(The Mexican Expedition, 1916)
These are challenging times for the retired analytic community. We have a distinct baseline composed of belief and truth, at least to the extent we can tell the difference. We veered into that one with the usual mass of reporting this morning. There were more criminal acts committed by- what are we supposed to call them now? “Newly Arrived Criminals?”
Most of us here recall the 1970s and the hard-to-believe stories of those days. Crime was surging out of control, but at least no one claimed that the situation was “OK.” Action was taken across the country to toughen standards of justice, including mandatory minimum sentences and things like “Three Strikes Laws” that imposed mandatory long jail terms for repeat offenders. We freely acknowledge that they may have had an overstated impact on the segment of the population who were engaged in criminal behavior and their subsequent incarceration. Maybe it went too far, but that is just what people were saying as we stumbled into our current mess.
That legitimate concern turned into something more akin to a hallucination. “The Police are the problem!” goes the mantra, not the criminals. We will undoubtedly see the pendulum swing back the other way as outrages continue to mount. The ones this morning included reports of newly arrived non-citizens driving on the wrong side of highways hitting other motorists head-on, legal visitors to the United States being caught in civic fire-fights and dragged beneath cars for two city blocks. Or the girl whose head was smashed repeatedly against the concrete, captured on video in a gang assault. Which is not to bring up the now “old-news” of Laken Riley’s vicious murder.
These emotional pendulae take their time to arc through the extremes of public expression. So, there is that, and we expect there will be a response. But that also represents the “old think” of which we are guilty. This time, some have sworn not to allow the pendulum to perform its natural swinging motion and make it stop. Like right now.
This seems to be headed for trouble, with millions of non-citizens swarming across our border, but of course that is more antique thinking. Those of us of a certain age recall the events at Waco and Ruby Ridge as a mark of how things can unexpectedly come off the rails. But that requires you to know about rails and the hurtling locomotive of our nation. We had something else to consider this morning. We will try to keep it short and focused to see what you may think, since we have lurched from real concern to frank disbelief.
One of our sources of morning messaging is the Epoch Times. They ran an updated story today from correspondent Brad Jones about events on the Border. He clarified some earlier reporting that can only be described as bewildering. He claims some of the activity in San Diego County isn’t just “migrants” seeking “economic freedom and justice.”
Some of them are, according to video imagery, Mexican Army troops carrying fully automatic weapons in what used to be California. We used to live there and some of our families still do. It is thus a matter of increasing concern, since it appears the view of a “border” between the US and Mexico can be a unilateral misperception. There is a tradition that belies our belief that there is something legal- in fact “sacred” about the boundary between our nations.
We could go back to 1848 for the start of the perception management campaign. On this side of the Rio Grande we called it the “Mexican-American War,” and it featured soldiers who would became national heroes- or traitors- in the later Civil War. The people living south of the river still call it the “United States Intervention in Mexico.”
We don’t think it is partisan to acknowledge that there has always been a little confusion about where the border might be and who can cross it. In those days, the special military operation of the Americans followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, an act with which Mexico disagreed. We stayed in the northern provinces for two years, hoping to settle things down in a new world order.
Sound familiar? Some of the reporting this week suggests the criminal cartels have joined the “refugees” in coming north, and now have stablished a presence in many cities across America. That also is nothing new, although it is the boldest such incursion since the events of 1916, which reflected another minor disagreement about borders and their validity.
The Press- that is what they called Mainstream Media in those days- called it “The Mexican Expedition.” It started out as the more righteous “Punitive U.S. Army Expedition.” It was a military response by the Wilson Administration to the paramilitary forces commanded by the bold Mexican bandit Fransisco “Pancho” Villa. He had taken his armed band to attack the border town of Columbus, New Mexico.
You can understand that Washington was not happy with this aspect of the Mexican Revolution. That turmoil spanned a decade from 1910 to 1920. It also set the tone for the neatly bracketing the horrific conflict of World War One in Europe. Villa’s rash move prompted the dispatch of General “Black Jack” Pershing and a thousand men to punish the recalcitrant Bandito. Or Patriot, depending on whose account you read. The Americans crushed Villa’s army, but failed to capture their leader. They stayed in Mexico for almost a year and got Mexico City’s attention in a strange variation of the cartel activity now in progress.
If any of this seems to echo today, you can yell “stop it!” We will. But the report from Brad Jones are that the Mexican Army, not the banditos crossing the border in hundreds of thousands, have set up camps south of the razor wire in San Diego. He adds that the video of the man in cammies with the full-auto rifle- a machine gun- is walking in what we still are calling the United States.
He reportedly went back south, but his presence is a graphic demonstration that we are in a state of change we no longer comprehend in the same manner we did just a couple years ago. Splash muttered something about a helicopter crash last week that killed three- two Texas National Guard solders and a Border Patrol officer. “I think we may already be in a state of war, although we are not sure with whom. It could be the Cartels, or Iran or the Chinese. They have been sending the equivalent of battalions of young men north across the border. Think they are refugees? Or Chinese-speaking modern Villas?”
There was some initial laughter around the circle but it stopped when we realized who was likely to be called up for the next special military operation and who just who we were likely to be fighting. There was some emotion on that topic, since some of us are not confident we know who our leaders are, you know?
Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com