Just Bad Strategy

Via Say Uncle comes notice of recent events in Houston (actually, the north-west outskirts of the city).

The mission was supposed to be a textbook “controlled delivery” — a routine trap by law enforcement officers using a secret operative posing as a truck driver to bust drug traffickers when their narcotics are delivered to a rendezvous point.

Instead, things spun out of control. Shortly before the marijuana delivery was to be made Monday, three SUVs carrying alleged Zetas Cartel gunmen seemingly came out of nowhere and cut off the tanker truck as it rumbled through northwestern Harris County ...

Leaving for another time the whole issue of structuring a war so as to inflict the greatest amount of damage upon your own territory and people, let's focus our attention on what is reported in the Houston Chronicle story linked above and some of the known behavior of the participants mentioned there-in.

Skipping right past the obvious willingness of US law enforcement officers to resort to apparently unrestricted rules of engagement as regards their own firearms, not to mention their shameless willingness to place a non-LEO citizen in such an obvious high profile target position, we have self-identified Mexican national criminal gang members operating within the US just as they are accustomed to doing in Mexico.

So let's look at that for a moment. Both of the major gangs operating in N. Mexico routinely target law enforcement personnel (and their families) who display even the slightest willingness to oppose their activities. The newspaper makes a good effort to clearly identify as many of the cops (or at the least their agency) involved in this incident as could be fit into the story.

How long can we expect to wait for the news report on the execution of any of these officers and/or their family members by other elements of the Zetas as is that group's long established practice?

What might the 1st Amendment consequences be throughout the United States as a result of such an obvious occurrence?

What is the likelihood of such an organisation (Zetas) being willing to spread cash around to politicians and senior cops (pardon the redundancy) so as to not overload their limited personnel's ability to inflict damage on an enemy without interfering with "business"?

Any "strategy" that doesn't clearly articulate both recognition of obvious problems like these as well as obviate them via conceptual structural organisation is an exercise in deliberate failure. Or a false-flag operation to disguise some other intended objective, depending on your preferred flavor of kool-aid or hat materials.

The cops named in this story (along with their families) are now all under death sentence per long established Zetas protocol and the Houston Chronicle has obligingly provided the initial target list for that groups all-too-experienced killers with the willing cooperation of the targets police themselves.

Well done all.

The only "improvement" this story could have is if it should turn out that Fast & Furious guns (those provided to Mexican drug gangs with the active connivance of US federal law enforcement) were used in this gun fight too.

This is all the fault of ordinary American's unwillingness to refrain from any activity their government decides they shouldn't be doing, you understand, so take up your share of the blame and send more money to your government as restitution for your failure as a citizen.

Or not.