Blog Friends with Smoking Fingers

Thomas Barnett

Zenpundit

Tom Barnett has been on fire since taking the reins of being his own webmaster, as he out OODA Loops the best of the MSM pundits. This quartet of posts are just a few examples of his deft eye and smoking fingers getting to the meat of a story.

China becomes a net importer of coal in 2009, in part because its needs are skyrocketing in terms of electricity generation and because it has sought to crack down on unsafe mining throughout the country.

But the shift is sudden and almost unreal in its magnitude: from basically breaking even in 2008 to a net importation of more than 100 tonnes million in 2009...

...This huge growth in consumption share is and will be mirrored in the oil industry.

When you see numbers like this, you naturally come to the conclusion, as I have for a while now, that the U.S. and "Chindia" are natural partners in policing and shrinking the Gap; we for pol-mil reasons, they for economic-network reasons.

Read more:
Appreciating China for what it's done for global capitalism

Then feast your eyes on these insightful treats.
Feudalism replaced by "democratic centralism" Replaced by..

The SysAdmin navy is a money-bal team

China becomes next importer on coal, and reinvigorates entire global coal market as result

Mark at Zenpundit has also been very productive the past few days, producing excellent book reviews and these two posts, that share almost 50 comments between them.

Thought Experiment

Thinking With A Fresh Mind

One of the commenters had this interesting link that caught my eye.
Upper bound: The American dream is simple: work hard and move up. As the country emerges from recession, the reality looks ever more complicated

If you have stopped along the way and read every article. I think you will agree, my blog friends have produced a mimi bonanza of thoughtful posts.

The Amphibian Sage: Commander Salamander

"Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?" Sgt Dan Daly

Sgt Dan Daly getting 2nd Medal of Honor 1915

As many of you know I was given the honor of being invited to be a guest contributor, (plank owner) on the new blog devoted to naval history. In an important related post. Commander Salamander has penned this razor sharp analysis of the state of the subject of history, particularly military history from the corridors of our public schools to the halls of our most prestigious institutions. Here is a taste of what he wrote.


A failure of historic proportions

Just what does that phrase mean? What kind of intellectual background does it take to even make that statement?

Those who have raised children in the last three decades know the state of history education in our schools. We also know that our centers of higher education have more or less purged their history departments of military historians. Required history courses – where there are some – more often than not do not cover military actions in any kind of context or depth. When you fold in the fact that the Navy has an institutional bias towards technical fields of education – then it is no surprise that historical illiteracy runs rampant from E1-O10. Is this a bad thing, or just a nuisance?

From $100 dollar questions such as, “Which nation is younger, Belgium or the USA?” to $1,000 questions such as, “What is the source of the border conflicts between Bolivia, Chile, and Peru?”, we simply do not do history well. As a result, when we work with our partners we regularly embarrass ourselves from ISAF to UNITAS as we demonstrate our ignorance of not only our history – but that of the rest of the world.

Even when we narrow the scope down to naval history – historical blindness has had real, definable costs. When you look back at some of the Navy’s worst errors in the last decade from LCS, DDG-1000, and the influence of the Transformationalist Cult – they all derive from a poor understanding of the lessons of history; i.e. – Battle Cruisers and Patrol Hydrofoils proved decades ago the seduction of speed is not worth the tradeoffs; regardless of technology the MK-1 Mod-0 eyeball is the primary sensor in the littorals; every successful shipbuilding program has been the result of evolutionary instead of revolutionary change. The examples are legion when you expand the relearned basics during this war by the Army and USMC.

Read more:
A failure of historic proportions

As one who teaches history I can concur with the sentiments expressed by this analysis. Very few military history classes exist. As pointed out in the linked supporting comments by historians, Linn and Hanson, the power of academics to impose the political views gained in their youth, has guided the direction of the historical narrative. In contrast, I might point out that the most popular history class at a local California State University, is American Military History which has enjoyed a waiting list every semester for the past twenty years it has been offered. How did this come to pass? Easy, the professor teaching it is long tenured and after twenty years and countless publications he was able to teach what he wanted. Hence, his military history class has enjoyed an overbooked status and gained rave reviews for the professor who now is going on over 40 years of teaching with the same energy as he did when he first was able to teach his true historical interest.

