Security Threat from Mexico Greater Than Iraq, Afghanistan" - Newt Gingrich

"The Perilous State of Mexico" - The Wall Street Journal

"With drug-fueled violence and corruption escalating sharply, many fear drug cartels have grown too powerful for Mexico to control. Why things are getting worse, and what it means for the United States."

And an article which says it ain't that bad.

"Is Mexico heading south?"

There are some sad and puzzling things about this. First, Mexico's troubles in this area, along with Bolivia's, Columbia's and most of Afghanistan's, are due to Americans buying illegal drugs. Supply and demand. The US demands that other countries limit production, asking that their peasants pass up the only opportunity they have to make a living.

Every marijuana user, for example, including any patriot on these boards who uses, is supporting these threats to US security as documented by Newt Gingrich and the WSJ.

Second, the Department of Homeland Security will take away water being carried onto an airplane but cannot stop tons and tons and tons of illegal drugs from entering the country. To say nothing of millions and millions of illegal immigrants.

There is something basically wrong here. We're funding very strange and hostile people, we're filling our jails with people who will never be part of the "system" again, and they have children, and we have no control over foreigners and foreign substances entering the country while we beat up citizens who want to fly somewhere. (I'm not against airport security. I'm saying that if that's all we do we have a false sense of security.

Anyone who wanted to could bring a RPG or man-portable, heat-seeking missile and get a commercial jet at an airport. The missile would transport in a van with people. It's not vigilance which has protected the US from that, it's not security, it's that no one who wants to has bothered.

I wonder what would happen if a rumor that 20 people with 20 missiles were on the verge of entering the US. How many billions upon billions of dollars would that cost the American public? And how effective would the efforts to close the borders be?

I can't help but think the US needs to take a broader look at what it does. Clearly the policies of the country, Democrat and Republican, haven't worked. Nor do they have any prospects of working. And it's not Mexico's fault they are in such trouble.

Arf