Our March issue featured the story "Plan Juárez: Echoes of Chiapas on Mexico's Northern Border [2]" from Frontera NorteSur news service, noting how Mexican President Felipe Calderón's militarized response to the escalating violence on the Rio Grande mirrors the counterinsurgency against the Zapatistas a decade ago. Our Exit Poll was: "If violence continues to escalate in northern Mexico, will the US intervene militarily? Will it happen this year?" We received the following responses:
From Russ, somewhere in cyberspace:
The US will not intervene, directly. "Advisors" could be sent in, per a request by the Mexican government. Otherwise, it will just be an opportunity for our economy to be drained more by the military industrial complex.
World War 4 Report replies: We're not sure. There is precedent for US military intervention, but—precisely because of this—not for the Mexican government inviting in military advisors. After repeated US interventions, it is considered an affront to Mexican nationalism. Unilateral intervention is actually more likely.
From Wajid Ali, somewhere in cyberspace:
The US will not involve itself unless there is the threat of violence in Mexico affecting American security.
World War 4 Report replies: The right-wingers on Capitol Hill are already saying [3] the violence in Mexico is affecting US security. They may be wrong, but in politics, perceptions are everything...
From Diana, somewhere in cyberspace:
Yes!!! They've been dying to since the petroleum wasn't privatized.
Will it happen this year?
Maybe(Hopefully not!)
World War 4 Report replies: Hopefully not, indeed. However, it looks like the petroleum actually is being privatized [4], albeit quietly and piecemeal...
From Michael Johnson of the Señor Pescado [5] Sustainable Seafood company in Myrtle Beach, SC:
if so, then every military fuck in USA will die with their family Viva La Raza... stay the fuck out of other people's country and they will leave us alone
World War 4 Report replies: Why don't you come out and tell us how you really feel, Mike? Isn't it amazing how left-wing and right-wing rhetoric is almost identical these days? The xenophobes and interventionists would say: "stay the fuck out of other people's country and we will leave you alone"...
From Jan Martell of Triangle Free Press [6] in Durham, NC:
The US intervenes to destabilize countries that appear to be gaining greater control over their resources. Mexico is in a destabilizing spiral right now, which suits us just fine, since we're overextended militarily—besides keeping larger swaths of South Asia destabilized, there's Africa to think about...
World War 4 Report replies: Who is this "we" to whom you refer? I certainly don't want to see nightmarish violence in Mexico—do you? Now, if by "we" you mean the US political establishment, you might want to use the pronoun "they," because I am not a member of it, and I assume you aren't either. More to the point: The US political establishment wants to see resource-rich countries destabilized if they are exercising national control over those resources, and otherwise bucking Tío Sam (see Venezuela). Calderón's Mexico is dismantling the structures of national control over the petroleum and other critical resources, as noted above. Mexico is one of Washington's last remaining compliant client states in Latin America. The last thing the US political establishment wants is to see it destabilized.
From "Locoto," somewhere in cyberspace:
Uhhhh,,,any objective look at Mexico would indicate that it has already happened--just not so much with uniformed official military--as opposed to the USAID, DEA, DHS, CIA and other "non-military" forces already there.
The question might be better stated as "will the US officially invade Mexico to augment existing personnel, and to bring peace, security and "democracy" (like the US is supposedly doing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan among other nations)?
Or in other words, will the USA continue to try to make Mexico into even more of a 51st state than it is?
My answer: does a bear shit in the woods?
World War 4 Report replies: Typical lefter-than-thou song-and-dance. The worst-case scenario is always "already" here. Utterly ahistorical. You cannot accuse this web site of failing to cover the Merida Initiative [3] and other actually-existing mechanisms of US imperial control in Mexico. But "military intervention" means what it says—actually introducing US military forces on Mexican territory unilaterally, as in Veracruz in 1914 and Chihuahua under the Pershing expedition in 1916. There is a very big difference between that and the status quo.
Furthermore, "51st state," however distasteful a prospect, is far too optimistic. States have federal representation. Occupied territories (Iraq, Afghanistan, Puerto Rico), do not...
See our last post on Mexico's narco wars [3]
See our last Exit Poll results [7].
Please leave a tip [8] or answer our new Exit Poll [9].
