All Along the Watchtower (The Iran-Venezuela Axis and the War on Terror)

National Review ^ | 3/18/2009 | Mario Loyola

[mojito]

Ronald Reagan helped to usher in a hopeful wave of democratization in Latin America. In one country after another, multi-party elections ended decades of single-party rule and military dictatorship. But today, that legacy is under threat — and so is our own homeland. The southern front in the War on Terror, which runs through Latin America’s institutions of state, is cracking under a combined assault of political revolution, Islamist terrorism, and the world’s most heavily armed drug cartels.

On Colombia’s frontiers, the radical “Bolivarian” governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia have embraced Iran, and are in league both with revolutionary terrorist movements such as the FARC and with drug traffickers. In the Caribbean zone, states are drowning in a tidal wave of drug- and weapons-smuggling — and increased extremism among its Muslim immigrant communities. In Mexico, massive drug cartels compete for control of the drug trade, deploying dizzying numbers of heavily armed paramilitaries. The violence has begun to reach our own cities.

There may be no direct connection between recent kidnappings in Phoenix and high-profile visits by Hugo Chávez to Tehran. But connect the dots, and you will see a transnational extremist-terrorist wave challenging the institutions of liberal democracy in Latin America. If that wave begins to win in Latin America, we will soon be facing it here at home, with potentially grave consequences for our security and our way of life.

America’s “defense-in-depth” against this wave consists of Colombia, Central America, and Mexico. All three lines of defense are under assault and in danger of failing.

[mojito]

We may have bigger problems than Pakistan.

But try telling that to the 0 Napolitano crew, where terrorism is now a "man-caused disaster."

[RonboTex]

And of course from those countries the terrorists with their WMDs can move North thru Central America and Mexico, finally crosing the porous border into the U.S.

Once here, they can get some free health care , and then proceed to reak havoc and destruction upon innocent civilians.

[nuconvert]

“In June 2007, a plot to bomb the fuel-depot system of JFK International Airport was foiled, preventing another mass-casualty attack in New York City. Of the four terror suspects arrested, one was from Trinidad and the others from nearby Guyana. “Although Caribbean societies remain mostly a harmonious mosaic of ethnicities and faiths,” writes Amanda Farfel of the American Jewish Committee, “the JFK plotters, late converts to Islam, demonstrate the susceptibility of some local Muslims to the messages of international radical Islamic organizations.” One of the JFK-plot suspects was arrested in Trinidad on a plane bound for Caracas. His wife told authorities that his intended final destination was Iran.”

[nuconvert]

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