Just after 0530 last Monday morning, I sprang out of bed, scooping up a 1911 pistol from the magnet mounted on my nightstand. The last time I did that was in Jalalabad, or possibly Lashkar Gah; I can’t remember exactly, but it was at least 15 years ago, when I was living and working in Afghanistan. I stood frozen in place, wondering what was going on, when I heard it again, distant rifle fire coming from somewhere near the airport.
I would have been upset had I leaped out of bed like that for no reason. A buddy of mine described my reaction as unconscious competence. That sounds about right, as my comfort with firearms is the fruit of thousands of hours of practice. The subconscious recognition of rifle fire is a trait I share with thousands of military and contractor veterans of the Afghan and Iraq wars.
The firing did not last long and was followed by a chorus of sirens as McAllen police and EMS units began to roll towards the Border Patrol Annex next to the airport. This attack was just 3 days after the attack on the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. McAllen is 500 miles south of Alvarado, and it is hard to believe the two attacks are linked. But the lone gunman was dressed in black and could well be a fellow traveler.
It is impossible to imagine what this guy was thinking when he launched his one-man assault.
The gunman, Ryan Louis Mosqueda, had a Michigan driver’s license and Michigan plates on his car, but was reported missing from Weslaco (18 miles east of McAllen) at 4:00 am that morning. That indicates somebody close to him was worried about his mental stability or suspected he was going to do something stupid.
Mosqueda spray-painted the words “Cordis Die” on the side of his car, which, according to press reports, is a phrase from the Call of Duty: Black Ops II video game, meaning “the day of the heart.” His attack on the Border Patrol had a video game vibe. He parked his car in the Border Patrol lot and stood there waiting for somebody to show up. When an admin guy drove in and parked his car Mosqueda engaged him. The Admin guy fired back with his pistol, but it jammed, so he called 911 to report an active shooter.
The Border Patrol annex is a small building with a small parking lot, so we’re talking engagement distances of less than 50 feet. Mosqueda then walked towards the entrance, firing rounds from his rifle, and tried to enter the building, but the door was locked. He produced a pistol and shot at the doors a few times before walking around the south corner of the building to reload his rifle. A trio of Border Patrol agents came out of the building, told him to drop his weapons, and then shot him “graveyard dead” when he refused to comply. That’s what you would expect to happen, making this appear like suicide by cop.
That is piss poor shooting from near point-blank range
Mosqueda’s tactics and weapon handling were the opposite of competence. Given the target density, short distances, and superior weapon platform, it was a pathetic amateur hour performance. He did not hit any of the many targets he engaged. One of the responding McAllen police officers took some shrapnel in his leg from a round that had skipped off the deck. Glass fragments cut the admin guy; he had engaged Mosqueda through his windshield, but the glass could have been from return fire.
A second McAllen police officer was transported to the hospital because of “ringing in his ears.” It’s hard to know what to make of that, but it doesn’t reflect well on the local 5-0.
The Prairieland Detention Center ambush was also a poorly planned clown show. It was conducted by an eleven-man person Dallas Antifa cell that included a former Marine. It appears the Marine hit an officer in the neck, showing a degree of marksmanship competence. Then his rifle jammed, and he left it behind, demonstrating gross gun handling and tactical decision-making incompetence.
The abandoned rifle was a Franklin Armory FAI 15, equipped with a binary trigger. The trigger setup is intended to increase the rate of fire, but it has a reputation for frequent Type 3 malfunctions and/or light primer strikes. It’s a gimmick trigger that appeals to people who don’t know shit about gunfighting because when it functions as designed, it causes excessive muzzle flip and recoil, sending rounds high and to the right.
It is not clear what the Antifa cell thought they would accomplish with this ambush. There were 10 cell members at the ICE facility, eight were used to lure the ICE officers out of the building while two designated shooters lay concealed inside a tree line. The eight vandals launched fireworks and spray-painted the privately owned vehicles in the parking lot. The feds inside the detention facility called 911, and when the Alverado Police arrived, the shooters unleashed around 30 rounds, hitting one of the cops in the neck.
Normally, Antifa members would expect no punishment for this kind of vandalism, but when you start shooting at cops in rural Texas, that expectation vanishes.
