Stupidity . . .

FRED REED thinks the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is stupider than a trilobite. Why? Rickie wants to invade Mexico.

Almost forever, the record for stupidity was held by Lumbo, a Cambrian trilobyte (sic) born to an early family of retarded trilobites. Lumbo also had Down’s Syndrome. It ws an unbeatable combination. Nobody and nothing was as slow as Lumbo. It was thought that he would hold the record for all time, but then came the governor of Texas, Rick Perry. He thinks it might be a good idea to invade Mexico.

Even the Washington Post is warming up to the concept. Here there be lunacy. Fortunately, it's not likely to happen. That being said, stranger things have happened. IMHO, it would be the suicide of the US republic.

El Degüello Pasa

ACCORDING TO WIKI, El Degüello means "no mercy" or "to put to the sword". The literal translation is "a throat slitting". Originally a bugle call, it was used by Howard Hawks in the 1959 flick, "Rio Bravo".

Well, FABIUS has an article, "Stratfor looks at Mexico: “The Struggle for Balance” featuring a by-permission re-post from STRATFOR on the Mexican Problem, written by Scott Stewart.

Why should you care?

The drug cartel problem in Mexico is getting worse as time goes on, to the point where some pundits are using dire descriptions like "failed state" in their ruminations about this very violent situation. The Mexican gangs have moved into the US big-time, and they'll be here soon. We have the taser-happy RCMP, who can't shoot straight. Makes you feel warm and fuzzy.

Certainly at that macro level, there is a lot of money flowing into Mexico and a lot of people, from bankers and businessmen to political parties and politicians, are benefiting from the massive influx of cash. The lure of this lucre shapes how many Mexicans (particularly many of the Mexican elite) view narcotics trafficking. It is, frankly, a good time to be a banker, a real estate developer or a Rolex dealer in Mexico.

However, at the tactical level, there are a number of issues also shaping the opinions of many Mexicans regarding narcotics trafficking, including violence, corruption and rapidly rising domestic narcotics consumption. At this level, people are being terrorized by running gunbattles, mass beheadings and rampant kidnappings — the types of events that STRATFOR covers in our Mexico Security Memos.

Mexican elites have the money to buy armored cars and hire private security guards. But rampant corruption in the security forces means the common people seemingly have nowhere to turn for help at the local level (not an uncommon occurrence in the developing world). The violence is also having a heavy impact on Mexico’s tourist sector and on the willingness of foreign companies to invest in Mexico’s manufacturing sector. Many smaller business owners are being hit from two sides — they receive extortion demands from criminals while facing a decrease in revenue due to a drop in tourism because of the crime and violence. These citizens and businessmen are demanding help from Mexico City.

These two opposing forces — the inexorable flow of huge quantities of cash and the pervasive violence, corruption and fear — are placing a tremendous amount of pressure on the Calderon administration. And this pressure will only increase as Mexico moves closer to the 2012 presidential elections (President Felipe Calderon was the law-and-order candidate and was elected in 2006 in large part due to his pledge to end cartel violence). Faced by these forces, Calderon needs to find a way to strike a delicate balance, one that will reassert Mexican government authority, quell the violence and mollify the public while also allowing the river of illicit cash to continue flowing into Mexico.

And the proposed North American trade corridor . . . looks like a continuation of that drug map.

When the Mexican toilet flushes . . .

FABIUS MAXIMUS is an American who has an eponymous blog which is "a discussion about geopolitics, broadly defined, from an American's perspective". Over the years, I have found a sage perspective.

Anyway, Fabius has a page on the current debacle that is Mexico, leading with the comment, "Mexico continues to fall apart in slow-mo. There seems to be little we can do to help, so our government pretends all is fine — rather than take defensive measures." Fabius is not given to hyperbole, so, just how bad is it?

He cites an article in THE ATLANTIC, by Philip Caputo, titled "The Fall of Mexico":

In the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, border towns in Mexico have turned into halls of mirrors where no one knows who is on which side or what chance remark could get you murdered. Some 14,000 people have been killed in that time—the worst carnage since the Mexican Revolution—and part of the country is effectively under martial law. Is this evidence of a creeping coup by the military? A war between drug cartels? Between the president and his opposition? Or just collateral damage from the (U.S.-supported) war on drugs? Nobody knows: Mexico is where facts, like people, simply disappear. The stakes for the U.S. are high, especially as the prospect of a failed state on our southern border begins to seem all too real.

14,000 people killed in 3 years? Wow. Here there be dragons. As well, the Fabius page has links to other articles about this festering problem. As Pete De Lorenzo says at Autoextremist, "a heaping, steaming bowl of Not Good".

