A Matter Of Perspective

Afghanistan is reputed to be a dangerous place to live.  There is no doubt but it is.  Last year, according to a Congressional Research Service report, 2,421 civilians were killed, the majority by Taliban and other anti-government elements.

It was, however, far more dangerous to be a non-combatant living in the city of Cuidad Juarez.  In another, recent report by the CRS which drew on the work of a dedicated and talented research librarian at New Mexico State University (known in these parts as Moo-U), Molly Molloy, shows that 3,111 died in the war between cartels and government.  (Ms Molloy's number and that determined by the Geek are within five bodies of each other.)

Given the population difference between the country of Afghanistan and the city of Juarez, it is almost thirty times more deadly to reside in the latter than the former.  The CIA sets the population of Afghanistan at a bit over twenty-nine million while the most recent Mexican census gives a figure of 1.3 million residents for Juarez.  It deserves mention that the population of Juarez and the valley communities extending to the southeast have shrunk, some considerably, in the time since the census was compiled.

The numbers point at a grim reality: The so-called "drug war" in northern Mexico is far more deadly for those caught in the crossfire than is the combination of insurgency and brigandage underway in Afghanistan.  This is in spite of the undeniable fact that Taliban field commanders have taken to attacking soft, civilian targets regardless of the ROEs established by their seniors across the border in the FATA.

The pressure applied to Taliban and the others over the past several months has resulted in a de facto shift in operational level doctrine and tactics.  The goal of the peddlers of violent political Islam are no longer willing to take on the ISAF directly and have become increasingly loath to confront even the Afghan National Forces in the field.  The default is to seek to terrorize the civilian population by an escalating series of suicide bombings and an increased use of IEDs particularly of the roadside bomb variety.

The ever changing Taliban field commanders--ever changing due to the massive success of the decapitation program inaugurated by General Stanley McChrystal--is comprised of ever younger, ever more True Belief ridden men of limited experience.  The lack of experience coupled with the growing competence of the Afghan forces and the superb capabilities of the US, UK, Canadian, Australian troops means the bad guys have little option but to hit the soft targets and hope that fear will trump anger on the part of the uncommitted majority with the effect of undercutting any support for the Kabul regime and the foreign troops.

This means the war will become more lethal for the civilians.  Whether the payoff of this rush to bloodletting will benefit Taliban is debatable at best.  History shows little probability of Taliban's approach working to its advantage.

In Mexico there has been no shift in either operational level or tactical doctrine on the part of either the government or the cartels.  The only change year over year has been that of the cartels deploying ever more deadly weapons in an ever more indiscriminate way.  Los Zetas pointed the way years ago with the introduction of military small unit tactics and weaponry to the contest.  Subsequently, all the cartels have followed suit with the result that any and all have shown the capability to take and hold territory, blockade entire towns, and assault semi-fortified positions.

During the same span of time, the cartels have used self-consciously terroristic methods.  The beheaded corpses, the dismantled corpses, the heads rolled bowling ball style into bars, the grisly intermingling of multiple parts of multiple bodies are all intended to create terror.  So also is the program of singling out cops who refuse to submit to the sweet odor of bribery for barbaric execution.  Terror of this variety has been so successful that many of the smaller towns--and some not so small--have become de facto law free zones.

While the government of Cuidad Juarez exists and functions to a large extent, this is not the case in many of the smaller communities of the Juarez valley.  In many locations, including large swaths of Juarez itself, the cartel has become the government.  It is the thugs of the cartel who levy and collect tribute--taxes--and control the activities of businesses and politicos alike.  It is the cartel which decides how free the media might be, enforcing the strictures in the accustomed robust manner.

The same situation applies deeper in the interior of Mexico.  The government exists in name only.  Or, best case, it exists in the sense of providing law, order, personal, and communal security only sporadically as when the Mexican Marines or one of the very few army units which is both well officered and immune to corruption drops by for a few hours or days.

As in Afghanistan, the most fatal of conditions has become endemic in Mexico.  That condition is not so much fear as it is corruption.  Corruption has been legendary in Mexico for generations.  Even considering that fact of life, the lure of easy money has grown logarithmically since President Calderon declared open war with the cartels.  It has been established that the army has become almost as corruption riddled as the police.  The several internal security services which have frontline responsibilities for handling the cartels have taken the same course as have key components of the justice ministry.

None of this allows an optimistic view of Mexico over the next twelve months.  The highest probability is the body count will continue to grow.  The highest probability is the government presence will become more and more symbolic, more and more hollow, particularly in the northern states.  The highest probability is that Los Zetas and its emulators will spread their odious presence into Central American countries, an evil oil spot spreading ever to the south.

The states of the region are less able to counter the spread of the cartels than was Mexico when Calderon declared war.  This implies that the hollowing effect will be seen in Mexico's neighbors.  The signs of this dynamic are becoming unmistakable in Honduras, Guatemala, and, most recently, Belize.  Indications of the same occurring have been noted further south, even in Nicaragua.  (Perhaps Danny Ortega should spend more attention at home rather than joining with Chavez in supporting Gaddafi.)

Mexico is not a failed state.  Nor is it a failing state.  It is, however, in grave danger of becoming a hollow state, that is a state in which the remit of the government is limited severely by insurgent or quasi-insurgent movements.  It does not matter that the cartels are criminal enterprises.  All that matters is that the cartels have become sufficiently efficient purveyors of violence and terror to become the defacto government in portions of Mexico.  The "business plan" of the cartels is successful enough to be viable in the smaller, less wealthy states to its south.

Columbia came back from the brink of having been hollowed out completely by the combination of FARC and the cocaine cartels.  But the process took a decade and more as well as a level of US financial and other support far surpassing that which has been provided to Mexico.  Also, in the case of Columbia, the domestic elite finally grew aware of the peril confronting it and mustered its resources to support the government rather than simply getting on the next plane out of Dodge.  The Mexican elite has not yet shown an equal awareness let alone an equivalent commitment to the common weal.

This leads ineluctably to the conclusion that even with the uptick in attacks on soft targets in Afghanistan it will remain far more dangerous to live and work in Juarez.  It can be expected that more and more businesses and individuals will join the migration from Juarez to El Paso, from Juarez valley towns to their twins on the north side of the Rio Grande.  If the violence increases significantly, there is a very strong likelihood that the US-Mexico border will come to resemble that between Libya and Egypt today--a flood of desperate people seeking sanctuary from death and the fear of death.

Whether either the Mexican elite or We the People like the idea or not, the US does have a dog, a very big dog, in the fight.  Choice time is upon both parties to acknowledge this and deal with the result creatively or continue in a state of denial resembling that of the noted Colonel ("I am history!  I am the revolution) Gaddafi regarding the situation in Mexico.

For the Mexicans the problem is one of recognizing that factors other than the demand for illegal drugs in the US are primarily responsible for the degenerating conditions in Mexico--and then doing something about it.  For the Americans the problem is that of deciding if the prohibition of drugs is worth the costs.

Both Americans and Mexicans have little choice other than a rational consideration of what is at work in Mexico.  Insofar as the dynamic which is hollowing out Mexico is the consequence of the American fear and loathing of mind altering drugs there is an ethical imperative to examine closely the reasons for that fear and loathing and decide what is in our overall best interests: stomp down harder or admit the effort has not paid off such that benefits received are greater than the costs imposed.

Not that there is any hope of either Mexicans or Americans engaging in rational introspection, rational decision making, and rational action.  The subjects--nationalism and mood altering drugs--are simply too productive of overly strong emotion for that to happen.

The Old Whore Keeps Repainting Her Face

War formerly was easy to recognize and define.  In the good old days of not that long ago, most (but, critically, not all) wars were fought between states using organized, identifiable armed forces.  Almost as much ink as blood was spilled on defining the nature of belligerents, the rights of non-combatants, and the limits which might be applied reasonably in the use of armed force.

The exception to the readily defined inter-state war was insurgency.  But even that breed of cat came to be defined and understood over the past two hundred years.  Over time the customary rights and immunities were extended from uniformed soldiers under national flags to those seeking the overthrow of the established political order by force and violence.  After World War II the major powers of the world even came to official agreement regarding the rights of an occupied citizenry to resist the occupying forces even though in the real world these understandings are often more honored in the breech than in the observance.

In most recent years the introduction of non-state actors, part time insurgents, full time terrorists, criminal gangs with ambitions which transcend mere minor league avarice have come to complicate the old picture with results which are most discomfiting to policy makers and military operators alike.  Accompanying these instrumental changes has been a major shift in motivation on the part of advocates of violence.  High on the list here are the reawakening of religious passions and the profit motive.

Both religion and profit have raised the attractiveness of the newer and less readily defined forms of war.  When looking at venues as disparate as Afghanistan and Mexico, the observer not only sees the prominence of the newer forms of non-state, non-uniformed combatant forces but also the potency of both belief and the quest for profit.  For practitioners of older forms of war and coercive diplomacy, the development of alternative means and motives has been an unwelcome and all too often unrecognized phenomenon.

To look briefly at Afghanistan, it has become unpleasantly evident that the power of the mosque, or, to err on the side of accuracy, the local cleric, has more than simply offset the effectiveness of both the escalation of American forces and the new technologies of battlefield supremacy.  It has become the key to looming American defeat.  Not to put too fine a point on this Afghan dagger, the universal message of the thousands of clerics holding forth every Friday has been the need for solidarity in resistance to the foreign infidel.  Given that the mosque and the Friday sermon are the single most important source of news and opinion in Afghanistan, this is a development filled with difficulty for the US.

