That hand grenade may not be too far off target....

Truth be told, I think that's an accurate assessment. In time...a couple years, maybe?....it may be seen as prescient.

How the U.S. can cope, and whether it can cope, with large numbers of desperate people is the question. Especially if the situation that drives them here is long-term, such that there is little prospect of their departure.

Neither the public treasury nor private charity will have the capacity to support them. There will be no jobs for them. But sending them back will be a near-equivalent to a death sentence.

And then there are the politics...those are likely to be angry and divisive.

Hmmmm! "Refugee camps" right next to the agricultural fields in the SW AZ and SE CA areas.

SF teams to train G's for infil into their homeland to free their nation from corruption!

I have a plan. I am available. The President should call... :D

I like the Mine Field and refugee camp ideas. :D

Here are a couple of interesting nuggets regarding "refugees".

http://www.arlingtonrefugeeservices.com/new_page_3.htm

OK. So we call the spade a spade. The Mexican government will get all indignant about their people being called refugees. The "usual suspects" Jessie, Al, ACLU, and SPLC will scream racism. And the politicians will vehemently deny the Mexican people being classified as "refugees" in order to keep them as potential future voter blocs.

FWIW, the current edition of The Economist has a briefing on Mexico's efforts to combat organized crime.

The printer-friendly version of that briefing is available here.

Well...I'm not sure that's enough. I was discussing the issue with some friends over breakfast yesterday, and I think it may come down to some unspoken assumptions.

Here's the problem - those assumptions are both emotionally charged and unprovable. Even if they're not unprovable, there is little (no?) hard information on the subject.

The two assumptions are:

1) Do people - extra population, if you will - always and without limit add to the wealth of nations? The assumption is a yes or no. A further complication is the question of when this occurs, since new immigrants (or refugees) may be expensive, whereas their descendants may (or may not) be a positive contributor to the greater society.

This assumption applies to the new population in aggregate. We can always find an example who is brilliant, good-hearted, and a wonderful addition. We can also find some loathsome criminal. Instead of looking at individuals, the issue deals with the group in its entirety.

2) Is there a point at which extra population is more a burden than a benefit? This goes with the question - are we there yet?

My personal bias - because I see no hard facts to guide me on this - is that the refugees would generate more costs than benefits and that we are at a point where the extra population is more of a problem than a gain. This leads to the conclusion that the door should be slammed shut.

Others will surely have different views. Maybe they're right.

If we get lots of refugees (or illegal aliens, or undocumented workers, or whatever we call them), then I suspect the societal debate will become heated.

Train them, arm them, send them back, advise and sustain them...like ZD said...

Not Much UW Potential in Mexico
 

As I stated in another thread, the people of Mexico are a conquered people and have been sheep for generations. If the US were to do as a couple of the QPs have suggested, there needs to be:

1. A populace that is willing to sacrifice everything for their freedom. This does not exist to any large degree. There are those who will sacrifice everything for money . . . their loyalty will only be to the highest bidder.

2. A group of leaders who will sacrifice personal ambition for the good of the people. The political leaders have been corrupt from the beginning and have no loyalties to anything other than their own power and pockets.

If we do train, arm, advise, and send them back, what then? If they prevail, what will be the end state? IMO, they will not work to change Mexican society nor will they move policies to help the US. The only way out is to lock them out.

We "trained, advised, & sent back" the Zetas. Didn't turn out too well.

x/S

That sounds like a great plot for a movie??
FID & COIN doctrine rolled into one cohesive WIN..
We'll call it "Shichinin no Samurai" :munchin:D


Lock the gate & take the Welcome sign down.... :mad:

Zetas
 

Actually, us training and advising the Zetas is completely incorrect. I had the privilege to work in 2/7 when we were conducting the Mexican Training Initiative (MTI) and I currently work with the Mexican Army executing CN / CT related Theater Security Cooperation. While working with senior Mexican officers, I have come across a few who attended MTI and now are either O-6s or O-7s in SEDENA. They have a very different story to tell. While a few (very few) did leave the military and go to work for the cartels (leading to the creation of Los Zetas), most are either out of the Army leading productive lives or still in the Army serving honorably. To them, the fact that a small handful of those that received our training "crossed over" is horribly embarrassing and they work extra hard to keep the GAFE (Grupos Aereos de Furezas Especiales or Airmobile Special Forces Groups, the initial recipients of our training) above reproach. In other words, it is a radical oversimplification and frankly, gives the impression the we (SF) created and organized the Zetas and stigmatizes the good faith acts of the 7th and the honorable behavior of the majority of those that attended. :(

Sorry, bro, but, I have heard this misstatement allot and it bugs me.:)

If the Fedreal Government were to ask for people the help secure the border I think a fair number of people would be willing to take part. Possibly an offer of expenses and a small stipend would be in order so that the people taking part in this would not have to do so at their own expense. I'm fairley sure that most of the interested people would have had a criminal back ground check and possibly a secruity clearance in the past so the expense to the Government would be far less then full time federal employees. The down side would be that I think most of these people would be older and not up to partols with heavy rucks, but OP's and fixed check points could free up the Border Patrol to take care if the areas with difficult access and border crossing points. I really don't expect this to happen , but it would not be impossible. :munchin

sinjefe:

I stand corrected.

x/S

I find the main problem here in Mexico is the lack of education, and the naivety of the general populace.

