Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

But you seem to be advocating killing ANYONE who seeks to illlegally cross the US Mexico border.

How is that assertation any better than the scumbags causing the situation?

Necroshea wrote:These are the stories I would read about, I simply never see them. I've never heard anything about mexico in recent times except the gang killings, and police abandoning their stations because they keep getting shot up.

That's because you're sitting here, arrogantly spouting crap from your safe little ivory tower, completely ignorant and completely without understanding, mocking anyone who in the face of danger tries to simply survive when you've not faced any real danger yourself.

Melissia wrote:you've not faced any real danger yourself.

Really? You're better than this. All I'm going to say is that you're wrong and I'll leave it at that.

Melissia wrote:

Necroshea wrote:These are the stories I would read about, I simply never see them. I've never heard anything about mexico in recent times except the gang killings, and police abandoning their stations because they keep getting shot up.

That's because you're sitting here, arrogantly spouting crap from your safe little ivory tower, completely ignorant and completely without understanding, mocking anyone who in the face of danger tries to simply survive when you've not faced any real danger yourself.

Sigh. I gave my opinion at the beginning of this thread, I even stated that I didn't have the answer to the problem. Still you wished for me to proceed and continue on explaining how I feel about the situation. Now it appears that you don't like what I have to say. We have different opinions on how to address the situation. I respect your opinions on the matter, and while you seem to not share the sentiment, I won't fault you for it.

I'm dropping the conversation. I've explained my stance on the situation, and it's obviously not what you wanted to hear, and it never will be.

Melissia wrote:

Necroshea wrote:

Melissia wrote:]But what about the unfortunate people who are trying to escape the violence?

Allow me to answer your question with a question. Why don't they do something about it?

Because the ones who do get killed.

Even if they try to do it anonymously, they still get tracked down and killed.

Tell me, can you look an eighteen year old who works at a taco stand and barely manages to make enough to support her family in the face and tell her that she needs to risk being kidnapped, beaten, raped, and murdered, her corpse mutilated and then hung over a bridge as an example, leaving her family going hungry?

Actually, there is precedence for just this type of action/solution. Read up on Los Pepes in Colombia and their effect on Pablo Escobar and his band of not-so-merry men. Obviously they had some support, but they also had 'skin in the game'. Finding local groups to start something like this and providing similar support and continuing to train and support GOM counterdrug/counter insurgency (it is a narco insurgency...) forces and operations won't completely solve the problem, but it would be a good start.

A huge part of the problem is the GOM has been notoriously corrupt for decades. The cartels have used that to push out GOM influence they don't want and set up micro-narco states within Mexico, supporting the GOM elements which either turn a blind eye or actively support their efforts, and brutally punishing those that refuse to be corrupted. GOM needs to clean out their own house.

A decent book and fun read on the border situation is The Reaper's Line. It details a struggle in Arizona but is applicable across the border.

I just realized I'm using GOM. That is Gov't of Mexico. Sorry. I used to work as an intel guy for SOUTHCOM, and my wife used to fly counter drug ops, so the topic is one that has interested me for a while.

Jake





Automatically Appended Next Post:
One thing to keep in mind. The cartels and the gangs they use for distribution have a large and potentially violent presence in the US. This is a 'war' that can potentially affect us more than folks understand.

On that appended statement: I know. It's spilled over into Texas quite a damn few times That's why I posted the thread in the first place after reading this.

I'm not talking about border violence. Look up MS13 and the cities they have a presence in.

Were you ever at Fort Sam Houston Cpt Jake?

Briefly. Had a trooper in the ICU at BAMC and I got to play liason between the chain of command there, the red cross, his family, and my chain of command... Not a good couple of weeks.

My experience mentioned above was while in Panama and Ft Bliss.

Ah. My dad is with the 470th Mi Bde at Fort Sam.

470th used to be in Panama....

Melissia wrote:

And if so, what should we be doing?

A concerted effort.

Use the National guard to guard the nation, focus on the Mexico/US border.

Deport any foreign national that has no visa or other legal right to be in the US when they commit a minor crime, lock their ass up if a major crime(just like anyone else), death penalty if they commit a crime that carries the death penalty (Just like anyone else).

kronk wrote:
Use the National guard to guard the nation, focus on the Mexico/US border.

Despite its name, the National Guard is not, and was never intended to, serve as a border control force. Using it in that manner would require a lot of internal restructuring, and major policy changes regarding service expectations. And that's before we talk about the problems inherent in using a military force to solve a police problem.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

CptJake wrote:
A huge part of the problem is the GOM has been notoriously corrupt for decades. The cartels have used that to push out GOM influence they don't want and set up micro-narco states within Mexico, supporting the GOM elements which either turn a blind eye or actively support their efforts, and brutally punishing those that refuse to be corrupted. GOM needs to clean out their own house.