The resolutely anti-American, anti-foreigner, anti-West, anti-infidel message not only empowers those in the Afghan population most opposed to the outside presence, it undercuts all the well-intentioned efforts at "nation building" in the country.  The total inability of the US and its allies to sell their good intentions to the clerical establishment of Afghanistan has assured that each, every, and all the dollars and lives expended in the quest to transform Afghanistan have been wasted.

The clerical resistance couched as it is in the compelling language of belief has both grown and become more strident year to year since the first American boots hit the Afghan soil.  When the US made the fateful choice to switch objectives in Afghanistan from those of a simple punitive expedition to ones of national transformation, the door was immediately opened to the linkage of faith and nationalism--a linkage which cannot be either undone or defeated.

The single greatest reason the security situation has continued to deteriorate year over year is not the open border (although this is a non-trivial consideration) but rather the monolithic opposition of the Muslim clerics.  The opposition is so solid and so widespread that it has political implications, as when Karzai echoes the complaints of the clerics.  Taken with the corruption and inefficiency of the Karzai government, his necessary tilt in favor of the clergy serves to put the international coalition under stresses which will enervate its effectiveness, fatally.

The US is posed for failure not because the opposition has any military advantage.  It is posed for failure not because it has fought the war with inappropriate tactics and methods.  It is facing failure because the faith which motivates the opposition as well as the uncommitted majority of Afghans has proven obdurate.  The US is facing failure ultimately because decision makers failed to consider the nature of the human terrain in the country and limit the goals of the war to those which would be acceptable to the majority of the human terrain.

In short, the US and its allies are likely to be defeated because the Bush/Cheney administration did not recognize the nature of war as understood by Afghans.  As a result of this, the administration allowed or encouraged a redefinition of goals which was way, way too expansive.  At the end of it all, what can be written is that the US was defeated not by bullets or by the enemy having a better theory of victory but by the very nature of the human terrain and its understanding of war.

To our immediate south Mexico is engaged in a prolonged and very bloody conflict.  The irony is that the Mexican government cannot define accurately what is going on beyond the self-evident outpouring of corpses on the streets of Mexico.  The US government is no better off being unable to decide if Mexico is in the throes of insurgency or simply an unusually large scale turf battle between criminal syndicates.  Not that the semantics matter to the average Mexican as he steps over the blood and bodies of the previous day's festivities.

But, what is at work in Mexico is not an academic dispute over semantics or theories of conflict.  It is hard if not impossible to fight any sort of war without knowing what is at stake, what would constitute the better state of peace for which the war is being waged.

Four years ago when he launched the effort against large scale criminal, primarily drug trafficking, gangs, President Calderon probably believed he was inaugurating a simple program of robust law enforcement.  Whether policemen or soldiers did the job, it was the traditional task of compelling acceptance of the law's dictates by the criminally inclined.  There was nothing new at work here.

Whatever Calderon's intentions might have been, no matter what he expected, the outcome was both far more prolonged and bloody as well as inherently destabilizing than he or anyone anticipated.  The Mexican police and military quickly became simply one more combatant in an already underway multi-party struggle over territory and markets.  The government unintentionally became one more gang in a several gang armed contest.

Paradoxically, the entrance of the government allowed greater inter-gang violence.  Whether because of suborned treachery or simply as a fallout from its efforts, the armed forces and police would tilt toward one gang or another in each of the several contested areas.  By so doing, the security forces assured a process of consolidation would occur which would ultimately strengthen the successful gang in its goal of having a "law free zone" in which to carry out its profit making activities.

The process favored the criminals from the beginning.  The drug smugglers knew why they were fighting.  They had goals.  They defined the better state of peace.  By limiting its concept of operations to one of traditional law enforcement, the government was actually clueless in the real world.

The narco-trafficking gangs wanted two things: To eliminate rivals in the several corridors and to establish law free zones so they could operate without fear.  With a few psychopathic exceptions, the leaders of the several syndicates were indifferent as to which of the two traditional methods of accomplishing these goals would be used.  Silver or lead, the choice was up to the recipient not the grantor.

The combination of means as well as the unity of goals gave the advantage to the criminals.  Had Calderon never initiated his Made In Mexico war on drugs, the contest would have been settled with rather less blood and much more corruption.  One gang would have bought out the survivors of the others and established a profitable monopoly.  The law free zones would have been created through corruption not killing and terror.

This conclusion is predicated not on some belief that Mexicans are naturally given to crime and corruption to any unusual degree.  Rather it is based on the history of Mexico, the long-standing traditions of buying one's peace, one's freedom from authority.  More it is based on the equally hoary social, political, and economic dynamics of Mexico, including the remote indifference of the Mexican elites and their tool, the government, from the realities of life as they impinge on the majority of people.

The challenge presented by the Calderon Declaration of War resulted in the development of a form of war not seen even in the days of "narco-democracy" in Columbia two or three decades ago.  The new form of war represents a hybrid of gang conflict and defensive insurgency.  Over the past four years the criminal syndicates shifted from use of graft and corruption to secure territory to a reliance on violence and terror to create the necessary law free zones.

As a result, one which was easily predictable, the gangs have become the de facto shadow government in large swaths of Mexico's border states.  These same states are productive of more than a quarter of Mexico's GDP.  Most of their population and more of their territory now exist outside the authority of Mexico's government or governmental forces.

By virtue of not recognizing that the government was embarking on a new form of the old game of war, the Mexicans have lowered the national flag over a goodly part of their state.  At the same time the criminals have become a de facto government, in effect levying taxes--and collecting them, establishing whatever passes for law along most of the border, and have expanded their criminal enterprises into areas far removed from mere smuggling of drugs to the US.  This means the gangs have given themselves both more political will and more means to act in lieu of the official government.

This does not imply that Mexico is a failed or failing state.  It does imply that Mexico is in a far more desperate contest for survival in recognizable form.  It implies that US policy with respect to assisting the Mexican government has failed as well.

This failure will provide more challenges for the US in the months and years to come.  As the smugglers become more ambitious and more far reaching in their efforts and connections, the probability of diplomatic linkages with states hostile to the US increase as does the risk of adverse personnel and supplies being inserted into the US.

Other than the outcome, there is no real close resemblance between traditional forms of war and what is happening in Mexico.  When night falls, either the Mexican government will or will not be in control of the border states.  It either will or will not have unimpeded sovereignty over its territory.  Right now it looks very dismal for Mexico.

The irony here is that the impending Mexican failure like that of the US in Afghanistan is rooted in a failure to identify accurately the new features of war in play.  It is also rooted, again like the American failure in Afghanistan, in not realising that the local folk define what constitutes war and how to fight it.  It is, again like Afghanistan, based on an insistence that there is only one play book for war fighting--and the government wrote the book, not the locals.

It Is An Insurgency In Mexico

There has been a low level rumbling sort of debate regarding this proposition: Resolved, the violence in Mexico does constitute an insurgency.  The negative in the debate argues correctly that Mexico is not so gripped with violence that it is being pushed to the edge of failure.  The advocates of the negative also contend with some accuracy that the organized cartels are not seeking any political goal such as overthrowing the government.

In the second prong of their argument, the upholders of the negative are being disingenuous.  The cartels are seeking two goals.  One is strictly commercial, the allocation of turf.  The other is political, the carving out of zones free of governmental control in which the cartels can operate freely.

Once the second cartel goal is recognized, it follows that the gunslingers are waging a defensive insurgency.  True it is a unique form of defensive insurgency, but that is what it is nonetheless.

Historically, the vast majority of defensive insurgencies have been wars of national liberation.  The insurgents have been either a self-defined and recognizable society and polity ruled by outsiders (think--the American War of Independence) or an identifiable minority living in a defined geographic region within a larger polity (think--the North Caucasus.)  In both instances the ultimate goal of the insurgents is replacement of the status quo regime by one organic to the society supporting the insurgency.

The cartels have a far less expansive goal in Mexico.  The several groups desire to carve out what might be best conceived of as "police free zones" covering the approach routes to the border and, deeper in the interior, areas where illegal products might be manufactured, grown, or stored without anxiety.

There are no indications that any of the cartels want to take over the tedious, mundane quotidian functions of government at any level.  They are perfectly willing to let those who do those jobs now keep on doing them.

Even policing is OK provided the cartels, their members, and activities are exempt.  Everything reduces to the need to conduct business without any hassles from government, press, civic society, or the church.  If and when that occurs, the insurgency will come to an end.

While the smuggling of illegal drugs may have been behind the commencement of the violence, the insurgency now exists independent of drugs per se.  President Calderon may have declared a war on drugs three years ago, but the nature of the stakes has changed greatly as the blood has flowed in ever more impressive quantities.

Even if by some miracle every American who currently uses products transported or grown in Mexico were to wake up with the thought, "Today I join the Nancy Reagan Just Say No club," and followed through, the insurgency south of the border would not collapse.  The same would apply if the morality driven majority of the American polity awoke with an attack of sanity deciding that the game of prohibition was not worth the manifold costs.

