The violence caused by warring drug cartels in Mexico is worsening by the day. Over the weekend, Americans were targeted and killed. When does it end?
According to the NYTimes:
UNIÓN, Mexico — Gunmen believed to be linked to drug traffickers shot a pregnant American consulate worker and her husband to death in the violence-racked border town of Ciudad Juárez over the weekend, leaving their baby wailing in the back seat of their car, the authorities said Sunday. The gunmen also killed the husband of another consular employee and wounded his two young children.
Gunmen killed an American consulate worker and her husband in Ciudad Juárez. Their baby was found in the back seat.
The New York Times
The F.B.I. was sending agents to Ciudad Juárez on Sunday.
The shootings took place minutes apart and appeared to be the first deadly attacks on American officials and their families by Mexico’s powerful drug organizations, provoking an angry reaction from the White House. They came during a particularly bloody weekend when nearly 50 people were killed nationwide in drug-gang violence, including attacks in Acapulco as American college students began arriving for spring break.
The Mexican govenment has 10,000 troops in border towns. Secretary of Clinton has sent strong warnings to the Meixican government. Triggering the drug trafficking is competition over the American drug market. What steps can be taken to cut down on Americans and American interests being harmed by this continuing violence? it all seems rather hopeless. Americans use drugs, human beings are greedy. Where is the weak link here?
“What steps can be taken to cut down on Americans and American interests being harmed by this continuing violence?”
The whole open-borders policy that Bush and Obama has propogated should be reversed. Right now criminals are able to elude capture by crossing the border at will.
How to make our border more secure? Stop accepting “undocumented” into our society as a norm.
What has Obama said about open borders? That is the best kept secret in town.
Also, how would cutting down on undocumented help this situation that is spilling over into our country? The violence is that and is often the cause of decent people coming here undocumented. They want to escape the violence.
Someone needs to remind these druglords that Mexico is a gun free zone.
“how would cutting down on undocumented help this situation that is spilling over into our country?”
Because it would be less easy to hide and blend in after crossing illegally and existing without legal documentation, if that weren’t a norm.
The violence in Mexico is about drug money and drug routes/systems not immigration. This is Columbia all over again – and it was not resolved by law enforcement or the CIA – it was resolved by Los Pecos – who quite literally took out the Escaboar cartel one by one. Hundreds died. But, as the Mexicans point out – the problem is demand. Its no different than Prohibition. Legalize it, regulate it, educate about it, control and tax it.
Our broken immigration system obviously helps the drug trade.
This is funny stuff. best kept secret? Only for you, I’m afraid. In fact, now taxpayer dollars are going to universities in California to pay for development of a cellphone app to HELP illegals cross the borders! What’s the missing link? Border Security. Before Christ walked in human form, the Chinese knew how to build a wall. Guns, Drugs, and criminals cross into the US every day. Hell, for that matter, illegals from Mexico has Ganja farms in California that they tend to on a regular basis!! My female cat can figure out how to stop this problem, but not our federal government. And it’s actually ONE OF THEIR JOBS!!!! Troops need training? Station them on the border. Don’t prosecute them for shooting a drug lord. God, could we BE this stupid?
Oh, and what has Oblamo said about open borders? nothing, but one should not focus on what he says, as it’s all lies anyway. Instead, focus on what he DOES, or what he doesn’t do.
Oh I forgot [slapping self on forehead], there was no illegal immigration until Obama got elected. Silly me. Captain, you are so anti-Obama that you lose crediblity.
I am going to agree with Tax-person. The violence has everything to do with the drug problem. I also think his solutions make the most sense.
You can’t walk up to everyone who looks ‘Mexican’ and ask to see their papers. If the person is drug trafficking, you will be dead before you can blink anyway.
Capt.
We have had walls in many places and for a long time. Walls do not keep people in or out. Those who REALLY want to, will go over, under and around the walls.
How much money have we spent on the wall between Mexico and the US? How much money has been spent the towers that track the border crossers. How many troups can we afford to put on the southern border while at war in Iraq and Afghanistan besides keeping an eagle eye on the North Koreans?
Why don’t you lend your smart female cat to Homeland Security so she can tell them what to do? Or, perhaps you can ask her and tell the Federal government what to do.
(is your male cat not as smart, maybe?)
P.S. What has happened to the Minutemen who kept watch night and day along the border.
