The Largest, Most Immediate Threat To The United States?

Mexico.

In the December issue of Forbes magazine, the cover story is "Mexican Meltdown: The Next Disaster" by Jesse Bogan, Kerry A. Dolan, Christopher Helman and Nathan Vardi, subtitled: Narco violence is exploding--just as oil prices are plunging and Mexico is bracing for a deep U.S. recession.

From the story:

This year, through mid-November, there have been 4,300-plus drug-related deaths in Mexico, compared with 2,500 in 2007. Edgar Millán Gómez, who oversaw the joint efforts of the army and federal police, was assassinated in May in his home in Mexico City. Roberto Velasco Bravo, a federal chief of criminal investigations, was shot in the head a week earlier. The narcotraficantes have infiltrated the highest levels of law enforcement, including, allegedly, Mexico's principal link to Interpol and its former senior drug czar. Mexico, once again, is battling the ever powerful gangs. "It has been a fierce bloodbath," says Felipe González González, president of the Senate public security commission and former governor of the central state of Aguascalientes. "We have more dead than you have in Iraq."

We have more dead than you have in Iraq.

Think about that for a moment.

It's now so bad the Bush Administration policy wonks and bureaucrats are actually getting concerned themselves. Up to now, one of Bush's largest failures as far as Conservatives are concerned is his refusal to secure our borders, his inclination to cozy up to Mexico and his disdain for the Minutemen, Ramos and Compean.

In that light, prepare to be amazed by these truthful but self-evident, Captain Obvious-type statements:

But there is urgent concern north of the border about a potential strategic threat. "We're fixated on Iraq and Afghanistan, but from a homeland security perspective, right here on our border, isn't this more important?" asks Fred Burton, a former State Department counterterrorism official, now a vice president at Stratfor in Austin, Tex.

Washington, D.C. is fretting, too. "The consequences for both our countries in the near future and the not-so-near future could not be greater," says John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a.k.a. the drug czar. "The consequences if President Calderón fails and the institutions of government, at least in the northern part of his country, become controlled by terrorist mafias--well, we worry about ungoverned spaces far away from the U.S., and this is right next door."

Please note, however, you're not hearing or reading this from our sitting president or those immediately around him. And if you think it's going to get better under our president elect -- you'd best think again.

Continuing from the story:

The explosion of narco terror comes alongside a precipitous drop in oil prices and the crushing effects of a deep U.S. recession. The climate of fear is kicking the life out of the economy. The second wave of the global financial crisis is playing out in the developing world--and right on our doorstep. After expanding by 3.2% in 2007 to $900 billion, Mexico's GDP growth will slow to 1.5% this year and tumble to somewhere between zero and 0.7% in 2009, predicts Raúl Feliz, an economist at CIDE, a Mexico City think tank that specializes in economics and politics. While some of that meager expansion will come from government stimulus spending, its hands are tightly tied because state-owned oil monopoly Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos) contributes 37%--$80 billion in 2008--of federal revenue. Next year analysts expect a plunge in petrodollars. Unemployment will jump from its current 4.1%. Throw in part-time workers, who account for roughly one-third of GDP, and the jobless figure soars to 10%. Feliz expects that number to reach 12% next year.

More Captain Obvious:

The cartels are also taking a big toll on business. "U.S. companies are worried about the safety of their workers," says Maria Luisa O'Connell, president of the Border Trade Alliance in Phoenix, Ariz. "Drugs have become such a big problem." As they have for the business community throughout Mexico. As a result of many high-profile kidnappings and murders, one of the most vibrant businesses in the nation is security--bodyguards and armored vehicles. An executive can shell out as much as $500,000 a year to protect himself and his family, reports Stratfor.

Kidnappings? Ransoms? Thinking South America? No; think Mexico:

Chronic fear of kidnapping, or worse, is driving more and more Mexicans north to the U.S. Alejandro Junco, proprietor of one of Mexico's largest dailies, El Norte, recently moved his entire family to live in Texas. Pablo Jacobo (Jack) Suneson Bautista, owner of Marti's, a high-end arts and crafts gallery on Guerrero Avenue in Nuevo Laredo, refuses to let his kids come home to work in the business. "No way," he says. "I am just afraid they might be singled out or there might be some kind of kidnapping attempt." No one knows how many Mexicans are fleeing. But Arturo Rolland, a broker at Latin Credit Mortgage & Realty in San Diego, guesses that maybe 100 families a month are moving from Tijuana to the Chula Vista/San Diego area to seek safety. Some because gangsters "are using Facebook and MySpace to track people and their relatives," says a source at the Asociación de Empresarios Mexicanos, an entrepreneurs group in San Antonio.

Is Mexico's drug violence affecting us now? Of course; read on:

The Gulf cartel has dug its claws into the Atlanta area, as shown by a federal indictment in September of 34 of its members who authorities say were organized into distribution and transportation cells. The feds say the leader, 20-year-old Edgar Rodríguez-Alejandro, was taking orders from the highest levels of the Gulf cartel in Mexico until he was arrested in May with 12 kilos of cocaine and $7.7 million, a slim fraction of the 16,000 kilos of cocaine and 116 weapons recently seized in the U.S. Two cells of Shorty Guzmán's cartel in Atlanta were tracked and 20 indicted in December 2007.

But moreover, what about that wonderful and giving Meridia Initiative from the Bush Administration (a "multi-year proposal to provide equipment and training to support law enforcement operations and technical assistance for long-term reform and oversight of security agencies.") where the US has planned to provide $500 million to Mexico in Fiscal Year (FY) '08, and another $450 million in FY '09? Read this statement:

What about help from the Mérida plan? "The money is going to the wrong side of the border," contends Congressman Ted Poe (R--Tex.). "With the infiltration of law enforcement and so many corrupt officials in Mexico, we don't want that equipment used against us."

Here's a newsflash: you let more Mexicans into the United States and you're going to get Mexico. Plain and simple. I've written this so many times: demography is prophecy. You want more dead Americans, leave the borders porous. You want politicians and officials even more corrupt and, beyond that, your military and your law enforcement infiltrated with corruption, violence, death -- armed with their current tools? Leave the borders porous. You want more entitlement payouts, more persons taking from the system instead of giving? Leave the borders porous. You want to have the United States in the future precisely resemble Mexico now? Leave the borders porous.

This monster sits, literally, at our back door. It's scratching and clawing to get in. It's already killed a few family pets. And its eyes are locked on your throat.

Build the wall. Build it high and build it deep. Link it up. Remove illegal invaders from entitlements. Raid businesses who hire illegal invaders. Prosecute the owners. No more sanctuary cities: remove all federal funding from towns and cities encouraging this practice. Enforce the laws. Stop lawful American citizens from being murdered, raped and beaten at the hands of illegal invaders. Utilize the Sheriff Joe Arpaio model (THIS JUST IN: SHERIFF ARPAIO'S OFFICE ARRESTS FOUR ACORN ACTIVISTS FOR DISRUPTING A MARICOPA COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS MEETING!) for dealing with illegal invaders when other agencies refuse to do so. And all we have to do is enforce the current laws on our books.

So you think Texas Fred is a bigot, a racist, a nutjob, an idiot for wanting to protect his state, his country, to seal our borders both north and south?

You'd best just think again.

BZ