10 Facts About the Border Crisis

Actually it is hard to know anything for certain about the crisis on our southern border. The federal government has had much better success at keeping news from getting out than at preventing invaders from getting in. And the main stream news (Fox partially excluded) has raised few objections and made little effort to get at the important parts of the story.  But operational realities tell us some irrefutable facts, and lead to some important strategic conclusions.

FACT #1: Moving tens of thousands of people 900 miles is a huge logistical endeavor. It requires large numbers of trucks, busses, assembly points, drivers, fuel, food, way stations, communications, and parts and maintenance personnel. It requires planning, money and time. It requires guards and guides. Children are actually harder to manage and move than adults. As terrorist groups who have tried to hold children for long periods of time have discovered, it is harder to control and (after a while) intimidate children than adults.  And even a hardened cartel member can’t ride next to a stinky diaper for 6 weeks. Moving tens of thousands of children a thousand miles requires lots of preparation.

FACT #2: The trafficking of thousands of people across this enormous distance cannot take place without the cooperation of federal, state and local law enforcement and political officials in Mexico and multiple Central American countries. You could not move 1000 children across Tennessee by bus without attracting the attention of state and local police. The same is true south of our border.  Everyone moving along the “underground railroad” pays a tax (bribe) to every jurisdiction along the way.

FACT #3:  We have a huge intelligence apparatus operating in Mexico and Central America, and on the airwaves and internet linkages that would be used to coordinate such a massive movement.  NSA, CIA, DIA, DEA, DNI, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, DHS, Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, etc. – the list of intel agencies watching cartel and other illegal action south of our border is long.  Unless we have the dumbest intel operatives and analysts in the world (and that’s not the case – they are very good), the US federal government saw this coming in considerable detail weeks before the surge of illegal children began.

Fact #4:  These agencies did not “sit” on this information. Given sensitivities about intel in Iraq, against domestic terror threats, etc., you can bet that the intel agents and agencies who saw this wave coming reported it right up to highest levels. No one wanted to be blamed for failure to anticipate this event . . . and in fact, no one has been blamed. Because it was anticipated – and reported – right up the chain of command.  

FACT #5:  This leads to an inescapable conclusion. Senior US federal officials knew about the pending invasion weeks and perhaps months before it began.  AT BEST, they ignored the situation, waiting for it to become a crisis, so it could be used for political leverage. AT WORST, our senior officials actively colluded with the perpetrators (to include foreign governments and the cartels) to create a politically useful crisis.

FACT #6: The recent historical record supports the idea that US government leaders (both within the Administration, and in Congress on both sides of the aisle) planned a major combined effort to push through comprehensive immigration reform  in early to mid-summer – precisely as the wave of illegal immigration began to crest. Aside from the famous federal job announcement in Jan 2014, seeking escorts for 65,000 immigrant children (a curiously accurate figure) to be in place by summer, news outlets carried many stories last spring on the growing consensus between democrats and republicans that early summer was the right time for such a political push.  It was timed to be passed into law before the August recess – before Congress went home in August, and before campaigning began in earnest in September.  Media reports also repeatedly highlighted the strong support of the American Chamber of Commerce for such action.

FACT #7: As broadly reported by media, this effort fell apart when the #2 Republican leader in the House (Eric Cantor) lost his primary fight in early June to an opponent who stressed Cantor’s openness to immigration reform. Political experts within both parties immediately declared immigration reform dead for this year – again a curiously abrupt conclusion about nationwide impact, given the mainstream story that Cantor had simply lost touch with his district. What few outside the senior leadership knew on the date of the primary was that the trip from Central America takes 6 weeks.  The huge wave young illegals was already on the way.  There was no way to turn it back. And it was going to arrive just as anti-immigration groups had shown national level clout.

FACT #8:  And how do we know that the Administration knew about the impending wave? Because the unclassified publically available executive order for DHS, FEMA, and DOD to prepare to receive the mass of humanity was dated weeks before the huge numbers began to arrive. In fact, the President declared a “Humanitarian Disaster” well before the situation reached that stage.  So he knew it was coming, and he took no action at all to forestall or diminish it. No action to correct the newspaper ads and public pronouncements in Central America that the door was open. No action to ask Mexico to intervene. No action to direct the busses be stopped at the border. No action except to hide the actual event from the press, and begin shuttling the invaders as rapidly as possible to as many locations as possible within the United States.

FACT #9:  While our border defenses are completely overwhelmed changing diapers, washing children, trying to arrange humane living conditions, and shuttling them around the nation to people who may be family members (try to find a birth certificate or accurate identification card in the press of humanity), the known crossing routes for drugs, sexual trafficking, and very bad people are wide open.  A lot of money is being made here. Wonder where it is going.

FACT #10: The logic train of these irrefutable facts can lead to only one conclusion.  The senior political leaders of the United States in both political parties knew exactly what was about to happen along our southern border, before the children ever boarded the busses headed north.  Our leaders either chose to ignore the situation, or actively encouraged it.

Political motivations are matters of conjecture, and not my area of expertise. But the operational facts and strategic logic are clear. We do not face an unpredicted disaster – a tsunami of people unexpectedly washed up on our shore. This is a well-planned, well-funded, and logically organized movement, expected by next Fall to be nearly as large as the force we launched out of Kuwait in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

You are free to debate the political implications of this last fact. But it is a fact, whether we like it or not.

DOD Global Strategy: Gone with the Iraqi Wind

There was a window when the entire ISIS was stretched out on the Iraqi road system in pickup trucks.  We could have devastated them from the air.  But the president was pretty involved in golf and chasing donations in CA, so that moment passed.

