2009-02-18

 

America's Next Battlefront

America may soon be involved in a new war, with another country.

Pakistan? No.

North Korea? Nope.

Mexico. That's right, I said it. Mexico.

SCENARIO:

The economy continues to spiral downward; round of layoffs one leads to round of government layoffs one, leads to round of layoffs two, leads to round of ....you get the idea. Unemployment gets to 10, and then 15, and then maybe even 20%. The effect in Mexico is even higher, riots, massive drug lord killings of government officials, crime so out of control that the police who can't cope now throw up their hands and walk away. Or worse, they join the other side.

All of this leads to people who are hurting from the economy rushing to the border towns of Tijuana, Mexicali, San Luis Río Colorado, Nogales, Agua Prieta, Puerto Palomas, Juárez, Ojinaga, Ciudad Acuña, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, and Matamoros.

An American millionaire's daughter is kidnapped, raped, and killed in Cancun. Another wealthy American family is slain in Acapulco.

Next these cities turn in to war zones, just like Beirut in the 1980s or Sarajevo of the 1990s. Maybe the people find a racial divide, maybe they don't, but they do find other divides: economic and which side of the drug trade you side with.

But as the economy grows worse, more and more people will cross the criminal line in order just to eat or feed their families.

Of course all this leads to the violence spilling over into the companion cities across the border: San Diego, Calexico, San Luis, Nogales, Douglas, Columbus, El Paso, Presidio, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, Laredo, and Brownsville.

The government of Mexico disintegrates and the ones left alive flee the country with their families. A component just as important, the wealthy families of Mexico also flee, taking their money with them.

Next, while Carlos Slim Helú relaxes in Dubai, the governors of the four border states send their national guard units to the border to help local law enforcement officials who can't handle the escalating crime. Then an event analogous to "remember the Maine" occurs. And we are at war with Mexico.

Is it such a stretch with headlines like these:
The escalating violence was bad enough before the current downturn in the economy, but it is starting to snowball, and soon could be an unstoppable tsunami headed right toward California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and point north.

We don't need a racial divide to rip Mexico apart, an economic one (which is always the real catalyst behind most every single conflict leaving blood through history) will do just fine. But, once the war does spill over into the United States, it will quickly become racial. God help the illegal immigrants from Mexico then. Good 'ole boys with pickups and rifle racks will have a new kind of rabbit to chase down on the way home from the bar at night.

Hillary Clinton and other members of President Obama's team better get down to Mexico City now, and help the Mexican government get on top of this problem before it escalates into U.S. Army soldiers shooting at Mexican citizens.

This will be the Mexican-American War 2. Sometimes I think that the U.S. should have kept after the first one, when Winfield Scott captured Mexico City in September of 1847.

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