All the crazy talk from Janet Brewer about beheadings put me in mind of the wingnut obsession with beheading during the glory days of the Iraq war. And it got me thinking just how interchangeable the various scary places filled with brown people are. Steve M.:
People forget this now, but right-wing talk about foreign policy in the Bush years was like a Surrealist European art film from the 1960s, one in which the same character could be played by two different actors and the same location by different landscapes. When it suited right-wing bloviators, Osama bin Laden was played by Osama bin Laden; at other times, he was played by Saddam Hussein. When an al-Qaeda tape surfaced and spreading fear was useful, we were told that the most dangerous enemy was in (or was being dispatched from) Afghanistan and Pakistan; at other times, Iraq was Afghanistan and Pakistan (“the main front in the War on Terror”). And on and on.
The confusing surrealist narrative goes even deeper than this, of course: as you all know, Saddam Hussein was an ally before he became Hitler (same for bin Laden). And Pinochet, who, like Saddam Hussein, killed tens of thousands of his own people, was eulogized by Fred Hiatt and others — as a bulwark against the greater Hitler of communism — when he died.
But I’m getting off track here. My question is this: does Mexico have the potential to be the next great Home of Hitler, a place that must be invaded or at least used as symbol of everything that is evil?
Jude
Fuck yes it does. Hell, Mexico even “invaded” the US at one time. Then you get all the nativists who are terrified of the state of Aztlan, and you scare a few more people with talk of a failed state becoming a haven for al Qaeda, and you’re talking invasion time. You know that the Beltway crowd will go for it–they always do. And do I really need to drag out Goering’s statement to Gustave Gilbert about how to start a war?
Unfortunately, it’s easy to make them the next Hitler.
El Cid
An essential part of the violence talk that Brewer et al have been allowed in the AZ immigration debate has been to discuss narco-trafficking and its related violence as if it were ‘illegal immigration’. Narco-traffickers already defy laws and would be crossing the border and committing violence as long as there are $billions$ to be made in narco-trafficking and dealing of illegal drugs, no matter what the laws may be on illegal immigration. The deputy who was shot was shot as he was inspecting a marijuana field, not Jose coming over to try and be a carpenter or something.
So now, drug trafficking and dealing = immigration.
Resident Firebagger
Unless they find lots of oil under Mexico, I’d say they’re not a candidate for invasion…
DougJ
@Resident Firebagger:
What if they suddenly find a trillion dollars in rare minerals?
hidflect
Mexico will never be invaded so long as they are keeping up the regular supply of drugs and consistently increasing purchases of US-made weapons…
El Cid
There is nothing the US or Mexico can do to seriously cut down on narco-trafficking until the US takes the illegal consumer market away via legalization / decriminalization.
The Mexican nation-state is currently fracturing. The closest comparable model, Colombia, has been the recipient of absolutely massive amounts of US, is still the leading producer and shipper of narcotics by far (though our asshole foreign policy and punditry still tries to blame Venezuela for Colombia’s narco-trafficking).
No amounts of military and police crackdown in Colombia has reduced this problem in truly significant ways.
Mexico has begun experiencing the formation of the sorts of paramilitary narco-trafficking organization which has been seen for decades in Colombia — many analysts see it as an imported, or exported, model. The federal military (there are often state militaries) forces sent in to battle narco-traffickers not only face firepower comparable to their own as well as massive targeted assassination, their officers and other commands are easily bought off.
The likelihood of that sort of violence entering the US — AZ laws and fences and border patrol increases or no — is pretty high in my view.
Snarla
Lately there’s been a push to convince the American people that Hezbollah is behind the Mexican drug cartels. This makes them think al-Qaeda, nevermind that Hezbollah and al-Qaeda are enemies.
Time magazine had a truly retarded article about Mexico beheadings back in 2009. I blogged about it: http://snarla.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/on-beheading/
Of course if their were any fairness in the American media, beheadings in Mexico would lead to an outcry against their cruel religion, Christianity.
