Mexican Security Threat

What makes things so frighteningabout Mexico is that the continuousfailure to provide and support a standard in education and human welfare ispushing the population out into the USA and coming with it is the drugsupported criminal mafias.  This can bestopped and must be stopped. Unfortunately, we keep getting hope and failure from the leadership of Mexico as thecountry slides into even worse conditions.

The drug prohibition fraud mustend and be regulated to cut of the money flow to the outlaws in Mexicansociety.  The oil business in Mexicois also presently collapsing and this will begin to starve the institutionalizedgraft in the government.

In the meantime, the violence isbecoming so extreme it is now spilling over the borders.  As this item makes clear it is becoming toobig for the locals to handle and they are plausibly corrupted in anyevent. 

The real problem is that we can notavoid the problem by ignoring it all.

7 Reasons Mexicois the Biggest Threat to American Security

BY ROB TAYLOR

POSTED ON MARCH 3 2011 6:00 AM

Rob Taylor has a Master of Arts degree from Wesleyan University.He blogs at Greenville Dragnet.

Conservatives and liberals alike look to far flung shores for thebiggest threats to our national security with good reason. No enemywe face is more dedicated to our destruction than Islamic Expansionists andresurgent communism worldwide has again begun to wage war against Americanworld dominance. But these threats, as real as they are, need to gain entranceto our country to truly achieve their ends and it is through the collapsingMexican state that they will find purchase. As they do, other threats emanatingfrom within the hollow state of Mexicoare even now exacting a heavy toll in American blood, landand economic health.

Mexico is a problem that has been left to festeron our border for decades and the Left hasexploited this war zone to pursue their corrupt anti-American agenda. Right nowthere is no battlefront more important to the continued existence of America thanthe southern border. Here are just seven reasons why:

7. Narco-Cults Have Spread from Mexico into Most Major MetropolitanAreas

Most famous and brutal among these is the now infamous cult of the HolyDeath or Saint Death, better known as Santa Muerte. I’ve long argued a connection between the Santa Muerte Cult andthe Matamoros murderscommitted by the coven of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, but Santa Muertecultists are thought to be involved in many more murders both in the U.S. and in Mexico. In 1989 when police bustedConstanzo’s coven, they hadcommitted 14 confirmed ritual murders.

That same year there were 74 confirmed ritual murders in Mexico city.

Santa Muerte worship has exploded along the border states buthas also made inroads into any area where there is a large illegal populationor drug activity, traveling as far north as Chicago andNew York. Because the cult has no central theology, the worship of SaintDeath is transmitted by professional “practitioners” to followers whoare largely drug dealers and other criminals. They are, according to Dr. Tony Zavaleta, fanatics whohavecommitted murder to appease their goddess. More importantly, theworship of Saint Death has diffused into many traditions without losing therituals that define it. Thus the cult’s members range from MS-13 members, who have an unusually high concentration of SantaMuerte devotees, to professional Witches, who may or may not workon the periphery of the criminal underground, to thrill seeking suburbanites.

Unlike the mythical satanic cults of the 80s and 90s, the Santa Muertecults are criminal enterprises that represent an actual threat toAmericans. A man was beheaded by cultists in Chandler, Arizona bya group of illegal immigrants who had been seen burning candles andusing spirit boards. Police are reluctant to call the murder aritual crime but will not deny that it is. A woman named Angela Sanford stabbed a lover of hers 13 times in what policethink was a ritual sacrifice in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At one time a Wiccan policeofficer found that Sanfordhad listed the victim on her phone as “sacrifice” and local Wiccansmaintain she gave up Wicca to practice “traditional” witchcraft. Acrossthe border in Mexico, murder victims are routinely decapitated and their heads givenas an offering to the goddess of death.

We often say the Left does not understand Islamic imperialism becausethey don’t understand a religion driven by fanaticism to a cause. But allAmericans are guilty of underestimating the growing power of Santa Muerte inour cities and border states,and the murder and mayhem they bring with them.

6. Mexican Corruption is Creeping Across the Border into Our LawEnforcement Agencies

Mexican corruption is so pervasive and endemic in Mexico that it has now infectedAmerican law enforcement agencies. Nowhere is this more blatant than the Project Gunwalker scandal involving the BATF and anattempted cover-up by the Department of Justice. While this storywas breaking on the blogs months ago, it is just making the news nowthat the leftist media can no longer protect their ideological brethren ingovernment.

