There needs to be a full scale invasion of our troops into Mexico, but the actuality of that ever happening is a laugh. We're tied up to the teeth with Iraq, Iran and Syria, and we're stretched so thin, thanks to Clinton's thinning of our troops, that that's about all we can handle. In fact we're not even handling Iraq correctly right now because we're still letting al-Sadr run around doing more damage than the terrorists! Bush, who seemed to have a backbone after 9/11 (and who I also promised never to bash) is not who he was after 9/11. Instead of swimming on top of the water, and not drowning in it either, seems to be sort of floating around on his back. "Appeasement" will kill us, because we are not going to be able to appease these sons-of--their -mothers, no matter what we do! Either this is war with no holds barred, or we are dead. It's as simple as that.

Great post, Seth. Keep it up!

Gayle --

Thanks.

That is so true.

The Dubya we reelected in 2004 is not the same President we elected in 2000. He seems to have suffered a softening of the spine, or perhaps a lightening of committment.

He allows attacks from the left to modify his resolve and cause him to back away from the promises he made to the American people after 9/11.

His immigration policies do not correspond with the law of the land. His committment to homeland security has waned in the face of attacks by entities whom he shoud rightfully consider completely insignificant.

So now we have major wetback rights, Mexican troops enforcing for foreign drug traffickers on U.S. soil and enemies of the state dictating our conduct of the War On Terror and Homeland Security.

And we're allowing our grip on the Iraqi theatre to slip away.

If this keeps up, the United States will become the bone for 2 dogs to fight over -- the socialist canine and the Muslim mutt, and we, the people will have no influence on the matter.

Seth,
Agree fully. Your use of "2 dogs to fight over -- the socialist canine and the Muslim mutt," sent me to Wiki-Peed's section on 'political epithets'..where we find precedent with Mao's "Running dogs of Capitalist Imperialism". Of course they
eat canines and perhaps, like yourself, inject cuisine with politics. Which, by the way, are suggestive of "Dog-whistle" politics. Doggone, it's a dog-eat-dog world. :)

The solution to this problem is simple. Merely post notices in south AL, GA, TN, KY announcing an open season on Mexican drug trafficers and Mexican military north of thier border, that there is no bag limit, with a daily possession of not more than six, that they taste a bit like buffalo, and that there is free beer at the end of each "hunt day," and Bubba will have the shitsheeashun under control in no time! Seriously!

Were a couple of those "heavily armed Mexican military HMMWVs" to be on the receiving end of a HEAT round delivered by an M1 Tank or a HELLFIRE delivered by an APACHE, they may think a bit harder before breeching our border in order to provide screen cover for their dopers. But then, I'm the kind of guy that carries a .44 magnum when invited to a knife fight.

BB --

We are being dogged by two anti-American dogmas, one from within and one from without. The internal one is aiding and abetting the external one, which, if successful, will then behead said internal one, at which time and way too late, the latter will realize that they've screwed the pooch.

Good cuisine is welcome at any time, with or without politics, sort of like when I was a kid and used to go to the bakery to buy fresh rolls (good Jewish bakeries are becoming scarcer and scarcer as their immigrant founders pass away and the kids, toting college degrees these founding folks' hard work financed, move on to other things -- judging by the same products put out by the bakeries in big chain supermarkets, it is apparent that even the baking of good kaiser rolls has become a lost art), and indicate "with or without seeds".

Dog is a big delicacy in some places (not in my house!), especially in Asia. Over there, they say, "chau time".

Ah, so! Tonight for dinnah, we have exerrent dish. We have Peking doggy with nooders an' flied lice!

Old Soldier, both solutions are good ones. Get the good ol' boys into the picture, LOL.

On the second, it should be a real option -- it's not our fault that Mexican troops are pulling this BS on our soil -- we didn't provoke them -- whether their superiors are cognizant of it or not.

It is, however, well within our purview to address the situation in a suitable manner. A tank round or a helo fired missile would be perfectly suitable and might even encourage fellow Mexican troops to desist from future such incursions. :-)

My maternal ancestors hail from Tennessee, so I think that Old Soldier has an idea which might curtail the advancement of these Mexican forays:

The solution to this problem is simple. Merely post notices in south AL, GA, TN, KY announcing an open season on Mexican drug trafficers and Mexican military north of thier border...