PeakVT
No. The economies of the two countries are too integrated. Our ruling class would never allow it.
Southern Beale
Oh yes, one of my favorite incidents from the wingnut’s beheading/stoning obsession was when David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag promoted his “Islamofascist Awareness Week” with a movie still. Ooops.
El Cid
@Snarla: The case mentioned Acapulco. That’s a port city on the Southwestern Pacific coast of Mexico. A couple weeks ago over a dozen bodies were found rotting and dismembered in an abandoned mineshaft in the formerly idyllic ex-silver mining colonial town of Taxco.
Why that coast? Because increasingly drugs are being brought in over sea, often from Colombia. They have been using home-made submarines, only recently having a very large one (100 ft) found.
If there’s a role model for massacre-oriented violence, it isn’t various Islamic militant / jihadist groups, it’s the obvious one — the narco-traffickers and related right wing death squad narco-paramilitaries. The latter have frequently massacred entire villages, dumping the bodies into mass graves, many of such still being discovered.
What kind of nitwit would look at such clear links and examples and say, “Hmmm, must be Hezbollah, ’cause, y’know, like, jihadists beheaded people”?
[This in addition to the copying from Guatemalan genocidalist techniques and Salvadoran death squad patters as linked above.]
JGabriel
@El Cid: Weren’t they taught those techniques by the School of America / CIA?
.
El Cid
@JGabriel: I don’t think the SOA needed to teach them techniques that repressive tyrants had been using for decades — SOA etc I think focused on higher level questions of logistics, how to gather intelligence on these ‘enemy’ civilians, how to obscure any links between assassination and terrorism and slaughter from the regime, etc. It was more the complete backing and support and financial assistance of the murderous tyrants in power, and defending them from any charges (officially and in the media, often via friendly pundits), in my view. There was a pretty strong correlation between SOA training and massive human rights abuses, and part of that is likely because of training received, but also because those leaders were the ones invited.
mclaren
Mexicans speak Spanish, just like Luis Bunuel, so, sure, why not? We’ve even got Mitt Romney recapping the end of Simon of the Columns, spouting gibberish (this time about Obama’s START treaty) while perched atop a spire of rock in the desert.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and 2012 will give us a remake of L’Avventura, with Sarah Palin wading ashore on a coral outcrop and then vanishing forever.
Or maybe the entire Republican party will enact the title of Antonioni’s 1968 film Blow-Up.
We can always hope.
Southern Beale
My understanding was that SOA taught many things, including the “art” of using rape and kidnappings to intimidate and other heinous things. Your tax dollars at work.
gene108
I think we’re better off invading Canada. They are a bigger threat. They can easily pass for American (William Shatner, Shania Twain, Peter Jennings, etc.) but they have terrible communist policies in their country like socialized medicine and the metric system. They also recognize French as an official language.
I personally wouldn’t be surprised if there are gobs of Canadian spy cells in the U.S. trying to influence policy. I bet it was the Canadians, who were behind he push for the U.S. to go to the metric system by 1980 and they probably influenced enough policy makers to ram their socialist health care system down our throats.
Southern Beale
Oh, should have mentioned this earlier but the funniest thing about the David Horowitz “Islamo-fascism Awareness Week” phony photo was the sock puppetry the comments thread generated (unfortunately all comments on my old posts got lost when Haloscan went kaput and I had to switch to Blogger’s commenting).
Anyway, for anyone who cares, Here’s the rest of the story:
“Apparently there is someone named Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi whose father is an Iranian political prisoner who has been shopping this movie-still-cum-photographic-evidence around to the fringe right-wing set who are so eager to justify their war-thirst for Iran.”
I mean cripes, do we on the left do this kind of stuff? I can’t say it’s never happened but it seems like the right wing seems to specialize in this kind of manipulation, while the left spends most of its time trying to expose it.
kommrade reproductive vigor
If you’re asking in relation to the fReichtards’ world view I’d answer with another question: Have you been paying attention?