Others concur. William S. Lind is what you could call a "paleoconservative", which seems somewhat whacko to my milquetoast weltanschauung, but, Willie is something of an avant-garde theorist, when it comes to things military. His take is that La Familia, one of the Mexican drug outfits, is different from the rest, in that it is the acquiring the shape of a "4GW" entity. That's 4th Generation Warfare. He is a major contributor to Defense and the National Interest, and what he has to say is worthy of attention:

An article in the October 23 Washington Times points to what I think may be the next important evolution in Fourth Generation war. The piece concerns Mexico’s third-largest drug gang, La Familia. La Familia is best known for beheading people it does not like. But according to the article, its real claim to fame may be as a pioneer in seizing the mantle of legitimacy previously worn by the state.

SPP : Manufacturing Content

Four collaborating alumni of the Task Force on the Future of North America are duking it out in the pages of the Globe and Mail over how best to hasten North American deep integration. At issue is the inclusion of Mexico, long considered by Team Canada to be a usurper of Canada's rightful pride of place in America's heart.

Team Canada, represented by John Manley and Gordon Giffin : Canada is more special to the US than Mexico.

Team Mexico/US, represented by Andrés Rozental and Robert Pastor : No, you aren't - try harder.

Good thing RevDave is here to guide us safely through the towering clichés and treacherous platitudes.

Mexico: Failed State or Same-old Basket-Case?

A soldier inspecting the S.U.V. where three police officers were killed last week in Ciudad Juárez. /Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press
See the windshield? That's fire-power.

THE NEW YORK TIMES article,
"With Force, Mexican Drug Cartels Get Their Way", by Marc Lacy, is a chilling read on a number of levels. The misery that resides in Juarez thanks to the lunacy of the US War on Drugs is ghastly.

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Mayor José Reyes Ferriz is supposed to be the one to hire and fire the police chief in this gritty border city that is at the center of Mexico’s drug war. It turns out, though, that real life in Ciudad Juárez does not follow the municipal code.

Roberto Orduña Cruz, left, was escorted by a police officer after resigning on Feb. 20 as police chief of Ciudad Juárez. Drug cartels vowed to kill an officer every 48 hours until he resigned.

It was drug traffickers who decided that Chief Roberto Orduña Cruz, a retired army major who had been on the job since May, should go. To make clear their insistence, they vowed to kill a police officer every 48 hours until he resigned.

They first killed Mr. Orduña’s deputy, Operations Director Sacramento Pérez Serrano, together with three of his men. Then another police officer and a prison guard turned up dead. As the body count grew, Mr. Orduña eventually did as the traffickers had demanded, resigning his post on Feb. 20 and fleeing the city.

Replacing Mr. Orduña will also fall outside the mayor’s purview, although this time the criminals will not have a say. With Ciudad Juárez and the surrounding state of Chihuahua under siege by heavily armed drug lords, the federal government last week ordered the deployment of 5,000 soldiers to take over the Juárez Police Department. With the embattled mayor’s full support, the country’s defense secretary will pick the next chief.

Chihuahua, which already has about 2,500 soldiers and federal police on patrol, had almost half the 6,000 drug-related killings in all of Mexico in 2008 and is on pace for an even bloodier 2009. Juárez’s strategic location at the busy El Paso border crossing and its large population of local drug users have prompted a fierce battle among rival cartels for control of the city.

“Day after day, there are so many horrible things taking place there,” said Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso who studies Mexico’s drug war. “The cartels are trying to control everything.”

What to do? Well, maybe it's time for the Mexicans to develop their version of the British S.A.S. When they were set upon the IRA, all of a sudden the intransigent became eager to negotiate. Gerry Adams didn't come to the idea that it was time to play nice, without some prodding. Hard times may require some really hard solutions.

Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency

DEFENCE AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST is one of the best sites out there for pondering aspects of defence and warfare. It is also a great place to start learning about John Boyd. Who is Boyd? Go to the site and find out, before the next adversary gets inside your OODA loop.

Anyway, John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus have written an article, "Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency". Apart from murdering Canadian tourists, ill-socialized Mexicans are up to all manner of mayhem:

Grenades are thrown at popular gatherings. Mutilated corpses flood the morgues. Heavily armed gunmen blast police to shreds with high-powered automatic weapons. Just another day in Iraq or Afghanistan? No-all of the events described occur regularly in Mexico. Our southern neighbor is imploding under the weight of a criminal insurgency just as dangerous any crew of bomb-tossing jihadists–an insurgency that may soon envelop our borders.