After the shots were fired, whatever plan the Antifa had went pear-shaped. Bradford Morris, the alleged ringleader, took off by himself in a red Hyundai van and was immediately pulled over by responding police officers. Inside his van, police discovered a pistol, an AR-15 rifle, loaded magazines, a 2-way radio, a ballistic helmet, and multiple sets of body armor.
Top row from left to right: Elizabeth Soto, Maricela Rueda, Ines Soto, Savanna Batten, Seth Sikes. Bottom row from left to right: Bradford Morris (trans name ‘Meagan Morris’), Cameron Arnold (trans name ‘Autumn Hill’), Joy Gibson, Zachary Evetts, Nathan Baumann
Police then found Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, Nathan Baumann, Maricela Rueda, Seth Sikes, Joy Gibson, and Savannah Batten walking down the road. They were dressed in black paramilitary clothes and had loaded weapons, magazines, body armor, and printed flyers with “fight ICE terror with class war” and “free all political prisoners” messaging.
Zachary Evetts, one of the shooters stationed in the tree line, was found walking alone on a road about three miles away from the facility. He too was dressed in black ‘military style’ clothing and had “a black balaclava mask, a pair of tactical style gloves, and a pair of safety goggles.” He was smart enough not to have a weapon with him, but that’s irrelevant, given his clothing and tactical gear. When asked where he was coming from, his brilliant response was “I don’t know.”
This staged attack lacked the planning and rehearsals necessary for an “action” by ten people to have any chance of success. Like the bizarre one-man assault on the McAllen Border Patrol annex, the detention center attack makes no sense to anyone familiar with tactical fundamentals.
Cameron Arnold, who is pictured above with the others, was arrested the next day at Bradford’s apartment. The tenth man at the ambush was the former Marine who is still at large.
The former Marine is named Benjamin Song, and he showed up on my phone earlier in the week in the form of a public safety alert:
Investigators uncovered his name and address when they processed the abandoned rifle; his cell phone records placed him at the scene of the ambush, and his Mercedes-Benz was parked outside the home of Bradford Morris, the ringleader of this debacle.
Bradford Morris believes he is a woman and goes by the name Megan. I am in flagrant violation of the AP stylebook and guilty of the pseudo crime of dead-naming by using his given name. But you know what? Fuck Bradford, the Associated Press, and the legacy media; I’m tired of their politically correct bullshit.
For years, these clowns have been allowed to intimidate and attack normal citizens. When they are arrested, they are never prosecuted. I sense a sea change coming for the left-wing “Resistance.”
The million-dollar question is, what did they think would happen once they started shooting cops? It’s possible they thought liberal judges and progressive prosecutors would rescue them. Batten, Song, and Soto have been arrested multiple times for protest-related violations but never prosecuted.
Time to meme this post up
In 2020, Song shouldered his FAI-15 and aimed it at an Austin police officer. He lowered the weapon and backed into a crowd of protesters when the police aimed at him. Song was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon against a peace officer. But he was in Austin, where the local grand jury declined to indict him. The Austin Police Department was ordered to return items they confiscated from him, including a semi-automatic rifle, a semi-automatic pistol, two loaded rifle magazines, and a green gas mask.
Dallas is another Texas city saddled with liberal judges and prosecutors, but the Antifa ambushers have not been jailed and won’t be prosecuted in Dallas. They are in Johnston County under 10 million dollar bonds and charged with terrorism, aggravated assault on a public servant with a deadly weapon, and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon against a peace officer. I suspect they will spend the rest of their days inside a Texas State Penitentiary. Song may opt for the suicide by cop route like Ryan Mosqueda; time will tell, and his time is running out.
Political violence is a tool the democrats have been employing for years. Their adjuncts in the press run interference for them by ignoring the amount of destruction, injuries, and deaths caused by organizations like Black Lives Matter and Antifa. When the BLM founders misappropriate donations to purchase million-dollar mansions, take elaborate vacations, and buy expensive vehicles, they are not de-banked or removed from funding platforms. That only happens to Trump supporters or physicians who questioned the COVID-19 narrative.
This is why liberals cannot compete with conservative memes. Their overreach provides us with too much ammunition.
The democratic party is hemorrhaging the support of men from every class, creed, and color because men perceive democrats as woke, weak, and antipathetic to American values. In response, the democrats are becoming unhinged. They are encouraging their NGO funded shock troops to cause so much damage that the Trump administration or conservative citizens overreact. Then their media adjuncts can gaslight about the “threat to democracy” 24/7 before the midterms.