The cartels long ago expanded their scope of operations.  Not unlike American organized criminals of an earlier period, the cartel leaders have come to understand that their capabilities were cross elastic.  As a result kidnappings for ransom, hijackings, human trafficking, extortion, loan sharking, and other illegal activities have become major profit centers.

The cartels have also expanded geographically extending their networks and franchises into the US.  There are no major and few medium sized cities here which lack their local affiliate with one or more cartels.  This outreach program not only has made for more profits back home but an expansion of influence, political and otherwise, into domestic communities of Mexican descent.

With the vast expansion of capabilities and consequent cash, the cartels have too much at stake to do other than continue and escalate the insurgency.  To a significant extent the outcome of the insurgency is existential for the cartels.

The outcome of the insurgency is not existential for the Mexican central government nor the elites which support it.  The government and elite can come to an understanding with the cartels, a tacit agreement to live and let live.  Winding down the military operations would be welcomed by the many ordinary people caught in the crossfire.  It would be welcomed by the business community as the ongoing war may have not crippled investment yet, but it bodes well to do so in the not so distant future.

Ending the war, reaching an understanding, deciding to live and let live does not require the government to declare defeat.  It does not even demand an immediate pulling back of the troops and new federal agents to their barracks and offices.  All that need happen is a slow ramping down of "offensive" operations, a bit less zeal in collecting or acting upon information received, a tardy response to cartel actions.  Should the cartels respond by tamping down their violence (roadblocks, shootouts, and similar high profile activities) the tit-for-tat detente will continue.

Money will change hands.  Heads will be averted.  Brave statements will be issued.  Promises to foreign governments will be made.  But, in the real world, affairs will slip to the status quo ante.  Life will go on.

President Calderon has two years left in office.  The next election will be a referendum on his war of drugs.  To continue that war or end it will be the centerpiece of the campaign whether openly or not.  The "war on drugs" is not popular now.  It will be less so two years hence.  It is unlikely to the extreme that any amount of Merinda Initiative money will alter this fact or serve to make the counterinsurgent efforts more effective.

Improvements in intelligence sharing and more US training for Mexican forces will have some slight benefits, but not sufficient to be game changing.  In this context it must be recalled that even the most mediagenic events such as discovering a tunnel equipped with light rail running under the border, or the seizing of thirty plus tons of pot are not indications of the game tilting in favor of the law and order side.  As has been the case ever since Dick Nixon started our "war on drugs," such spectacles are mere blips on the long term trajectory.

It is fully expectable that the Mexican insurgency will come to an end shortly before or after the next presidential elections.  It will come to an end because the Mexican government and elite recognize that Mexico is not Columbia.  They will understand (if they do not already) that the outcome of the cartel insurgency is not existential for the government and elite unlike the previous case in Columbia.

Provided a Mexican equivalent of the Columbian FARC does not emerge from the scrub and sierras and the cartels remain limited in their ultimate goals, there is no threat to the traditional Mexican approach to social organization and politics.  It was the existence of FARC and other expansive goal offensive insurgent groups in tandem with the Columbian cartels which made the situation in Columbia existential for the government.

In short, the Mexican government at all levels can afford a "victory" by the cartels.  What the government at all levels cannot afford is a continuation of the social and political disruption caused by the insurgency.  The violence saps the soul of the nation, rips the Mexican social compact, undercuts the ability of the individual to have any faith in the future, to envision a tomorrow which is not worse than today.  Not even a culture as resilient or as inured to death as the Mexican can survive the current and projected onslaught of blood and disruption with equanimity.

Mexico can survive the coming to pass of the cartels' limited goals.  It can survive the inter-cartel battle for turf.  The question is what the limited "victory" of the cartels means to the US.

The establishment of "police free zones" in which the cartels can carry on their operations without any governmental hindrance will constitute a national security threat for the US.  The capacities of the cartels, their networks, their experience would facilitate the clandestine introduction of hostile personnel and equipment into the US.  And, given the established presence of agents from Hezbollah, Hamas, and other groups advocating and practicing violent political Islam in Mexico in areas dominated by one or more cartels, the highest probability is the cartels will provide essential services to these groups and their state sponsors.

It is this probability far more than any fear of a further flooding of drugs or illegal aliens into the US which assures the US has a dog in the fight.  Unfortunately it is dog which cannot be named.  The Obama administration has great difficulty admitting, let alone defining, the pressing but not yet readily apparent threats from abroad confronting us.  So, rather than focusing on the most essential component of the Mexican question, it tiptoes around mouthing platitudes regarding drugs.  The anti-administration groups are no better preferring to view with alarm the matter of illegal immigrants.

While emotionally appealing both drugs and wetbacks do not have the inherent political power to force the government of the United States to take more robust action to assist the Mexicans in controlling the insurgency--or securing the border with greater effect.  Admittedly, there is little that can be done directly to counter the cartels and their insurgency given the very prickly hyper-nationalism of the Mexican public, particularly the political and chattering classes, but more can be done to stiffen the willingness of the government and elite to continue their efforts.

Some of what can be done is not politically popular given the anti-immigrant sentiments so widely spread in our society.  However, one of the most effective ways in which the US can buck up Mexican political will is a reform of immigration laws and procedures which favors the Mexican demands.  By enhancing our role as a critical safety valve for economically excess Mexicans we would put a whopping big obligation on the Mexican government as well as providing ourselves with a lever on their actions regarding the cartels.

The irony in all of this is while the insurgency is in Mexico, it is the US with the most at stake in its outcome.  This means we have no realistic choice other than defining just what is at stake and, given the long term magnitude of that stake, what we must do to help ensure the proper outcome.

Even if the insurgency is not existential for the Mexican government, in the long run it may well be for ours.

In Mexico Every Day Is The Day Of The Dead

The Mexican internal war flows along in its self-created river of blood.  So far this year more than ten thousand have been killed in the fighting between criminal cartels as well as between the government and the gangsters.  Since the war was officially declared by President Calderon, nearly thirty thousand people were converted from living, breathing, hoping, and fearing human beings into sanitation problems.  That's right, nearly thirty thousand dead since December 2006.

It's a sucker bet that the body count will exceed 30,000 by the day the fourth anniversary comes along.  Over seven thousand a year, nearly twenty new corpses a day.  Almost one an hour, each and every hour for four years.  Compared to that, the combined American fatality toll in Afghanistan and Iraq amounts to a mere bagatelle.

For all the death and fear precious little has been accomplished.  The flow of drugs has not decreased.  Nor has the price to the end user increased.  And, the purity of the final product has not degraded.  As an effort to block the movement of illegal drugs across the Mexican-US border, the Calderon campaign has been a total failure.

At the same time the assorted cartels have expanded their operations from the smuggling of drugs to other profit nodes.  The cartels smuggle people.  They hijack cargoes of assorted merchandise and smuggle them into the American market.  As sidelines the gangs kidnap for ransom, run protection rackets, and burgle everything not nailed down.  For fun the gangsters rape, beat, and murder.  It's a good life, being a member of a gang--unless the opposition or your own bosses take you out.

During all the down and dirty criminal merriment, the gangs have brought corruption to a new level.  For years, generations, the predilection of Mexican cops for bribes has been the stuff of both popular humor and personal tragedy.  The question was not, "is this cop corrupt?" but "how much will it cost?"  The Calderon government has tried to stamp out or at least limit the corruption of local police, but faced with the "silver or lead" tradition, the efforts have failed.

When the cops either could not be bought or, once bought, did not stay bought, the gangs have had a simple solution.  Cops, local or state or federal have died in wholesale lots.  On the local level it has not been uncommon the past year for the survivors to turn in their badges with unseemly but prudent haste.

The judicial system is no less corrupt--when it isn't simply being inefficient.  The system cannot handle the relatively small number of gangsters who are arrested.  The lack of public confidence in the judiciary and police is reflected in the estimate that only a minority of serious crimes are ever reported.  Not that making a report matters.  Very, very few suspected criminals are ever arrested and even fewer come to trial.  Of that unfortunate minor fraction, even fewer are convicted, and still fewer ever see the inside of a slammer.

The motto for a Mexican gangster should be, "What? Me Worry?"  That is a realistic attitude.

The gangs have not been indifferent to the attraction of buying politicians.  While killing the politico has a long history in Mexico, the notion of purchase in wholesale quantities is of relatively recent origin.  But, if there is one thing the gangs have in inexhaustible amounts, it is money.  Flush with cash, the gangs have found buying politicians to be a good investment.  After all, the best way to stop the Calderon Campaign is through politics. Need one know more?

To be successful, it is best if corruption takes place in the shadows.  A politician or a judge or even a local cop is an ineffective agent of gang interests if it is known that he has been bought and paid for.  Thus, keeping journalists quiet has become a high priority for the gangs.  Since pistoleros don't care who they cap, the killing of journalists is as easy to accomplish as the killing of rival gang members.

As a result of the stop-the-news effort, journalists in Mexico are at a greater risk of becoming corpses than are members of the Mexican army.  One of the most, perhaps the most, dangerous places to practice the craft of journalism today is Mexico.  Not surprisingly, the papers are loath to practice investigative journalism or even make a big deal out of the daily tripping over bodies which is commonplace in places like Juarez.