Corruption in Mexico really didn't take off until the mid-90's, prior to that PRI dominance made it difficult for individual officials to circumvent the will of the partisan elite. Now that Mexico is no longer a de facto single party state, the upper echelons of the party have had a hard time riding herd.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Necroshea wrote:
I'm a fan of the concept that if you are oppressed enough, you will eventually decide to rebel.

It doesn't generally work that way. Oppression can lead to rebellion, but a strong state with military support is damned difficult to dislodge, and even harder to replace with something that is meaningfully distinct. Basically this means that incidences of rebellion don't tend to scale with severity of oppression. Just look at North Korea.

Necroshea wrote:
Bleeding hearts will demand we save them, cold hearts will demand we destroy. The former solves nothing but makes people feel better, the latter solves the problem but makes people feel bad for making hard decisions.

Of course, the problem is much more complicated than that, because genocide is expensive in fiscal, and psychological terms.

dogma wrote:

kronk wrote:
Use the National guard to guard the nation, focus on the Mexico/US border.

Despite its name, the National Guard is not, and was never intended to, serve as a border control force. Using it in that manner would require a lot of internal restructuring, and major policy changes regarding service expectations. And that's before we talk about the problems inherent in using a military force to solve a police problem.

Guarding our borders and our nation is a national problem and should involve the military. Why would it be the police? I don't see Houston Police Air Craft carrier running around.

kronk wrote:
Guarding our borders and our nation is a national problem and should involve the military. Why would it be the police? I don't see Houston Police Air Craft carrier running around.

For one, posse comitatus. But, going beyond legal issues, the violence on the Mexican border does not represent any kind of meaningful attack on the United States, even in the loose sense now popular in the age of international terrorism. Then there's the issue of cost, and institutional strain. And, of course, questions regarding the capacity of the military to actually serve in the capacity of the border patrol. Tanks and planes are cool and all, but they don't really have a role to play here.

CptJake wrote:470th used to be in Panama....

HQ is in Fort Sam at the very least. Focus is South and Central America so they have a lot of assets down there.

Amaya wrote:

CptJake wrote:470th used to be in Panama....

HQ is in Fort Sam at the very least. Focus is South and Central America so they have a lot of assets down there.

I know, they moved CONUS when we left Panama in 1999. Up until then the US had several bases in the Canal Zone, the 470th HQ was on Corozal. I used to be in the 470th. My wife and I were in Panama from 96-99.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

dogma wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:

CptJake wrote:
A huge part of the problem is the GOM has been notoriously corrupt for decades. The cartels have used that to push out GOM influence they don't want and set up micro-narco states within Mexico, supporting the GOM elements which either turn a blind eye or actively support their efforts, and brutally punishing those that refuse to be corrupted. GOM needs to clean out their own house.

Corruption in Mexico really didn't take off until the mid-90's, prior to that PRI dominance made it difficult for individual officials to circumvent the will of the partisan elite. Now that Mexico is no longer a de facto single party state, the upper echelons of the party have had a hard time riding herd.

The GOM has had corruption problems way before the 90s. But don't let facts get in the way of your compulsive tendency to correct everything someone other than yourself types.

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/951127/lomnitz.shtml

http://education.ezinemark.com/corruption-in-mexico-4db530e3f6b.html

And a good book you may want to consider: http://www.questia.com/library/book/corruption-and-politics-in-contemporary-mexico-by-stephen-d-morris.jsp

The book I mentioned above, The Reaper's Line also discussus corruption well before the '90s.

And an article on PRI corruption: http://www.centerforajustsociety.org/2010/01/21/27765/cjs-forum/terror-and-corruption-in-mexico-part-one/

A nice quote from the Wiki on PRI:

After several decades in power the PRI became a symbol of corruption and electoral fraud

And of course there was govermental corruption in Mexeico even prior to the Revolution, and of course in the period after 1920 until the PRI took power.

CptJake wrote:
The GOM has had corruption problems way before the 90s. But don't let facts get in the way of your compulsive tendency to correct everything someone other than yourself types.

Oh, I'm, sorry, did you think corruption was defined by US practice?

As for your quote regarding PRI fraud, maybe let's not take it from the official site of a PRI rebel faction.

CptJake wrote:
The GOM has had corruption problems way before the 90s. But don't let facts get in the way of your compulsive tendency to correct everything someone other than yourself types.

