Terrorists Send Message of Chaos and Death, As Some Blame U.S. Policy
The Washington Post reports on the most recent spate of torture and beheadings by the terrorists, providing a sobering reminder of exactly what kind of people we’re dealing with:
Increasingly, bodies show unmistakable signs of torture. Videos of executions are posted on the Internet, as taunts, as warnings. Corpses are dumped on playgrounds, with neatly printed notes beside them. And very often, the heads have been removed.
The article states: “As the war drags on, the violence grows bolder and more grotesque.” The article goes on to describe someone rolling five heads onto the floor of a public building two years ago. But the violence has recently stepped up: “37 people were slain over the weekend, including four children.” An expert comments: “Each method is now more brutal, more extreme than the last. To cut off the heads? That is now what they like. They are going to the edge of what is possible for a human being to do.”
“November was the bloodiest month so far, with at least 700 killings,” and 4500 people have been killed since 2007.
Journalists in particular are targeted. One is quoted as saying: “They are making a joke about the authority of the government. All the killings and all so public. They are broadcasting that there is no government that can stop them. They are geniuses at marketing. They commit these spectacular murders. They decapitate people. They light people on fire. Who is not going to pay attention to that?”
As always, there are those who blame U.S. policy for these killings. But regardless of U.S. policy, the violence continues. The paper reports that just last week, “the corpses of seven men, each shot multiple times, strangled and tortured, were lined up against a garden hedge at a primary school. The killers left poster-size signs.”
And, of course, the terrorists love to broadcast songs proclaiming their violent successes. The paper reports that, soon after these most recent killings, “the local police frequency was commandeered” and a song praising the terrorist group was broadcast.
A U.S. official denounces the terrorist acts: “The hyperviolence, the grotesque acts, the decapitations, dumping bodies in schoolyards, going after families, this is the work of what I call terrorist mafias.”
Yet people regularly argue that U.S. policy is responsible for these killings. As if a change in government policy could cause monsters like this to suddenly become human beings again.
P.S. A recent L.A. Times article touts a report that places the blame for this violence squarely on the United States. According to the report, we shouldn’t be focusing primarily on going after these violent thugs, but rather on changing U.S. policies that are responsible for the violence. “[T]he report suggests an incoming Democratic government led by Barack Obama can open opportunities for better ties and communication” to stem the tide of killings and beheadings.
Do you agree?
Would it change your thinking about this if I told you that the recent beheadings all took place right across the U.S. border? And that the killers are sending their representatives into the country on a regular basis?
You do realize I’m talking about the Mexican drug cartels, right?
I hate the French. So, by this kind of goofball “logic”, I am absolved of my role in this, and all of the blame lies at the feet of the French, who must change their evil ways so I no longer hate them.
JD (bda7e2) — 12/5/2008 @ 6:54 amI think you erred. Although you provided a link,
mjb (d9adee) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:00 amnot everyone will read the original article. You
neglected to mention that the ‘terrorists’ were
the drug cartels in Mexico–not in any other
country.
Why is it so hard for some people to wrap their head around the idea that there are sick, evil people in the world and that no amount of understanding,compassion, bribes,political arse-kissing will render them human.
pitchforksntorches (12026e) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:02 amHe come down to the people being victimized. Sad to say and not very Super-power like, yet it must be the victims of this violence that will rise up and end it, most sadly but sucessfully, they will end it with violence as well.
Political oppression might well be ended peacefully, (An example does not spring to mind at present..) but criminal oppression must be violently opposed by a people-empowered authority.
The simplest way to stop terrorism is not only to find the terrorist and kill him/her but to kill their immediate family and friends.
While this sounds horrid and indiscriminate, it gets at the heart of the problem. Clans talking smack, inciting young people to go and do bad things.
You think Parents would talk jihad to their 10-15 kids if they thought their ass was grass or if people who fund this insanity thought for a minute they would be killed as well as their family?