The systemic deformation of the institutions of justice, politics, and the press have combined with the daily mayhem to undercut the integrity of the social and political compact which unites citizen and government.  The situation of a deteriorating social/political compact has been worsened by both the historical indifference of the Mexican elite to the lives of the hoi polloi and the numbing effects of poverty and hopelessness.

Mexico is not a failed state.  Not yet.  It may never become a genuine failed state.  The capacity of the Mexican peasant and his urban counterpart to endure the unendurable is legendary--and real.  Yet every day that the bodies fall, the corruption flows, and the misery grinds on is a day which erodes even the seemingly endless capacity of the Mexican to persevere.  Trust in the government like hope for a better tomorrow has become a gravely endangered species.

Should the Mexican hoi polloi come to the realization that more of the same is totally unacceptable, the results will be massive, shocking, and lethal in the extreme.  If Mexico fails as a state, the consequent internal war(s) will equal or surpass those of the long, long warfare of the early Twentieth Century.  As was the case a century and less ago, the violence will cross the border to the detriment of places like El Paso or Tucson, which were small, quite off the beaten path places back then but are major cities today.

This potential implies strongly that US policies regarding immigration and illegal drugs must be considered in the context of will they help or hinder the reestablishment of stability in Mexico.  As the coming of collapse cannot be predicted with precision, it would be prudent for the US decision makers and We the People to consider the package of policies directly impacting on Mexico with the greatest of expedition.  Time is not on the side of stability.

It is spectacularly unfortunate that both subjects--illegal drugs and immigration change--are almost as emotionally stimulating as, say, abortion and homosexual marriage,  Strong emotions do not make for careful calculations of how best to serve the collective national interest.  However, both national interest and the American responsibility for the current state of near failure in Mexico demand that emotions be shunted aside and a serious debate on how best to assist in rectifying the sorry state of affairs south of the border be undertaken with dispatch.

Unless the US government and We the People can get serious about solving our share of the current predominantly Mexican problem, not only will it be conceivable that all the Mexicans currently in the US illegally will be able to apply for political refugee status, but that there will be a lot more coming, waves of people fleeing the violence of collapse.

The Mexican Question is one which is truly bi-partisan.  So, get on with it you denizens inside the beltway.  It is a tough job at the least, but you were elected to take on the big ones.

Insurgency Or Not, Mexico Sure Is Bloody

President Obama and his Secretary of State are on opposite sides of a proposition: Resolved, Mexico today is Columbia of twenty years ago. Ms Clinton took the affirmative yesterday. Today, Mr Obama argued the negative for the benefit of a Mexican outlet.

The Obama view is far more popular in Mexico, particularly with Mexican president Calderon, than is the pessimistic assessment of Hilary Clinton. Equally unsurprising, Ms Clinton's flack stated the secretary had not wandered off the reservation.

Seemingly shoving Mr Obama's rather rosy assessment that Mexico is a vibrant democracy with an expanding economy, the drug thugs went on a tear in Juarez racking up a total of twenty-five corpses making it the deadliest day in that city since the Mexican drug war started. The roughly 6,400 cadavers which have littered the city across the line from El Paso would seem to argue that Ms Clinton is right. That much spilled blood despite the presence of the army, the federal police, a reconstituted local police, a passel of new government programs intended to show the government is present and able to aid in assuring security and prosperity would tend to show the place is no longer under effective government control, and that is a chief criterion for defining the presence of an insurgency in progress.

But the presence of dead bodies and the absence of effective security or basic government services do not on their own show an insurgency exists. An insurgency is an organized political expression of underlying disaffection on the part of a definable segment of the population.

That isn't the case in Mexico--yet.

Twenty years or so ago in Columbia there was an insurgency. FARC was both political in its goal and representative of disaffection. The alliances made between the insurgents of FARC and the several cocaine powered cartels were tactical in nature and did not alter the political color of the insurgent group at first or for many years to follow.

FARC and the cartels used each other with effectiveness. However the combination did stimulate the American response which ultimately saw the Colombian government defeat the cartels and toss FARC almost out of the arena. The awesome amount of American aid including highly pertinent training and critical intelligence support coupled with Colombian political will to bring about the eventual marginalization of FARC until the desperate remnants of the once dread insurgent group were reduced to playing the part of criminals and begging Hugo Chavez for assistance in order to survive. The political agenda of FARC went by the wayside as survival needs took the highest priority. Today FARC is a bunch of brigands without any political will or consequence.

In Mexico the several cartels have not yet demonstrated any notable political character beyond that of establishing safe zones in which they can conduct their activities. To that end the cartels have terrorized and corrupted local governments as well as members of the police, armed forces, and judiciary. Those officials at any level who have proven resistant to bribes or threats have, perforce, been killed--usually in a manner which terrorizes others similarly situated.

Carving out safe zones has been paralleled by inter-cartel fighting to secure turf and its necessary concomitant, a greater share of the forty billion dollar drug trade. The most critical consequence of this focus has been that the majority of the dead have been cartel members or gunslingers. The high profile killing of police, officials, bystanders, journalists, and other non-combatants capture attention and obscure the fact that most of the nearly thirty thousand dead to date have been combatants of one sort or another. This imbalance is not typical of insurgencies in progress.

This is not to say the Mexican soil may not yet sprout a full fledged insurgency, but the probability is low. Regional issues in the states where the violence has been most concentrated have not yet produced widespread disaffection. Nor is such likely to emerge in the near- or mid-term, provided the safety valve of the northern frontier remains open enough. Only if the American border security program becomes far more effective is the absence of effective, responsive governance in combination with ever present violence likely to produce any sort of pre-insurgent conditions.

Even then, a regionally based defensive insurgency would be short of life as the central government, its supporting elite, and the armed forces would have both the political will and capacity to suppress any genuine insurgency rapidly (and very bloodily.) Further militating against any insurgency developing is the deep scar left by the years of civil strife marking the first quarter of the last century.

Ms Clinton was, in short, too alarmist in her comparison. Mr Obama is closer to the truth on this one, but absent any significant improvement in the Mexican government's ability to face down the cartels and simultaneously improve the economic lot of the long suffering Mexican lower classes, the vacuum will grow as will the violence.

This means, that Mexico will continue to bleed whether or not the basis is political, whether or not there is a real insurgency underway. The necessity for both Mexico City and Washington is to stop the violence, the killing. The problem lies in the inconvenient fact that the most efficient and rapid way of doing this is unacceptable to American morality--legalize the drugs which power the cartels and make their violence both necessary and possible.

US Foreign Policy Goes Schizophrenic Again

The long running US declared "War On Drugs" has been marked by flat out schizophrenia more than a few times. Without exception the schized out stance has been caused by the almost inevitably contradictory demands of halting the transportation of illegal drugs by armed organizations whose arsenals of weapons are equaled by satchels of bribe-ready cash on the one hand and the considerations of human rights on the other.

This time around the attack of schizophrenic policy is directed at Mexico. For the first time the State Department has exercised its authority under the legislation establishing the Merida Initiative to withhold fifteen percent of the scheduled tranche if Mexico does not meet certain required milestones in human rights protection. State announced it is cutting 26 megabucks from the allocated 175 million USD.

The "punishment" was invoked in the hope of halting the escalating number of human rights violations allegedly committed by the Mexican Army in its anti-drug operations. Additionally, the Obama administration is seeking to compel the Mexican government to try soldiers in civilian courts for any and all purported human rights abuses.

The army has been accused of an ever growing number of human rights offenses. The number of complaints lodged against military personnel has grown ninefold from 2006 (206) to 2010 (1833) with serious crimes (murder, torture, rape, and kidnapping) increasing from zero to thirty in the same time period. The serious offenses have been confirmed by the Mexican government's own Human Rights Commission, which is a generally reliable source.

Considering the nature of the conflict, the level of violence, the irrelevance of most Mexican army training to the demands of counter-drug operations, the capacity and political will of the drug cartel members, the level of human rights abuses is not overly high. As the recent shootouts between Mexican troops and cartel trigger-pullers demonstrate, the level of combat is not dissimilar with that experienced by US personnel in Afghanistan.

The conflict between cartels and government has resulted in sufficient dead bodies to be considered a very real war. It is a war which the Mexican Army did not want to fight. And, more importantly, is not yet ready to fight in a way which would both guarantee an absence of human rights abuses and the suppression of the cartels.

There is nothing in Mexican Army doctrine, training, or historical experience which would have allowed it to step into the unaccustomed role of operating in support of the civil power. When President Calderon took the step of declaring open war on the cartels, he must (or at least, should) have known the army was not competent to the task--particularly if the job was to be done without the slightest risk of any civilian having any right infringed upon in any way.

The realities surrounding the judicial and law enforcement systems in Mexico four years ago did not leave Sr Calderon much choice. Frankly, he had only two alternatives at that time or more recently. The first was arranging an armistice with the cartels allowing them to move their product through Mexico without hindrance by the government (beyond the customary bribes to local authorities.) The second was the course chosen, the assertion of government supremacy over the cartels.

The pervasive corruption which had been such an open secret for so many years that the outstretched hand of the cop was a staple of humor was exploited to the fullest by the cartels. The result was simply that no Mexican police force at any level of government was not totally compromised by one cartel or another. Anti-drug operations were known by the target(s) in, shall we say, a timely manner.