The general sentiment I grew up hearing here, is that us Mexicans are a bunch of lazy guys, just looking to make easy money. I've met mroe than a handful of immigrants in the States, and all of them worked very hard.

Then you have the guys with money down here, within the 8%(more or less) that attends college/university. They dont care about Mexico, they care about making money, and using the uneducated masses for profit. They may not counciously realize it, but they are doing it if they support the current working schemes in Mexico.

You'll hear a lot of Mexicans, on both sides of the border, talk about patriotism and pride for their "motherland" but none of them are willing to work for her, much less carry a gun and bleed for her, which is truly disheartening.

There's no culture for discipline or respect towards the authority here, the required military service is a joke (its LITERALLY a lottery to see who marches/does social service and who simply gets their "pass," no marching, no training, no nothing).

IMHO, Thats just positive reinforcement to tell the populace you can "skip" authority and discipline, you can "skip" honorable service to your country and carry on complaining about your country is corrupt:mad:

Is Mexico running out of control? Surely. Are Mexicans aware? Some(the educated), but they lack the guts to really do something about it, unless it pays in cash.

/Rant ;)

I'd sure like to see some of the classified info we have on the mexican government, leaked to the world.........

But then again I don't think most of the U.S. would be surprised to see that the corruption actually goes all the way to the top of the mexican government and how widespread it really is......

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...062932426.html

Can Mexico Be Saved?

The mayor of Juárez—the border town at the center of the drug wars—says he's not getting enough help from his capital, or Washington either.
NOVEMBER 13, 2010
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Cuidad Juárez, Mexico

'I can't imagine how the U.S. can be so worried about Iraq and Pakistan while we don't sense that it is worried about the border here. We are together whether we like it or not."

So says Hector "Teto" Murguia, the mayor of this city that is plagued by drug-war disorder. In the 35 months since Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched his war against his country's drug cartels, more than 7,100 people have been killed in this border city. Over 2,700 have died since January—in other words, the rate of the killing has increased.

Carjacking, kidnapping and extortion are rampant. Going out to work, school, or a restaurant or even to visit friends has become a risky proposition. Recently, a 20-year-old mother who attends college in Juárez became chief of police in a nearby town of 9,000 because no one else would take the job. Many Americans who used to pop over the border for dining or entertainment have curtailed their visits. Hundreds of thousands of juarenes have fled, some just over the Rio Grande to El Paso, Texas, others to the interior of Mexico.

But the 57-year-old Mr. Murguia is staying. Even before he took office on Oct. 10, a welcoming committee was already at work: In the week before he won the election, a headless body was dropped on the road near his home.

So what's his plan to retake the city for law-abiding Mexicans? I have come here from El Paso, with an armed escort, to find out. As the SUV I'm riding in turns down his street, I note a new two-story shopping mall on the corner. It is completely vacant, a metaphor for a once-promising metropolis laid low by violence and fear.

A tall metal sculpture of Don Quixote decorates Mr. Murguia's foyer. As I enter his home office, the first thing I ask is why he ran for this job. He says that his party asked him to run again (he was mayor from 2004 to 2007), and he felt an obligation to the community.

Cleaning up the mess here will require the proper diagnosis, and I ask the mayor to share his. "If you have the biggest consumer of drugs just beside your [border] and you have a lot of people here who have no opportunity, you have the culture for insecurity," he tells me. But the mayor doesn't dwell on what he cannot change. Instead he zeroes in on Mexico. "The real causes that are generating the insecurity in Juárez and all over Mexico are lack of opportunity, lack of education, lack of [necessities], impunity, lack of justice. It is a mixture of a lot of problems where we Mexicans haven't done our homework," he says.

"People who think they are going to fix [the problem] with policemen and arms are completely crazy." Instead, he wants to see Mexico "make the changes in the fiscal policies to encourage investments that create jobs."

To capture the desperation of Mexico's young, the mayor-elect shares an anecdote: "Last week, at a gas station here, I met an 18-year-old. He told me 'Teto, you politicians don't know anything. You don't understand that without hope we have no future. We prefer to die in one year standing up than living all our lives on our knees.'" Summing it up, Mr. Murguia says, "When people lose hope they will do anything [to improve their circumstances]."