That’s not going to happen. There are no conservative organizations that riot, loot, or destroy property. The local and federal officers in cities like Portland and Los Angeles have shown remarkable restraint. If anything, they have been too timid in dealing with aggressive rock-throwing, fireworks-shooting rioters. When they start wood shampooing the shit out of those assholes, most of America will applaud them.
The 20+ million Americans who have concealed carry permits, who know how to use guns, are the most law-abiding segment of American society. Blue-haired weirdos will not provoke us into using our weapons recklessly.
Democrat whining about “state-sanctioned violence” lacks the bandwidth to paper over the protester violence we witness daily. Nobody cares what they say anymore; they sacrificed their credibility with the Muh Russia, COVID, and Hunter Biden laptop hoaxes years ago. They will pay for their malfeasance when their chickens come home to roost.
Last week, the BBC reminded us that we have just three years left to drastically reduce all CO2 emissions, or we risk crossing the dreaded 1.5°C warming limit set by the Paris Agreement. A persistent feature of the degreed managerial class is their arrogant refusal to learn from their past flawed predictions. Dire warnings of climate catastrophe have shaped global policy, media narratives, and public perception, resulting in the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars on technology that does not work. Predictions by climate ‘experts’ of submerged cities, the end of snow, vanishing ice caps, and dead coral formations never materialize.
Thinking that highly credentialed Ivy League professors would use science and math to destroy the man-made climate change narrative was not plausible a year ago. Yet, in this new cultural zeitgeist created after the implosion of the Democratic Party, the impossible is now possible.
Their message is simple: CO2-driven warming poses no danger to the planet, while the net-zero policies designed to reduce CO2 do more harm than good. It takes a paper of serious complexity to validate such a simple message.
Climate experts tend to pronounce things to be so, and that’s the end of it. Yet, a basic understanding of the Earth’s atmospheric gases demonstrated that the foundation of climate alarmism was oversimplified and incorrect.
Before examining their paper, it is helpful to review a few of the forecasts that have not materialized.
In 1971, a new Ice Age was imminent
By 2000, the threat of a new Ice Age disappeared and was replaced by global warming.
Four years later, it was back to a new ice age, but this time caused by global warming.
By 2009, the event horizon was just 96 months away, prompting celebrity climate geniuses to issue hysterical, easily ignored warnings.
Four years later, the Climate Models ™ that had never been correct warned the Arctic would be ice-free in two years.
The topic demands a meme at this point.
Lindzen and Happer use physics to demonstrate that CO2’s warming effect is limited by its logarithmic absorption of infrared radiation. The warming effect of each molecule of CO2 decreases as its concentration increases. They estimate low climate sensitivity (~0.5–1.5°C per CO2 doubling), which is far below the IPCC’s range of 2.5–4°C.
They contend that Hurricanes, droughts, and floods exhibit no apparent increase in frequency driven by CO2, with natural variability dominating (e.g., NOAA’s stable hurricane frequency since 1980). They demonstrate that higher CO2 levels enhance photosynthesis, resulting in a 14% global greening trend (NASA, 1982–2015) and a 20% increase in crop yields (FAO, 2000–2020).
They then emphasize that phasing out fossil fuels, which supply 80% of global energy (IEA, 2023), will raise costs and harm developing nations, with minimal climate benefit. Their physics-based approach challenges high-sensitivity climate models, which have overestimated warming in periods such as 1998–2014. They also align with skepticism of alarmist policies, like EPA regulations, which they’ve called a “hoax” in prior work.
The premise of man-made climate change hinges on three key facts: CO2 traps heat, humans have increased CO2 levels (~420 ppm today vs. 280 ppm pre-industrial), and this drives global warming. Lindzen and Happer don’t dispute the first two but argue that the warming is minimal and benign.
They contend CO2 is not destroying the planet; it’s enhancing life on it. Across the globe, elevated CO2 levels are supercharging plant growth and delivering bountiful crop harvests at unprecedented rates.
They then explain that hypothetical climate models rest on a long sequence of assumptions, many of which are either weak, invalidated, or demonstrably false. As a result, the outputs of these models are of questionable value and cannot be taken as reliable evidence.