The Army was not so heavily penetrated, at least not immediately, so its operations had a level of security and surprise which brought early and impressive success. Below the surface of media reports, however, the army went further than conducting search and destroy or search and clear operations. In many areas, particularly near the US border, the army executed what locals politely called "cleansing" actions.

In short, the Mexican army did what so many other LatAm armed forces had done in earlier years--"disappeared" people associated with the cartels. These distasteful actions did have the beneficial effect of severely perturbing some--but not all--of the several cartels. By the time the central government forced an end to the "cleansing" operations, in large measure due to legitimate fear of US disapproval, the net effect had been the weakening but not destruction of the cartels.

As a result the cartels abandoned the market distribution agreement and launched their increasingly bloody fight for turf and profit. Another consequence was the development of a new level of armed competence on the part of the cartels. The Zetas, who later hived off to form a new, independent cartel, started as an enforcement and defense force.

Many Zetas were former Mexican Army personnel including former members of the country's Special Forces. This assured not only greater paramilitary capacity but a higher level of violence. The Zetas had both the skills and resolve necessary to conduct operations not only in Mexico but in the US as well.

Because the Mexican Army could not land a fatal blow in the early days of the war, the situation rapidly came to resemble that in Afghanistan after the initial American "incomplete success." The cartels regrouped, retrained, re-equipped and came back bigger and badder than before.

As the months rolled by and the bodies piled higher, the character of the violence shifted in a subtle but significant way. While much of the lethal violence was cartel on cartel and accompanied by iconic displays of ruthlessness, and another significant percentage was the result of government, primarily military, action, an increasing proportion was essentially random. In a very real sense the culture of death took on a life of its own, particularly in areas such as Cuidad Juarez, which were and had been epicenters of the drug trade.

While not yet achieving the truly Himalayan heights of lethality exemplified by Caracas, the daily body counts in Juarez show the city is less safe than Kabul or even Kandahar. Making the dynamic worse is the way in which simple murder has been transformed into a high art of terrorism. The decapitations, the dismemberments, the partial burnings, the maiming of corpses, the rolling of heads into nightclubs, the indiscriminate shootings, the ever higher chance of becoming dead simply by virtue of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time have all conspired to turn Juarez and the adjacent valley into monuments to fear, loss of confidence, failure of faith.

Faith in the government, in the military, in the rule of law, in the future, in even one's self is a rapidly eroding factor of life. Even a cursory trip (all that is possible or advisable given the realities of life and death) quickly convinces a visitor that only an ending of the violence will restore the faith in self and community without which no government can survive let alone accomplish anything.

The locals, not unlike their counterparts in Afghanistan, want an end to the fear, an end to the looming specter of violent death, an end to the display of corpses dangling from bridges, impaled on fence posts, stuffed into trash barrels, an end to the screech of assault rifles. Easy to understand one would think even for an inhabitant of Foggy Bottom for whom pervasive fear is limited to the next performance review.

The people of Cuidad Juarez lose little love for the army in their midst, but, as one put it with the bluntness of being a combat veteran, "All can be forgiven--if I'm still alive to do the forgiving." Yes, and all can be rebuilt, restored, regained if only the faith came back which will happen if and only if the violence is stopped.

Whether anyone--in Foggy Bottom or in Mexico City--likes it or not, only the Mexican Army has the slightest potential of ending the violence before the violence ends, perhaps not Mexico, but the most embattled, most blood soaked parts of the country. This means with the horrid inevitability of a boulder falling from a steep cliff that there will be more violations of human rights. Even as the Mexican Army becomes better trained, better led, better at the job of waging low-intensity internal war, the violations will continue albeit at a lower level (if all goes right.)

Whether all goes right depends in large degree on how willing and able the Mexican armed forces are to listen to American advice. How willing it is to take lessons hard learned by US personnel in the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan. That willingness is in no way enhanced by actions such as the "punishing" inflicted by the worthies of the US State Department.

The decision makers at Foggy Bottom show an alarming lack of familiarity with some ground truths in Mexico. They seem, for example, unaware that the Mexican armed forces are totally unwilling to put their personnel under the purview of civilian law enforcement and judicial systems for reasons both historical and pragmatic in nature.

On a larger level it seems the people in charge (does that include you, Madam Secretary or are you too wrapped up in the search for a Mideast peace?) are oblivious to Mexican hyper-nationalism. As has been the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, the lads and lassies at State are of the apparent view that nationalism is moot, no longer operative, a reactionary hangover from the bad old days of the past.

The Mexican government and army rather resemble what General George Patton once said of armies generally (including the American,) "like a piece of cooked spaghetti, can't be pushed, only pulled." And, that means being led, not by the nose, but by patient advice and example.

The current administration and its State Department have to decide which is more important, which is more urgent a priority: Ending the violence and restoring governance in Juraez and other war zones or forcing some Mexican snuffy to stand before a civilian bar of justice. In a world where realism had a higher value than idealism, the choice would be simple.

Realism demands that the violence and its effects be ended without delay. When that has occurred it will be both possible and utterly essential that the weight be placed on the side of human rights. Until then, it must be remembered that the most basic human right of all, the right without which no others are possible, is the right to life, life without pervasive, enervating, all destroying fear.

Bugs Bunny "What A Maroon!" Award V

This time around the highly coveted What A Maroon! Award goes to both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. The Award is presented to these two Deep Thinking exponents of High Minded, Lofty Thinking Global Institutions for their joint decision not only to submit a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on the state of human rights in the US to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) but to include in the UPR a specific reference condemning the State of Arizona's affront known as SB 1070.

The UPR presented by the administration to the UNHRC last week is totally unremarkable in most respects. Much of it is a hosanna onto the American history of pushing the limits of human rights which is both relatively accurate and totally justified. A second chorus of praise centers on the Obama administration and, (cue the trumpets) the president himself as totally dedicated to yet further perfection of human rights defined in the broadest conceivable sense within the US.

So far, so good. Propaganda on behalf of the US is never out of line--provided it is based on reality. And, propaganda on behalf of a politician and his "Team" are a normal part of government. If the grandiose proponents of the multi-cultural, moral equivalence, post-modern view of the universe now occupying the Oval and the big office in Foggy Bottom had limited themselves to business-as-usual hyperbole, the UPR would have slipped by unnoticed and fallen into the Great Tomb of Official Documents quite unmourned.

But, no, the Dynamic Duo had to go a bridge or two too far. They felt an obligation to set up the progressive folks of the Obama administration in sharp contrast with and in legal opposition to the benighted, pitchfork and torch waving xenophobic racists of Arizona. This gratuitous insult may play well with the self-appointed hoi oligoi of both coasts, but it does so at the general expense of the US.

The UNHRC is the epitome of hypocrisy. As the successor to the terminally discredited UN Commission on Human Rights it would have been legitimate to posit a radical break with the past. But, as the UN General Assembly is predicated upon the one-nation, one-vote concept, that was not to be. And, indeed, never should have been hoped for.

As anyone well oriented in time and place knows, the UNHRC is a comprised of forty-seven members elected by majority vote of the 192 countries represented in the UN General Assembly. When the criteria for election were being drafted, the US plumped for requiring the human rights records of contenders to be evaluated. This sensible proposition was defeated. No surprise in that.

As a result, the entity, the UNHRC as currently constituted which will review, comment upon, and make recommendations concerning the UPR includes states notable for their suppression or even rejection of basic human rights. Among others, China, Cuba, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Russia will have the authority to evaluate the American record in human rights and offer suggestions for improvement or chastisement as they see fit.

There is another country in the roster with a special interest in immigration matters as such obtain to the US generally and Arizona in specific. That country (drum roll, please) is Mexico.

Mexico's record in human rights generally is, shall we say, checkered. With regard to immigration policy specifically, the right word is duplicitous.

The dichotomy between the moaning, groaning, bitching, and whining coming from the politicians and media of Mexico over the horrid behavior of the Yanquis on the one hand the True Tails Of Terror And Murder inflicted by Mexicans on illegal immigrants from south of their border has reached a vividness that at least some courageous Mexicans are challenging the myth. The real deal in Mexico is finally leaking around the false image of victimization painted by self-serving politicians, self-interested public intellectuals, and hyper-ambitious advocates.

The mass murder of seventy-two "migrants" (to use the favorite Mexican term for illegal aliens) by criminal smugglers of human beings last week in Tamaulipas exposed the charade in all its grotesque ignominy. The blossom of gore exposed by a wounded survivor of the mass murder stands atop the bloody peak of a mountain of kidnappings, robberies, murders, and general shaking down of people of all ages and both sexes who seek to transit Mexico en route to the Land Of The Big BX.

In the six months between September 2008 and February 2009, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission documented 9,758 identified kidnappings which yielded an average of 2,500 USD per victim. Unfortunately, there was no break down between kidnappings executed by police officers or other officials as contrasted with the informal acts of criminals. Nonetheless, the Mexican Human Rights Commission specifically holds the central government as well as those of the states responsible for the offenses.

Ironically the Mexican federal government whose representative on the UNHRC will soon sit in judgement of the US received a chastening letter from the same body for the sins of both commission and omission which resulted in harm to aliens from Central and South America. Is there something wrong with this picture?

Presumably, both Mr Obama and Ms Clinton had access to information regarding the actual situation in Mexico. It is also to be presumed that both knew the general anti-American stance within the UNHRC. One might be so bold as to assume that both understood and understand how the UPR can and will provide ammunition aplenty for those governments which seek to harm the interests of the US.

