Cartels Biggest Winners in the Imaginary
War that Texas Gears to Fight at Border
Capitol Inside
November 21, 2022
Governor Greg Abbott may be confusing Ho Chi Minh City with Eagle Pass with the deployment of vehicles and vessels that are built for war to the nation's southern border as the Texas leader does everything in its power to stop people from coming here from other counties in an attempt to live the American dream.
Abbott's War on the Rio Grande got under way in earnest last week with a constitutional pirouette that formally declared that Texas was being ravaged by migrants in an invasion from a foreign country that it has its origins in the criminal underbelly of the Lone Star State's southern neighbor and former ally up to now. But Abbott appeared to recognize a cold hard fact that he will never acknowledge - that the Lone Star State wouldn't have a prayer in a battle outside a video game with drug cartels, human smugglers, terrorists and other unsavory characters who he envisions.
The governor responded with a massive show of singular might that would make Florida Governor Ron DeSantis green with envy. Abbott will be sending the Texas troops to fight to the death now in a battery of tanks that the state has acquired with a fleet of warships as the first line of defense as the icing on the executive order that christened the invasion that Abbott claims to be under way.
But Abbott won't exactly be sending his soldiers to fight to the death in style. Some will be rolling toward their grace in 10 armed personnel carriers that were manufactured as M113s before they were taken out of production more than a dozen years ago. The M113 made its debut for the Americans in Vietnam in the early 1960s in the infant stages of the war against a communist invasion that wasn't a figment of paranoid imaginations and easy way for weapons manufacturers to profit beyond their wildest dreams.
The M113s are made for combat - and therein lies the rub. The antiquated machines will be worthless as weaponry based on the cold hard fact that the state won't be allowed to use them as such barring the event of concerted attacks by the enemy that Abbott envisions on Texas soil. Anyone who's a student of the Mexican drug wars knows that will never happen. Texas doesn't appear to be intelligent to realize how the narcotics lords are way too smart for that. They're almost certainly celebrating now that Abbott has single-handedly given them yet another incentive to drive their prices up.
Based on the data, that's been the only real effect of Operation Lone Star up to now beyond its value as a campaign ploy that Abbott rode to an 11-point victory over Democrat Beto O'Rourke in the midterm election this month. Abbott has contended constantly that he's taken the initiative to secure the border in the face of President Joe Biden's steadfast to do so. But the governor campaign should buy a lollipop for every Texan who really believes that their state has put a dent in the flow of people into the state illegally when the number of migrant apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol has skyrocketed 40 percent in the past year alone.
Abbott would be telling the truth if he said that the federal government hasn't done as much to restrict immigration under Biden as it had under Donald Trump. But the record shows that the federal government does more every day to enforce immigration laws than Operation Lone Star has ever been capable of doing - with or without an invasion decree. Abbott should take a sucker for himself if he's fallen for his own talking points on Biden open border policies.
The truth is that the state doesn't have the authority to fire its tanks at anyone who isn't literally attacking our troops on the north side of the river. Texas won't be allowed to sink any migrant caravans that are crossing the Rio Grande so they can pursue their legal right to seek asylum anywhere in the U.S. they choose to go.
Texas would be delusional if it really thought it had the authority to take the enforcement of federal immigration into its own hands with the stroke of a pen in an executive order. All the fancy new artillery will be worth little more than action figures that are dressed like soldiers in the state's escalation of war games on the Rio Grande - invasion or not. Operation Lone Star has been invisible up to now in every conceivable way that can be substantiated in the eyes of those who the state sees as the enemy. Cheap jewelry isn't going to change that. If there's a chance for survival and employment in the United States of America, they will come. Period.
Everyone who isn't atheist should hope and pray in the meantime that Operation Lone Star doesn't trigger a nuclear war accidentally in the worst case scenario or kill its own people with friendly fire from tanks and boats that the state does not have the power to use for anything but show. Maybe - in the best case scenario - Texans who are most vulnerable and frightened easily will feel a little safer now. |