Now we have sent about 600 troops (perhaps 300 more – the numbers are hard to follow), to set up joint operations centers and “evaluate” what additional training and weapons the Iraqi Army needs. Suffice it to say they won’t need any track and field training.  They run just fine.  Especially after throwing down and leaving behind all the expensive equipment we gave them.

So now our two most dangerous enemies in the world – Sunni radicals and Shia radicals – are squaring off.  I think there is something to be said for letting the cannibals eat each other.  Opponents to that line of thought fear that this will become a regional conflict.  My answer:   Soldiers from the US, Canada, Australia, GB, Germany, Poland, the Philippines, Italy and other nations have died in Iraq in the last decade.  Not one soldier from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council).  It would not bother me a bit to see them put a bit of skin in the game, while we stand by to pick up the pieces. Let’s open some Saudi VA hospitals for a change.

But either way it goes, what we may be seeing is the end of DOD's newly developed strategy for the world -- convert the American Regular Army into a training force, regionally oriented, and focused on creating reliable military forces in every unstable nation, while Special Ops whittles the bad guys down to size.

First test -- with years, lives and billions invested -- was Iraq.  Total failure. 

Secretary of State Kerry said: “Nobody expected” the Iraqi Army’s wholesale desertion.  Uh –h-h-h – actually a lot of people did.

We are trying to make a national army in places that are collections of tribes, and hoping the military force will not only defeat the terrorists, but act as the backbone and catalyst for turning the tribes into a nation that values democracy and diversity.  "Hope" being the operable word.

What we saw in Iraq was revealing.  The plan worked as long as the US Army was on the ground and the USAF was overhead -- as long as somebody was ensuring fair and competent leadership of the indigenous forces. As long as they had reliable fires on call, and medical help standing by, and somebody who could not be bought off was answering the radio in the ops center.

Soon as we left, so did the empty dream of turning a national army into a nation.  The elected leader of Iraq saw the Army as a rival to his power. He fired competent officers and hired cronies. He turned a blind eye to corruption.  He used the military to oppress minorities.  Result -- the national army melted at the first whiff of gunpowder.

Next big test is Astan . . . unless Yemen or Nigeria or Jordan or some other place collapses first. 

Nobody else seems to have recognized the global implication of the melting of the Iraqi Army. But it is there and it is big.  Remember, you heard it here first.

Nicely done. But dangerously inadequate.

          On June 19^th, 2014, guest columnist Roger Cohen penned an article in the NYT called The Diplomacy of Force (see http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/opinion/cohen-the-diplomacy-of-force.html?_r=0 ).  It is about as solid and clearheaded an analysis as I have seen from a traditional perspective about how power works, and why American diplomacy and use of force is off track. Cohen’s article is so good that I hesitate to attempt a summary. But in short he argues that by insisting on waging diplomacy without the force to change the balance of power, President Obama has violated a fundamental principal of statecraft.  If you don’t bring a big stick to the negotiating table, bad people refuse to be reasonable.  It is a great point. 

          But it is also wrong -- or maybe more accurately, inadequate -- for the same reason that all the major theories of diplomacy since WW II have recently come a cropper.  They failed to properly account for the nature of man.

          They either assumed that man is RATIONAL (the central theory is called Realism) and will make a rational analysis of the balance of power.

          Or that man is REASONABLE, (the Yen to Realism’s Yang is called Liberalism) and doesn't really want war and destruction, if we could just get rid of bad leaders and the bad ideas they teach.

           These approaches are both mistaken. Men -- all men -- have some really bad ideas of their own.  Some of those bad ideas are really attractive -- even contagious. Pretending that bad ideas always bow in the face of superior power is dangerously wrong.  Pretending that men will let go of bad ideas if power is shared is just as dangerously wrong.

           And these two concepts are at the core of pretty much every military, diplomatic and economic theory, strategy and policy in the West today.

          The seed of this failure does not reside in democrats or republicans, or even the foreign policy elite. Nor even with the bureaucrats who seem to be spinning out of control all on their own.  They are just adapting the theories that best serve their own interests.  The seed of failure lies with the priesthood that has generated those ideas, and preaches them to the masses and the acolytes alike. And that is the tenured professorial class.  The worse their theories have performed, the more sacrifice they have demanded to the false gods of equality, diversity, and universality. But somehow these offerings don't seem to appease our opponents, or get them to the negotiating table, with either threats or promises.

          So nice try Roger Cohen. Very solid reasoning from a traditional perspective.  But dangerously inadequate. Shifting the balance of power against the ISIS while empowering the Shia lunatics who oppose them is not the solution. At this point, bad theories generated by academic theorists have backed us into a terrible corner. Nothing short of actually understanding the nature of our enemies is likely to help us get out.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

“A nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you.” (lyrics from Simon and Garfunkel, 1967).

Where has ThinkingEnemy been?

Ten months ago I suspended writing and publishing my blog, ThinkingEnemy. I had originally intended the blog as a simple series of responses from a strategic perspective to publications by others on issues of national significance. I quickly let the blog grow to the point that I was trying to produce several thousand words of high quality original strategic analysis each week. That’s a fine goal if it is part of your work, or if you do not have more pressing duties.

But in September of 2013 I began teaching several new graduate courses in homeland security and risk management, while trying to make headway on more than one book project.  Meanwhile, the Federal government accelerated the rate at which it was screwing up our strategic interests at home and abroad. As a commentator on strategic issues, I just couldn’t keep up. I had to prioritize. And top priority went to my students.

Well I am caught up with requirements, so I am bringing ThinkingEnemy back on line. I will return to my original intent with the blog – primarily strategic commentary on other writers, with a few original pieces as I have time. Hope you find the results interesting and worthwhile.

Joe DiMaggio (aka, Dave McIntyre)