CptJake wrote:

CptJake wrote:
The GOM has had corruption problems way before the 90s. But don't let facts get in the way of your compulsive tendency to correct everything someone other than yourself types.

In the military, do they teach you that bold text makes your claim better?

There's been corruption in Mexico for the last 100 years...

Amaya wrote:There's been corruption in Mexico for the last 100 years...

And the United States, and England, and France, and Japan, and every other place with things that people on the out can call corrupt.

Heres a radical proposal that circulated several years back, and might still be a good one.

Take over Mexico.

Everyone in Mexico, would suddenly find themselves American citizens, and wages there would go up, as well as living conditions, etc etc etc.

As a bonus, the USA would now have a Much smaller southern border to secure.

As another bonus, the USA would now have control of the majority of its oil supply, since Mexico is our #1 or #2 supplier.

Sounds like a win win win to me.


Short answer, yes, Mexico is a larger threat to the security of the USA than most countries in the Middle East.

Because of our promises to allies in the Middle East region though, we will continue to be involved. It is not so much about our personal security, but that of our allies.

dogma wrote:

CptJake wrote:

CptJake wrote:
The GOM has had corruption problems way before the 90s. But don't let facts get in the way of your compulsive tendency to correct everything someone other than yourself types.

In the military, do they teach you that bold text makes your claim better?

I couldn't figure a reason why someone would stick by such an asinine claim that Mexico has only had a big corruption problem since the 1990's. There is just not factual basis or evidence to support that view, and in fact contradictory evidence abounds. I suspect you're not stupid, so the fact that you stick with that view or practice deflection makes me wonder why you do so.

Now that I've seen your further replies to myself and others, which completely skip addressing the issue by deflecting towards other countries which may or may not be corrupt, I think I'm going to go with the theory that the second part of my bolded statement is accurate.

For example, your 'Posse Comitatus' reply is completely inaccurate. Posse Comitatus prevents the Army from exercising State police funtions on non-federal property. Since immigration, control of the borders, and customs functions are the realm of the Federal Gov't, they sure could use the National Guard (if federalized) or the active duty army. By the way, they've used both for decades at various times and don't have Posse Comitatus issues. In fact the military contributes manpower and equipment to counter drug operations along the borders and has done so for quite some time. Look up JIATFS (Joint Interagency Task Force South) for a relevant example. I've got real world experience in working interageny operations and dealing with Posse Comitatus, I'm pretty darned sure I have a handle on it. So again, an urge to correct with out factual back up. Some would call that douchebaggery or trolling.

Back on topic, I am not sure I would say Mexico is a more important national security issue than the Middle East. It is an important issue, and a different issue, but I don't think it is more important.

Here is my reasoning (by the way Dogma, you're on ignore so don't bother trying to correct me for my sake, but feel free to do so if it soothes your ego in some way):

Mexico going completely under hurts us economically and does pose security issues along the border, but I think they could be handled if we had to.

If the Middle East goes Tango Uniform in a big way, the world economy follows, and the orders of magnitude of Bad Things that could happen (Israel feeling too threatened and popping nukes over Damascus and Tehran for example, or the Saud family losing control and all the Emirates going down leading to a petroleum crisis) are much worse than a Mexico worse case scenario.

You have to evaluate risk by likeliness and amount of harm (probablitly loss will occur and magnitude of the potential loss). I think Mexican issues may be about as likely as major issues in the Middle East, but I think the harm from a major Middle East crisis is potentially a lot worse.

Where we are lucky is that because of our border with Mexico, we can actually modify some domestic policies and have an effect on Mexico, and can implement policies/dedicate resources in regards to Mexico a lot more easily than we can in the Middle East. So when you add in it is easier (in my opinion) to mitigate troubles in Mexico than in the Middle East, I see it as not more important a national security issue.

Wuddayaknow, someone actually makes sense on this board. /tipshat

CptJake wrote:
I couldn't figure a reason why someone would stick by such an asinine claim that Mexico has only had a big corruption problem since the 1990's. There is just not factual basis or evidence to support that view, and in fact contradictory evidence abounds. I suspect you're not stupid, so the fact that you stick with that view or practice deflection makes me wonder why you do so.

Actually, there is quite a bit of evidence, at least from a logical perspective; though really its simply evidence that the arguments being made are poor. After all, you can't provide evidence that a thing does not exist. The problem inherent to most allegations of corruption in Mexico is that the authors who have come to this conclusion generally assess "corruption" according theories of government predicated on some form of liberalism. This means they assess the proper practice of governance according to terms that are not necessarily relevant to the government in question.