In an effort to “pad” out the numbers of American guns foundin Mexico, the BATF wasallowing “hundreds” of guns to be walked across the border to Mexico. Becausethe claim that most illegal Mexican guns are legally purchased American armssmuggled across the border in exchange for drugs and cash isdemonstrably false, it is theorized that Obama administrationofficials enacted this illegal program to justify increasing callsfor gun control from the American Left. Not only was the program afailure, but according to ATF whistleblowers, one gun was used in the slayingof Border Patrol officer Brian Terry.

In pursuit of a political agenda that only benefits the corrupt Mexicangovernment our federal agencies armed the cartels with at least 2,500American weapons that would have never been available to the gangs.

5. The Mexican Military is Untrustworthy and Out of Control

The Mexican military President Calderon relies on to fight his war onthe cartels is known to receive upwards of $500,000,000 a year in bribes and payoffs fromvarious criminal organizations. A Wikileaks document shows that the StateDepartment and our military are both “aware” that much of the cartel firepowerin Mexico is actually military weapons America sells to the Mexican government–whichis then given by the military to the cartels.

In 2008, Local 2544, which represents Border Patrol officers in theTuscon area, reported that Mexican soldiers crossed a bridge into Americanterritory and held an agent at gunpoint. That same year Judicial Watch useda FOIA request to obtain documents that showed the Americangovernment knew of at least 17 confirmed armed incursions by theMexican military into American territory in a two year period. In 2010, Border Patrol confirmed two incursions by Mexicanmilitary, but claimed the actions were part of the drug war.

Just recently, video surfaced of Mexican troops crossing into America toconduct vehicle searches on our side of the border.

The military of Mexicohas increasingly disregarded national boundaries and as the situation within Mexico deteriorates they represent a seriousmilitary threat to the United States.

4. Hezbollah Has an Operational Foothold in Mexico

It has long been known that Hezbollah operates in many Latin American countries, especiallythose with Marxist governments sympathetic to the anti-Western views ofradical Islamism. A recent Fox News report by Adam Housley shows that ourfears of Hezbollah gaining a foothold in Mexico have been realized:

My military and Department of Homeland Security contacts areinsistent…it’s not if Hezbollah operatives have been smuggled into the U.S….buthow many? They note that drug tunnels are becoming much more sophisticated andstriking similar as tunnels being used by terror organizations tosmuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip. My contacts also say they have realconcern that bombing techniques used in the Middle East to promote terror arenow also being used inside Mexico,as the cartels war with each other and anyone in their way.

This comes as Mexican authorities busted a senior Hezbollah operativewho employed Mexicans nationals with family ties to Lebanonto set up the network, designed to target Israel and the West, according tomultiple reports. The man’s name is Jameel Nasr and he was arrested after aMexican surveillance operation revealed that he traveled frequentlyto Lebanon to receive information and instructions from Hezbollahcommanders and he also spent several months in Venezuela working with theterror group and Hugo Chavez’s people. American security contacts say theMexican operation was impressive and they are seeing some increased pressure onthe cartels from Mexican authorities and thus…their friends.

Meantime, over this past weekend President Calderon of Mexicosent a significant number of troops to the border regions and while they arethere to help battle the cartels, they have also been sent to deal with the growingconnection to Hezbollah. As one contact told me, “Mexico knows the seriousness of acartel connection with Hezbollah and the threat to their national security.”

We also know from DHS documents that over 180,000 illegalaliens from countries Other than Mexicowere apprehended from 2007 through mid-March 2010 and the State DepartmentCountry Reports on Terrorism said that “smuggling rings have beendetected moving people from East Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia”. I am told these people and drugs arethen moved up through Central America and into the Unites States through Mexico.

Our wide open border is allowing an unknown number of Islamists to pourthrough unchecked. A book celebrating suicide bombers was found in theMexican desert just recently and Islamist cleric Said Jaziri was discovered being smuggled intothe U.S. in the trunk of a car driven by a human smuggler.In 2009, 52,000 OTMs (other than Mexicans) were arrested at by Border Patrol.If Islamism is our greatest threat, how can we leave the southern border opento them?

3. The Cartels are Not Drug Gangs

The Left (and many libertarians) frames the chaos in Mexico as a “drug war” and callsthe cartels drug gangs. This is usually an attempt to make the case that endingprohibition (usually on marijuana) will end the violence, but this is afundamental misunderstanding of what the cartels represent. Even if you had thestomach to legalize all the drugs the cartels produce and distribute (includingmeth, cocaine, and ecstasy) the cartels make millions in the sex trafficking trade, human smuggling and even piracy.

