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Mexico's Big War

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 1/5/2007

Border: The invasion and rout of an Arizona National Guard station by Mexican traffickers Wednesday signals that Mexico's fierce new war against smugglers is spilling over into the U.S. We should have been prepared.

Not since the days of Pancho Villa has the U.S. fallen to armed Mexican invaders stealing in and making raids. Unlike in those days, though, Mexico's government is led by an ally, President Felipe Calderon, who seems to be working hard to destroy the criminals whose corrosive presence tempts many Mexicans to seek new lives in the U.S. illegally.

This attack on the National Guard is part of a much larger war that Calderon is waging on Mexico's violent criminal syndicates, which thrive on smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants.

Last week Calderon dispatched 3,000 federal troops to Mexico's second-worst crime haven, Tijuana — where traffickers murdered 300 people in 2006 — in a head-on confrontation with the enemy. This is Calderon's second dispatch of troops to fight organized criminal mafias, following a dispatch of 7,200 federal troops into crime-racked Michoacan state in the south.

The timing of Calderon's move coincided with Wednesday's armed border attack by bandits on U.S. National Guard troops near Tucson, Ariz. The U.S. troops are patrolling the border to help spot illegal immigrants but aren't allowed to shoot. So once attacked, they had no choice but to retreat.

Yes, we think there's a connection. The governor of Sonora, the Mexican state on Arizona's border, warned a day earlier that Calderon's march to retake Tijuana could drive organized criminals eastward into his state. Turns out, he was right.

In Washington, Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Steven Robertson agreed that the Arizona border attack may well be spillover from the Tijuana crackdown.

"It's the way things operate," he said. "Take enforcement one place and criminal organizations move to other areas."

It's happened before. In the 1980s, the DEA crushed Colombian traffic rings in Miami and then watched them move into northern Mexico — where the drug war is being fought now.

What's astonishing is how ill-prepared the U.S. was for this. It was publicly announced that Calderon sent 3,000 troops, 21 planes, nine helicopters and 247 military vehicles into Tijuana last week. He told Mexican troops to plan for a long offensive.

On our side of the border, National Guardsmen were sent to the border in a showcase of beefed-up border security. Yet, under the rules of engagement, they weren't even permitted to fire on armed invaders, for fear of "militarizing" the border.

Worse, the National Guard won't even say whether they were fired on by the border thugs. Shouldn't we know this?

This underscores just how serious our border problem is — and how unserious politicians seem to be about solving it. From recent flippant comments by Sen. John McCain about the border fence, to a California proposal to grant health insurance to children of illegals, politicians just don't seem to grasp the consequences of their failure to protect our border.

Al-Qaida terrorists have been eyeing our unfortified border with interest for some time. They must be looking at this rout of the U.S. military by mere lowlife Mexican dopers with pure fascination.