Mexico’s Zetas have drawn a bead on Guatemala’s 2011 presidential election, and former U.S. officials say the cartel is stockpiling arms to do the same to Mexico in its 2012 election. Is there a White House plan?
Smuggling military-grade weapons from Fort Worth through El Paso and Columbus, New Mexico, the Mexican cartel known as Los Zetas may be doing so not just to fight other cartels but to disrupt Mexico’s 2012 election, according to report quoting former officials in the El Paso Times that ran July 13.
Phil Jordan, a former director of El Paso’s DEA Intelligence Center, and Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, a former CIA contract pilot, warned that Mexico’s democracy could be in jeopardy as weapons sold through the U.S. Direct Commercial Sales program may end up with Zeta front groups. Last year, $416.5 million in sales went to Mexico through this program.
That corresponds to a similar warning from Mexico City on Wednesday. Guatemala’s President Alvaro Colom said the Zetas pose a “serious threat” to Guatemala’s democracy as it nears its Sept. 11 election.
Could two nations past our southern border go down to the Zetas and become narcostates? Obviously the cartels think so, based on the weapons they’re trying to bring in — anti-aircraft missiles, grenade launchers, assault rifles, body armor and night vision goggles. If true, this qualifies as a foreign policy emergency and calls for a serious response from the White House.
But from the Obama administration, we instead see things that would make a Zeta takeover more likely.
• Exhibit A: Operation Fast and Furious, a rogue Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) scheme that let cartel middlemen buy weapons without fear of arrest, perhaps with the aim of creating a political climate for gun control.
• Exhibit B: Our porous border, which thus far has served as a way to punish states seen as anti-Obama — such as Arizona and Texas.
• Exhibit C: the Obama administration’s failure to enforce immigration laws, directing the Immigration and Customs Service to deport illegal immigrants only if they have a violent criminal record as a means of drawing Hispanic votes for Democrats.
Like the Taliban, Burma’s drug lords, Colombia’s FARC and Pablo Escobar gangs, the story is the same: war against the state. They seek to topple states, and will create a failed state to accomplish that.
The Obama administration’s inaction is setting the stage for just such a nightmare on the American border.
