{"id":4305,"date":"2009-03-03T08:13:40","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T13:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4305"},"modified":"2009-04-24T19:50:49","modified_gmt":"2009-04-25T00:50:49","slug":"quagmire-on-so-many-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4305","title":{"rendered":"Quagmire On So Many Levels"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Orwell 101; the authoritarian\/totalitarian state has <\/em>to have an enemy to justify piddling on the Rights of Man.<\/p>\n

I know, I know; the left spent the last eight years caterwauling emptily about the same thing – the threat that the War on Terror was just a pretext to gut Americans’ civil liberties.\u00a0 It’s not to say that the price of Liberty isn’t <\/em>eternal vigilance; it’s not even to say that the left was crying wolf.<\/p>\n

It might seem, though, that they’re projecting a bit.\u00a0 The Obama Administration is apparently weighing using the US military to help the Mexican military fight the narcotraficantes\u00a0<\/em>weighing using the US military to help the Mexican military fight the narcotraficantes <\/em><\/a>that have made northern Mexico as dangerous as Iraq so far this year:<\/p>\n

The U.S. military is in a better position to provide Mexico’s military with training, resources and intelligence as its southern neighbor battles deadly drug cartels, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says…”I think we are beginning to be in a position to help the Mexicans more than we have in the past. Some of the old biases against cooperation with our\u2014between our militaries and so on, I think, are being set aside,” Gates said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.””It clearly is a serious problem,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But yes, of course – it’s our <\/em>civil liberties that are at fault:<\/p>\n

A U.S. report has found that weapons in the drug killings are coming from north of the border. Mexican authorities are outgunned by the drug cartels because the criminals are receiving their high-powered arms from the United States, Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday…”They want to clearly stop the guns from the United States going south. We want to stop the drugs coming north,” Emanuel said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “That border is important to us and Mexico is a key ally of ours.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We’ve called BS on this claim for quite some time; what self-respecting thug would use a measly semi-automatic, civilianized “Assault Weapon” when they can get, for a fraction of the price, fully-automatic weapons from Central American legacy terrorist groups, from the Mexican and other co-opted Latin American militaries, or from gun-merchants who can turn cartel drug money into first-world hardware for the asking.<\/p>\n

No, the Administration needs a boogieman.<\/p>\n

A domestic, right-wing boogieman.<\/p>\n

So, gun owners; are you ready to boogie?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Orwell 101; the authoritarian\/totalitarian state has to have an enemy to justify piddling on the Rights of Man. I know, I know; the left spent the last eight years caterwauling emptily about the same thing – the threat that the War on Terror was just a pretext to gut Americans’ civil liberties.\u00a0 It’s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,24,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-culture-war","category-liberty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}