You would expect this well-researched paper to be big news, providing the rational cover politicians need to drive a stake through the heart of the climate alarmism scam. But that is not going to happen. The political class will ignore it, as they often do with inconvenient data. However, the momentum is shifting much faster than the political class can cope with.
Joe Rogan dealt the climate hoax a bigger setback than any Ivy League professor could hope to accomplish with a well-written, peer-reviewed study. Rogan spent a few hours talking to the hapless, profoundly ignorant Senator Bernie Sanders. Bernie didn’t seem to know much about the topics he attempted to demagogue. Frustrated by Rogan’s effective counters to his preferred narrative, he grasped at something he thought would go unquestioned. “Some people think climate change is a hoax, but it ain’t a hoax.” He stated this as if that were a self-evident fact. His ignorance of contrary facts complemented the arrogance of his statement. Rogan used a WaPo article to school the old fool.
This is the story Joe used to alert Bernie to the fact that he’s behind the times
Today, every dogma of the neo-liberal religion is being publicly put on trial. Something in the air changed after the COVID-19 saga. COVID was a tipping point, an unmasking of the true nature of our bankrupt professional managerial class and their bought-and-paid-for “experts.”
The progress of unraveling the climate change scam is slow but steady. Yesterday, President Trump announced he will use an executive order to end tax subsidies for the wind and solar renewable energy grift. Finally, common sense and fiscal responsibility are now evident in Washington, D.C.. Yet, the question remains: how long will it take before the global professional managerial class realizes the gig is up?
Last week, 250 miles of the Rio Grande River shoreline in Cameron and Hidalgo counties were designated a National Defense Area (NDA). The international Boundary and Water Commission land fronting the river has been transferred to the General Services Administration and is now considered part of Joint Base San Antonio.
U.S. Northern Command will exercise command and control. They have been tasked with installing signage and fencing in the NDA according to Air Force standards, and then to immediately source follow-on security operations. The security force’s mission is to provide enhanced detection and monitoring through stationary positions and mobile patrols, detain and transfer trespassers, and support the installation of temporary barriers and signage.
This map obtained by MyRGV.com illustrates the Rio Grande Valley’s designated National Defense Area, or NDA, which was established by the U.S. Department of Defense last week. Highlighted in red, the area will snake along the curves of the Rio Grande from the mouth of the river in Cameron County to the western edge of Hidalgo County. (Courtesy: U.S. Air Force)
What are the ramifications of the border land being under the jurisdiction of Joint Base San Antonio? The NDA land includes local and State Parks, agricultural fields, and privately owned land, which is accessed daily by local workers and tourists. Trespassing on military property is a federal offense; being caught on an Air Force base with a privately owned firearm is a serious federal offense. The risk-averse military prohibits carrying privately owned firearms onto its bases. They claim their policy is for the safety of people visiting or stationed on them. History proves that claim to be ridiculous, but facts are irrelevant to the discussion.
Demonstrating their uncannily poor timing that has become a feature of the Democrats, the South Texas Alliance of Citizen Coalition of Mayors issued a joint proclamación decrying federal illegal immigrant enforcement operations. They claim enforcement of federal immigration laws is bad for business. I didn’t realize that South Texas construction companies, restaurants, car washes, fast food franchises, and nursing homes depend on illegal migrants’ labor to function.
There are unintended consequences when riverfront land is designated as part of a military base.
The mayors claim they are motivated by the “well-being, safety, and economic stability of our communities.” If that were true, the mayors wouldn’t ignore the sky-high automobile insurance premiums we pay in the Valley to cover illegals who drive without a license or insurance and are prone to hitting other people’s cars, especially when it rains.
There is also the increased tax burden to cover the costs of court hearings, police calls, identity theft investigations, and car accidents involving illegals. And health insurance premiums must consider Emergency Room visits by uninsured illegals, of which thousands are (apparently) loitering here in the RGV.
Relying on undocumented workers for labor has several benefits besides paying low wages. Payroll taxes are eliminated, and OSHA regulations and fines are no longer a threat. Illegals cannot file a civil suit for compensation if injured on the job. The only downside to employing illegal labor would be federal prosecution, which can be ruinously expensive and unpleasant.
