Strategypage notes that Duterte, who is being condemned by "human rights" types (which is pushing him away from an alliance with America), is popular here: because we are now a lot safer.
Now, if he only can get the vaccine roll out better. And we hope that China, who is now suddenly becoming more aggressive in the West Philippine Sea, doesn't pull a stunt to start a war here.
But my point is that yes, destroying the criminal element can be done. By the government, not by private hit jobs (as was being done before Duterte) which often mean thugs on both sides got away with murder. Now it's only the cops, and the government can fire crooked cops. But not the crooked politicians since their friends and relatives will cover up for them. Sigh.
Colombia pretty well stopped their "communist" (FARC) insurrection with a combination of carrot and stick, amnesties and reeducation of ex FARC types, and aggression against the narco terror heads who hired many of the ex FARC types to terrorize locals to grow drugs.
So the fight has moved elsewhere, alas, because the dirty little secret is that the USA has a drug taking problem. The tip of the iceburg is the overdose deaths (70 thousand in 2019 and 81 thousand in 2020), but the effect of drug taking on keeping a job and causing family break up or women refusing to marry their druggie boy friends or children abandoned to be raised by relatives or in foster care is a big problem.
Luckily the churches in the USA are aggressively fighting this cancer: NOT. Too interested in telling us not to use air conditioners and to live a green lifestyle while ignoring the casualties of drug taking sleeping on the sidewalks. Sigh. I am now reading Paul Johnson's book that has a chapter discusses how opium use in China preceeded the "opium wars", and he wonders why some cultures descend into massive drug use and others don't. Hint: he has no idea why. But he does note China was corrupt, and that there were several massive civil wars that broke out during the 1800s, so maybe something was brewing beneath the surface.
Well, anyway, my point is that much of the illegal "immigration" is not Mexican but from Central America, which is terrorized by gangs who make money from drugs, and with corrupt governments who let them do it.
They will also smuggle people for profit, so essentially the innocent fleeing refugees from the narco terror are actually making these gangs stronger.
Mexico who has tried to keep the place peaceful is now being inundated with these refugees and criminal gang related crimes. The gangs are like the Mafia: anything to make money. And hey, they read the papers too, and know Biden said he's let everyone in. Svoila, instant uber-migration of poor people looking for a place to live and work in peace (along with the gang members and the drugs they carry of course), and the women and children who come are at risk of being trafficked as sex workers etc. of course.
War correspondent Michael Yon has two reports on John Bachelor's podcast that discusses what he is seeing.
Not all the desperate refugees are coming from narco gang infested Central American countries: some are fleeing the socialist paradise in Venezuela or the new narco states that replaced Colombia.
Micheal Yon reports on what they face trying to transverse the dangerous Darien Gap:
and this report from ElPaso:
Sigh. A good alternative would be to send in someone to train local cops to fight, and to punish or convert the local politicians and work with the young men in gangs to rehabilitate them... The churches, both Catholic and evangelical, do this, and indeed several dozen clergy have been killed or been "disappeared" by these gangs in recent years.
But until someone finds an answer to the thirst for taking drugs, and changed public opinion against drug use, the mess will continue.
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