Posted by
Catmman on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 9:20:06 AM
Mexicans attacking our Border Patrol? Tear Gas retaliation? Take a gander at
this story:
SAN DIEGO (AP) - The Border Patrol says its agents were attacked nearly 1,000 times during a one-year period along the Mexican border, typically by assailants hurling rocks, bottles and bricks. Now the agency is responding with tear gas and powerful, pepper-spray weapons, including firing into Mexico.
The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that innocent families are being caught in the crossfire.
Counteroffensive? Nothing like a bit of inflammatory rhetoric to make the Americans look bad huh? Of course the residents are "innocent"...
"A neighbor shouted, 'Stop it! There are children living here," said Esther Arias Medina, 41, who on Wednesday fled her Tijuana, Mexico, shanty with her 3-week-old grandson after the infant began coughing from smoke that seeped through the walls.
"We don't deserve this," Arias said. "The people who live here don't throw rocks. Those are people who come from the outside, but we're paying the price."
Damn, callous, hateful American imperialists!
The Border Patrol's top official in San Diego, Mike Fisher, said his agents are taking action because Mexican authorities have been slow to respond. When an attack happens, he said, American authorities often wait hours for them to come, and help usually never arrives.
"We have been taking steps to ensure that our agents are safe," Fisher said.
Border Patrol agents were attacked 987 times along the U.S.-Mexico border during the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, the agency said. That's up 31 percent from 752 attacks a year earlier, and it's the highest number since the agency began recording attacks in the late 1990s.
What in the heck is going on with our borders?
John Hawkins over at
RightWingNews has more:
You know, when people suggest that illegal aliens could engage in the same sort of out-of-control rioting that Muslims immigrants do in France, it gets pooh-poohed with, "Well, Muslims just do that sort of thing all over the world. Our illegals aren't like that."
Wrong. Look to our border, where you've got thugs attacking American border patrol agents, the Mexican government standing by and allowing it to happen, and complaints that innocents are getting caught up in the crossfire.
It almost sounds like the Israeli/Palestinian situation minus the suicide bombings and look at what a no win situation it is:
1) The Mexican government could put a stop to it, but they choose not to do so.
2) If border patrol agents do nothing, they'll be injured and killed in increasing numbers.
3) When they use tear gas or pepper spray on a large scale, innocents are caught in the crossfire.
4) If they start regularly shooting the people attacking them, they'll be unfairly accused to using excessive force -- as if a rock or a ball bearing shot from a slingshot can't seriously injure or kill someone.
This begs the question: How long until suicide bombings begin? Hawkins does offer some interesting parallels. There is a natural progression to these things after all. I guess all we can hope for is that the Mexicans aren't as fanatical as the Muslims to keep this from escalating to that point.
Either way, this does not bode well for either nation.
(Credit John Hawkins at RWN for the title of this post.)