(There was a very active group of Minutemen in Herndon a few years back, but they have disappeared too, even though there a loads of day laborers on Elden St ready to be photographed)
Ah, but no sane or intelligent person could read “Obama invented illegal immigration” into what I said! But we’re dealing with someone who drools over the “Cuccinelli is a birther” piece, then has the arrogance to even mention the word “credibility.” Please, do go on, oh source of all non-partisan credibility! The world awaits the next pearls of non-partisan wisdom!
I’m an optimist. I bet even you could figure out how to build a wall that would work. Myself, I can come up with five designs right off the top of my head that would work. I bet you could figure one out! Here’s a thought, instead of giving stimulus money to the Univ. of Maryland to study the effects of meth-ampehetamine on the sex drives of female mice (thank our Savior they’ve finally gotten to work on THAT), give them some “free” tax-payer dollars to study “how to build a wall that actually works”! Oh, I see the problem. I didn’t mention that the troops I’ve stationed along the wall have .308s with real ammunition, and the skills to use them. Want to come through my wall now, genius?
Oh, we won the war in Iraq because of Bush! Twitching and “ticking” yet?
First, the DHS wall – and technology are working – that is exactly why the violence in Mexico has escallated along with the price of drugs – as the number of available routes have been squeezed and the different cartels and middle men are competing to control those remaining access points. Can we afford it – its a long route and the real problem for the DHS has been in split communities and the local open border groups and businesses. So yes Obama has to take a hit here because he’s been extraordinarilly weak with these constituencies. The environmental types have also been a problem. So its really two separate issues. At the split communities it will take some strong political will to push back on the open border/family types to see who really is an American. In the rural deserts – I say put in mine fields. They are cheaper and more effective, and if a donkey or a mule gets hurt illegally crossing, they should have read the sign, in german — Mine Field !.
Americans appetite for illegal drugs is what fuels these drug wars. We also sell them lots and lots of guns. If Americans stopped buying drugs from, and selling gus to, Mexico, that would go a long way toward reducing drug violence in Mexico.
A wall isn’t practical and really wouldn’t work.
I prefer a virtualized kinetic shield built overlooking a no man’s land (not mexican or american territory…a DMZ of sorts) that would stop any consitutional question of using lethal force on anyone in the zone. The zone would be automated to destroy anything that moved. Deployment of a land based ground penetrating radar/sonar system to detect mining activities and report that information to local/state/federal authorities.
Now thats a social program I might back! 🙂
Then again, I wish the General Assembly would issue out Letters of Marques to any Virginian boater that’ll sink or take command of any Maryland vessels and return them to Richmond for presentation before a Prize Court. Monies should be shared between the privateer and the State. We could take Annapolis and solve our VA budget woes in a few months! 🙂
We love you Starry. Knives don’t kill – people do, especially people with the kinds of incentives that the Mexican drug lords create in order to control shipments and reap the economic rewards of such sales. And its not just drugs – people smuggling is just as big a business – its just not quite as profitable. We need to seal the border – period – and to do that people are gonna get hurt. When that becomes an acceptable axiomatic to you liberals, our national defense will improve, the risk of terrorism will go down, our kids will be safer, health care and education costs will plummet and there will be more jobs in America.
PWC, don’t forget the rainbows.. Plenty of rainbows from the government kettle.
Slowpoke, it is time for you to find another blog. Elena and I are tired of the insults and so are some of our other contributors. You have been rude, crude and obnoxious. You are one to speak of arrogance.
Slowpoke,
You used to be funny in a dry sense of humor kind of way. But now you just seem really angry. You call the President “Oblamo” and other nepharious names on a regular basis and you think anything you say about him holds any meaning? I NEVER talked about President Bush the way you talk about President Obama. Your contribution for anything meaningful to the conversation has really dwindled in recent weeks. Maybe you should take a break, focus on your family, do something that makes you feel good about you.
It’s no different than some other posters on here engaging in name calling. Seems like both sides do it. So, by this logic I should discount anything said by a significant subset of posters on here – about some members of the PWC BOCS that people have called some pretty bad names and things. If I do that – it will knock out quite a few of the regular posters here!