You already nailed it here:
Plus, making the nearest brown person the root of all evil when the economy is bad is what these people do.
Mexico has several other advantages over places like Iraq: It’s right next door, which raises the ooga-booga factor. People already get across the border which raises the o-b factor even more. No need for elaborate plots involving terrorist babies. Just point to some surveillance film of people crossing over.
But best of all, they know we’re never actually going to invade Mexico to end the horrible terrible threat of blood-thirsty crop workers pouring into our fair land to fondle our strawberries for $1.50 an hour. This allows the fRighties to march around in camo-fetish gear making tough war talk without the fear that they’ll be asked to explain another clusterfuck of an unjustified war.
And of course, if all their talk about the nasty dreadful murderous house cleaners and yard workers inspires some heavily armed fucks to form a “militia” and in the course of “repelling the invaders” several people who committed the crime of being Brown in ReaLAMErica get shot RealDead, why, that will obviously be the fault of the failed Obama administration.
El Cid
@Southern Beale: I didn’t mean that the school didn’t encourage them to use such techniques of murder and rape and torture to aid their repressive governments or terrorist movements as much as successfully integrate them into systematic campaigns.
Hell, the US would inform El Salvador where the Red Cross had just dropped supplies so the forces could go bomb or shoot the straggling villagers who came out to get them.
Elliot Abrams vehemently defended against reports of a mass civilian massacre by our allies in El Salvador (El Mozote), and the result was the New York Times sidelined the reporter who exposed it, Ray Bonner, and then Elliot Abrams was retained as a prized adviser and brought back in by the Reagan II / Bush Jr. regime.
Wag
No. Not enough oil to make it worth our effort.
At least not until after peak oil.
Redshirt
I think the neocons have to go back to the old playbook and target truly hapless and helpless countries for their invasions – Panama, Grenada, etc. Iraq/Afgh is NO FUN! Whereas Panama? That was a great time.
So, yeah – a little security operation in Baja? Might be just what President Palin needs to push through her new Mama Grizzly Protection (killing) Act of 2014.
JMG
Mexico has been used as a demonized enemy by U.S. politicians for almost 200 years. Sure it can happen again. Fortunately, we are too broke to start any more wars.
JAHILL10
This is almost Josh Marshall-level trolling. We are not going to invade Mexico for Chissakes. Why don’t you back to speculating that Obama is going to be impeached by Christmas?
atheist
#17
Yeah, this is exactly what I’ve been thinking for the past year or two. Especially after Arizona passed that shit law, I’ve been kinda concerned that the conservatives are gearing up for a new war with Mexico. If our overseas war is like a slow cancer that kills us cell by cell, a war with Mexico might be more like a case of smallpox or something.
Corner Stone
Wait a second…you’re saying Pinochet is dead?
Corner Stone
And speaking of Hezbollah:
Lebanon Reinforces Army in South With 5,000 Troops as Threat of War Grows
Which contains this lil nugget:
El Cid
@Corner Stone: Ladies and gentlemen, this special update: Generallisimo Augusto Pinochet is still dead.
Mike in NC
Hitler had a moustache, and so do a lot of Mexicans. Coincidence? I fear not!
sparky
in the terms of this post, no, i don’t think Mexico could be the “other” as it’s simply too intertwined with the US, both as image (too close to be a faceless other) and as actual economically entwined co-dependent. that’s not to say that the US couldn’t be “invited” to help in certain provinces. but as a hostile, invasion type action? no.
incidentally, it seems to me that the important point here is that the US is becoming more like Mexico every day as the US falls into an oligarchy, with fascistic opinions now acceptable, a questionable democracy, and increasing poverty.
Corner Stone
@El Cid:
Somebody should get the smelling salts ready because joe from LOL is going to take this news hard when he finds out.