You know, Seth, I don't think our government is going to do a solitary thing to seal our borders. With this new session of Congress coming, I'm expecting the worst. GWB has always been soft on immigration, and he also doesn't like to wield the veto-pen.

It's only a matter of time before Al-Qaeda or a similar group smuggles a WMD or WMD's across. Additionally, South America has plenty of terrorists, of all sorts.

Our national sovereignty is going down the drain.

Maybe I'm being too pessimistic?

Another question is where is the press? Why isn't this in the news? Where are the headlines?

AOW --

Maybe I'm being too pessimistic?

We both belong to the same club, then, though my own belief is that Bush's motive has more to do with expectations of the NAU becoming reality in another 4 years, thus rendering preventing illegal immigration today a complete waste of time. I believe his signing legislation for a border wall was a pre-election political move, nothing more. Nobody's going to be funding that wall, not with an incoming Democrat majority.

Since the Democrats welcome a flood of immigration from Mexico, legal or otherwise, Bush won't even have to wrestle with the issue.

If any suitcase nukes arrive in American cities, be assured that they'll have been brought in over the Mexican border.

Shoprat --

They probably haven't yet figured out how to write it up without getting too many more voters worked up about a need for better border security, which wouldn't be good for agendas of the left.

"Another question is where is the press? Why isn't this in the news? Where are the headlines?"

a story about mexican ,ilitary assisting drug cartels at our border? there is no story, as seth and cns are lying to you. try googling "los zetas" and you'll find plenty of articles.

KEvron

KEvron --

Since you seem so frantic to get your "message" out, I will humor you this one time.

The Los Zetas tale is based on a program back, I think, in the early 1990s, that was entirely cosmetic (diplomatic BS) in which the SF "trained" some Mexican soldiers to combat the drug cartels who were troubling Mexico -- it was supposed to demonstrate our solidarity with Mexico in the war on drugs, yadda-yadda-yadda, and was little more than symbolic.

The Mexican soldiers did not receive any "commando training", they barely even got the equivalent of US Army basic training and spent most of their time in the 3 or 4 month period in classrooms "learning" stuff they probably already knew from their own basic training.

Since then, the whole Los Zetas thing got blown way out of proportion. People even capitalize on it, claiming to be a member of Los Zetas, for self publicity, to intimidate, etc.

Sorry, chum, but I know all about that story, I have spent a good amount of time in and around Mexico, and the border region is an old stomping ground of mine.

I'm sure you can Google up all sorts of rumors and legends about this BS, but I personally wouldn't waste my time. It's pure modern folk lore.

A myth.

"Since you seem so frantic"

perhaps you could explain the meaning of this word to your readers.

"to get your "message" out"

my message is a simple one: you're a bigot and a liar.

"It's pure modern folk lore."

translation: "your facts tend to undermine my bigoted diatribes."

the fbi seem to have fallen for that "lore"....

KEvron

KEvron --

The Bureau falls for a lot of things. They get a lot of their "information" from locals who either feed them 8th hand scuttlebutt or from people trying to deal their way out of unrelated problems, or people having a joke at their expense. They listen to rumors.

In most situations where they are dealing with people of a mindset different from Americans', our federal enforcement agencies are unable to adapt and think from those folks' perspectives. Have you ever been in a barrio in a Latin-American country, KEvron? I have. Several. There's no welfare, no unemployment and there are large families, lots of children to feed. Gaunt, big-eyed children with tragedy stamped into their faces from an early age, as often as not with running sores visible, playing in an environment of disease and open sewers, and nobody gives a damn. If there's no work, desperation and hunger lead to a view of life most of us here in the U.S. couldn't begin to know. The criminals that emerge from such environs make most of our own homegrown variety look squeamish.

That said, any of the myriad vicious Mexican drug gangs that want to use the myth to intimidate or to bolster their image are free to call themselves "Los Zetas" -- there's no hierarchy, not even a franchise, nobody who will be victimized by usurpage. The Bureau could catch someone who is the leader of "Los Zetas" in Nogales one day, and another who is the leader of "Los Zetas" in Juarez the next, and they still wouldn't get it.

My point being that the Mexican soldiers referred to in my post are totally unrelated to the myth upon which you expound.

Case closed.

Seth, why are you wasting your time on a trolling SF liberal socialist? Whatever a unionized cable monkey is; polite, cordial, considerate, etc. are not attributes displayed by him/her/it in conservative blog comment streams.

