US victims of Mexican cartel massacre range from 8-month-old twins to 43-year-old mother
This happened Monday in northern Mexico, article HERE.
It’s time to take off the gloves… From a friend who is conversant with the situation south of the border…
On Mexico…Tourism, Commerce, and War
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It’s time to get ‘real’ about the U.S. Government’s relations with the the country of Mexico!
The deaths of several U.S. citizens yesterday in a drug cartel shoot-out in the Mexican state of Sonora, less than one hundred miles south of the U.S. (Arizona) Mexican border should be a wake-up call for anyone who remains in denial about what a clear and present danger Mexico and its ruling drug cartels is to the United States and its citizens.
Recent (in)actions and malfeasance by Mexico President Andres Manual Lopez Obrador (“AMLO” to those American hipsters who are ‘woke’ by applying cute nicknames to their cultural heroes – about whom they know nothing except that they seem ‘cool’ and ‘woke’ themselves) after the arrest and subsequent release of ‘El Chapo’s’ son in Culican, Mexico, last month, are evidence that he has ceded effective control of the social and political apparatus in Mexico to the bloodthirsty terrorists who control the drug trade there and in the United States.
There are simple elements to this situation that can no longer be ignored and swept aside by for purposes of political expediency or potential gain. There is enough blame to go around on both sides. There are also short and long term solutions to the problem.
SHORT TERM:
1. The killings of the American family (including small children!) are proof positive that Americans are not safe in Mexico. The U.S. State Department should immediately begin an official process to discourage American citizens from non-essential travel into Mexico. In addition, it should remind the thousands of Americans who are living as expatriates in Mexico that their lives are in potential danger and the American Government can do little to protect them. American tourism is the heartbeat of the national economy of Mexico and any significant reduction of such will have an immediate crippling effect on their economy which would require the government of Mexico (if there is one) to make some hard choices.
2. The president should immediately take steps to deploy the National Guard (and in the case of California – whose governor will refuse such an order – the U.S. military itself) along the U.S. Mexico border to ‘seal’ the border and restrict entry to only those foreign citizens who have official visas to enter the U.S. This is a legitimate national security issue confronting the President of the United States and he has every right to do this. Who in America will object to such action with any veracity?
3. Redouble (re-triple?) the efforts by the U.S. agencies responsible for the interdiction of illegal drugs in such efforts. If Congress refuses to fund such efforts, President Trump should go around them and declare a national emergency and spend whatever it takes to fund these efforts.
LONG TERM:
1. The U.S. government (Executive and Legislative branches) needs to come to grips with the reality that with no demand, there would be no supply of illegal drugs and the cartels would forced to market their products elsewhere. One way of dealing with this is to make the sale and distribution of illegal drugs in the U.S. a felony (not subject to being pleaded down to a misdemeanor by a prosecutor). We are already in the next national election cycle. Let us see those on the political left defend the sale and distribution of illegal drugs with no effective penalty consequence on national TV. Simply put, support for the use of illegal drugs in the U.S. is tantamount to the support of the drug cartels (and their methods) in Mexico.
2. American companies have shown that they either cannot or will not cease to manufacture products in Mexico and bring them in for sale to the United States at the ultimate expense of jobs for Americans. Trump has tried the outmoded concept of ‘moral suasion’ with these companies with no positive result – indeed he has been subjected to public ridicule for it. It’s time for him to once again impose meaningful tariffs on goods brought in from Mexico to the effect of discouraging American companies from manufacturing there. Tariffs DO work (like a sledgehammer driving a nail!), draconian as they may seem by those squinty-eyed economists at Harvard who proclaim from their ivory towers that “this isn’t how we do it anymore.”
3. Going back to ‘AMLO’ and his hand-wringing and ham-handed ways of governing Mexico: If he can’t bring the lawless drug cartels under control with his own law enforcement and military, then he should turn to the U.S. for help (Is there any doubt who would prevail in a gun-fight between some cartel thugs and American military special operators?)
4. China is also part of this problem. Manufacturers of synthetic drugs (Fentanyl, etc.) are partnering with the drug cartels to use their channels of distribution to flood the U.S. with their products. Trump should place this on his punch-list of issues he has with President Xi and move it up in terms of priority. Xi and his dictatorship (BTW, to those still starry-eyed about our relationship with China, that’s what their form of government is) could put a stop to this in a heartbeat if they had the incentive to do so.