In their defense, both Mr Obama and Ms Clinton undoubtedly believe that the openness of the US to the scrutiny and criticism of hostile or guilty states offsets completely any anti-American commentary which will ensue. That may be true, but the realities of global politics require that countries which live in glass houses not invite the throwing of stones.

In this case, the President and his Secretary of State have not only invited the heaving of rocks at Uncle Sam's residence, they have passed out the stones gratis.

For that they merit the What A Maroon! Award.

ADMIN NOTE: The Geek invites, welcomes and will post all on topic comments. Because of spam attacks he has instituted defensive measures. He apologizes for any frustration which may result.

The Border--And The Borderland

An interlocutor sent the Geek a link to a semi-perceptive account of the historical and economic factors providing the foundation to the current controversy over the Arizona law regarding illegal immigration. The history cannot be changed no matter how many super-patriots in Mexico may wish to see the verdict of the Mexican War reversed. The same may not be said of the economic considerations which have loomed so large in creating the current unpleasant reality of a southern border which exists primarily as a legal fiction.

The linked article has its greatest value in bringing the matter of borderlands into a sharper focus. This very critical aspect of the "immigration debate" has not been given the consideration it deserves even in the American states which constitute the "borderland."

There are four borderlands states: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The situation in these borderland states is qualitatively different from that existing in other states with respect to Hispanic, primarily Mexican, origin residents.

While there are large pockets of Hispanic descent people including citizens, legal immigrants, and illegals in many other states, these constitute pockets surrounded by the domestic majority. As such they are analogous to the relation between previous immigrant communities and the preexisting majority population. Immigrants may introduce social, political, and economic change but do so in a way which can be accepted and integrated into the previous matrices.

In the borderland states the immigrants, both legal and otherwise, are directly and often intimately connected with their ancestral land. As such the migrants find no compelling need to assimilate with the majority society, polity, and culture. And, here is the more important consideration, because the immigrants can be viewed as having primary allegiances to their ancestral country, they can be perceived quite easily as agents of unwanted change, even agents of a foreign power.

This dark but very real subtext is a new dynamic in the American borderland. When the Geek was young, there were neither suspicion nor fear of the Hispanics who came, lived, and, often but not always, left. Those of us who lived in the borderland, in what was once dubbed, "Rio Grandia" were pleased and proud of our unique cultural and linguistic context. This was not limited to New Mexico but, as the Geek found time after time, extended both east into the southern wilds of Texas and westward into today's battlegrounds of Arizona's Cochise and Pinal counties.

Forty years ago, even thirty, the movement back and forth across the border was continual, slow motion, and, by and large unnoticed or at least uncommented upon. Even the border patrol wallahs of the Geek's acquaintance were not of the view that they were manning a frontline in a war zone.

Over the intervening years there have been some critical shifts in the national context which have not only destroyed the halcyon days of "Rio Grandia," but have set the stage for an increased fear of covert invasion by Mexico. Typically, pundits and politicos point at drug trafficking and the vast increase in the number of economically motivated illegal aliens as the most important, indeed, the only factors behind the upsurge in anxiety over immigration. Or, the more socially liberal trot out the presumed racism and xenophobia of the American hoi polloi.

The factor which has been overlooked all too often but is critical in the development of the new nativist subtext is simply that the federal government has not viewed the ever more porous nature of our southern border as a matter of importance. Twenty years ago as the drug trafficking routes shifted from their traditional corridors to the Mexican alternative, the federal government seemed not to have noticed. Then, during the Nineties as the flow of illegals reached flood stage, once again the federal government appeared indifferent.

The stance of the federal government can be explained to be sure, but any and all explanations have and will fall short in the ears of those living in the borderland. The reality on the ground throughout the borderland, particularly close to the border, was an ever growing number of smugglers and illegal aliens.

There were demands that the federal government take action to limit the flow of people across the line in the sand. The demands of a decade and more ago were much the same as today: Secure the border now and reform immigration later. The demands were unheard, or, if heard, not heeded.

Even if the Denizens Inside the Beltway were unaware of the role played by the Mexican government and its associated elite in the growth of illegal immigration, there were many living in the borderland who knew perfectly well that the Mexican government and its rico supporters were not only doing nothing to reduce the immigrant flow, they were actively encouraging its growth. Borderlanders were quite aware that the Mexican government needed the border as its social and political safety valve. They also knew because many read Mexican media that there existed a pervasive belief in Mexico that the results of the Mexican War could be reversed by sufficient immigration.

These considerations were not and are not the creations of fevered imaginations feeding on conspiracy theories of history. The Mexican government with the full support of its domestic elite has encouraged illegal immigration as doing such relieves the government and elite from developing Mexican resources to provide Mexican jobs. It has relieved both government and elite from taking necessary but painful measures to address a century or longer legacy of neglecting the needs of Mexicans and of having exploited for personal gain or political advantage the long suffering Mexicans.

At the same time the hyper-patriotic strain of revisionist history has and continues to loudly proclaim that los gringos stole most of Mexico's patrimony. There is a powerful myth, a defining myth in Mexico, which focuses all that has gone wrong in that country's long, bloody, and often disastrous history on the US. A companion to that myth, a twin connected shoulder and hip, is the belief in Mexico Redeemed.

Irredentism is a powerful force. It is alive and well in Mexico. It propels much if not all of the current torrent of vitriol poured on Arizona and the US. It also motivates the support of illegal immigration. It is why the Mexicans reserve the word "illegal" for those who enter Mexico without papers but use the neutral term "migration" or "migratory affairs" to refer to Mexicans who cross the line to the US.

Unless and until the federal government takes the border with not only a convincing degree of seriousness of purpose but an obvious effectiveness, the borderlands will grow ever darker with suspicion and fear. In this case, as in so much of politics, perception is king. The perception through most of the borderland is one of being invaded by Armies of the Night. It does not matter if that perception is absolutely true or not, it governs the attitudes and eventually the behavior of residents of the borderlands.

There may not be a real war here in the borderland, but it sure can feel like one. And, that, Worthies of Washington, is where the rubber hits the road.

Now, Hezbollah Joins The Narcos--Why Not?

Sue Myrick (R. NC-9) is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It may be recalled that she garnered more than a little notoriety when she wrote the forward for the book Muslim Mafia last year. This book accused the Council On American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of being a subversive entity. (It is interesting in this regard that CAIR during ensuing litigation did not charge the book's authors or publisher with libel or defamation but rather with having acquired certain documents by illegal methods.)

Alarmed by the book's allegations that CAIR had planted espionage agents within committees charged with national security duties, Ms Myrick, joined by other Republican Members of Congress, demanded the Sergeant At Arms investigate to determine whether or not interns appointed with CAIR backing had served in this sinister role. Later she, again with other Republicans, requested the Internal Revenue Service investigate as to whether CAIR had violated its tax-exempt status by lobbying efforts.

It is without surprise that CAIR and other pro-Islam groups including the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim American Society as well as Democratic Party heavyweights, most notably, John Conyers and Mike Honda, pushed back--hard. Weakening the push back efforts was the undeniable linkage of CAIR with officially identified Muslim terrorist groups as an unindicted co-conspirator in the controversial Holy Land Foundation trial.

Ms Myrick has written another letter recently. This time the recipient was Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. The subject: Investigate the possible linkage of Hezbollah and Mexican narcotrafficking cartels.

The letter is a fine example of unspecified "former intelligence officers," and "well trained officials," and "some authorities." Ms Myrick's missive rests additionally on some well known and unpleasant realities deep south of the border such as the cooperation between Iranian capo Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan supremo Chavez, the long established presence of Hezbollah operatives in the drug smuggling region of the Tri-border between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, the skill shown by Hezbollah in digging tunnels, and, as a bit of a stretch, the similarity of terrain between that of the southwest US-Mexican border and the border between Israel and Lebanon.

In Ms Myrick's estimate, the probable current or near-term partnership between Hezbollah and the assorted smuggling cartels operating on the US-Mexico border constitutes a definite national security threat. As such, the matter deserves, at the least, the establishment of a task force which "could explore all these issues."

It is the wishy-washy nature of the Myrick request which undermines her argument that the US may soon be experiencing "Israel like car bombings of Mexican/USA border personnel or National Guard units in the border regions." Get a grip, Congresswoman Myrick!

Either the US does face a growing threat from a partnership between Hezbollah (or Hamas or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the cartels or it does not. If the potential for such exists to the degree you appear to believe, then action beyond the formation of a "taskforce (which) could explore all these issues," is necessary.

The use of the resources, personnel, and knowledge of the smuggling cartels would be of great utility to an entity such as Hezbollah or an adverse state like Iran. However, the potential utility of such an alliance would be eroded significantly if employed for petty efforts such as "Israel-like car bombings." The killing or wounding of a few Border Patrol agents or National Guardsmen would be a frittering away of a capacity with much greater potential.

The current dynamics of global politics makes the use of the smuggling cartels an attractive option. Of course, this option would not be either cheap or risk free, so it seems reasonable that any partnership would have as its goal operations far more damaging to the US than the sound of VBIEDs in the desert air.