More so, there is a hunger inside the human spirit to understand our martial past that thread its way back to the earliest tribal conflicts. Somehow in the past few decades, we have been led to believe that if we ignore that history, we will purge those warlike traits from our behavior. I ask, is it not better to understand what wars were like if we want to work to end conflict? Much of what Commander Salamander writes about is directed to those in academia who have moved away from making the narrative of history interesting to the broad audience;  to become cloistered monkswho write empirical treatises for teach others consumption.

A Look Back, To See the Road Ahead

Well built by Maj Gant's team

Maj Gant and village girls

Afghan boys sorting school supplies*

A careful look back at the week, brings insight to the trail ahead in Afghanistan. The editor, Dave Dilegge and publisher, Bill Nagle of Small Wars Journal along with Steven Pressfield of "It's The Tribes, Stupid!" deserve a lot of credit for pushing the tribal approach to strategy in Afghanistan. This concept really seemed to have taken flight when Pressfield took the field and began a series of posts on a tribal strategy, by Major Jim Gant, supported by a series of interviews with Afghan tribal leader,Chief Zazai.

This week, the SMJ, posted an update on the Tribal Engagement Workshop held in late March 2010 where they provide a list of comments and  posts by some of the forward thinkers on this subject.

All are worth the time to read to get the lay of the land and insight into the world behind the smoke and retoric of dueling heads of state.

On a more personal note, these next reports by Michael Yon, offers a clearer picture of what is really happening, and serve to illustrate the concepts discussed above, being put to use by the boots on the ground.

Michael introduces this first dispatch like this.

Back in December, C-Co 1-17th Infantry battalion had been in about the worst place in Afghanistan. There is stiff competition for the position of actual worst place, and I am sure there are many contenders that remain unknown, but the Arghandab was one of them. The battalion had lost more than twenty soldiers, and C-co alone had lost 12 with more wounded. In December 2009, C-Co was moved north into Shah Wali Kot and has been running missions here for more than three months. I’ve only been at Shaw Wali Kot for a week.

Charlie Company headed on a mission to visit villages that had seen no formal western guests for at least the past five years, according Company Commander Max Hanlin. The soldiers drove to an area maybe two kilometers from the first village, parked, and walked in. The surrounding desert was so dry that only the hardy and small plants survived—often with thorns, and probably foul-tasting (and poisonous). How else can a plant expect to survive when the favorite Afghan meat is mutton, and foraging isn’t easy for the lambs? There was the occasional brown lizard or grasshopper, but on the whole it’s simply rocky desert. The place is barren but not entirely lifeless.

"Veterans watch the kids. If the kids don’t like you, or are afraid: bad. The adults can lie all day and might get away with it, while kids are a collective polygraph. If the kids disappear suddenly, it’s a good idea to prepare to fight, and it’s always great to see a bunch of young ones return a smile. Children also see the enemy just like everyone else does, though the children can be more likely to say something." Michael Yon

Read more:
Village Boys

Michael Yon has been perhaps the most intrepid, American war corespondent since Ernie Pyle. Spending more time in the field and relating the kinds of stories that made Ernie a household name in World War II.

In this post, Michael invites MAJ JF Sucher, MD to write this dispatch where the major uses the metaphor of a whisper to convey the tidal wave of support it produced.

A singular sentence in reply to a common, simple question. A whisper from Afghanistan has returned a loud echo from Laconia, New Hampshire, a small town of 12,000 (40,000 in the summer) nestled amongst the glacial lakes in the center of the state.

Dr. Sam Aldridge has practiced peripheral vascular surgery in Laconia, NH for the past 15 years based solely on a gentlemen’s handshake with Tom Clairmont, CEO of Lakes Region General Hospital, who has been a stalwart supporter of Aldridge’s military commitment.

On January 15th, 2010 LTC Aldridge left for his third active duty deployment since joining the Army Reserves Medical Corps. Before leaving, Danielle Mostoller, the hospital’s PR representative, had LTC Aldridge promise to write regular updates that would be placed in the hospital’s email newsletter, which reaches 1600 people.

LTC Sam Aldridge

Soon after Aldridge’s “updates” hit the hospital newsletter, people began to respond. Danielle asked if there was anything they could send him. Maybe some care packages of snacks or books and such? LTC Aldridge, knowing that there were so many people around him that really did need something, responded with a simple request of socks for the Afghan soldiers and school supplies for the orphaned children of a nearby local village. A singular sentence. A simple whisper.

