Bordering Disaster
IBD Editorials
Posted 06/04/2010 06:53 PM ET
National Security: A Mexican cartel plots to blow up a dam — in Texas! Another pack of Mexican terrorists takes cash from Hugo Chavez. And what is Washington wringing its hands about? Why, racism in Arizona.
If still more proof is needed that the border needs to be secured, the latest threats emerging from Mexico should do the trick. Together, they signal that the country's war could advance to a more savage stage.
Last month, the Los Zetas paramilitary drug cartel tried to blow up the Falcon Dam near Zapata, Texas, on the Rio Grande River. The motive was to destroy a smuggling route controlled by the rival Gulf Cartel. Had it succeeded, 534 billion gallons of water could have been unleashed onto a region of 4 million people.
The plot was primitive, and U.S. lawmen took preemptive steps to foil it. But it showed motive, and the threat remains. On Friday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry called it a reminder that more federal resources are needed to secure the border. Perry said he hoped he never had to tell U.S. officials "we told you so" after a major attack.
Moreover, the threat is no longer just over smuggling routes. Last Tuesday, the Washington Examiner quoted Mexican and U.S. intelligence sources as saying Mexico's Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR), a Marxist terror organization aligned with drug cartels, is secretly receiving funds from Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.
The group seeks to overthrow the Mexican government while engaging in drug trafficking, much as the FARC guerrillas do in Colombia. What's disturbing here is not just EPR's growing ties to the drug trade — which in time could lead to an alliance with the Zetas. It's the threat to Mexico's democracy, as well as the group's expertise in destroying infrastructure like gas lines, which EPR did in 2007.
FARC itself has also begun operating in Mexico, cutting out drug trafficking middlemen to forge closer ties with Mexico's cartels. StrategyPage, an intelligence forecaster, warned that FARC could begin launching attacks against the U.S. from Mexico in an effort to stop the U.S. from helping Colombia in its war on drugs back home.
These blood-chilling scenarios aren't fantasies. They are signs of an emerging threat that gets little attention from U.S. lawmakers. Instead of focusing on making the border secure, they play partisan political games, pandering to potential voting blocs by dangling amnesty in front of illegal immigrants, grandstanding against Arizona's effort to enforce federal law and coming up with one excuse after another for not erecting a border fence.
As illegal armed groups plot to blow up infrastructure even in this country, Democrats in Congress are more concerned about an illegal immigrant getting his feelings hurt if a police officer in Arizona asks him to show some ID.
Such distractions create opportunities for Mexico's already-odious drug traffickers to be even more ambitious.
The developments from Mexico parallel what happened in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s, before that country got a grip on how to defeat drug lords.
As drug lords such as Medellin cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar became rich and powerful, their depredations became increasingly callous and casual. Trying to murder a politician, Escobar blew an Avianca 727 out of the sky in 1989, killing 110 people.
To destroy court records that could have meant extradition to the U.S., he teamed up with the Marxist terrorist group M-19 to blow up Colombia's supreme court building, killing 11 justices in 1985 to make sure the papers burned.
He also played politics, aligning with left-wing lawyers and human rights activists, claiming fealty to the poor and victimhood for himself on the human rights front. After Escobar's demise in 1993, political terrorist groups such as FARC took his place.
Now we have Mexican cartels and terrorists emerging in the same pattern. The plot on the border dam and Chavez's funding of Marxist narcoterrorists are an emerging menace that demands immediate attention. Mexican groups like EPR and the drug cartels find only advantage in Congress' indifference to security and laugh at its political priorities.
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