Ms Myrick would be well advised to reform her letter, its arguments, and the sketchy evidence supporting her contentions to an appropriate level. Not to be unduly alarmist, but taking into account the strong probability that Iran will have the capacity to take two Hiroshima sized bombs off the shelf within eighteen to twenty-four months, a legitimate level of threat is that of a WMD attack using either nuclear or biological munitions.

The capabilities of the smuggling cartels, their human resources, their collective knowledge are up to the task of introducing agents and equipment into the US. This capability should be understood not as simply dumping the martyrdom seekers and munitions across the Great Fence of the Southwest but delivering them well into the interior of the US.

The complex, well-organized, and highly redundant delivery system developed and constantly improved upon by the cartels provides a ready capacity for delivering a devastating attack on the US at any time. All that is necessary is the formation of a partnership between one or more cartels and either Iran or one of its proxies.

This takes time. The cartels are run by men who are even tougher of mind than the mullahs and their stooges. It will take more than a slight amount of effort to persuade the cartel chiefs that what is in the deal more than offsets the risks of American response. It will take careful playing off of one cartel with the others as well as meticulous manipulation of relevant and receptive Mexican police, military, and government officials.

None of this is made easier by the arrogant xenophobia which has been well noted by those foreigners--even other Muslims--who have had dealings with Iran or Iranian proxies. Nor does the assistance of Hugo Chavez ease the path to partnership.

Chavez enjoys no particularly high standing in the estimate of the cartels. He has even lower standing with members of the Mexican elite both in and out of government. Any Chavez involvement will be obvious since that is the only way Hugo, The Mouth Of The South, knows how to operate. The evident participation of Hugo will make any deal with Mexican officials all the more difficult given the nationalism which is always present in their makeup along with greed.

The culture gap between Islamist jihadi and Latin American narcotrafficker is wide and deep. It will not be bridged quickly and easily--if at all. This ground truth is far more relevant in considering the potential of an emerging threat on the border than is the presence of a few jail tattoos in Farsi.

Ms Myrick is correct in being concerned. The growth of an alliance between Iran or its proxies and the elaborate smuggling networks of LatAm is a real threat in the longer term. But, the right way to go about countering this potential is not in the writing of politically expedient letters.

The right way is that of careful monitoring of developments and their disruption whenever possible. And the options for disruption are manifold given the nature of the relationship between Islamists and traffickers. Not to simplify the matter, time is on the side of the US in this area of threat assessment and abatement.

In short, Ms Myrick should put her word processor on stand-by. Unless the intelligence community has become significantly more incompetent in recent months (not impossible but highly unlikely), the Iranian-smuggling connection is already on the radar screens. As a rule of thumb, if we hear nothing about it, the matter is being handled properly and effectively.

Violence Never Settles Anything!

To which the Geek replies, "Like hell it doesn't!" For definite proof simply channel the Carthaginians as to what matters were like for them after the Third Punic War. Or, if channeling isn't your thing, simply look at the maps of Europe at various times during the Twentieth Century.

Look particularly at Germany. Notice how it expanded and contracted according to the fortunes of war.

Then consider Poland. You see how the whole damn country moved west as the guns fell silent in May 1945. The Soviets simply took a goodly chunk of the eastern marches of Poland. As compensation, (that's right, the fine old word, "compensation" which decorated so many treaties ending the multifarious wars of Europe in previous, presumably less enlightened centuries), Poland was given a nearly equal sized section of Germany--Silesia.

This dual land grab was sanctioned not simply by the greed of Stalin but by the good wishes of the leaders of the other Great Powers, Great Britain and the US as well as the pretend Great Power, France. No one blinked over the ethnic cleansing which accompanied the move of the borders. No one was perturbed over the loss of lives, mainly those pesky Germans, which resulted inevitably from the forced relocations.

Wars are noted as real estate transactions. Indeed, that has been their primary characteristic and major reason for existence. And, contrary to the popular assumption, most settle the questions of who owns what and who lives where.

Even countries such as the UK and Japan, which are fortunate enough to be defined geographically by their status as islands, owe their identity to aggressive warfare. In each of these cases as in so many others including the US, the indigenous population was invaded and defeated by outsiders. Whether exterminated or banished to remote and unpleasant locations as well as political and social marginalization, the result was the same. A new nation existed by virtue of war.

Filled with the adrenaline of success against the deeply fractionated and demoralized Christian populations of the Mideast and North Africa, the Muslims made a play for Europe. They were stopped at Tours in France by Jeff the Hammer and his boys but held fast to the Iberian Peninsula for a goodly spate of years. In the fullness of time, however, the Muslims were ejected after a very long and quite bloody war of reconquest by the Catholic Spanish. Since the late Fifteenth Century there has been no question about who owns the Iberian Peninsula.

(Admittedly there has arisen within the more primitive minded sort of Muslim the strange and specious notion that Islam must reassert its "historic" sovereignty over the Peninsula. These Koranic fantasists dream of undoing the verdict of war fought hard and long to say nothing of reasonably fairly and quite openly with a campaign of terror, kidnapping, and assassination. These Mighty Warriors of Allah must be partaking of the same hashish which gave the original Assassins their name.)

Then, of course, there are the more than simply annoying Muslims who fail to acknowledge that the Israelis beat them fair and square in a series of wars between 1948 and 1973. None of these wars were necessary. In particular the first wars, those of Israeli Independence, were the result not of Jewish greed or Western machinations but rather of pure, unadulterated Arab Muslim stupidity and obstinacy to say nothing of an unrealistically high belief in their own military competence.

Having failed at both war and diplomacy to settle who owns what and who lives where, the irredentist Muslims have practiced the low and dirty craft of terror coupled recently with an even more abysmal effort at provocation and delegitimization. Unlike other populations who have experienced the nation defining effects of war--for good or for ill--the Muslims of the Mideast driven by the primitively violent diatribes of a religion from the barbaric wastes of the Arabian Peninsula cannot accept the verdict of battle.

The Arabs lost. The Israelis won. What is so hard to understand and accommodate?

The Ottoman Empire died in war. The recent effort by Erdogan in Turkey to resurrect in effect if not in name the golem of the Ottoman Caliphate and Sultanate is an effort to deny that history happened. That the Ottoman welter of bureaucratic inefficiency, fiscal mismanagement, and pure military incompetence allowed the Empire to expire in the throes of defeat in no way matters to Erdogan the Muslim Revanchist.

A case can be made for the desirability of an Ottoman Restoration. Under the Ottoman loose hand, the Mideast was stable and comparatively peaceful. Islam was worn lightly. The dreams of conquering Vienna had faded before the need to secure Istanbul against the Russians, the Bulgars, the Greeks. The fringes of the Empire slept quietly, quaint destinations for tourists.

Unfortunately, that halcyon past can no more return than can the days when the crescent and scimitar flew over Cordoba. Violence settled the Ottoman Question just as it created the secular Turkey which Erdogan desires to expunge.

Muslims are not the only folk eager to rewrite the decisions of battle. The Mexicans (who can rival a Muslim in fine fettle when it comes to whining about history) want to pretend the war between their country and the US either did not happen or was the result of Gringo aggression. As long as one overlooks the simple reality that the Mexicans wanted war, were so proud of their war plan that they published it and were assured by both the British and French embassies that their fine army would clean Anglo clocks, the Gringos-Did-It-To-Us thesis passes muster.

In point of fact the Mexicans promoted war expecting victory. Their plans were good. Their estimate of the impact of political divisions within the American population bang on. Much of their army was good and their cavalry excellent.

It didn't matter. They lost. The Yankees won. As Mexico was prostrate, the US could have sought to occupy the whole damn place. Being smart enough to understand the sheer impossibility of absorbing a very large number of Spanish speaking Catholics into an American population which was not only predominantly English speaking but afflicted with profound fear and loathing of all things "Papish," the Gringos took only California (not for the gold but rather so as to have a face on the "Ocean of Tomorrow," the Pacific) and the sparsely populated future states of New Mexico and Arizona.

That's history for you. The war did settle who owned what and who lived where. It is a ground truth that cannot and will not be reversed by "migratory rights." The Mexicans have no real choice but that of accepting that what happens on their side of the border--for good or for ill--is the sole responsibility of Mexicans. The freight cannot be offloaded onto the back of Uncle Sam.

The Mexicans and the Muslims have to get a grip on the same reality as have so many others (including that portion of the Geek which is forever Apache.) Here it is, boyos, war, which is to say, "violence" does settle a lot. In particular it settles who lives where and who owns what.

Mexicans Out Whine Muslims

For years the Mexican political and media establishments have caviled mightily over the immigration policies of the US. There has not been a single "migrant" (to use the preferred and totally inaccurate Mexican formulation) law which has met the approval of the easily bruised hyper-nationalistic egos of the politicians and pundits of Mexico.

Since Arizona passed its now infamous law which did little more than make an already extant federal crime--being present in the US absent legal authorization--a state offense as well, Mexicans of all ranks have closed ranks in a wall of wailing and whining which surpasses even the waves of tears shed by Muslims over what they perceive as insults to their religion (including quotes from the Koran and other sacred writings.) To read the Mexican press, to listen to the words of Mexican politicians one would be forgiven the impression that the Fascist Racists of Arizona with the approval of many, many equally bigoted and dark-hearted Americans generally had launched a campaign of extermination against any and all people of swarthy complexion, accented English, or a last name other than Smith or Jones.