Asking Slowpoke to leave suggests that the liberal blogger elites’ skins have gotten a little thin. Instead of circle jerking with other mass media and Democrate party apperachnicks, the blog has had to deal with real reactions and alternative policy designs. Its not just Slowpoke that is getting angrier at both the Administration and the Congress. I suggest Elena, that you step back from your urban social, entitlement and political agenda and take a look at what is happening in mainstream America. The name calling really started with the Liberal reaction to the Tea Party, which continues to grow. BTW I still think Slowpoke and the Captain are funny in the vein of Steward and Colburn, Letterman and Ed Shultz. Its just that these liberal media types serve to reinforce your minority views.
Best Tea Party rally sign yesterday — “If you think Health Care is expensive now, wait till its Free.”
So what are you trying to say? Should we just give up? I have to believe that all of the above is at least stemming the flow of illegals into the USA. For every illegal that these walls and security measures stop from entering, that’s a good thing.
It’s never going to be perfect, and there’s never going to be a way to stop every person from entering the USA illegally, obviously.
However, the technology is improving, and I don’t think we should just throw up our hands and say forget about the walls, the security, etc. at our borders and just let anyone in who wants to come in. Maybe that’s not what you were saying, and if so, that’s good.
As long as the border situation doesn’t take away from our troops being needed in places like South Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and other parts of the world where they are needed, then we should at least keep staffing at the border at its current levels, I think.
I don’t really know that anyone can say what troop levels are necessary for Afghanistan and Iraq. However, having been in South Korea and talking to people in South Korea several times a week due to my job and having a system I’m working on deployed in South Korea – I think we have sufficient troops there given what the current situation there. We have a ton of technology there keeping an eye on the North Koreans – they really can’t blink without us knowing it. I know, because the system I have deployed there collects all the information that’s gathered by different sources, aggregates it and sends it on to troops all over the South Korean peninsula.
I do notice that it seems name calling on this blog is OK when it’s done on people who the majority of posters on this site dislike – such as the Virginia AG or certain members of the PWC BOCS, for example. However, right away it’s disliked if it is done on people who the majority of posters on this site like. Kind of a bit hypocritical.
Now, I don’t like name calling at all, and really don’t think you can find a post of mine that has done that.
I just think it’s interesting when one poster is loudly called out for name calling, and it is suggested they go away from the site – while others are allowed to get away with it time after time after time. I’ve seen members of the PWC BOCS called vicious things that I won’t repeat because I think some of those words have been banned and this post might get auto-filtered out. Never was it suggested those posters should leave. I’ve seen Tea Party members called vicious things but never was it suggested any of those posters should leave.
It is interesting how blinders are turned on to those kinds of posts (or at least those posters are never called out which leaves me to believe their posts are condoned), but when one poster chooses to engage in name calling of someone the majority of posters on this site like, he is called out and almost told to go away for awhile at least!
I just find the whole thing fascinating! Of course, the admins of this site are free to make their own rules and run the site any way they wish. However, they run into the danger of the site being thought as possibly not accepting contrary viewpoints, or having two sets of standards – one for people they agree with (name calling is allowed by those people) and one for people they disagree with (name calling is not allowed). I actually think all name calling is bad, but that’s just me and my own personal opinion.
I’d say either allow name calling by all posters, or don’t allow it by any poster. You can’t have it both ways and be thought of as being “fair”.
Of course, if the reason the poster is being asked to leave is that he has leveled insults at the admins, that’s a whole other story. Obviously, the admins should not have to be forced to put up with insults against them.
Actually Taxpayer, now I am asking you to leave also. How dare you call Elena out on where she lives and her life style! You are on the wrong blog, buddy.
And you can get a little taste of my elitist thin skin.
Gainesville has gotten it right. Politics is fair game. Taking cheap personal shots at us on our blog really takes elephant balls.
Thanks GR, for pointing that out.
@PWC Taxpayer
“I suggest Elena, that you step back from your urban social, entitlement and political agenda and take a look at what is happening in mainstream America. The name calling really started with the Liberal reaction to the Tea Party, which continues to grow.”
I have never called you a name, nor did I call Slowpoke any names and yet you are insulting me directly. I am not “entitled” and I’m not even sure why you would say that. I moved out of my house at 18, paid for my own undergrad and graduate degrees. I have worked my entire life until I had children, and now I work as a mom, best job ever. I am not going to argue about the tea party, I have plenty of close friends and relatives who are shocked and dismayed at the what they have seen at town hall meetings and rallys. It isn’t liberal elitism, its an expectation of civil behavior.