“Tom Trulson” - Homeland Security Should Look to Mexico More Than Middle East
March 28, 2011 TOM TRULSON
March 25, 2011
"More than 35,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon ordered a military offensive against the country's drug gangs shortly after taking office in December 2006." This statement in a recent news brief caused me to again wonder if we're focusing too much of our homeland-security efforts too far from home.
While I agree that al-Qaida and similar extremist groups pose a significant-and-real threat to American security that shouldn't be ignored, what is occurring daily in Mexico is perhaps much more of an immediate and long-term threat.
While the feuding drug cartels may not have nuclear weapons (yet), or religious aspirations of destroying Western civilization and everything for which it stands, what they do have is a volatile mixture of guns, cash and illegal drugs with the fuse being their utter lack of respect for human life.
Attacks within our borders by so-called terrorist groups have been few since 9/11, but the rampage in Mexico continues daily and spills across the border into the United States regularly.
Are the powers that be in Washington so focused on maintaining trade agreements and such with Mexico that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the real-and-imminent threat poised just to our south? The administration's laissez-faire approach to the illegal-immigration crisis is bad enough.
If Washington continues to downplay or ignore the even-more-viable threat to America from the Mexican drug wars, the body count will only go higher while the cartels and their wannabes grow in strength and territory.