The Mayors don’t care about any of that. They’re from the rent-seeking class who view government office as a purely extractive enterprise. Every year, they raise our property tax rates to increase the number of their subordinates in the city government, yet public services never improve.
Economic growth in the RGV is characterized by an unending proliferation of payday loans, pawn shops, fast food franchises, and cheaply constructed apartment complexes. The vibrant service economy offers numerous opportunities for young couples to work two jobs each, enabling them to afford to live here.
Boston Jerry aptly sums up the situation faced by many today.
The South Texas Alliance of Citizen Coalition of Mayors represents a new South Texas archetype; men (and women) who are rotund of body, soft of hand, and thick of skull. They operate devoid of facts; they pronounce things to be so, and that’s the end of it.
There is little chance that large numbers of impoverished Hispanics will smoothly integrate into the local Tex-Mex society. They litter HEB parking lots with abandoned shopping carts, they don’t restack their weights in the gym, and they listen to hideous Spanish accordion music at deafening volumes. On the plus side, they seem to despise Rap music.
The city fathers want to meet and coordinate with the military now that our riverfront is part of a National Defense Area. Given their public denunciation of and refusal to support federal law enforcement efforts, why would federal officials bother talking to them?
Not that the residents of the RGV can pick and choose which local law or ordinance they want to ignore. Local politicians can virtue signal with no cost or repercussions to them, but local citizens who do the same to them will be arrested, fined, and jailed by them.
Disposing of 400 decomposing bodies is a routine task in Mexico.
A glance at the morning news from our southern neighbors reveals more reasons to avoid traveling to or living in Mexico: 400 decomposing corpses stacked inside a nondescript building in Juarez. This is one of the benefits of a closed border. Keeping the desperate poor of the world away from the homicidal psychopath rapists venerated in popular Mexican corridors. Every politician in the nation should support that.
Yesterday, I took a tour of the NDA inside Hidalgo County. I found what I expected, nothing. In the many places that were full of Border Patrol and State Police trucks during the President Auto Pen administration, there were no law enforcement vehicles, no stationary police camera units, and no military personnel.
The portable camera systems that dotted the border are now gone.
It is hard to believe that the Air Force will send security units into the RGV to conduct mounted patrols. How many units like that do they have? What kind of vehicles will they use? I don’t see the utility of additional fencing in the parts of the NDA with which I’m familiar.
There is no reason to patrol or fence in the popular birder’s paradise of Bensten — Rio Grande Valley State Park, or the Anzalduas County Park. Texas law enforcement has been using the Anzalduas Park boat ramp to launch their watercraft, and I’m sure NORTHCOM will use it if they bring watercraft. The military has numerous small boats, but for a security mission, the smallest they will use are Riverine boats, which are usually armed with multiple automatic weapons.
I would love to see NORTHCOM deploy a Riverrine squadron to patrol the Rio Grande River. They look cool and would be fun to watch in the narrow waters. However, there is no reason for them to be here, just as there is little reason for numerous security forces to be working the former IBWC land. There isn’t much for them to do now; the border is closed.
I was a member of two renowned infantry battalions while serving as a company-grade officer in the Marine Corps. The first was the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines (1/9), and the second was the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines (1/8). 1/9 was known as the Walking Dead, a moniker they picked up after losing a rifle company (Bravo) to a North Vietnamese Army ambush in the Leatherneck Square area of Northern I Corps in 1967. 1/8 was the battalion targeted by Iran in the 1983 Beirut bombing.
Former 1/9 Marines are constantly creating new and improved 1/9 logos
The term “The Walking Dead” originated as a pejorative label for the battalion, referring to it as a hard-luck outfit that suffered excessive casualties. Vietnam-era Marine infantry battalions averaged 800 men. During the four years 1/9 fought in Vietnam, they sustained 747 men killed in action.
Despite the casualties that earned 1/9 the “Walking Dead” nickname, Marines assigned to 1/9 embraced the Walking Dead handle. It was on our PT shirts in the 1980s when infantry battalions were allowed to have distinctive physical training uniforms. It was on our unit plaques; every Marine assigned to 1/9 was proud of being in the famous Walking Dead battalion.
The 1st Battalion, 8th Marines was the exact opposite. There was no institutional memory of the Beirut disaster. When I served in 1/8, I knew the battalion had been decimated in Beirut because my surgical support team was deployed there following the bombing. While I was with the battalion in the mid 90s nobody ever talked about or acknowledged the Beirut disaster.