The vitriol poured in metric ton quantities by the President of Mexico during his state visit to the US, which included the signal honor of addressing a joint session of Congress, would have done the thundering denunciations of Hitler by Winston Churchill proud--if only they had been true and accurate. With the American president standing by complete with approving smile, Sr Calderon accused the citizens of Arizona (and by implication all other Americans who approved the new law) of being racist, xenophobic, and generally blotches on the face of humanity.

It is passingly strange that the Mexicans who are so free with their exaggerated or totally fabricated charges about the American hatred of Mexicans and other Latinos do so without once mentioning the portions of the Mexican Constitution which deal with "migrant" issues. A brief glance at these articles shows an attitude far more contemptuous of "migrants" than any contained in any American law, state or federal. Articles 11, 27, 32, and 33 limit the rights of "migrants" to a degree unthinkable anywhere in the US, including Arizona. And, mark this well, these are not mere laws but part and parcel of the Mexican Constitution.

Nor are other countries filled with critics of the Arizona law immune. Guatemala has constitutional restrictions which surpass any legal disabilities placed on legal "migrants" in the US. So does Costa Rica, generally considered a liberal beacon in Central America. Even El Salvador, in which place American treasure was expended in wholesale lots during its long counterinsurgency, does not take as kindly to "migrants" as does the US.

It is a hallmark of the basic human propensity for hypocrisy that politicians and pundits can heap abuse on the democratic process and its result in Arizona while being remarkably indifferent to what is going on in their own countries. Even this pinnacle is surpassed by the insufferably arrogant demands by Calderon and other Latino statesmen that the US effectively give up all semblance of control over its own borders and admit all comers while insisting on their own sovereign right to deny admittance to those coming from abroad.

Worse than any and all these self-serving words and efforts by Mexican elites and their ilk elsewhere south of the Rio Grande are the totally ridiculous postures adopted by American "progressives" including the President and Attorney General of the US. Several features are quite evident in the repeated diatribes by politicians and journalists of the American "progressive" shade.

Many have not even read the Arizona enactment as was finally admitted under questioning by, among others, Eric Holder. Then there are those who may have read the law but willfully sought to misinterpret it. Finally there are the legions who deplore the reality that the US is a federal republic with intentionally divided sovereignty so that states have a duty to act when threatened, if the federal government is unable or, more likely, unwilling to act.

The Arizonans saw a threat in their midst. They saw a lack of effective federal action. So they acted, quickly and directly. Far from being a group of Fascist vigilantes, the people and legislature of Arizona have acted in prudent self-interest.

We should be willing to see and admit this fundamental truth. Even a small handful of Mexican commentators have done so.

Unfortunately, as Muslims have shown, it is far easier and more emotionally satisfying to whine, moan, bitch, and carp. And, playing the victim game also absolves one from having to be truthful, honest, or courageous.

Viva! El Presidente Calderon! But Not Some Others

President Felipe Calderon in addressing Congress once again demonstrated an unfortunate propensity for blaming the US for Mexican problems. Facing a deteriorating security situation back home with politicians increasingly occupying center stage in the cross hairs of rifle sights, the Mexican leader took his time in the congressional spotlight to urge or, perhaps more properly, demand that the legislative worthies reimpose limits on American rights of gun ownership.

Even though there is an absence of compelling let alone convincing evidence that many of the weapons captured from criminal gunslingers originated in the US, Sr Calderon averred that the US is as responsible for the guns in Mexican shootouts as it is for the drug demand which prompts them. There is no doubt about the latter. There is much doubt about the former.

Even if every firearm more modern than a Brown Bess were to be confiscated in the US, the Mexican pistoleros would be inconvenienced in no meaningful way. Given the number of captured weapons which originated in the Mideast, Northwest Asia, South America, and Asia, there seems to be no more difficulty obtaining heavy firepower in Mexico than in, say, Somalia or Yemen.

Presumably Sr Calderon was playing for the folks back in Buncomb County when he made his demand. If not, it shows that he is as badly served by his internal security chiefs as he was by his translator at yesterday's welcoming ceremony.

Sr Calderon may also be playing to the home folks with his whining reprise of we-gotta-get-migration-reform-now. The same may be true concerning his never ending invocations of Arizona as the fountainhead of all things anti-Hispanic.

Certainly Sr Calderon is aware that his country has laws defining citizenship, legal alien status, and the crime of being illegally present upon Mexican soil. He must know that Mexican police at all levels of jurisdiction regularly arrest and deport illegal aliens with the exception of those individuals who "regularize" their presence in Mexico by the payment of a "fee" to the arresting officer and/or his superiors. Sr Calderon may even be aware of the number of illegal aliens in Mexico who are robbed, beaten, raped, or killed by Mexicans. Even Mexican media report these incidents, if bloody enough.

Sr Calderon would be the first to defend Mexico's rights to define legal alien status, to control entry by foreigners into Mexico, and to secure Mexico's borders. It is unlikely in the extreme that Sr Calderon shares President Obama's post-modernist, we-are-all-passengers-on-spaceship-Earth mentality as represented by the American president's observation that "we are not defined by borders."

Sr Calderon is a firmly committed Mexican nationalist. This is precisely what he--or any other president--ought to be. He is in favor of "migratory reform" because it is in Mexico's national interest to use the US as a safety valve for its mobs of unemployed as well as a source of hard currency via remittances. He is in favor of restricting Americans access to certain categories of firearms because this is in his party's political interest even if flatly irrelevant to the stability of the country.

Indeed, his resolute offloading of ultimate responsibility for as many of Mexico's internal social, political, and economic problems onto the broad shoulders of Uncle Sam shows his wide, deep commitment to Mexican national interest--both real and mythic. To accept that responsibility for most of the many inequalities, injustices, which blemish Mexico would be to violate the strong central tenets of Mexico's defining mythology which holds that proximity to the US is at the root of all domestic evils.

Overall, one must congratulate Sr Calderon for acting as a good nationalist. Give him the credit he deserves for pursuing Mexican national interest as such is defined by the Mexican politically articulate elite. That is his job and he is doing it well.

Then there are some of Sr Calderon's fellow travelers. Particularly those who are card carrying members of the Open American Borders party.

The Open American Borders party is eclectic in its membership. In it are to be found assorted "migratory rights" folks and the non-governmental organizations which serve to amplify their voices, various and sundry "progressives," and last, but far from least important, numerous political and media personalities in Latin America.

A recurrent, unifying theme ties the diverse elements of the Open American Borders party. The theme has a major and a dependent component.

The major component is migratory freedom is a well-established human right enshrined in international conventions. The contingent component is that of equating the free movement of capital with a presumed freedom of worker movement.

The major premise is a carefully crafted misstatement. The several treaties and international agreements hazily mentioned all refer to prohibitions on a state's prevention of exit. These agreements are directed against Berlin Walls and similar efforts intended to hold a population captive. None are directed against a sovereign right to determine eligibility for admission or citizenship. In short, it is an international no-no to limit a person's right to leave but it is not a similar no-no to refuse a person admittance.

The minor premise is also a perversion of reality. States can and do limit the free movement of capital. Routinely states have limited how much cash a person can take out of a country, or bring into it. Laws which impinge on the movement of funds between countries dot the legal landscape. Indeed, such laws are at the heart of effective operations against transnational terrorism. They are part and parcel of the host of trading-with-the-enemy laws which have existed during every modern armed conflict as well as many of the unarmed sort.

Countries either inhibit or promote international capital flow on the basis of perceived national interest. If it is in a country's national interest to do so, capital flow will be encouraged by all available means. If the self-defined national interest requires inhibiting the movement of money, such will be the case.

Even the most capitalistic of countries, even the most vocal exponents of open, free trade will and have when national interest requires operate to restrict, even end the ability of money to cross the border. This sweeping statement applies to the US as much as to any other free trade oriented economy.

National interest should be the sole basis for a country's policies on immigration. If the self-defined national interest is best served by enhancing the in-migration of foreign workers of a given or even all categories of worker, then the borders should be opened accordingly. If the converse applies, the borders should--must--be closed.

National interest may include the admission of aliens for humanitarian reasons. Or because a person or group faces persecution at home. These non-economic considerations are a legitimate component of national interest as they reflect the values and ethical imperatives of the nation.

Importantly, there is no human right to enter any given country. The US is under no ethical or legal imperative to open its borders for any reason other than as a consequence of national interest. For this reason (as well as many others) no country has the right to demand that we admit their citizens. Likewise they have no standing to criticize efforts by the US or any of its several states to arrest and deport foreigners present without legal status.

The concept of criminal trespass exists not only as regards privately owned property but for nation-states as well. In a federal system of joint exercise of sovereignty the several states have as much right and duty as the central government to prevent or punish those who are criminal trespassers. This is what Arizona has done, effectively to place into a state context the already existing federal law.

Mexico and the several Mexican states already do the same. Sr Calderon knows this even if the majority of the Open American Borders party do not. It may be possible to forgive the Open American Borders party members for their ignorance and its consequences. It is not possible to do the same for Sr Calderon.

Sr Calderon needs to get a grip on the realities of life. He needs to go home and concentrate on forcing the Mexican elite to live up to their collective responsibility to act in a way calculated to so improve the lives of Mexicans generally that the need to enter the US without the benefit of law as well as the drive to join the criminals in their war for money are, if not obviated, at least lessened.