The US Army on the Mexican Border

[slapout9]

Hi Norfolk,This happened before you got here to. We used to have a thread called the Next Small War and I used to to post about how it would be Mexico. Anyway I found this song and dedicated it to SWC member Bill Moore after much discussion on the subject. And now for your listening pleasure and cultural enhancement. Time for Goodbye Texas-Hello Mexico by Johnny Tex and Texicans. PS I haven't found one for Tom yet but I am looking


http://www.johnnytex.com/

[Norfolk]

slap, you are a gentleman, providing that fine Texas tune for my edification. Even if Johnny Tex swimming the Rio Grande to go live in Old Mexico is a little implausible...especially as I hear that you can walk across the Rio Grande in a lot of areas anyway!

Tom, Ski, slap, admittedly I come at the whole matter of the American acquisition of the former Mexican territories ("New Mexico", et al.) from a rather different perspective, and one that doesn't approve of it in the first place (here in Canada, we've historically viewed U.S. expanionism with a rather jaundiced eye, for obvious reasons, so please, don't take offence.)

That said, 150+ years of United States rule obviously matters, and no matter how many illegals come to live in the Southwest (or elsewhere), tens of millions of U.S. citizens living there are an immutable fact. Mexican nationalism, especially led by ideological elements that are mostly US citizens themselves, is going to meet American nationalism, and that ain't just goin' to go away. Politically, this issue had already passed the "possible" to deal-with phase by the 1990's, if not the 1980's. The illegal immigration bill doesn't really change a thing, substantively.

That leaves the U.S. in a serious strategic predicament that will grow more dire (and I mean to use that very word) in which it utterly lacks the political unity and will to effectively resolve the matter before it seriously destabilizes the Union, and will be left with having to resort to military, paramilitary, and like measures that have even less ability to handle the matter. What would, what could, the US Army do if a potent Mexican separatist movement gained real traction in California? Texas is one thing, but a state that has cities that pass resolutions against Marine Recruiting Stations is quite another.

The potential for things to get completely out of hand a generation or so down the line, because the political classes can't muster the guts to face the monster that they're afraid to stop tacitly feeding, may make the Recent Unpleasantness between North and South seem positively "clean", or at least civilized, by comparison to what may develop out of this.

Maybe if the US Army is able to retain the lessons that it has learned in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, it may at least be fairly well-prepared for what may lie in the future along the Mexican border.

[Ski]

I don't disagree with anything you've said.

I felt less secure in a few sectors down there than at any time I was in Afghanistan. The border itself is a joke, with a few strands of barbed wire -if that- and some ancient wooden pickets being the actual "border."

Nothing will be done because both political parties want Central American illegal immigration to continue - the Pubs want cheap labor, the Dems want votes. No one is willing to look at a clash of cultures or races because that is politically incorrect and no one could ever fight over such abstract concepts in the US.

Exceedingly shortsighted. We will pay in the end in blood I think.

[Tom Odom]

Nothing will be done because both political parties want Central American illegal immigration to continue - the Pubs want cheap labor, the Dems want votes. No one is willing to look at a clash of cultures or races because that is politically incorrect and no one could ever fight over such abstract concepts in the US.

Exceedingly shortsighted. We will pay in the end in blood I think.

I fear you are correct and that truth will come to haunt us...

[AdamG]

Interesting little fire fight, with the cars and weapons coming from the north side of the border. Probably only a matter of time before this sort of fun and games gets moved up here, particularly if the cartels disguise their horrorshowing business moves as a Liberation Movement.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...1.466c702.html

TIJUANA, Mexico – Suspected drug traffickers clashed on the streets of this border town across from San Diego early Saturday in a wild and bloody shootout that left 13 people dead in a series of moving gun battles.
Gunmen began firing on each other with rifles and automatic weapons in a light industrial area east of the city, according to authorities, ultimately leaving a trail of corpses, spent shell casings and bullet-riddled vehicles across Tijuana.
*
Mr. Perez, the state police spokesman, said police seized 21 vehicles after Saturday's shootout. Some had U.S. license plates.


http://www.canada.com/victoriatimesc...2-45e4c4ccacdd
Fourteen bodies were lying in pools of blood on a road near assembly-for-export maquil-adora plants on the city's eastern limits. The corpses were surrounded by hundreds of bullet casings, and many of their faces were destroyed.
Soldiers stand guard in front of the Tijuana city morgue, where the bodies of drug gang members killed in a gun battle yesterday are being kept. It was one of the deadliest shootouts in Mexico's three-year-long narco-war.
The 15th body was found nearby. Eight men were injured and six others were arrested, but some gang members are thought to have escaped.

[Gringo Malandro]

slap, you are a gentleman, providing that fine Texas tune for my edification. Even if Johnny Tex swimming the Rio Grande to go live in Old Mexico is a little implausible...especially as I hear that you can walk across the Rio Grande in a lot of areas anyway!

Tom, Ski, slap, admittedly I come at the whole matter of the American acquisition of the former Mexican territories ("New Mexico", et al.) from a rather different perspective, and one that doesn't approve of it in the first place (here in Canada, we've historically viewed U.S. expanionism with a rather jaundiced eye, for obvious reasons, so please, don't take offence.)

That said, 150+ years of United States rule obviously matters, and no matter how many illegals come to live in the Southwest (or elsewhere), tens of millions of U.S. citizens living there are an immutable fact. Mexican nationalism, especially led by ideological elements that are mostly US citizens themselves, is going to meet American nationalism, and that ain't just goin' to go away. Politically, this issue had already passed the "possible" to deal-with phase by the 1990's, if not the 1980's. The illegal immigration bill doesn't really change a thing, substantively.

That leaves the U.S. in a serious strategic predicament that will grow more dire (and I mean to use that very word) in which it utterly lacks the political unity and will to effectively resolve the matter before it seriously destabilizes the Union, and will be left with having to resort to military, paramilitary, and like measures that have even less ability to handle the matter. What would, what could, the US Army do if a potent Mexican separatist movement gained real traction in California? Texas is one thing, but a state that has cities that pass resolutions against Marine Recruiting Stations is quite another.

The potential for things to get completely out of hand a generation or so down the line, because the political classes can't muster the guts to face the monster that they're afraid to stop tacitly feeding, may make the Recent Unpleasantness between North and South seem positively "clean", or at least civilized, by comparison to what may develop out of this.

Maybe if the US Army is able to retain the lessons that it has learned in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, it may at least be fairly well-prepared for what may lie in the future along the Mexican border.

I have to disagree with you here. Latin America is much more fractious than the US. The "little brown guys" that come here to work are mostly indigenous people and they are treated worse in Latin countries than they are here. While we talk about "Mexicans" as a group, it is still a small group of rich white dudes at the top and a lot of poor brown folks at the bottom. This is a major part of the struggles throughout all of Latin America. We face a much bigger threat from a Mexico that is a failed state than from the state itself. Mexico can barely control its own population (i.e. Oaxaca) much less leverage them abroad for political control.

Mexico is almost entirely dependent on the US economy and its greatest threat to stabilization is financed by OUR drug habits. A secure and prosperous Mexico is vital to our national interest and that means greater integration with them, not walling them off.

I think a shifting cultural tide is a small price to pay for a stable border, especially in light of the aging if the US population and the much more insular Asian communities, who DO identify strongly with their government (at least with the Chinese).

Also keep in mind that an increasing percentage of Latin immigrants come from central and south America too, and they don't always get along with each other.