By Mr. Murguia's measure, Juárez was a place of hope not so long ago. "Juárez for 40 years, from 1965-2005, was the city that generated the most jobs per capita in all of Mexico. And those jobs were not only for juarenses," he says proudly. "People came from Oaxaca, Zacatecas, Veracruz because they couldn't find jobs in their own city. Some of them tried to cross the river but a lot of them found a job in Juárez."

What went wrong? The mayor-elect blames Mexico's revenue sharing model. "The investment that the federal and state government makes in Juárez does not correspond to what the city sends in federal taxes." He complains that though the city created jobs for the nation, investments in "public services, streets, schools, parks, community centers and health-care centers haven't corresponded to the job growth. We were forgotten." He wants the federal government and the state "to return to Juárez what they owe us."

Of course economic development is unlikely when investors are having their throats slit. When I raise that issue and the issue of corruption, Mr. Murguia says that part of what Juárez is owed is resources for law enforcement. He says that when he first took office as mayor in 2004 there were only 1,000 police for the entire city. He raised that number to 1,600 and increased police salaries by more than 50%. But he says that is far from what is needed.

"Experts in crime prevention say Juárez needs 7,000 police. Yet even if I had used the entire budget I couldn't even have hired 3,000. We couldn't give them scholarships for their kids and they didn't have housing. I visited some of them at their homes and saw the dirt floors. . . . We ask our police to give their lives for us and we don't have enough money to pay them properly."

A complicating factor is that Mr. Murguia's political adversaries have accused him of having ties to drug traffickers, since a high-ranking member of his police department during his last term was busted. When I raise this, the mayor-elect is ready and rattles off his former subordinate's resume as a pillar of society and business. "And let me tell you something else," he adds. "During the six months he worked for me he received two recognitions from U.S. authorities." In other words, this official did not have the socioeconomic profile of a cop on the beat, which suggests that higher salaries alone don't prevent corruption.

Nevertheless, Mr. Murguia says that what Juárez needs is more resources—"money, intelligence and cooperation"—from Mexico City. He also complains that the U.S. aid program for fighting the cartels, known as Plan Merida, has so far provided "nothing" to his city.

Isn't that a problem to take up with the Mexican government and Mr. Calderón? "But it's 2,000 kilometers from here," he exclaims. El Paso, on the other hand, is just across the river, so Washington should convince Mr. Calderón to help Juárez. "If the Mexican institutions—the federal police, the army, the federal government, and the municipal and state governments—fail Juárez," he warns, "everybody is going to fail. What can a small powerless mayor of Juárez do if President Calderón doesn't provide the support?"

Mr. Murguia says his city is demoralized. It no longer has just an organized crime problem, but widespread chaos. "Copy cats" and youngsters have learned to take advantage of the general breakdown of law and order. "For kids, 15 or 17 years old, when there is a lot of impunity, it is very easy for them to extort a business. But this is not organized crime." Mr. Murguia draws a distinction between the two and says, "If we can solve the extortions and kidnappings, Juárez will begin to [improve] slowly." Hence his emphasis on social services, investment and strengthening of the police.

Mexican politicians are notorious for anti-American rhetoric, but Mr. Murguia displays no such prejudice with me. Still, he doesn't shy away from the unpleasant reality of American drug use and marijuana-growing. When I ask him about legalizing marijuana, he launches into a favorite Mexican jeremiad: "How do you explain to a guy here who is in jail because he was caught carrying two kilos of marijuana that California is producing 10,000 kilograms per day in just one [facility]? How do you explain that [the Mexican] loses his liberty while Californians produce? It's hard to explain that to the people who are in jail here. Fair? It is not fair."

Is he saying, I ask, that there is a perception in Mexico that marijuana is already legal in the United States? "Yes, oh yes," he tells me. He makes clear that he thinks the stuff is bad for you, but he says that any move to legalize it must be done on both sides of the border—and all over the world. "Otherwise you will get Hell's Kitchen here in Mexico."

I press him on that point, asking whether legalization, on both sides of the border, would stop the bloodshed and disintegration of the state. If you want to end the violence and corruption it creates, he says, you only need to turn the business over to governments. He says that he could then deal with the extortion and kidnapping epidemics separately.

I ask Mr. Murguia whether he thinks winning in Juárez will mean no more drugs will go into the U.S. "I don't think so," he says. So you are fighting a problem and risking your life, and if you win you won't solve the problem?

He repeats his doubts, but for him that's beside the point. "I'm not going to get philosophical," he says. "The only thing I want to do is get my city calm."

Ms. O'Grady writes the Journal's Americas column.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A11

Yet another
 

Yet another victim in Mexico's slow death march. that fact that these women are standing up where men do not is a testament to Mexico's abject corruption.

http://dailychilli.com/news/8090-top...cop-shot-dead-

What a shame.

That it is.:mad:

I realize that the original thread title from 1/09 is U.S. military report warns "sudden collapse" of Mexico is possible. Time to update that collapse is here.