5. Finally, the American people (including those on the left who see illegal drug use as a cute, harmless manifestation of a liberal, progressive attitude that somehow sets them apart from the staid old, boring, ‘unwoke’ lifestyle of their conservative counterparts) need to come to the understanding that illegal drug use by their friends and acquaintances – as benign as it may seem at the moment – has consequences that began many miles and passages of time away from that moment. The people who profit from the activities of the cartels are smart and ruthless. They will not stop with controlling the drug trade; they want complete control of the Mexican political and economic apparatus to the end of having control of the activities of all legal businesses (they are now targeting even avocado growers!) in Mexico. How long will it be before the successors to ‘El Chapo’ will be negotiating with Ford and General Motors about the terms and conditions about new manufacturing plants in Mexico? How long will it be before they are occupying the Mexican seat at the U.N. or the Embassy of Mexico in Washington? How long will it be before they have seats on the Board of J.P. Morgan Chase or Bank of America?
There may not have yet been a ‘Pearl Harbor’ type incident (although the survivors of the family killed in Sonora yesterday will see that as such), but Americans must come to the realization that we are at war with insidious outside hostile forces (Mexico, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – all of which are dictatorships), that want to destroy America and its historic values by non-military means if possible. The question for each American is, do we fight back, or simply lie down and take an ass-beating from these people?
I can’t find anything he says to disagree with… And stay the hell out of Mexico. No vacations, no running across the border to shop, zip, nada…
The biggest lever we have is the remittances. Mexican people in the US — legal and illegal — send home BILLIONS every year. It’s one of the foundations of the Mexican economy. Interfere with that, and AMLO will play ball.
We also —through open or semi-open borders — provide Mexico with a safety valve. They send over thousands upon thousands of people with little or no education, few skills, and no ability with English every year. Instead of being a drain on the the Republic of Mexico, they join the welfare rolls here. Some become small-time criminals, and others work for gangs or for a cartel.
Some go to work and work very hard. They start businesses, raise good families, and make their communities better.
The problem is: we don’t control which people come in, and we don’t seem to have any interest in screening out potential problems before they are released into the interior.
AMLO, BTW, is Bernie Sanders in a guayabera. He ran for years as kind of a joke, a Marxist with no chance of election. It was finally his turn as President, and he’s just as bad as I feared.
This is way old news to those of us who live hard up along the border. The Mexican state of Tamaulipas some years back had open warfare between the Zetas and rival cartels moving in. We will not cross into Reynosa any more, and only occasionally go over at Progresso. We make sure to be back before dark – Progresso (so far) has been safe. Plenty of cartel presence though – kids on bikes carrying new cell phones as lookouts is as common as a shoe shine kit on the sidewalks.
The ones I fear for are the Snow Bird winter visitors – they think being American grants them protection. It doesn’t – cartels don’t care about ANY human life, they are ruthless. Plenty of spill over crime from across the border.
Excellent article. Should be required reading.
While these particular victims may not have been the intended victims,
“(Alfonso Durazo, Mexico’s top security official) said the gunmen may have mistaken the SUV convoy for rival gangs,”
that’s rather irrelevant. If you have a set-up in which criminals routinely enforce their program with violence, then it is an absolutely foreseeable consequence that innocents will be killed.
Query: Were these, in fact, US citizens? I don’t know how it works, when you have established a community in a foreign land.
Follow up query: does this give the US government legal standing to invade?
I’m thinking about Grenada, where 600 US medical students were deemed to be at-risk due to the military takeover of the government. While the US WAS asked to invade by Governor-General Scoon, then under house arrest, as well as a request by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, that’s not the legal justification cited by our government for the intervention. Evidently, the charter of the Organization of American States has a proviso for situations which endanger the peace.
My heart goes out to the families and friends of those mothers and children.
Deepest Mexico has always been this way, it’s just recently that the open corruption has come to tourist spots.
Time, past time to quit ignoring all the armed invasions by Mexican military, by Mexican para-military and by Mexican armed gangs. Maybe even time to do a modern version of Pershing’s raid, or that fun time in 1842. Clear a zone 50 miles deep, push Mexicans below that line, make it our ‘Gaza Strip.’
Cut or tax remittances by illegal aliens (I’m for a 50% tax, will work on Chinese and other illegals, too!)
Cut all social services to illegals to the bare minimum, at most 50% of what the lowest on Social Security get.