Old Soldier --

I don't know what a unionized cable monkey is, either, LOL. Given his geographic location and stated horizontal preferences, I would assume he enjoys doing things with "cable".

I generally delete his (I think) comments on sight, and will continue to do so, which is why I ended my last comment "case closed".

I would chalk up my above replies to his misinformed comments to "isolated seasonable charity to the less fortunate". :-)

Kevron,

The fault lies not with the people, but with corrupt, power-lusting governments who milk them mercilessly. Free the people from the constraints of totalitarian elitism, and voila! Problem solved!

Here's the lineage of your particular view of reality (my apologies to everyone, especially toSeth; I promise never to do anything like this again! I swear!):

It was Plato who first decided that the mind of the common man was so incompetent that the only way humanity could hope to muddle through was to be ruled by a governing elite that would always have the last word. In short, a totalitarian elite.

It was his student, Aristotle, who said no way, the mind of the common man is completely competent to manage his life, and we don't need a ruling elite to micromanage life. Aristotle was the guy who discovered the Law of Identity, the Law of Causality, the first steps in concept formation, logic, the dictionary - well, you get the picture.

For reasons I will not go into here, Aristotle's thinking was responsible for the emergence of the Greek "Golden Age."

Plato and Aristotle actually had a huge fight over their different views, especially the concept-formation one, which I will not burden you with now. They didn't completely sever their relationship, but they could never really work closely together again.

Eventually, Aristotle got a job with Philip II of Macedon as tutor to his son, Alexander. You know, the Great. Alexander went on to conquer most of the known world, and "Hellenized" the conquered territories. Part of "Hellenization" included the introduction of Greek philosophers, including Aristotle. Just as this kind of thinking had kick-started the Greek Golden Age, it kick-started the same process in the whole Hellenized world.

Great centers of learning sprouted up all over the place as a result. Pergamum, Byzantium, Alexandria, etc. came first, followed by (in the days prior to Islam), Damascus, Baghdad, Nisibis etc. The (then still pagan) Arabs and Persians loved the new Greek way of thinking, and got so good at it that they started their own "Golden Age."

That lasted for only a while after the Muslims conquered those cities; a Muslim scholar at a university in Baghdad named Al-Ghazali had a crisis of faith, so he went off into the desert for a ten-year sabbatical, then came back to found Islamic fundamentalism. He hated Aristotle.

His arguments for fundamentalism sounded so dumb to the Golden Age scholars that they almost laughed Al-Ghazali out of town. Then Al-Ghazali got an idea; he stole bits and pieces of Aristotle's invention, logic, and framed his arguments to sound like that.

That worked. He gained more followers, and with the help of an early Islamic version of the Spanish Inquisition, he wore the opposing scholars down. Eventually, they disappeared, and along with them, so did the "Muslim" Golden Age.

Not long after that, the mullahs had a meeting and froze Islam in the fundamentalist mold, and declared that any change thereafter would be regarded as a sin punishable by death. They were the ones who said that the recently writen Koran was the eternal, unchageable word of Allah.

The only remnant of the Greek philosophers that was left in Islam after that was a little neoplatonism. It's a long story, so I won't go into that, either; suffice it to say that Plato's non-religious ideas (Platonism) were changed by an early Roman Christian named Plotinus into religious ideas (hence "neo"platonism).

But that's not the end of the Plato-Aristotle story.

The Christians liked Plato a lot, but weren't fond of Aristotle. When the Barbarians invaded Italy, the monks grabbed their copies of Plato, Plotinus, Galen's medical texts, and fled to fortified hilltops. The only Aristotle they took was some of his work on logic.

So, while the Golden Age was under assault in the Islamic Middle East, Aristotle was lost in the West. The Barbarians weren't readers, so they didn't make any copies of the Greeks or anything else. Being biodegradable an all that, books pretty much disappeared, except for the ones the monks took.

But there was light in the darkness. Spain was conquered by the Muslims, and they brought their book collections with them. Spain was far away from the Middle East, and the last to feel the full force of the anti-intellectualism of the fundamentalists.

One brilliant scholar born in Spain of a Muslim father and a convert (?) mother, was named Ibn Rushd (Averroes was his Spanish name). He was a real fan of Aristotle, as well as a judge and a physician. He spent most of his adult life "cleaning up" all the changes that had been made in Aristotle's work in previous centuries, and returned them to their original form. He wrote his commentaries (he was known as the "Great Commentator") at three levels - beginner, intermediate, and advanced. It is thought that they were aimed at students.