LTC Sam Aldridge (left) and CPT Chad Zielinski (right) stand outside the 909th FST with a new arrival of boxes* Photos provided courtesy of CPT Chad Zielinski, USAF Chaplain.

The true measure of the success of this program is in the faces of those who are gifted.

Village boy with new jeans

* Photos provided courtesy of CPT Chad Zielinski, USAF Chaplain.

Take the time to view the photos and the essay. Then pause and reflect on LTC Aldridge's two quotes.

“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” – Shakespeare – Merchant of Venice Act 5, scene 1

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” – Sir Winston Churchill

View the post:
A Whisper

For those who do not follow Michael Yon's blog, he is totally self-supporting in his reporting efforts.
Support Michael Yon

How Many More Sailors Will the Hermit Kingdon Claim?

Forty one years ago today, a U.S. Navy EC121 surveillance aircraft was deliberately shot down by North Korea. The irony of this is that today, it appears that overwhelming evidence came to surface that the South Korean Navy ship was blown into by an external explosion.The Naval History Blog has the full story of Deep Sea 129.

15 April 1969 (Korean time) marked the final flight of a Navy VQ-1 EC-121/WV-2 callsign Deep Sea 129. Roughly 100 nm off the North Korean peninsular site where the Hermit Kingdom today defies the world with its ballistic missile tests, lies the watery grave of 31 Americans (2 bodies were later recovered).

Read more:
15 April 1969: Deep Sea 129 Shootdown

Today, South Korean and U.S. Navy ships raised the stern portion of the sunken South Korean Naval ship.

SEOUL, South Korea – An external explosion most likely sank a South Korean navy ship that split apart three weeks ago, an investigator said Friday, amid concerns about possible North Korea involvement in the disaster.

The 1,200-ton Cheonan split into two pieces after exploding March 26 during a routine patrol near the tense maritime border with North Korea. Fifty-eight crew members were rescued, but 46 were missing for weeks.

There has been some suspicion but no confirmation of North Korean involvement in the sinking. The disputed western sea border has in the past been the scene of three bloody inter-Korean naval battles. South Korean officials have said they will look into all possibilities, including that the ship might have been struck by a North Korean torpedo or a mine left over from the 1950-53 Korean War. The conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the Koreas still technically at war.

Read more:
South Korea Says External Explosion Sank Ship

Where will this lead? I venture that it will lead to nowhere. The world plays a waiting game for the hermit kingdom to crumble on it's own. As grand strategist Thomas Barnett has often said. "No country with nuclear weapons has ever gone to war with another with nuclear weapons." So in a form of political checkmate we let this festering sore of a country pick off a few dozen sailors and we respond by sending food shipments to prop them up for a few more years. Oh, the irony!

The Gangs Who Couldn't Shoot Straight!

Taliban Marksmen Training

Afghan National Army

My apologies to author Jimmy Breslin for borrowing from the title of a book he wrote. But a series of reports from New York Times correspondent CJ Chivers about Afghan marksmanship has a comedic thread only tempered by the occasional lucky shot.

In this first article Chivers uncovers the truth about the fable about legendary Afghan marksmanship.

The recent Marine operations in and near Marja brought into sharp relief a fact that contradicts much of what people think they know about the Afghan war. It is this: Forget the fables. The current ranks of Afghan fighters are crowded with poor marksmen.

Thissimple statement is at odds with an oft-repeated legend of modern conflict, in which Afghan men are described, in clichés and accounts from yesteryear, as natural gunmen and accomplished shots. Everyone who has even faintly followed the history of war in Central Asia has heard the tales of Afghan men whose familiarity with firearms is such a part of their life experience that they can pick up most any weapon and immediately put it to effective work. The most exaggerated accounts are cartoonish, including tales of Afghan riflemen whose bullets can strike a lone sapling (I’ve even heard “blade of grass”) a hilltop away.

Read more:
Afghan Marksmen Forget the Fables

Taliban Gear

Chivers continues to zero in on this subject by taking a closer look at the Taliban fighters and why their rifle fire has been less than stellar.

We plan more posts about the nature of the fighting in Afghanistan, and how this influences the experience of the war. Today this blog discusses visible factors that, individually and together, predict poor shooting results when Taliban gunmen get behind their rifles.

It’s worth noting that many survivors of multiple small-arms engagements in Afghanistan have had experiences similar to those described last week. After emerging unscathed from ambushes, including ambushes within ranges at which the Taliban’s AK-47 knock-offs should have been effective, they wonder: how did so much Taliban fire miss?