Terrorism, as we know, would cease to exist in one year because all those societal “pressure points” who brain wash these knuckle heads would back of for fear of their own lives.
But alas, we live in a kinder Obama world where consequences can only be positive and nothing bad should ever happen to anyone for any reason.
Da'Shiznit (089453) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:04 amThank Gaia they aren’t waterboarding anybody, that’d be real torture, probably get them indicted for war crimes or provoke large scale marches in various cities or something…………..
Techie (07c8ee) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:16 amWaterboarding is exponentially more vile and disgusting that lopping somebody’s head off.
JD (bda7e2) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:18 amRemember, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Techie (07c8ee) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:20 ammjb,
I went back and forth about whether to include that detail explicitly. I think you’re right. I need to include it. I have added a P.S.
Patterico (cc3b34) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:25 amTerrorism is terrorism, I do not see any need to differentiate between different types. But, you have to admit, and it is more than a little bit telling, that the natural reaction to this is to assume it was in reference to some Islamofascist peaceful goat-herder, driven to the depths of depravity by Bush and Cheney.
JD (bda7e2) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:28 amMaybe it’s time to dig up Blackjack Pershing again.
Techie (07c8ee) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:34 amIt’s all America’s fault. Uncle Noam told me so in that class I took.
Jack Klompus (cf3660) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:36 amThey’re only trying to feed their families. There isn’t a single resident of El Paso who does not have a relative, friend or neighbor who smuggles drugs into the United State.
nk (5fa892) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:36 amMexico has to decide to deal with this. I don’t go there anymore. Soon, they will find that no one else does either. If they had a nuclear weapon, they’d be Pakistan.
Mike K (2cf494) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:39 amPlease tell me that the /sarc is missing from your comment JD.
pitchforksntorches (12026e) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:43 amDrug interdiction created the market that created the cartels.
What would replace the business of protecting drug markets?
Would thuggery lesson if they lost their market? I don’t doubt it.
But you are quite correct it wouldn’t go away. The bandits are from a culture that revolved around mayhem, and sadistic ritualistic brutality to gain resources, influence, and power, steeped in ignorance and violence and bloody warring between rival groups.
What are you going to do with people like that?
SarahW (a6e80b) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:48 am“thuggery lessen”, not “lesson”
SarahW (a6e80b) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:48 amQED It’s all Bush’s fault.
Mike Myers (31af82) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:49 amThose savages are better armed than the national governments. They have no check of conscience or law on their methods.
How do you destroy them? Take away their market – that would help, but that’s a lot of power and thuggery with no place to go. THey would be finding a place to use the tools and ethics developed in the drug war arms race. They would be looking for something new to expropriate and control.
SarahW (a6e80b) — 12/5/2008 @ 7:57 amHow do you take away their market?
By legalizing drugs, thus increasing usage and demand?
Patterico (a5fedf) — 12/5/2008 @ 8:02 amNo PS was necessary.
Twenty years ago we shook our heads over the violence in Colombia by the Narcotrafficantes; but what occurs in Mexico makes the depravity of the Medellin cartel seem like a Sunday picnic.
When you have a vermin infestation in your home, the only way to rid yourself of it is to track it back to the nest, and destroy the nest and everything in it.
Calderon is doing more than any Mexican President has ever done in attempting to bring his country back from the Gates of Hell. But, the culture of corruption that has existed there with the express consent, acquiescence, and encouragement of the political classes, is one tough nut to crack.
The future of Mexico, and to some degree that of the United States, hangs in the balance.
Another Drew (46c816) — 12/5/2008 @ 8:09 amYears ago, I was told that the Chinese dealt with their drug addiction problem like this: anyone caught using drugs would be told, “Take us to your supplier.” In the event he refused, he would be shot on the spot. One way or the other, the addicts would be eliminated. I don’t know if it really happened like this, but it’s food for thought.
dchamil (b81d35) — 12/5/2008 @ 8:10 ampitchforksntorches #14 –
Fear not, JD was being 100% sarcastic. If you look at some comments he’s posted on other threads, you can see what his real opinions look like vs. when he’s just being sarcastic.