Former 1/8 Marines do not seem that attached to the battalion despite its long history of combat excellence.
The difference in how Marines viewed the disasters in Vietnam and Beirut proves an old saying, frequently forgotten by officers, that you can’t fool the troops. Vietnam-era Marines knew the media were lying about Vietnam. They knew, after Walter Cronkite said that the War was lost, that it was, in reality, won. The Marines knew that they had beaten the NVA to a pulp, destroying entire divisions with their aggressive deployment of raggedy ass infantry battalions into the Demilitarized Zone.
Despite media skepticism, regardless of the popular histories written by unpopular journalists like Stanley Karnow, Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, and Michael Herr, the troops knew who won the fighting portion of the war. Not until legitimate historians like Mark Moyar, who can read Vietnamese and spent time in Hanoi’s archives researching the war from the North Vietnamese perspective, did the truth known to troops on the ground reach a wider audience.
After the Marine barracks bombing in 1983, the troops knew they would never get payback. They intuitively understood our feckless national leadership would not punish Iran but would, as hard as it was to believe, reward them in the ensuing years. Our national leadership was incapable of understanding or operating from first principles; they refused to understand the Koran, the purpose of Islam, or believe that Islamic clerics and militants meant what they said about the infidel West.
While the “best and the brightest” flailed about in the Middle East, the troops seethed. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the troops got a little payback. Still, they were halted long before the job finished because our leaders were squeamish about the disproportionate casualties they were inflicting on the Iraqis. Then 9/11 happened, and instead of going into Afghanistan and destroying the Taliban and killing Osama bin Laden in a massive punitive raid, we destroyed the Taliban, then let Osama get away because our leaders are risk-averse careerists. The idea of “mission first” or winning a war is an alien concept to careerists.
Then, inexplicably, we decided to stay in Afghanistan because of the “you break it, you buy it” rule at Pottery Barn. That Pottery Barn has no rule like that was irrelevant; our best and brightest do not concern themselves with trivialities like the truth, the narratives they create are more important.
After allowing OBL to slip away, we then invaded Iraq for unexplained reasons, placing our troops in mortal danger while spouting nonsense like Islam is the religion of peace. Islam has never been a “religion of peace” and never will be. Early during the Iraq debacle, the CIA was warned about Iranian military officers infiltrating Shia areas to introduce explosive formed penetrating IEDs designed to destroy American armor and automatic weapons to cleanse Iraq of its Sunni Muslim minority.
The CIA came up with a plan to kill the Iranian agents using contractors, and Eric Prince got busy putting together a force to do it, but, at the last minute, Susan Rice canceled the plan. Every American killed by an explosive-formed penetrator died because Susan Rice found the idea of killing Iranian agents distasteful. The troops who served in Beirut, the ones deployed by dumbasses who had no idea what they were doing, were denied payback by a new generation of feckless idiots.
Public service announcement: I don’t speak for every Marine, sailor or soldier who deployed to Beirut; just the ones who are worth a damn.
Now, finally, we have our payback in the form of a punitive raid launched by a President who understands how to wield the power granted him by our constitution. The hammering of three Iranian nuclear sites by giant GBU 57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators was gratifying. Watching the press, the military YouTubers, and the know-it-all podcasters prove wrong in real time was even more gratifying. I know some of the guys who have taken to the airways, trying to cover their flawed analysis by doubling down with opinions that are half-baked and dead wrong. They’re still my friends, but they’re wrong, and I have never been shy about pointing out the obvious to my friends.
Few institutions in America are as worthless as the media, but idiot congressmen and the Council on Foreign Relations run a close second.
The thought that President Trump would put boots on the ground in Iran, of all places, is ludicrous. Iran is a natural fortress protected by massive mountain ranges and deep, hot deserts. The fear that Iran is capable of hurting the United States financially by closing the Strait of Hormuz or by activating “sleeper cells” of battle-hardened jihadists is a pipe dream. Closing the Hormuz hurts Iran (and China), not the United States. How long would “sleeper cells” last in a country that has more firearms in the hands of its civilian population than people?