Read more:
The Weakness of Taliban Marksmanship

Now just when we all could take a sigh of relief that the fabled Afghan enemy can't hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun, Chivers offers up this report about the Afghan National Army, the guys who've been the recipients of billions of dollars of training.

Puncturing some of the legends of Afghan fighting prowess has value for at least two reasons.

First, when assessing the Taliban and other insurgent organizations — which few people dispute form a resolved and adaptive force – it is important to be wary of exaggerating their traditional fighting skills, as opposed to their social and political skills, their effectiveness as criminal organizations, and their shift in recent years toward improvised explosives. The Taliban’s shoddy marksmanship also raises questions about how fighting in Afghanistan has evolved. Is the Taliban’s shift toward using improvised explosives an indication that they have learned from the insurgents’ experience in Iraq? Or is it an indication that the Taliban realized that their rifle fire was usually ineffective? Both?

Second, when the discussion turns to deficiencies in the marksmanship of government troops, the conversation has another use. It provides insights into the overall state of the government security forces. And it leads to a natural question: What return has the United States received in Afghanistan on its extraordinary investment in the Afghan National Army? More on that in a moment.

Read more:
Afghan Marksmanship: Pointing not Aiming

Now before we all get ourselves up in a dither about wasting billions in what seems to be an unteachable excercise, we should reflect that our own forces haven't focused on long range shooting skills for decades.
Tactical Tidbits from Afghanistan and The Return of an Old Friend. We can look back at the experience of our own military in trying to teach shooting skills to soldiers post Civil War, when as few as ten rounds per man were allocated for practice per year. It will take decades of training to build a cadre of marksmen, something that might be beyond the scope of our timetable. There may be a third way as explained in this article from the Small Wars Journal by Col. Gary Anderson.

When Ralph Peters of the New York Post and the editor of the New York Times actually agree on something, it is both an unusual occasion and a cause for reflection. In the case of Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan, we have one of those rare confluences of agreement. Both concur that Karzai has become more of a liability than an asset. His poorly thought out threat to throw in his lot with Taliban in response to Western disapproval, combined with his inept handling of the war, has lost him critical support in Washington and in Europe. Some Afghans think he may have lost his grip on reality; whatever the cause, he has made few friends in recent weeks among those he needs if he hopes to retain power. None of this bodes well for American strategy in Afghanistan. It is one thing to have an unstable ally in a war; we have dealt with shaky allies in the past. However, an ungrateful and unstable ally may well be too much to ask the American people to bear. It may be time to explore a third option between abandoning Afghanistan and enduring Karzai’s ungrateful and demonstrably corrupt regime.

Read more:
A Third Way in Aftghanistan



UPDATE: Uncut: Lessons learned from Six and a Half Years in Afthanistan

Too Important Not to Read

Selling women in ancient Babylon

Long Pross, Trafficking Victim

Actress Maggie Grace (L) and jounalist Nicholas Kristof present Somaly Mam of Cambodia with the Human Rights Award at the Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on March 19, 2009 in Washington, DC.

This week I have posted a few reads that delve into the nature of culture, women at risk and how we all can make the world safe for women.

Leading off is this post from Steve DeAngelis who blogs about the power of culture to either hinder or advance the human experience.

The Victorian Scottish historian and essayist, Thomas Carlyle, once wrote: "Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being." In past posts, I've noted that culture can either be used as a platform for progress or it becomes an anchor that keeps people mired in the past. According to a recent study, culture has played a more important role in humanity's evolution than once thought ["Human Culture, an Evolutionary Force," by Nicholas Wade, New York Times, 1 March 2010]. Wade explains:

Read the rest:
The Power of Culture

Related to culture is how women are treated in this world. For those of us living in a society that protects and values women, it is vital to read these next two posts to see how we can contribute to making the world safe for women.

Steve DeAngelis continues in this post to introduce Nichlos Kristof whom I have written about here and here.

One of the oldest objects of worship known to man is small figurine carved out of oolitic limestone that has been labeled the Venus of Willendorf. Displayed at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, the Venus of Willendorf was created sometime between 24,000-22,000 BCE. The figurine was probably carved by a man. Although it is not a particularly flattering depiction of a woman, it reminds us that men have always been in awe of the power of creation. Unfortunately, the awe that mankind has demonstrated for the process of procreation has not extended to the women who carry it out. When it comes to history, might makes right and the gentler sex has felt the brunt of that might for far too long.