Robin Munn (088890) — 12/5/2008 @ 8:14 amThe PS was necessary for me: I scanned the article, thought you were talking about Mumbai/Bombay, and wouldn’t have clicked on the link because I don’t need to see more such idiocy this early in the day.
Robin Munn (088890) — 12/5/2008 @ 8:15 amI never understood the need to experiment with drugs, let alone living for them. Knew way too many hip people who died young from using drugs like heroin. Call me cynical and jaded, but still feel would be well served if the street drugs made available were too potent and killed indiscriminately. No need for those 12 step programs. Yes, make all drugs legal and tell them they should not drive or else if DUI will have to attend drug counseling. Dealt with that BS years ago when coworkers reveled in hard drugs, screwed up at work or just took off. They’d come back and all was well and forgiven if they got their “counseling”. Repeat over and over.
madmax333 (0c6cfc) — 12/5/2008 @ 8:34 amAnd yeah, I know to err is human, to forgive is divine. Steppenwold had it correct- Goddamn the pusher man. Don’t they simply execute pushers in Singapore? I don’t need drugs to croak, I think the foul air in Mexico City would be enough to croak me.
The great FX show had its share of drug crimes, especially involving Mexicans and South American drug cartels. On a practical level, these people should not be breeding- sterilize their asses when they are in the system- regardless of race, age, wealth status.
I’d be ok with allowing elderly to dwell in opium dens enjoying their hookahs, if they wish. Might make life a bit easier. Beats sitting in a high chair in a day room with a TV blasting while they soil their Depends. I worked in that sort of atmosphere for a few months while just out of high school…except no Depends used.
Why don’t we destroy all those drug fields in Afghanistan? Oh, they will hate us more? Yes, I know yuppies need their various escapes from reality and some could not survive without at least their daily ganja. Not that alcohol is any great positive contributor to society either.
The drug cartels are more rational than their Islamic counterparts. The drug gang slaughters are directed at rival gangs and public officials. These “messages” are sent to specific, small, groups of people. The ones who trespassed onto off-limits turf know who they are. These messages get results, and cause intimidated rivals to back off.
The mass insanity which is Islamic terrorism is directed towards humanity as a whole. That message is so illogical and incoherent, only the insane among them think it is accomplishing anything.
Wesson (3ab0b8) — 12/5/2008 @ 8:58 amComment by Wesson — 12/5/2008 @ 8:58 am
Do you really want to be seen as someone who thinks the Drug Cartels are rational businessmen?
Tell that to the parents of 4 & 5 year olds gunned down in their front yards playing with their toys – “Oh, they’re just collateral damage from a business decision!”
Another Drew (46c816) — 12/5/2008 @ 9:08 amRobin – You know me well.
JD (059bab) — 12/5/2008 @ 9:13 am“What are you going to do with people like that?”
Destroy them. And the culture that enables them.
My contempt for Mexico and it’s apologists knows no bounds.
belloscm (cf0c5e) — 12/5/2008 @ 9:38 ampitchforksntorches wrote:
This was a rhetorical question, right?
Well, I’ll answer it anyway: for some people to realize what you wrote is true, they would have to alter completely their mindsets. What you have described is the strange idea that people are responsible for their own behavior, and that bad behavior can’t be laid at the feet of George Bush or evil corporations or even just white people.
And if they could expand their paradigms enough to accommodate that concept, then they might [gasp!] become conservatives.
The wicked neocon Dana (3e4784) — 12/5/2008 @ 9:48 amComment by The wicked neocon Dana — 12/5/2008 @ 9:48 am
Consider yourself denounced!
Another Drew (46c816) — 12/5/2008 @ 9:50 amIn a word, yes. People need to be responsible for their behavior and the only issue that government should address in terms of criminal penalties is
“Did any given person initiate the use of force or fraud to achieve their goals.