He had some pretty odd ideas, including about women; he said Islam was shooting itself in the foot because it regarded women as possessions and ornaments, and didn't permit them to become involved in productive intellectual work.

A lot of this kind of thinking didn't sit well with his fundamentalist North African colleagues, so they tried to destroy his work, and then banished him. Somehow, though, all was forgiven, and he soon died (under suspicious circumstances) and was given the proper Islamic credentials to enter paradise.

But wait, there's more! For a couple of hundred years, the Spanish had been slowly pushing their Muslim conquerers out of Spain, and as they did so, they gained access to the libraries, some of which still had copies of Aristotle and Ibn Rushd's works. Bishop Raymund of Toledo got terribly excited, and formed a translating group of Christians, Jews, and Muslims to begin translating into several languages, including Latin. To his great credit, the Bishop did not impose his own views on this effort.

By 1492 (that's right, the year Columbus sailed; the reason Isabella had to sell her jewelry to finance Columbus was because the campaign to oust the Muslims had drained the treasury), the Muslims were gone, and the translations entered Italy in droves.

Since the Church favored Plato more than Aristotle, this sudden influx of Aristotle got them a little nervous. St. Thomas Acquinas, a neoplatonist whom some believe was a
"closet Aristotelian," stepped up to the plate and tried to reconcile Plato/neoplatonism with Aristotelianism. He failed (if the two guys themselves couldn't reconcile, how did Acquinas think he could referee them?), but now, instead of leaks from Spain, there were whole treatises on Aristotle, and they were in Latin!

That was the end of the Dark Age, and the beginning of the Renaissance, which led to the Enlightenment. The birthplace of the Enlightenment was Britain, whence, like Hellenism, spread with the British Empire throughout the English-speaking world. This led to the design and implementation of the United States and its Constitution. This was the first document in human history to assert that rights were inherent in the nature of human beings, and that governments existed only to protect them.

In the meantime, back in Continental Europe, the Enlightenment hadn't taken root so well, and Plato/neoplatonism were still a much greater influence there than they were in the English-speaking lands. While Britain and its heirs went down the "Aristotle-Ibn Rushd-Locke-Jefferson" et al. path, Continental Europe followed a path that included much more of the "Plato-Kant-Hegel-Marx/Engel" et al. route. These guys, especially Germany, agreed with Plato; the state, the government, the group, was supreme, and the individual was merely a "cell" in the state "organism" (that's the "Organic Theory of State") and his raison d'etre was only to support the state. After all, the people who formed the government were smarter than the rest of us, and thus were the Ruling Elite, totalitarian-style.

Anyway, Kevron, that's the lineage of (non-classical) liberalism/leftism/socialism/communism/fascism (I know, fascism comes as a shock, doesn't it?) and all manner of postmodern elitists. That's why they are so anti-American. As an aside, "modern" thinkin refers to the Aristotelian style Enlightenment thinking of the Founders and Authors of the Constitution.

How did you become a postmodernist? Well, after the Revolution and the War of 1812, some of us were still pissed off at the Brits, so instead of sending our sons to Britain to finish their educations, they sent them to Germany (the home of Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Engel). When the boys came back home, they brought these collectivist ideas bacl with them and then year after year, they entered every profession - entertainment, publishing, the law, politics, and - you guessed it - education.

You were educated by a bunch of folks who have been the target of the postmodernists and their predecessors for the last 150 years; when education came under government control in the mid-1800s, they jumped at the opportunity to access the captive minds of an entire population of children.

By the mid-1900s, they had succeeded, and by the 1960s, the flower-children and hippies demonstrated that the postmoderns (as they became widely known by this time) had won the battle for the hearts and minds of our children.

PC was one of the most potent weapons in this battle for the minds of American children, and it is the hallmark of the culture today.

All I have to say to you and your fellows is "Be careful what you wish for - you may get it."

And never, NEVER underestimate the power of ideas!

Cubed --

Welcome.

There is nothing to apologize for, I welcome comments such as yours anytime. The chronological progression was superb, and I must say I picked up quite a bit of information alomg the way. :-)

If the intended recipient chooses to reply intelligently, pro or con, rather than in his usual manner, I will not delete his comment.