Mexico and Hezbollah

Back to Professor Skip Bacevich and his point about Mexico.

Here is an article in The Washington Times, "Hezbollah uses Mexican drug routes into U.S."

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a serious problem.  Hezbollah (remember, they run southern Lebanon) uses Latin America as a place to earn cash to finance their activities.  Interestingly enough, their sponsor, Iran, is being chummy with both Venezuela and Nicaragua. Here are the first three paragraphs of the article:

Hezbollah is using the same southern narcotics routes that Mexican drug kingpins do to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, reaping money to finance its operations and threatening U.S. national security, current and former U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials say.

The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America's tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil.  Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S.

Hezbollah relies on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels," said Michael Braun, who just retired as assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

It is kind of a longish article, but interesting.

One thing that we have to consider, if we think that Hezbollah (or Mexican drug cartels) poses a threat to our nation, is the issue of illegal immigration.  Illegal immigrants operate in the Underground Economy, outside the disinfecting light that shines on the above ground economy.  An Underground Economy of any substance encourages corruption, both private and official. Neither of those is good when fighting people engaged in human and drug trafficking.

Our present arrangement, arrived at by not being willing to compromise on any one approach, is achieving nothing and leaving us vulnerable.  Our children will look back on us and sigh in disbelief that we were unable to realize the danger and come up with a solution that was both equitable and effective.

Regards  --  Cliff