Facts don't lie. Only one percent of the landowners around the globe are women. Widespread participation by women in politics is a modern development. Often in the past the only way that women could influence politics was between the sheets. The Greek comic playwright Aristophanes knew this and penned his famous play Lysistrata to demonstrate that although they were under-appreciated in the male-dominated Athenian society, women were nonetheless well-informed and capable of pursuing political agendas. The play was performed in classical Athens in 411 BC. The play is a comic tale of Lysistrata's mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Her strategy is to convince the women of Greece to withhold sexual favors from their husbands and lovers until they agree to negotiate peace. At the beginning of the play, Lysistrata says to her friend Calonice, "There are a lot of things about us women that sadden me, considering how men see us as rascals." To which Calonice replies: "As indeed we are!" Even back then, women were more appreciated for their beauty than their brains and more for their sexual prowess than their other life skills. Twenty-five hundred years later the world's women are still suffering at the hands of men.

The husband and wife team, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, remind us that women continue to be ill-treated in many places around the world ["The Women’s Crusade," New York Times, 23 August 2009].

Read the whole post:

Making the World Safe for Women



Finally comes this post from the outstanding blog and online magazine devoted to military matters Small Wars Journal who turned their attention to spotlighting an organization that is making a difference.

Innocents at Risk is a 501©(3) nonprofit founded to fight child exploitation and human trafficking. Our mission is to educate citizens about the horrific global and local problem of human trafficking and work to prevent it. In order to increase the visibility of the severity of the issue, Innocents at Risk established partnerships with the Department of State, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education, Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Custom Border Patrol and the D.C. Task Force. We work with a vast number of non-government organizations and service providers.

Human Trafficking is 21st century slavery. It is happening throughout the world in every country and across the United States in every major city and small town. According to the Department of State, every year over 2,000,000 men, women and children are taken, trafficked and thrown into this cruel world of slavery. Traffickers use force, fraud or coercion to obtain their victims.

Read the whole post.
Very Good People Doing Great Things

If any one is serious about stopping this scourge, please visit the links under Honoring our Commitments links on the right of this blog. As Steve DeAngelis noted in the end of his post on culture, none of us will live to see the results of how the information age will influence future cultures, but properly used it can be a powerful tool for doing good and making the world safe for women.

A Father's Promise

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Robert Gilbert in Afghanistan

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Robert Gilbert, Jr. with his dad, Robert Gilbert, Sr., who is a police officer in the Village of Richfield.

Just when I thought I could clear my head of questions of why we continue to spend lives in Afghanistan in the face of statements like this and man up to trusting General David Petraeus at his word that it is a worthy investment of lives and the pain those losses inflict on those left behind, I read something like this.

The letter sat on the dresser for four years.

Robert Gilbert never opened it. He only touched the envelope when he needed to dust around it. He wanted to give it back to his son unopened.

Every time his Marine son was deployed, his son would ask, "You still got my letter?"

His dad never wanted to read what was inside an envelope marked: "Dad, open this if I am wounded. Love, Robert."

The call to open it came March 8.

"Is Robert Gilbert there?" a voice from Marine headquarters in Quantico, Va., said.

"Junior or Senior?" Robert said.

"Senior."

The father felt his stomach drop even before he heard the words: "Your son has been injured in Afghanistan."

Now folks, steel yourself with whatever inner fortitude you have before you read on. Then pause and reflect on the the love this man had for his son.


A Father's promise, a son's sacrifice for his country
by REGINA BRETT

Columnist for The Plain Dealer

Thanks Sean!

Sean Meade

Thomas Barnett

This past week has seen a change at the blog that holds the leadoff slot at my Favorite Blog Links. Thomas Barnett announced that his long-time and excellent webmaster Sean Meade was leaving. Normally this would not be cause for another blog to take notice. But, this blog would not exist if it wern't for Sean encouraging me to join the fray that is blogging. I took him to heart and havn't looked back since. Last year, when Great Powers: America and the World After Bush was published, Sean invited me to conduct an online reading group to read and discuss the book. For that experience I am forever grateful to both Sean and Tom. Blogging has also introduced me to a network of blog friends that are as treasured as any friend one could have. This past week, it led me to be invited to become a guest blogger on a new blog about Naval History sponsored by U.S. Naval Institute and the Naval History and Heritage Command. I own a hearty thanks to Sean for his encouragement and continued friendship which made it all possible.

