Are we ready to welcome new states named Chihuahua, Durango, Veracruz, and Yucatan?

I suspect some of this talk about Mexico becoming a "failed state" on Rachel Maddow may be overkill, but with the border drug wars and the Zetas raising all sorts of hell with Mexican military and law enforcement units, what if the government in Mexico City fails? What if the Mexican people are forced to turn to us for humanitarian aid, occupation, and even the possibility of annexation?

A long time ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson answered calls to annex Mexico after the conclusion of the US-Mexican war as follows: "The United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic; Mexico will poison us." Granted, this was still at a time when slavery was still legal in roughly half of America, but would the current political reality make annexation a more palatable option, provided the Mexican government could no longer sustain itself?

didn't you?

Pay to the report on the uptake

Because :rofl: to that suggestion. It's a bit too late to close the barn door, if you know what I mean.

dg

I bet the world is more than tired of having the US government subvert their democracies in service of US monied interests.

Hell, it was our drug consumption that is at the root of this problem. If drugs were legal in this country, Mexico wouldn't be in the grip of drug lords fighting a drug war.

Mexico does have its share of problems but I would hardly say it is on verge of collapse. Hell, the US is probably closer to collapsing then they are.

Are you talking about racial issues or something different?

conquering barbarians. Chinese culture won in the VERY LONG RUN.


So the "racial" part would be, "WHY would the question be posed as" Mexian states being "welcomed" into the U.S.?!1


It's sort of a Minutemen framing.


Why would HYSTERIA be part of the equation, like, OMG!1 Mexico is going to collapse/invade the Gawdgiven U.S.-Manifest-Destiny-PLACE!1

Mexico only existed as a nation since 1810. The indigenous Aztec civilization crumbled long ago. Granted, we Americans are still trying to figure our deal out, but we probably still have the strongest hand on the table.

Or "Michoacan"

I am so sick of waiting for health care.

Chihuahua, Durango, Veracruz, and Yucatan, they have to take California, Texas, and Florida. And, if they ask real nice, maybe we could get Canada to throw in Quebec.

I'm talking about a situation where Mexico, as a nation, fails to exist. I'm afraid you're stuck with the Lone Star State either way.

Unfortunately, thanks to Christian fundamentalist wackos deciding US drug policy, which in its turn decides Mexican drug policy, Mexicans will continue to die and face the collapse of the government.

deciding US drug policy. It's cynical, Machiavellian right-wing assholes who have been doing this for years.

"Bush is a Christian"...snork!

the Zeta detachment is a Federal Judicial Police Unit... see a special ops unit on the border region

The Zetas you are referring to is part of the Sinaloa Cartel and it was originally a joke on the Army, and the Federal Police... see that special ops unit.

That said, all this hyperbole, as you call it, is not hyperbole

Just that until now people chose to ignore it

As to Mexico being taken over by the US... nuthing will unifiy people more into guerrilla warfare than the US military marching on Mexico City

Hell, the first Seal that buys it ... reforma will be all but pretty

Iraq was (until 2003) an independent nation with its own military, economy, culture, government, etc. until Junior decided to invade it in order to make a killing in the oil fields and establish a neo-con corporate state over there. Totally different situation from Mexico - and I never mentioned anything about marching troops into Mexico City.

standard if you are gonna take over somebody else's territory, you still need that 18 year old physically there, with a sword, or an M-16, hasn't changed that much

Oh and Iraq still has its own culture... in the scheme of Iraqi history, we are just passing annoyances

Something Americans usually don't understand

Ah having the view of 5K years of history.

Granted, you can trace some of it to our failed nation-building experiment in Iran, but elements of American culture have popped up all over the Middle East, even in Saudi Arabia. This has caused a lot of resentment all by itself.

they both hate modernity

They fear that not just American culture, but western secular thought will lead to a loss of control of a population...

