| | |  Editorials | Opinions | January 2009 
The Second Greatest Threat to America
 Lee Ellis - OpinionEditorials.com
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Which two countries offer the greatest threat to the United States? If you answered that they both must be in the Middle East, you would be only half right. You would be amazed to learn, as was I, that the second greatest threat to America comes from this hemisphere - yes, right next to us. Former CIA chief Michael Hayden told reporters in January of this year that Mexico could rank alongside Iran as a challenge for President Obama - perhaps a greater problem than Iraq.
The U.S. Justice Department said last month that Mexican gangs are the "biggest organized crime threat to the United States." National security adviser Stephen Hadley said recently that the worsening violence threatens Mexico's very democracy.
Mexico is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a federal district, the capital - Mexico City, whose metropolitan area is one of the most populous.
Glenn Beck, on his new FOX News Channel program of January 26, reported that presently, 23 of these states are each completely controlled by the Mexican Crime Cartel which makes its millions from selling illegal drugs. This cartel is growing rapidly, mainly because over 80% of the police (federales) are on the take from the crime bosses. Thus, these drug lords are making millions of dollars by smuggling drugs into America and threatening our very way of life.
Some of our readers may ask how this creates such a large threat to America, compared to Iran. There are two great reasons why.
Mexico is within inches of a total collapse. If this happens, as Michelle Malkin said today, Venezuela and other Communist countries may take control of our next door neighbor. Think about what is happening to Israel with its enemies across its border.
Secondly, the USA population has reached approximately 304 million as we start 2009. Over 8% - 24 million American men, women and children - are already using or are addicted to illegal drugs - PODs, or Prisoners of Drugs (Not much different from POWs). This is a calamity for this American customer base built by these drug lords in Mexico. This percentage rate keeps increasing each and every year enslaving more and more Americans, especially our youth, robbing them (and America) of future careers and lives. Once a drug seller hooks someone, the price is raised, forcing each customer to turn to crime to fuel his or her addiction. This, in turn, causes our crime rates to increase.
It makes little difference whether Americans are bombed by Iran or converted to a life of drugs and crime by the crime cartel of Mexico, the same number of lives is destroyed. It may take a combination of diplomacy and military action to stop the bombs from Iran, but only education by both schools and good parenting can keep kids from turning to illegal drugs to solve their problems. We are no longer teaching a majority of our youth reliability and consequences, nor imbuing optimism for their future. We witness the results daily in our media due to the lowering of all standards of behavior, civility, courtesy and knowledge in America. A combination of the secular-socialist propaganda and the Mexican crime cartels has increased the downfall of almost all the standards that made this Republic so great. We now have a major part of our government and public in favor of following Europe down the same road to a secularist and socialist society.
Our border agents and walls no longer are able to compete against the Mexican crime cartel as it successfully smuggles illegal drugs, terrorists and other illegal aliens across our borders. These cartels have become so powerful that it even has its own military crossing our borders to kill our agents.
Lest you think that criminal gangs in Mexico are far away from us and no different from our old American Mafia teams or current gangs, think again. Over 500 media sources have reported that just across our border in Tijuana, a Mexican man who calls himself El Pozolero – (The Stew Maker) - has revealed how he dumped 300 bodies in vats of acid over the past decade to dispose of their remains for a drug trafficking cartel.
Santiago Meza Lopez, 45, told police after his capture by the army, that once the victims’ remains had been in the acid baths for 24 hours, he would bury them. He said he only dissolved men, refusing to make women vanish this way. Meza Lopez said he had been paid, in U.S. money, $600 a week for his work by drug boss, Eduardo Garcia Simental. He was arrested in Tijuana on the border with California, and is among the FBI's most wanted men.
The Stew Maker's nickname comes from “pozole,” a stew local to the Tijuana region where he worked. Its ingredients are normally corn, meat and chili.
In 2008, more than 5,300 people died violent deaths connected to cartel activities, with Mexican authorities having deployed some 36,000 police and troops to fight the drug-traffickers.
Many Americans are now being kidnapped in Mexico. On December 15, 2008, the Washington Post reported that an American anti-kidnapping negotiator, whose company says he has resolved almost 100 kidnapping cases in Latin America, was abducted by gunmen -- while meeting with Mexican business executives and their bodyguards to discuss ways to thwart such crimes. The abduction of Felix Batista was bold and chilling, and the report of his disappearance had Mexicans wondering whether anyone was safe.
Decapitation has also become a favorite tactic of warring drug gangs that have contended for control over smuggling routes. Authorities in Tijuana said four decapitated bodies were recently found there, apparent casualties of a violent struggle for control of drug smuggling from Mexico into San Diego. Across our border from El Paso, Texas in Juarez, decapitated bodies have also been found.
All this has affected tourism in Mexico, so much so that Mexico is now close to a failing economy. Glenn Beck said that a friend of his who had gone to one of my favorite places in Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, told him that every third hotel was closed and boarded up. Tourism is dying off for Mexico.
Instead of our new President and Congress thinking of closing Guantanamo and surrendering the war on terrorism, they need to look much closer to our own border gates. The barbarians are indeed at our gates!
Please, President Obama, build stronger gates against terrorism coming across our borders and also keep Guantanamo open. The inmates there are anxious to move to our local prisons as they know, from experience, that it is much easier to recruit new terrorists there! This is how some of them were originally recruited. Fixing America’s economy is necessary, but not if it is to be conquered by the forces of crime and terror moving in across our borders!
Lee Ellis is a retired journalist and narrator, formerly with both CBS and Gannett (USA Weekend). He was also a combat veteran of WWII, having fought in the South Pacific invasions. He had the pleasure of interviewing Ronald Reagan as an actor and then later working to help him become Governor of California. At the age of 80, he is keeping busy writing and doing free lance narrations for radio and television. He is an active member of Rotary and the VFW. indiolee(at)dc.rr.com |
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