Tom wrote that he would be soldiering on alone, I might note that his solitary effort has produced 33 concise quality posts in the past three and a half days. Here is a sample of some of them.

Gosh! The borderless world that we all dreamed about isn't happening!

The New Core East will get over its fixation on boys versus girls

The riser's ego naturally swells

The Pullout of combat troops will proceed, but trainers will remain in Iraq past 2011

Just prior to Tom announcing Sean's leaving these two gentlemen, and I give them both credit for this feat, saw the blog mark the incredible milestone of 10,000 posts since it's founding.

The 10,000th Post

Tom wrote this article to explain why he blogs. It serves as a templete for all who sit down before the keyboard and grid themselves to be a blogger. He explains how blogging is crucial to his calling.

In this sense, generating and maintaining the blog magnificently expanded my professional "RAM," or random-access memory storage capacity. Without that upgrade, I simply couldn't write or think at the level I do today, nor could I cover as much of the world or so many domains. Without that reach, I couldn't be much of an expert on globalization, which in turn would seriously curtail my ambitions as a grand strategist -- because nowadays, strategic thinking requires a whole lot more breadth than merely mastering the security realm. To be credible and sustainable in this complex age, grand strategy requires a stunning breadth of vision when judged by historical standards. So as far as this one-armed paperhanger is concerned -- no blog, no grand strategist.

Contained within this article are gems of wisdom on how to blog and make it work for the author and the reader. Read-on, of you have the desire to join this hardy band of on-line pamphleteers who add their knowledge and opinion to the electronic wind that is the Internet.

In closing, as Tom noted several times in the 10,000 post article, much of it was possible because of the efforts of his Webmaster, Sean Meade. For that and much more, Sean deserves our most sincere thanks and good wishes in his future pursuits.

Zenpundit asks! The End of Mexico? or The End of U.S. Sovereignty?

This morning I was going to put up a reads of the week post. But when I cruised by Mark Zafranski's blog, I was stopped in my tracks when I read his latest. The bigger question looms, how will this impact the sovereignty of the United States to secure our borders and ensure tranquility?

Mark began by quoting this from Fox News.

….Last week, at least 30 Mexicans from the town of El Porvenir walked to the border crossing post at Fort Hancock, Texas, and asked for political asylum. Ordinarily, their claim would be denied as groundless, and they would be turned back. Instead, they were taken to El Paso, where they expect to have their cases heard.

No one doubts that they have a strong claim. Their town on the Mexican side of the border is under siege by one or more drug cartels battling for control of the key border crossing. According to Mike Doyle, the chief deputy sheriff of Hudspeth County, Texas, one of the cartels has ordered all residents of the town of 10,000 to abandon the city within the next month.

Mark's own comments follow.

I saw this coming. I’m sure that so has anyone else studying insurgency or military history who stopped to give the matter five minutes of serious thought. There’s nothing magical about geographic proximity to the United States that would prevent this tactic, if applied widely and backed by lethal examples, from working. What has been done in the villages of Bosnia or Dar Fur can be done in towns of northern Mexico.

Read the whole piece.
The End of Mexico?

You will note after you read the link embedded above that this blog concurred and wrote on the same issue twice last year and the year before.

Mark's concerns are reflected in the citizens of Fort Hancock, Texas who probably feel they are channeling the lives of the people of Columbus, New Mexico who almost 100 years ago felt the sting of living next to the failed state of Mexico.

Fort Hancock, Texas -- Residents of this tiny Texas town say they're living in fear that Mexican drug cartel violence could spill over into the United States at any moment.

Locals here say they've seen a recent increase in illegal immigrants simply walking across the border and disappearing into the town, which lies just four miles from El Porvenir, Mexico, and 50 miles southeast of Ciudad Juarez, where 2,300 people were killed last year alone.

When I read each day that the cancer of lawlessness gains control like a reverse "Oil Spot Strategy" right on our southern border; and then read about this and this from the President of a country where we are spending our most precious resource to secure.

It becomes very hard to justify continuing to stay the course in Central Asia when it appears the tiger has creeped up to our open back door and threatens to come inside.


UPDATE: Chicago Boyz readers join the discussion, 56 and counting