Corner Stone
@sparky:
You know who else invaded an economically co-dependent intertwined country next door?
That’s right.
Southern Beale
El Cid:
Every November folks my church go to Fort Benning, Ga., to protest SOA, now called WHINSEC. Don Beisswenger, former Presbyterian pastor and member of our Presbytery, was sent to prison for 6 months after one protest. He wrote a book about it called “Locked Up: Letters and Papers of a Prisoner of Conscience.” Beisswenger gives presentations to groups about SOA/WHINSEC so most of what I know about it is from his talks.
I have written my congressman Jim Cooper, who is on the Armed Services Committee, about defunding this program. He always writes back to tell me he is “monitoring” the situation but believes SOA/WHINSEC’s abuses are a thing of the past. Every time there’s another incident involving a SOA/WHINSEC grad I write him about it and he says he is “investigating” or some other BS.
Again: your tax dollars at work. I’m sure the Teanuts are FINE with that. Unemployment extensions? Not so much.
wasabi gasp
Not according to the Cheesy Gordita Crunch.
hilzoy fangirl
No, because refugees.
Linda Featheringill
The US has always been a war-loving nation but we have avoided going to war with a neighbor for quite a while. We think that the Europeans are stupid for attacking each other. War is so much more destructive that way.
I hope the US doesn’t go to war with Mexico over this or any other cause. If you can’t be good [and apparently we can’t] at least don’t be stupid.
No getting pissed off at Mexico and taking it out on Timbuktu or some such country really is the American way.
Citizen Alan
I think the only way we invade Mexico is if narco-terrorism there rises to the point that it leads to the complete collapse of the Mexican government and the border areas become a haven for terrorist activities targeting American drug enforcement and border patrol efforts. Given our past and current drug policies and the strong likelihood that we will have at least 4 years of Republican administration out of the next ten (with all that entails), I put the odds of a total breakdown in Mexican democracy by 2025 at around 50-50. If that happens, it is a near certainty that we will have troops in some of the northern Mexican provinces, most likely as “advisers” who will be “invited in” by whatever military junta ends up taking over the country.
El Cid
@Citizen Alan: If people think there’s a border problem now, wait ’til a collapsed Mexican nation-state (even just around the northern or western periphery) and a US invasion.
The US would shortly be very, very, very sorry it did so.
Again, the solution is pretty obvious — eliminate the value of the narco-traffickers’ market by decriminalizing, but we’d rather throw a bunch of negroes in the private jails and risk nation state collapse than do that.
Corner Stone
Don’t we essentially have a failed nation state in Mexico at this point?
The Mex President declares war on narco peeps and then essentially all the people responsible for enacting this policy die or are indicted.
I’ve mentioned in the past that I have a very good friend living in Juarez, MX. Think he believes there’s a functioning govt in Mexico?
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
Doctors report that General Pinochet’s condition is stable.
BruceJ
Nope. The soldiers could walk home from Mexico.
Viva BrisVegas
Was the head mounted on top of a tortoise?
Maybe Brewer woke up in the middle of a Breaking Bad episode and mistook it for a documentary.
Aunt Moe
If we invaded Mexico that would be the beginning of the end of The Americas. It would be a hundred years’ north/south war. And Elvis help us.
bobbo
We have always been at war with Eastasia
grumpy realist
Mexico isn’t going to become Numero Uno target until after we’ve bombed Iran, I feel. At the moment the war porn contingent is still being led by those obsessed about the Mid-east (Boo! Hebzollah! Scary Iranians!) vis-a-vis “protecting Israel.” It isn’t going to be until the neo-cons get replaced by the “Hispanics are scary” contingent that we’re going to start pushing our armies southward. Will be an interesting dust-up within the Republican party.
(I still remember the explanation a Palestinian friend of mine gave on the whole I-P mess: “Everyone in the Mideast is nuts.”)