This Is Going To End Well...

h/t I Hate The Media

Because, well...the cartels pay better. Viva capitalismo!

Greater Aztlan Two U.S. soldiers were stopped and questioned by Mexican troops, while conducting a surveillance operation on the U.S. side of the border. According to officials, two soldiers were sitting in an unmarked vehicle north of the Rio Grande last week, when six Mexican troops approached with the guns drawn.
The troops reportedly approached the vehicle and confiscated a gun from one of the American soldiers.
One of the U.S. troops spoke Spanish and was able to talk to the group, explaining they were on U.S. territory.
The Mexican military personal allegedly thought the U.S. troops were on Mexican territory, as that part of the border is unmarked.

 

Firstly, by custom and formal agreement, until recent US ANG deployments in support of the current crisis, both nations' troops are limited to staying well back from the border, to prevent exactly this sort of "accidental" contact.

 

Secondly, the border's location isn't in dispute, nor has been for any time in 171 years. Their troops and ours know where it is, and which side they're on.

 

Thirdly, I've watched Mexican troops, and police, violate the border where they can without penalty, time and again. Whilst armed. Invariably, anyone on their side at the border isn't there to enforce the border, or anything else, except at the wishes of, and to the benefit of, the drug/smuggling cartels, which have controlled all movement across it for 10+ years. I have photographed and listened to, from rock-throwing distance, off-duty Mexican law enforcement scouting the border for passing drug and personnel shipments over it, and calling it in to their narco-jefes. I have witnessed them deciding, in the absence of US presence, to violate US sovereignty time and again, while armed, and not up to anything good. (The technical term this goes by in State Department conference rooms is "cassus belli".)

 

One of the border ranches I worked on, our host had a couple of pictures on his wall of a full squad of pickle-suited Mexican soldiers in the mid-1980s posed in front of his garage, a mile, three fenclines, and one set of PG&E electrical lines overhead NORTH of the international border, and their G3 military rifles at stack arms, which is where there were placed when found by rapidly arrived Border Patrol agents, summoned in the nick of time when the uniformed Mexican troops came north under orders onto his property to kidnap him, take him back to Mexican territory, and execute him. This was a couple of days after he reported a drug cooking lab house just over the international fenceline to US DEA authorities, and it subsequently blew up "unexplainedly", the night before crooked Mexican drug enforcement police were to raid it the next day. They claimed they "got lost" in broad daylight, were escorted back to Mexico at an international port of entry, given back their weapons, and the would-be victim told in no uncertain terms the attempt never happened, or he would be in court every day for the rest of his life testifying, contrary to the wishes of the US Gov. Under Reagan, FFS. The fix has been in forever.

 

I furthermore watched in real time as two Mexican cops patrolling the fenceline (which they didn't do routinely in that area) shot at two attempted crossers, not for trying to get across, which happened in that area with tedious regularity, but for trying it on their own, without a coyote on the cartel payroll, nor paying the $1-2K cartel "fee" for such exploits, which meant those cops weren't getting their cut from them either. And there was no "Alto! Manos arriba!" Mexican Miranda pretense, either. Those cops jumped out shooting, doing full mag dumps on sight when they glimpsed the two would-be crossers. I suspect they killed them, as we didn't see them re-attempt the crossing, and never saw the Mexican po-po hauling anyone off to jail afterwards. This is not a playground, kids. Big Boy Rules apply in full force. This is just what happens there.

 

Enforcing cartel business is what the Mexican military and police in the border regions do, going back decades. There are honest police and military forces there. They can usually be recognized by the bullet holes in their foreheads, or the fact that their heads are not found co-located contiguous to their torsos, in about 99% of cases. There are no other honest ones within 20-50 miles of the US-Mexican border, inclusive, from Tijuana to Brownsville. Write this on your hands with laundry marker, lest ye forget. Plomo o plata is the operating rule.

 

So if a small group of Mexican soldiers was on, or in this case, over the border, they were

a) dirty (and I'm not talking about their personal hygiene, though that probably applies as well)

b) working for someone other than the Mexican government at the time

to a 100% metaphysically true certainty.

 

And let's call this like it went down: They didn't "question" US troops. They captured them, disarmed them, robbed them, kidnapped them, and let these two world-class dumbphucks go, alive, because they didn't have any idea they would be there, and they were momentarily confused, and reverted to theft and criminality because it's their default mode.

 

Sleep tight, America. Big Green is keeping you safe with fucking idiots like this, and officers and NCOs who sent them there.

Note the deafening lack of details on who these two jet-fuel military geniuses were, who their NCOIC and OIC were, and what military intelligence bunch of stumblefucks sent them down there to wave their dicks, with less situational awareness, common sense, ROE, or live ammunition and the will to use it than we routinely gave PFCs on a routine DMZ patrol along the Nork border forty effing years ago.

 

The only reason those two US military personnel are both alive, and free, is because someone wasn't expecting to find them there, and didn't know what to do with them, but wasn't willing to risk an international incident over killing or kidnapping them.

Unlike, for instance, clueless jet ski tourists on the wrong part of a reservoir on the Texas border.

 

Maybe after a few NG dickheads are found strung up to trees with their genitals in their mouth etc., the general dumphuckery level of the average NG squaddie deployed there will move from imagining they're in some magical bubble of safety because "Muh military cammies", and the survivors will cross over into IQ levels higher than agave cactus. Time will tell, but I wouldn't be holding my breath waiting for it to happen.

 

This is why whenever I ventured south, it was in company with friends, following Murphy's Laws of Combat ("Bring a gun. A long gun. Bring all of your friends with long guns..."), we carried a Basic Load and more of ammunition, and we were perfectly happy to expend it all rather than fall into the hands of anyone we encountered not driving a marked US official vehicle. The border, for 300 years, is bandit country.

 

These two clueless squaddies just learned that the hard way, and very nearly won the Second Place Award for Combat, with Cluelessness Clusters.

 

 

This nonsense is going to continue until someone lights up a squad of troops, from one side or the other, and possibly both ways. Or somebody just disappears.

 

Build the goddam wall, and put an end to this silly nonsense.