While attention is focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, the US is ignoring the real threat on its border with Mexico. Drug-running cartels with advanced military weapons, airplanes, submarines and plenty of cash are wreaking havoc along the border. They could even possibly take over the government of Mexico. While the US continues to spend countless billions in Iraq and Afghanistan, it spends chump change on border protection and Homeland Security in general. It's not a question of militarizing the border; it's a question of properly operating the border so that legal border entries of both goods and materials can be expedited while stopping all illegal cross border activity. Legal cross border activcities can be facilitated while stopping illegal activities in their tracks if the US only had the mindset and intestinal fortitude to do it. Instead real threats to US security are ignored while phantom threats are pursued. The drug cartels in Mexico are a bigger threat to the US than the ragtag Taliban in a third world country half way around the world.
Texas Governor Rick Perry wants US troops patrolling the border:
EL PASO - Gov. Rick Perry said he wants 1,000 troops to help guard the Texas-Mexico border, and for the U.S. to fund strong security measures to fight the Mexican drug cartels that have spread violence and fear in Mexico, including Juárez.
"We're (also) asking the (Texas) Legislature for $135 million for border security - to go after transnational gangs, for technology and aviation assets," and the federal government for 1,000 troops, said Perry at a news conference Tuesday at the Chamizal National Memorial.
"I don't care if they are military, National Guard or customs agents. We're very concerned that the federal government is not funding border security adequately. We must be ready for any contingency."
Retired General Barry McCaffrey said the U.S. government spends $12 billion on Iraq and $2 billion on Afghanistan each month, "without taking into account what is happening in Mexico." McCaffrey has criticized the relative lack of resources the US has devoted to what amouints to a full scale war right on its border.
The bottom line—nearly 7,000 people murdered in the internal drug wars since 2006—3,985 murdered this year alone through 25 November. The outgunned Mexican law enforcement authorities face armed criminal attacks from platoon-sized units employing night vision goggles, electronic intercept collection, encrypted communications, fairly sophisticated information operations, sea-going submersibles, helicopters and modern transport aviation, automatic weapons, RPGs, Anti-Tank 66 mm rockets, mines and booby traps, heavy machine guns, 50 cal sniper rifles, massive use of military hand grenades, and the most modern models of 40mm grenade machine guns.
The US has invested a paltry sum in a "virtual" border fence which was contracted out to the Boeing corporation. The Boeing Corporation produced a botch job which doesn't work. That doesn't mean that another tack shouldn't be taken along the same lines. The idea is basically sound. It just needs to be properly resourced and properly implemented. And I would second Governor Perry's idea. The Border Patrol is the poor stepcousin of the US military. While hundreds of billions of dollars go to support the Army, Navy and Marines whose mission is not to protect US borders but to fight useless foreign wars of aggression, The Border Patrol and Coast Guard go relatively unfunded. As a result we have a mess along the border with Mexico. Illegal persons and materiel flow across the border in both directions. Since the border is a sieve, terrorists could cross with impunity carrying suitcase nuclear weapons. The drug problem in the US only gets worse as countless tons of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and oxycontin are smuggled in. US jails fill up with drug offenders costing US taxpayers countless millions of dollars. When paroled, they flood the streets with unemployable workers. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
But the US is solving the wrong problem. It is going after a ragtag band of illiterate third world yahoos while the real threat to US security exists right on its own border. These guys are ultrasophisticated and well funded. While the Taliban has to resort to primitive devices like IEDs, the drug cartels have advanced military weapons, a Navy and an Air Force. They have every military asset money can buy.