I admit that using firearms to kill Americans would work in the blue cities that prohibit or restrict their citizens from owning or carrying firearms. It would be most effective in Washington, D.C., where the law-abiding are unarmed and law enforcement DEI-centric. Still, Iran isn’t stupid enough to do us the favor of shooting federal officeholders.
Punitive raids do not start wars; they avoid them by punishing the targeted country so severely that they are incapable of meaningful retaliation. And we just saw one pulled off by true professionals. The plans were kept secret, and the operation was flawless, indicating that we now have a Secretary of Defense who knows how to operate effectively. President Trump did a masterful job of obfuscation, which enabled both strategic and tactical surprise.
This proves that being a wounded combat vet doesn’t prevent one from becoming a political hack who places her dysfunctional political party and personal interests above a competent military.
I don’t care how much of Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed, and I know that nobody currently commenting in the old and new media about it has any idea about the extent of battle damage from our GBU 57s. Not that it stops people from claiming it had a limited effect or that it destroyed the targeted facilities. Nobody will know that for a long time, and the only source that has proven it has the human intelligence networks to find out is Israel.
I hereby retract every snarky thing I have ever said about the Air Force. They did us old Marines a solid by putting the big boom on target in Iran.
We now have a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, which is impressive, and it might even hold. I don’t care about that either, although it is certainly an impressive accomplishment by President Trump. All I care about is that we finally got our payback on a bill that has been long overdue. Iran delenda est, let’s hope they do something stupid so we can destroy more of their military infrastructure.
Dar al-Harb is still out there, and there will come a day of reckoning with them. Let’s hope President Trump or someone like him is at the helm when that happens.
I have a friend named Beverly “Bev” Cook whom I have never met in person. We became friends after she contacted Michael “Mac” McNamara, the host of the excellent All Marine Radio (AMR) podcast. Bev had recently lost a friend she corresponded with daily, and was looking for something to fill her time. She had been amusing herself stringing along a Nigerian scam artist who, in his social media profile, was using a picture of Marine Corps General John Allen while begging for money because his “was all tied up”. Beverly tired of the scammer, but one day she discovered a long-form interview Mac had done with General Allen on All Marine Radio, and she found it fascinating.
Bev started listening to All Marine Radio daily in 2017, and for good reason. Mac is an excellent interviewer who has put in his 10,000 hours of practice, as Gladwell would say, honing his skills on an AM talk radio station in North Dakota. She listened to the AMR live broadcast daily but became annoyed when Mac failed to post one of his episodes to his podcast page. Bev sent Mac an email alerting him to this lapse, and he promptly wrote back, inviting her to assume the position of the All Marine Radio quality control officer.
Beverly Cook during her teaching career.
In the Marine Corps when we like each other we constantly give each other shit. We expect the same in return, and Bev, a retired schoolteacher from the plains of Canada, seemed to understand this immediately. However, she was incapable of responding appropriately, as she does not habitually use gross profanity. She came on the podcast, endured Mac’s relentless (good-natured) teasing with grace. I have it on good authority that her favorite segment was the Mensa Brothers demonstrating excellent taste and an appreciation of ironic humor.
It wasn’t until Mac developed and deployed his remarkable Post Traumatic Winning (PTW) seminars that I learned Bev had been handicapped from birth by congenital lymphedema. Lymphedema is the accumulation of fluid that’s usually drained through the body’s lymphatic system. Undrained lymphatic fluids constantly swelled her legs and arms, which made her the target of bullies when young and social ostracism as an adult. She was a schoolteacher who maintained contact with many of her former students, but she lived alone, her social circle limited to family. When Mac started offering his Post-Traumatic Winning classes in an online seminar format, she was the first person to sign up.
Before that seminar, she had never talked about herself or the problems she endured growing up with such a debilitating, disfiguring disability. All her life, she had held the pain in; during the PTW seminar, she let it all out. I saw it as it happened and have loved her ever since because she gave me, and the others in that class, strength.
Bev became a student of the Stoics, who figure prominently in Mac’s work, and she became a regular at the twice-monthly PTW graduate seminars. She had built the best life she could before meeting Mac. Still, like any person cursed with a congenital, disfiguring condition, she was lonely, searching for a community that would accept her without question. She found one headed by a retired Marine Corps infantry officer who practiced truth-based tough love. I’ve always enjoyed her wry sense of humor when participating in the PTW seminar with her. She is generous with her time, voluntarily reviewing and editing the manuscript of my memoir about Afghanistan. She is a genuinely good-hearted, loyal friend.
