Mexican Drug Cartels: Cartel Violence Heading North and Federal Government in “Deep Denial” According to Retired Army General

Retired Army Generals Barry McCaffrey and Robert Scales recently released their assessment regarding the status of Mexican Drug Cartel activity along the US/Mexican border. The four-month long non-partisan study was sponsored by the “Texas Departments of Agriculture and Public Safety”.

According to two media sources cited below, their [General’s] basic assumptions were that the US Federal government is in “deep denial” regarding the threat of instability the cartels pose to US national security. The threat, in their assessment, continues to move their “battlefield” north.

According to McCaffrey, "We're going to have a shameful incident on the U.S./Mexico border in the coming years if we don't amp up security on the frontier. It's coming” .

Of note, General McCaffrey stated that more people have been killed in the US than has been recorded, an observation he noted was not recorded in US statistics. The source of the information was a Texas rancher, but the targets of the murders were illegal aliens and the murders were higher than Texas Department of Public Safety statistics as the 22 became hundreds. Ergo, McCaffrey implied the official federal statistics are not accurate, and the cartels are operating more freely across the US borders than originally believed.

One of the media sources below interviewed another respected Cartel analyst, Sylvia Longmire, whom the source article seem to imply she offered a counterpoint to McCaffrey’s assessment by saying "It's not in the cartels' best interest to draw attention to themselves" because it disrupts the goal of the cartels. Longmire is not the only person to question the assessment there are others as well which are noted within the last source below.

My comment is this, while I do agree with Longmire with respect to the current situation, I think we need to consider the long-term ramifications of such actions if they are not monitored and disrupted. Because if the issue is not disrupted, the United States WILL have a problem where portions of the border may become ungovernable. We’ve a bad economy and people are looking at alternatives to making money to survive, drug trafficking is one means, people smuggling is another, wittingly/unwittingly smuggling terrorists and/or nefarious actors wishing to subvert US interests are another.

Failing to take aggressive and appropriate diplomatic, security, economic and informational measures is exactly why the drug war in Mexico that began in the 1980s reached its current state and only continues to worsen as of today. Mexico is not a cohesive nation, it’s a Frankenstein hybrid made of some non-corrupt entities and states combined with fiefdoms.

Last, General McCaffrey warned the current and previous administrations about the growing cartel problem that is now reaching thermal runaway. You can read that report here - General Barry McCaffrey Warns Obama Administration in 2008. Death Rate Appears to Have Quadrupled. Also, a publication written by the General is linked below.