Makes you think...

Published Tuesday, March 30, 1999

The Texas intervention of 2008

------------------------------------------------------------------------ `In the same spirit that Clinton once viewed the tragedy in Kosovo, so we must act to avert another tragedy in Texas,' the Mexican president said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

By ANDREW J. GLASS Cox News Service

The United States declared a state of war today as waves of Mexican warplanes pounded U.S. military targets in a campaign to force Washington to accept an international peace plan for Texas.

President Ignacio Vazquez Torres of Mexico said the strikes, the first attack on another nation in Mexico's 198-year history, were aimed to prevent ``brutal repression'' by U.S. forces against the heavily Hispanic majority, which seeks to establish self-rule throughout southwest Texas.

Vazquez asserted that the attacks ``enjoyed the support of every nation in the Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic to Patagonia.'' As he put it:

``We and our Latin allies have taken this action only after extensive and repeated efforts to obtain a peaceful solution to the crisis. But President Bush has rejected the balanced and fair peace accords that our allies and partners, including Canada, have advanced, a peace agreement that the Mexicans in Texas courageously accepted.''

Canadian leaders, however, voiced their outrage against what they called ``a blatant case of aggression against our American brothers.'' Ottawa vowed to break an international arms embargo imposed against Washington after President George W. Bush stubbornly refused to acquiesce to Hispanic demands for an autonomous pro-Mexican government in El Paso.

But Bush, who had served as a Spanish-speaking governor of Texas before entering the White House in 2001, told a special session of the 110th Congress: ``We shall never surrender our control over the region nor allow foreign `peacekeeping' troops on sovereign U.S. soil.''

Bush also claimed that ``the world community remains poorly informed about the many atrocities committed by Hispanic guerrilla forces against defenseless Anglo civilians in and around El Paso.''

Vazquez, in his speech on the Internet, viewed by some 5 billion people, recalled the fierce NATO attacks against Serbia in 1999. That campaign occurred shortly before the collapse of the U.S. economy and the discovery of vast oil riches in Mexico -- wealth that allowed Mexico to leap ahead of its neighbor and to build its Fuerza Aerea Mexicanos (FAM) into a massive aerial arm.

``The onetime Clinton administration in Washington established the principle that ethnic rights must be upheld even if it means going to war,'' Vazquez said.

``Now horrors are taking place along our northern border and not in some faraway land. In the same spirit that Clinton once viewed the tragedy in Kosovo, so we must act to avert another tragedy in Texas. For us, this is also `a moral imperative.'

``I pledge that we will stop the bombing and recall our FAM forces when the United States comes to its senses. But, until that happens, we've warned the Bush clique in Washington that any attempt to retaliate would lead to the gravest possible consequences.''

Vazquez disclaimed any territorial ambitions by his powerful country. He did note, however, that vast stretches of the southwestern United States, including Texas, ``were Mexican soil until relatively recently, actually only 172 years ago.''

------------------------------------------------------------------------ Andrew J. Glass is a Washington, D.C.-based columnist for Cox Newspapers. Write him c/o Cox News Service, 2000 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 10,000, Washington DC 20006, or by e-mail at glass@coxnews.com .

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), March 30, 1999

Answers

Yes...it was the most humiliating thing to happen to this country since the Cuban invasion of Florida in 2003...

-- a (a@a.a), March 30, 1999.

Almost as bad as the China-led Asian takeover of the West Coast in 2005.

-- rick blaine (y2kazoo@hotmail.com), March 30, 1999.

...or when the "big one" hit the west coast in 2004. The few who survived surfed to Denver.

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), March 30, 1999.