And we are a bunch of libertines

That said, the US. and our current secular ways, are a passing fad, in the longe duree of history

Bush's biggest heresy was that he taught that democracy could be promoted at the barrel of a gun, which is what he ordered the troops to do in Iraq.

And while the intractable culture of Afghanistan may be forever, we stand a chance of acheiving permanence on our own merits, provide we don't allow the likes of Bush to screw it up again.

see we could not impose communist at the tip of a bayonet, good luck....

As to the US reaching permanence, I have gotten really cynical. Republics only last as long as the people are interested in government, we no longer are

So I do expect the US Republic to join Athens, Rome, and Venice fairly soon in the scope of history

Thought I was in the lounge.

Sorry, kids.

:crazy:

If Mexico becomes a failed state, we've got real problems, like that drug army coming this way. Hell, they're already operating along the border now, how long before they move further. What's it going to take to make the government wake up and legalize the shit. People dead and kidnapped in Chicago?

from the usual suspects, (LA, NYC) to the not so usual suspects, if the map Rachel Madow flashed by was accurate, fargo ND.

By the way, haven't I been saying this for over three years?

The thing is the public is now finally waking up to it. Hopefully they decide to do the right thing and demand legalization. Otherwise Mexico isn't the only failed state they'll have to worry about.

it may happen faster than the fifteen years that took this to reach this point in Mexico

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCwZaqn8i7I

I disagree in legalizing drugs being the cure-all for the problem. It isn't. The traffickers would either A) switch merchandise (which the mafia did once booze no longer was a viable commodity in the 30's), or B) switch markets (which Mexican gangs did in 2001, as Cenk pointed out).

The only way to solve this issue is to take out the command structure and methodically eliminate the branch elements once they are without their organization. Even then that might not be feasible for Mexico to do. Fox, the previous Mexican President, was a bit of a dumbass with this issue, which allowed the gangs to grow to gargantuan size and strength. In the end, we may not have much of a choice in terms of direct intervention. It's a matter of what kind of intervention would it be.

Prostitution, gambling and most other illegal vices are already locked up, at least in this country. Nor do they make that much money. Legalizing drugs would take a huge monetary chunk out of their budget.

Different markets, I really doubt it. Europe has for the most part either decriminalized or legalized drugs, India and SW Asia already have their own drugs, China will kill you without hesitation, Africa and South America are too poor. Not to mention transportation costs would eat up your profit margin.

Legalize drugs and these gangs become minor problems that can be easily mopped up.

We'd have our cheap production force now, and we wouldn't need China anymore. Bienvenidos, mi amigos!

Read this article: http://world.std.com/~mhuben/paarlberg.html

tl;dr version--

Legalizing drugs substitutes a couple problems for several others, thus ultimately solving nothing.

So legalizing drugs will make them cheaper and more available, therefore they will be greatly used by the urban and rural poor? I guess the urban and rural poor don't use enough hard drugs now huh?

I expect to hear stuff like this from Pat Buchanan.

Those folks are only moderately a part of Mexico now.
If the greater state falls I'd expect to see them split off and form their own country, probably with a sigh of relief from a large percentage of the population.

Maybe we can set up some kind of a trade?

burner.

The world wide powers that be NEVER quit and are no doubt pushing for the outcome you propose.

:tinfoilhat:

The US ever made was not annexing ALL of Mexico when we beat them in the Mexican-American war. We probably would have fully assimilated both cultures by now, and more than likely be a bilingual country, to our own betterment. We could have eliminated most if not all of the corruption which seems to be endemic to the Mexican culture, and did our best to eliminate much of the poverty there. We have spent too much of the last 160 years enmeshed in the affairs of Europe, Africa and Asia. All this time we ought to be concentrating on problems of the Americas instead of the rest of the world.

None of this is a joke, I'm quite serious about all of this.

I prefer annexation ala carte.

The PTB, especially republicans, would not allow it.

Orwell predicted this in 1984.
I think it's great, what better way to learn Spanish,
than to get a job, and move down south, way down south.
Hola, Companeros.