Will demand go up? Will there be more drug use? More than likely. But to paraphrase Oliver Wendall Holmes, “Individual liberty with personal responsibility is the price we pay for a civilized society.”
Horatio (55069c) — 12/5/2008 @ 10:04 amTake away their money by legalizing or decriminalizing most (but maybe not all) drugs. Powder cocaine and heroin could be purchased directly from growers in Bolivia or Peru etc. by the DEA and sold to addicts for as low a price as needed to disrupt the income stream of traffickers. Weed grows anywhere so it would become a drug that pot-heads could get for either free or absurdly cheap. Decriminalized pills could be sold to pill-heads via legal proscription and made right here in the USofA.
Cut out the middle men and they will have less cash to buy guns, and government officials with. Not all of them of course but more than now.
Weaker bandits that have more trouble paying their goons and paying off the man might be easier to capture or crush as needed.
Of course that move would be opposed by an entrenched prison/interdiction industry here in the US, but maybe there would be a way to meet the needs of at least parts of that industry as well (experienced DEA personnel would shift their emphasis away from drug interdiction to more conventional crime, still going after the same guys but for different reasons). Congressmen with a healthy prison industry in their districts would kick of course but I guess they would just get creative and figure out something ELSE that they could criminalize to keep those prisons full.
There are probably several political reasons that our government wants the “drug war” to continue in places like Guatemala and Colombia but that “drug war” justification for our presence in those countries could be shifted over to a “war on terror” stance.
EdWood (c2268a) — 12/5/2008 @ 10:35 amPatterico,
Its even worse – on the gulf side towards Columbia there’s a coastal community of about 250K that has a huge murder rate of nearly 300 per year If all of Mexico were like this coastal city then the Murder rate for two years would be nearly 30,000!!!!! Talk about some REAL crime
Wow
Lucky that city isn’t in Mexico
But after Katrina who really cares eh?
EricPWJohnson (d66a90) — 12/5/2008 @ 10:48 amThere is a bi-partisan plan to solve this problem.
Perfect Sense (9d1b08) — 12/5/2008 @ 10:59 amIt is called “comprehensive immigration reform” and Mexico can export these thugs to the USA and the USA will give make them citizens.
Problem solved!
#33, Sad but too true. According to my (police officer) neighbor NOLA’s murder rate, which really got going strong in 2006, was (is) a city wide turf war where gangs that were fragmented by Katrina started staking out new territories to sell their products in. There wasn’t a functional crime lab there for a while either which made it basically impossible to prosecute the people they caught.
EdWood (c2268a) — 12/5/2008 @ 11:01 amI am pretty sure that it is racist to support actual application of any of our laws. Especially drug laws, especially since the CIA introduced crack into urban areas.
JD (059bab) — 12/5/2008 @ 11:01 amEric – What does Hurricane Katrina have to do with this?
JD (059bab) — 12/5/2008 @ 11:02 amComment by JD — 12/5/2008 @ 11:01 am
I see you’ve been speaking with Maxine again.
Another Drew (46c816) — 12/5/2008 @ 11:07 amJD
Actually nothing the murder rate in America soars past Mexico’s
We need to understand that 2,250 murders in a country of 110,000,000 is not an all out war with blood running in the streets as breathlessly stated
When you compare our top ten cities you get the same number for about a 1/4th of the population of Mexico – Sad as it is we blame Mexico for our problems
Not that 1 murder is not noteworthy nor should we take precautions but to suggest that 100,000 US troops are readying themselves for a domestic war on drugs is beyond the pale
EricPWJohnson (d66a90) — 12/5/2008 @ 11:34 amI meant to say that nor should we NOT take precautions
EricPWJohnson (d66a90) — 12/5/2008 @ 12:01 pmIt is going to be very interesting to see how the MSM,hollywood,and political talking heads handle
terrorism and other problems that they have blamed Bush/Cheney for.
