The Texas state police are at war:
“I never thought that we’d be in this paramilitary type of engagement. It’s a war on the border,” said Captain Stacy Holland with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Holland leads a fleet of 16 state-of-the-art helicopters that make up the aviation assets used by the Texas DPS to fight Mexican drug cartels.
In recent years, the cartels have become bolder and more ruthless.
They cross the border with AK-47s on their backs, wearing military camouflage. They recruit in prisons and schools on the American side. Spotters sit in duck blinds along the Rio Grande and call out the positions of the U.S. Border Patrol.
To combat the cartels, the Texas Department of Public Safety is launching a counterinsurgency.
Tactical strike teams send field intelligence they gather to Austin to a joint operation intelligence center, or JOIC in military terminology.
“It certainly is a war in a sense that we’re doing what we can to protect Texans and the rest of the nation from clearly a threat that has emerged over the last several years,” said Former FBI prosecutor Steve McCraw, who runs the undeclared “war.”
And this isn’t the kind of misnamed “war,” like the war on drugs, which leads to excessive militarization of civilian policing, a serious concern I think conservatives are wrong to have left to the libertarians. The cartels in Mexico sure seem to be engaged in a genuine insurgency against the state, and legalizing marijuana — which I think is necessary on its merits — will have no effect in curbing the narco-insurgency south of the border.
In fact, Texas governor Rick Perry said yesterday that we may need to send troops into Mexico to fight the cartels (Glynn Custred wrote about this more than a year ago, but no one paid attention at the time). I don’t think we’re there yet, and I hope the model we followed in Colombia, with money and training, will be enough, but if push comes to shove, protecting our national territory from a narco-insurgency is a whole lot more important that interceding between rival gangs of thieving goat herders in the Hindu Kush.
But what is BHO doing instead? Pulling the National Guard off the border! Because, you know, it’s all secure now. And the whole thing was just a pre-election stunt in any case.
It's a good thing that Texas is on our border with Mexico and not Vermont! Otherwise the area would already be a new Mexican province.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"The cartels in Mexico sure seem to be engaged in a genuine insurgency against the state, and legalizing marijuana — which I think is necessary on its merits — will have no effect in curbing the narco-insurgency south of the border."
...this doesn't makes sense. Legalizing marijuana == zero marijuana revenue for the Mexican drug gangs. They'll still have cocaine and meth, of course, but you'd expect to see a gigantic decrease in their revenues. And that would have "no effect" on their ability to fight? Why?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI could not agree more, Mark. When "criminals" start chopping off heads, blowing up cars and literally attacking police stations with fully-automatic weapons, it's well-beyond what can be solved by neighborhood policing. And, unless something is done soon, this is coming to a US border town, soon.
Is it too soon to call Mexico a failed state? I'm not so sure.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI hate to sound alarmist, but AQ does have a history of operating in the seams of lawlessness?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe first step to take on any militarized border is to seal it off as much as possible (see Korea, South Lebanon or the West Bank). Why is such a common sense step not being completed with all due haste? Obviously there are a plethora of other issues which need to be debated, but sealing the border would be a good first step in containing the cartels (who are essentially insurgents at this point) before the extreme terrorist style violence spreads to US cities.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI reckon with neighbors like that that's how Texas got that way ... and how Vermont got its way.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThings are much worse than the general public in the US suspects. Even if you speak Spanish, watch the Mexican news and read the newspapers, you'd have no clue how bad things have gotten. Entire towns have had all their young men picked up by the "narcos" and forced to be cannon fodder against the Mexican army. The death toll goes unreported; Each faction of mafiosos approaches the newscasters with threats to spin the news one way or the other(I know some folks at the local news station across the border). The army won't protect them and the police is non-existent. Gunfights ending in massacres get turned into stories about how the army mistakenly raided a house and stole the owner's belongings. There is absolutely no law enforcement protecting the citizenship. The US won't be able to just stand and stare while its neighbor's house burns much longer.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseds, legalizing marijuana will have roughly the effect on the cartels that repealing prohibition had on the mobs: not much. The cartels for a time will still be the largest sellers of marijuana so they will still get revenue from it, and what they lose they will make up for with other activities.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI would like to see our federal government stick to what it is Constitutionally mandated to do, and no more. Narco-terrorism is becoming a clear and present danger and those engaging in it should be dealt with. Law enforcement does not have the resources, the training or the mandate to deal with this - send in the military.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIs there a deeper, basic underlying problem which must be recognized, understood and dealt with before any of the proposed "plans" will work?
Yes, and it's the one you won't hear discussed.
No one in political power is inconvenienced in the slightest by the current illegal tsunami.
They either profit from it ("campaign contributions"), use it as a buffer against charges of racism, or count on current and future hispanic voters.
All the disagreement over the time-table, penalties, waiting periods, security is smoke and mirrors - they're wasting time pretending to discuss it until you lose interest. The the only remaining question is on what basis Republicans will permit blanket amnesty:
A. belief that new voters will not be liberal
B. enough earmark waivers (or, as Oriental scholars recognize it, "fighting with silver bullets")
It's not going to be fixed, because they don't want it fixed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI totally agree with Rob Slim. I think many in Arizona, Texas and California know how bad this has become. A huge problem is the political correctness of the media because they do not want to publicize the problems of illegals and broken borders. But then, a lot of sane Americans are just not really aware of how bad these problems are and they don't see it on their local level. Mexico has changed unbelievably in 20-30 years. Whether Calderon really can or wants to do anything about drug cartels is a huge question. But what has happened is that the local yokels in the north and elsewhere made the same mistake that has always been made with mafias: they made a deal with the devil to cooperate, a deal which cannot now be undone, of course. Now they are finding themselves dead or in exile, with the cartels in charge of their city, dismembered bodies in plazitas. This is apparently true in some cities across from Brownsville. But if that is true, it is likely true all over Mexico. Sadly, Mexico has a huge history of lying about everything. The culture jokes about it.Everyone gets paid off. But this will all end very badly indeed. This will not end at an imaginary unattended U.S. border. So, next you will be finding the decapitated heads in Calexico, Brownsville, Yuma etc. And thanks to Obama for withdrawing the troops from the Border....I guess we won or whatever. Sheesh.
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