The cartels control territory, not trade, and though thismay sound similar to American street gangs, remember that our gangs don’t havemore authority than the local police in an area. The cartels cutout complete swaths of land and retain total control. They controlnot just the drug trade or criminal activity, but the entirepopulace, law enforcement, and even legal economic activity. Thecartels have fiefdoms in the literal sense so viewing them as simply “druggangs” creates a dangerous illusion that hampers our ability to dealwith them

The cartels control not only territory in Mexico, but in America. Cochise County SheriffLarry Denver claimed last summer that Border Patrol agents in his county were ordered to withdrawfrom areas that were “too dangerous” to patrol. Cartels have placed forward observers in American territory.

A pre-dawn oil pipeline explosion in December wasblamed on the Zetas stealing oil from the state owned pipeline. Cartels have beenincreasingly turning to this sort of theft as the Mexican state shows itself tobe powerless to stand against them.

These are not the actions of “drug gangs” but of warlords who havelittle fear of Mexican or American state authority. Their private armiesalready challenge our law enforcement on the border and will expand theirterritory into Americapermanently if we don’t push them back.

2. There’s a Literal War on the Border

When a Pinal County sheriff’s deputy was ambushed by an armed group ofillegal aliens, Americashould have been put on notice about how bad the situation was near the border.But that story didn’t wake people up.

Neither did the new stories of American families being driven from their homes by carteloperations or the Mexican Mafia publicly putting a hit out on Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.Babeu just recently told a reporterhe expected his department to be in “armed conflict” with thecartels in the next few months. America’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio needs a .50 caliber machine gun and an armored car to patrolparts of his county. So little control does our government have on theborder that several different militia groups are active there. At least one is affiliated with the Nationals Socialist Movement,while others are locals fed up with the economic damage of open borders.

Militia groups from outside the area have traveled to the borderto run operations against the cartels, and bandits have taken to patrollingthe areas looking for cartel drug loads to steal. A rumor has been circulatingthat claims the Zetas believe several of their soldiers were gunned down byAmerican “vigilantes” and they are planning to retaliate by shootingany armed American they come across and dispatchingassassins to hunt for drug bandits.

This all sounds like news from a third world country but it’shappening now inside our border. Mexicohas destabilized our border statesso much that there are now private armies fighting each other inside ourborders. How could this not pose a clear and present danger toAmerican security?

1) Mexico is a Hollow State

John Robb, author of  A Brave New War, definesa hollow state as thus:

The modern nation-state is in a secular decline, made inevitable by therise of a global market system. Even developed nations, like the US, are notimmune to thisprocess. The decline is at first gradual and then acceleratesuntil it reaches a final end-point: a hollow state. The hollow state has thetrappings of a modern nation-state (“leaders”, membership ininternational organizations, regulations, laws, and a bureaucracy) but itlacks any of the legitimacy, services, and control of its historicalcounter-part. It is merely a shell that has some influence over the spoils ofthe economy. The real power rests in the hands of corporations andcriminal/guerrilla groups that vie with each other for control of sectors ofwealth production. For the individual living within this state, lifegoes on, but it is debased in a myriad of ways.

Except in Mexicothere really isn’t much in the way of corporate entities willing tovie for control of anything there. Instead we have criminals andinsurgent groups competing with each other and with local and state governmentswho seek to consolidate power in the vacuum left by the Mexican statewhose legitimacy rests more and more on a co-opted military unwilling to takethe fight to the cartels.

While the “hollow state” theory is an interesting armchair debate, theconsequences of living next to one are no different than the consequences ofliving next to a failed state like Somalia, as our border governors can assureyou. If America bordered Bosnia or Somaliaor Tunisia,only the most partisan of hacks would argue that our borders shouldn’t be ourtop defense priority. But because Mexico gives the illusion of afunctioning government, the Left and libertarians pretend that open borders cancause little harm to American interests.

To believe this requires a studied ignorance of what life is like forAmericans that live near Mexico.Mexicois a near lawless ruin of a state comprised of neo-feudal kingdoms constantlyat war with each other. Increasingly these combatants, including the“authorities” we recognize, have shown themselves willing to annex Americanland in pursuit of their goals and there is no governmental institution we cango to that would have even the slimmest chance of stopping them.  Thehollow state of Mexico is acancer on our border that is slowly spreading into America.

Who has called for any action on this threat? There have been piecemealcalls for action, but few in power have the spine to fight the war on ourborder, and thanks to the Left’s campaign to smear those concernedwith border security as racist, there will have to be a massacre on the borderbefore anyone takes the actions we need to secure America’s southern frontier. Mexico cannotkeep receiving American arms if it cannot guarantee control of them. We cannotkeep close ties with their government if they’re successfully corruptingour agencies at the highest levels. We can no longer rely on locallaw enforcement and private citizens to fight the war that the cartels havedeclared on us. Mexicois the biggest security concern we have and we must start taking control of ourborder seriously before it’s too late.