You'll note that, of the things generally considered corruption, only bribery, electoral fraud, and embezzlement (with electoral fraud and embezzlement not frequently practiced in Mexico until the 90's) have any physical basis, and only embezzlement electoral fraud are intrinsically inappropriate.

I mean, literally every source you're presented offers evidence of corruption as follows: Mexico is corrupt because we believe Mexico is corrupt. That's fine, but perceptions of corruption do not entail corruption, unless political corruption is literally nothing more than political activities which people consider to be unsavory.

CptJake wrote:
Now that I've seen your further replies to myself and others, which completely skip addressing the issue by deflecting towards other countries which may or may not be corrupt, I think I'm going to go with the theory that the second part of my bolded statement is accurate.

The point of the comment was that what most people consider corruption is not corruption at all.

CptJake wrote:
For example, your 'Posse Comitatus' reply is completely inaccurate. Posse Comitatus prevents the Army from exercising State police funtions on non-federal property. Since immigration, control of the borders, and customs functions are the realm of the Federal Gov't, they sure could use the National Guard (if federalized) or the active duty army.

That's wrong. Federal property is not delineated by federal duty.

CptJake wrote:
By the way, they've used both for decades at various times and don't have Posse Comitatus issues. In fact the military contributes manpower and equipment to counter drug operations along the borders and has done so for quite some time. Look up JIATFS (Joint Interagency Task Force South) for a relevant example.

JIATFS is nominally considered a Coast Guard command, and the Coast Guard is exempted from posse comitatus. Additionally, JIATFS does not conduct operations in US land territory, it is confined in terms of physical operations to air and sea space; both of which are federal property. Those operations which it does undertake related to land-based affairs are confined to intelligence gathering, which is not a nominal police function.

CptJake wrote:
I've got real world experience in working interageny operations and dealing with Posse Comitatus, I'm pretty darned sure I have a handle on it.

Apparently not, because you've gotten a lot of basic facts, even related to JIATFS (which I assume is your real world experience), wrong.

CptJake wrote:
Here is my reasoning (by the way Dogma, you're on ignore so don't bother trying to correct me for my sake, but feel free to do so if it soothes your ego in some way):

Its not for my ego's sake, I just find it amusing when people who value their experience don't seem to have a good handle on it.

CptJake wrote:
Where we are lucky is that because of our border with Mexico, we can actually modify some domestic policies and have an effect on Mexico, and can implement policies/dedicate resources in regards to Mexico a lot more easily than we can in the Middle East. So when you add in it is easier (in my opinion) to mitigate troubles in Mexico than in the Middle East, I see it as not more important a national security issue.

Politically, any action against Mexico would likely be much more complicated than action in the ME, not only because of posse comitatus, but also because of minority constituencies in the US and those bodies that support them. Then there's economics to consider. Oil is important, but not just to the US. Even Israel's nuclear arsenal is unlikely to stop crude shipments, because the producing nations depend on that activity as much as the consuming ones do. The real danger is in a spike of ppb due to speculative fears, but I'll wager that a massive military operation in and near the heart of the US refining region would cause the same problem.

biccat wrote:

Melissia wrote:

biccat wrote:

Melissia wrote:But what about the unfortunate people who are trying to escape the violence?

Wasn't that part of the rationale for Iraq and Afghanistan? And now Libya?

To add context to that quote,I was talking about accepting immigrants instead of completely closing off the border.

Sorry, that wasn't immediately clear.

But still, how do you propose stopping the violence in Mexico?

Move infantry divisions from foreign countries to perform the primary task of the US government, protect our borders. Put two infantry divisions on the Southern border. As we have paid off Mexican army units and military aircraft intruding into Southern Texas they should be ready to fight if needed.

Its not like we haven't done this before.

Dogma: Pardon me for bargin' in, but I think it's hard to argue that paying a person (IE not the system, the actual law enforcement officer) money to avoid being prosecuted by the system is pretty corrupt. An official accepting bribes to let criminals go unpunished has been one of the hallmarks of corruption for thousands of years in many, many cultures (including cultures such as China, which are widely different from the western culture we're used to).

Not all of them labeled said corruption as OMG THE WORST THING EVAR, sure, but it is a sign of corruption.

Melissia wrote:Biccat: Pardon me for bargin' in

Hmm?

I think you mean dogma. It appears he's engaging in sophism.

Right, sorry, I meant Dogma.

Seems like Mexico needs more and better law enforcement. The murderers need to be caught and executed.
I'm against capital punishment but i think mexico needs to be sorted out first, then they can abolish cp later on.
It must be an incredibly hard life for people who oppose the drug traffickers.