The Powderkeg At Our Border

On December 18th of last year I wrote that Mexico posed the largest immediate threat to United States security.

Forbes magazine also wrote, in part:

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."

A Texas Republican said, about Mexico and the execrable Meridia Initiative:

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."

More pointedly, because of all this instability, the US military is now warning of a possible massive disintegration of Mexico with, naturally, concomitant dire consequences for America:

EL PASO - Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

A report from the USJFC places Mexico's instability right alongside that of Pakistan. Ponder that for a moment, if you will. To continue:

The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."

Also consider this: how much finger-pointing, sphincter-clenching and butt-covering will ensue should Mexico explode, literally, in our faces? And how much better we'd be had the border fence been created years earlier and our immigration laws actually enforced all along?

This is a powderkeg that is ready to detonate on every level imagineable: politically, economically, societally.

BZ