Minimal health care, to stabilize only.
Giant holding pens on the SW border, or maybe on Johnston Atoll or some of the Aleutian islands, for all illegals and refugees.
Any refugee or illegal who wants more than that, must submit to volunteer for the new X Country Militia, trained for 8 weeks, dropped back into said country to fight for their rights in that country. Fund them as long as they’re showing results. As soon as results stop, so do the funds. Any return under non-positive circumstances gets them executed on the friggin spot.
Tired of this bullscat. Tired of the world pooping on us. Tired of being ‘nice.’
Grrr.
Bob- Concur. As always, it’s about the $$$
jrg- You’ve got more balls than I, I wouldn’t go south/cross the border for a million dollars right now.
Jim- True, but only a few will even see it…
Pat- Concur with all.
A week ago I started watching “Narcos” on Netflix.
Drugs aren’t the problem.
MONEY is the problem.
Seems to me if we legalize, although we end up with different problems, the violence goes away.
I have too agree with you. I’m not fond of any of the major illegal drugs, not even marijuana. My voices involve other substances, still nominally legal. That said, we have made various degrees of war on the Big Three (Heroin, Cocaine, and Marijuana) since the 1930’s, and it doesn’t fracking WORK! The actual number of users its never very high, the War erodes out civil liberties and protections, and one of the social costs involves ruining peoples’ lives by giving them a record because their addiction of choice involves inhaling smoke, sniffing powder, or injecting instead of pouring liquid down one’s neck.
I’m not saying that the drugs that are currently illegal don’t damage society. I’m saying that I think there’s a decent chance they damage it LESS than the laws prohibiting.
Greybeard, the few examples I’ve seen of legalization outside the US didn’t work as planned. The gangs and others moved right back in, just at a different place in the money and drug streams. (Netherlands, others). Granted’ it has been several years since I followed up on it, so conditions might have changed.
History repeats…
Making a recreational substance illegal doesn’t get people to stop using it, stop making it or stop supplying it.
Not for booze, not for tobacco, not for pot, not for heroin, not for cocaine.
Taxing the snot out of it, likewise, has little to no effect on the supply.
What punitive taxes and bans do is to make breaking the law lucrative.
Then, after a period of time we realize we didn’t do a dang thing to save the substance abusers from themselves; but have created a monster in the form of very rich, and organized groups of ruthless criminals.
While prohibition didn’t create organized crime, it made organized crime POWERFUL.
The war on drugs did not create the gangs which form the cartels, it’s made them powerful.
Even if all drugs were legal and sourced domestically, we’d still have to contend with this well funded, organized and ruthless problem.
War is still the killer app of the state.
We could even add a couple of stars to the flag by the time it’s all done.
Presently we’re dealing with the immorality of abusing substances with the even more immoral situation of invasively monitoring and controlling many aspects of every citizen’s daily life.
Substance abusers scope to harm to people besides themselves is limited and localized. We’ve still got that AND we’ve secured unlimited and generalized harm in the bargain.
There’s no ideal solution, but we need to seek the least worst one and quickly.
Does anybody remember the early 20th century, when cross-border raids by Pancho Villa and other Mexican thugs brought horrid death to America, and the Punitive Expedition was sent after Villa? The more things change, the more they stay the same.
It strikes me that a four-ship element of A-10s could put cartel HQs out of business, if we knew where they are.
We wouldn’t nuke them, because missiles are way more expensive, and there’s the collateral damage to consider, but talking about doing so might get their attention.
We know where they live. We just are too… cautious and too humane to blow them and their families to kingdom come. So far.
All- Excellent points, can’t disagree with anyone. And TXRed is right. Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, SEA, etc…
Posted from my iPhone.
Excellent point by all commentators and I find little to disagree with. What isn’t getting much publicity is the religious element. Polygamy. Every since the days of Latter Day Saints emigrating to Utah, polygamist communities have been formed in Mexico and the interaction with polygamists in the US has gone on. These people killed were part of that community enroute to a polygamist enclave.
This doesn’t justify what the cartels did, to be sure. Do those killed (or their leaders) have some responsibility for knowingly going into danger?
+1 Beans and WSF
Simultaneous GBU-43 drops on all their compounds.
DEA should have the locations.
“Should” being the operative word. Lord knows what those bureaucrats with badges are up to now. Probably “digging up dirt” on Trump.