In about a year,to blame America will be to blame Obama,and you know they are not going to do that.
The liberals in power will have to actually come up with solutions, instead of sitting on the sidelines using the difficulties of war as a political hammer,something they have not done successfully in decades.
With Obama keeping the same CIA interrogation
techniques,signing on to the NSA wiretapping program,keeping the troops in Iraq,and keeping on
Gates,their solutions appear to mirror Bush’s more and more everyday.
I suspect that the democrats and their supporters will revert back to the tough talk and
condemnation of terrorism that they played out under Clinton when they were telling the world that Saddam had WMD’s,ties to al-qaeda,and was an
imminent threat.But their solutions of “soft power”,lobbing missiles,and police action will be
as much of a failure as it was in the 90’s.
Another example of “Hope and Change” really meaning “yea,what Bush said”:
Baxter Greene (8035ae) — 12/5/2008 @ 12:04 pm‘Muted by Reality’
Now that Obama has won, we could be in Iraq for a hundred yearshttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB122841335568079935.html
mjb….why would it make a difference who the terrorists are or where the terrorists do what they do, and then try to blame the US???
Your point is a straw man….
Build him up please…..
reff (b996d9) — 12/5/2008 @ 12:22 pmProhibition worked real well with booze didn’t it?
At least “THAT” prohibition was passed by the citizens, “LEGALLY” subsequently repealed by the same citizens. WHY? Could not have been at all related to the violence brought upon the common folk eh?
As far as legalizing (some drugs), leading to increased use, the world will soon have actual data to back up the theory. So far the theory seems to be failing the reality. But time will tell.
TC (0b9ca4) — 12/5/2008 @ 12:30 pmGun control in Mexico has worked out real well, hasn’t it? It insures that, when the cartels attack civilians, they can’t fight back. Makes for safer working conditions for the druggies.
Socratease (64f814) — 12/5/2008 @ 5:07 pmGun control always works to the advantage of authoritarians, and to the detriment of the great unwashed.
Another Drew (46c816) — 12/5/2008 @ 5:11 pmThe Islamic extremists actions are the result of just that, Islamic Extremist views. The illuminati left refuses to accept the fact that these are people who are dedicated to a twisted view of their religion and will go to any lengths to make that clear. We might be their enemy, but they would be doing whether or not we were in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Rj (b3eac0) — 12/5/2008 @ 10:06 pmThe solution to the narco-violence destabilizing Mexico must be implemented on both sides of the border.
I can guarantee positive results. However, I must be placed in complete charge of this effort. My official title shall be “El Caudillo.” But you may call me Don Caudillo – just remember, no direct eye contact.
Californio (d41cf6) — 12/5/2008 @ 10:32 pmThe legalization of currently controlled substances would indeed “de-fang the serpent”.
While I agree that you would undoubtably have an initial increase in overdoses, DUI’s, and violent crime, you would remove the root cause of the problem.
In the case of OD’s, those who would simply throw away their lives for a celebratory blow-out (apologies for the pun…), are probably not worth the lost sleep anyway. They will find some way to rid us of their existance, might as well just make it quick and “fun” for them.
As for the DUI’s, I would back stronger punishments for offenders (not to say I don’t now). Death sentences in fatal cases are one possibility.
The increase in violent crime would result from the sudden cessation of crime’s chief life-blood: Drugs. Suddenly the criminals of this country would face either finding legitimate jobs, or resorting to less honorable means of aquiring misgotten wealth. The latter is also known as theft, and to be done “scott-free” is extremely difficult and requiring of skillsets that your average “thug” simply hasn’t taken the time to learn. They would be rounded up rather quickly I think.
To conclude, I agree whole-heartedly with the comment regarding personal responsibilty.
The argument that an inanimate object controls the actions of humanity is a decidedly liberal one. It fuels the gun-ban arguments of the left on a regular basis…
Evil Monk (4fbc7d) — 12/6/2008 @ 2:54 am