t wait until these “enlightened” people show up in my neighborhood. I guess it’s about time we started being accousted in our homes. How did we make it the first 200 years without all this great minority diversity? I sure am glad to see T.B. make such a grand comeback amongst us. Thank God our schools are filled to capacity with immigrants to slow and dumb down our education systems. And with all the new people getting social services and welfare, maybe they can expand the federal government some more. Bottom line, folks, America is screwed. Welcome to the Socialist Republic of Amerika. Looks like the communists won afterall. All the old Soviet leaders must be sitting in Hell, and smiling.
Even more troubling, Mexico’s violence is spilling across the border into communities in the southwestern United States.
Don’t worry, white Americans:no correlation between the rise in violence, Mexican “Mafia” dominance and drug gangs and a rise in the “Hispanic” population of a town.
You want to know why? Because you’re a racist if you disagree with me
There is only one way to clean this up.
Vigilantee justice, where the enemy does not know who you are.
So long as the drug cartels know who is targetting them the war is lost. Only when they start being eliminated by the unknown hand will there be change and only when every last one of them is terminated.
“While U.S. leaders focus on Afghanistan, Iran and other problems in distant regions, there is an alarming security problem brewing right next door. Violence in Mexico, mostly related to the trade in illegal drugs, is spiraling out of control. Even worse, it is increasingly apparent that the drug-traffickers are winning their fight against the Mexican government.”
With the above information in mind, plus other data avaliable from earlier reports, let me speculate on just ONE possible scenario, which, I might add is pure speculation on my part from reading what the experts have to say about this situation.
Right this minute mestizo gangs in Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico, and in El Paso Texas, are being supplied with AK 47’s, RPG’s, hand grenades, rocket launchers, M-60 machine guns, mortars, and land mines that can take out a tank. These items have been photographed by the Border Patrol after seizing huge amounts of drugs and arms in arrests that have occurred in recent months.
When the mestizo/black gang conflicts in the Southwest, especially California, get to a point where the violence is ratcheted up to a high volume, I think that will be the spark that analysts describe as being the point of critical mass and our civil upheaval will begin. The area right now now is rife with much low intensity conflict between these two groups. It won’t take much to accelerate the situation.
The mestizo gangs will annihilate the black gangs, but in the process of it all, the National Guard will be called in, but they won’t be able to control the violence.
The mestizo gangs in California alone amount to about a half million members, with a ready supply of manpower, arms, and money available nearby just across the border. All these necessities to support insurrection will gladly be donated by the drug gangs, hoping to take control of the Southwest US to give them a base of operations and a corridor to transport narcotics into the interior of the country.
The National Guard will be overwhelmed, and the cartel controlled gangs will capture much heavy equipment and small arms and ammo from them. If the US military is called upon to bring the situation under control the entire Southwest will erupt into war, with the likelihood of the cartels moving to take control of Mexico and aligning Mexican troops against the US forces.
Casper Weinberger wrote a book a few years ago entitled, “The Next War,” which he proposed would be with Mexico. As defense secretary, he likely was aware of the growing control of the drug cartels and their ability to someday control the entire country.
The situation could erupt into sporadic points of conflicts throughout the entire US, because there are millions of mestizos interspersed literally everywhere, and they will be well-supplied via the interstate corridors by the drug cartels. But the fighting will not just involve government troops. Black gangs in the urban areas everywhere will be entering the fray to avenge the tens of thousands of their tribal kin who were lost in the conflict in the Southwest.
How the situation will evolve from there is anybody’s guess, but the one thing that is certain is that if we have troops still in Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, and South Korea, we’re not going to be in any position to fight an effective conventional war that will be raging in many of our urban areas. Nuclear missiles and stealth bombers can’t be used on our own soil. Only a madman would destroy his own infrastructure with such devastating weapons, so they will be nearly useless. The fighting will have to be a conventional ground conflict. A response on Mexico could be a different situation altogether and would likely occur.
The outcome of it all could very well be a split of the entire country into smaller nation states, just as Tom Chittum outlined in his book, Civil War II.
If drugs were legal, the drug lords would be out of business. This whole thing can be solved without firing a shot. Who most favors drug laws? It is the folks in the drug business. That is those who supply them, and those who make their living running around after them, like cops and judges.
This problem is far greater, I think, than most realize. Mexico is likely, if things continue, to fall apart as a nation-state, and unless we start fighting, and fighting hard, to elect people who will actually protect, close, and patrol our borders, the streams of illegals we see now will pale in comparison to the flood that will follow. If we wish to protect our Country and our culture, the southern borders must be sealed— and fast.
Anonymous at 7:50 p.m. Bravo! Well said, my friend! You are exactly right. That is the only way it will change for the better. And the sooner the better. Then we can work on getting ALL the illegals out of this country. Maybe we can send the multi-culti washington politicians down there with them. We must eradicate this problem now, it is spilling across the border as I type. Our government is aiding our enemies.
Late breaking news: Mexico now requires all cell phone buyers to register themselves with fingerprints:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUKN09529514
Drug gangs are supposedly the reason, but since most of the “government” is owned by the drug gangs, it’s probably for another reason. Carlos Slim wishes there were more control. And since he effectively owns the New York Times now, it’ll be interesting to see if the same newspaper that railed against the NSA tapping phone calls between Karachi and Detroit have a bad word to say about this.
America is now like Rome in it’s corrupt final days, not only weak and apathetic in response to being overun by barbarians, but we even protect them while they sneak in….
The mestizo gangs in California alone amount to about a half million members, with a ready supply of manpower, arms, and money available nearby just across the border.
But all is not lost!! I’m sure our government will lodge the strongest of protests with the U.N. and the Mexican government:)
Simply put, Mexico is a failed state. The anarchy there is distinguishable from the armed disorder that characterizes sub-Saharan Africa only because there is more money driving it. The only sensible act for the US would be putting troops on the border to keep the bloodshed on the other side.
I don’t think narcotics interdiction has a chance of working. When I was locked up, there was plenty of marijuana in prison. A prison is by any definition a controlled environment, so if they can’t keep drugs out of prison, WHY ON EARTH would anyone imagine they could be kept off the street. Although narcotics interdiction has absolutely no chance of success - none - keeping the Mexican violence out has a chance.
I don’t know if the article mentions it, but I read yesterday that there is speculation that one thing that is fueling the violence from and in northern Mexico is that the U.S. has tightened border security; they’re making many more seizures than in the past, which has made smugglinig much more difficult; as a result, the drugs sit on the Mexican side of the border awaiting transport, and Mexicans are winding up as customers rather than just pushers.
- Svigor
America is now like Rome in it’s corrupt final days, not only weak and apathetic in response to being overun by barbarians, but we even protect them while they sneak in….
These illegal invaders are making their demands and we (the U.S.) are giving in, soon the illegals will throw their sword on the pile of ransom.