Bev and her Father
Three years ago, Bev lost her freedom and independence to lymphedema. She was admitted to a nursing home, confined to a hospital bed because she could no longer walk. She was forced to sell her house and car, and, because she’s a Canadian, she went on a year-long waiting list for a powered wheelchair so she could get around the facility to socialize with her fellow patients. She bore this life-altering setback with dignity and grace. She isn’t perfect, and several times during the PTW seminars, it was evident that she was distraught, but she received the same tough love that Mac gives to us all. Life is a battlefield, and sympathy is not valuable ammunition in the fight. Watching her handle a fate that to many of us is worse than death was inspiring, not just to me but to everyone who knows her.
We go through life unaware of the impact that our example and encouragement have on others. We can hope that the effect is positive; nobody wants to serve as an example of cowardice, weakness, and selfishness. Bev daily demonstrates the traits of a true warrior: discipline, fortitude, courage, selflessness, and sacrifice. Once the nursing home staff got around to helping her into her wheelchair, she spent the day helping other patients who were less fortunate than her. When confined to her bed, she corresponded with friends and posted frequently on social media about the weather, old classic comics, eagle nest cameras, and fascinating historical tidbits. Every day, she posts meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living from Ryan Holiday’s book The Daily Stoic.
On June 4th, a bed rail that had been identified as deficient and in need of replacement over a year prior suddenly collapsed when she turned on her side. PTW seminar members familiar with hospital beds had told her it was not a model appropriate for somebody who is confined to it for 18 to 22 hours a day. Bev had raised these issues repeatedly in the past, and she was ignored every time. Canadian medicine might be free, but it’s not fair, and like all free healthcare, a nightmare of bureaucratic indifference and incompetence. When the rail gave way, she fell over a meter onto the floor, shattering both of her femurs as well as her right knee.
The Canadian medical system has refused to repair the broken bones, arguing that her lymphedema would prevent the repaired bones from healing correctly. I’d bet a month’s pay that the reason she is not getting her shattered bones repaired had more to do with cost and a faceless bureaucrat’s assessment of what constitutes quality of life years. In Canada, if they won’t fix your broken bones, they will offer you medically assisted suicide. That dark malevolence disguised as compassion fools no one, but it’s to be expected when you replace God with the State.
She has been given tight splints, but any movement of her legs causes excruciating pain. She has no idea when she will leave the hospital, no idea if she will be able to use her wheelchair when she returns to the nursing home, she now faces the very real prospect of being confined to her bed, plagued by unremitting pain from broken bones that will never heal for the rest of her life.
Her comment about this tragedy: “All I can control is my reaction.”
She has continued to post comics, birthday wishes to friends, daily Stoic quotes, and links to Mac’s media interviews about his newly published book, Post Traumatic Winning. There is no trace of bitterness or anger on her Facebook page; she has managed her reaction well. I have not. There is no excuse for allowing a patient to fall out of bed and fracture both femurs. Bev was raised in a high-trust, homogeneous society but is now living in a country rapidly becoming a third world shit hole.
What do you do when every moral authority in your country behaves immorally? When every act of compassion by the political class conceals cowardice. What happens when the political class is stripped of loyalty to their people and turns against them under the guise of virtue? The mechanisms of the budding globalist hegemony are the same throughout the Judeo-Christian West: manufactured guilt, elite betrayal, moral cowardice, and the belief that goodness consists in submission.
The Canadians who built the Great White North are rapidly being encircled, outnumbered, and betrayed from within by those who worship the act of opening the gates. Look at the picture below from a lake in Brampton, Ontario, home to an ever-expanding population from India. This is the future of Canada: public spaces polluted by people from a culture uninterested in assimilation and unconcerned about the environment.
Brampton Lake, Ontario. When you encourage mass immigration from India, your country will soon look like India.
Canadians like Beverly Cook are forced to deal with the consequences of a virtue-signaling political elite that is itself immune to accountability or the results of its failed policies. Like their American liberal counterparts, they are given safe, highly compensated sinecures when they leave office. This is why there is a growing backlash against the globalist agenda. This is why I am furious at what has happened to my friend. And for her, I leave these words of wisdom because the comfort of old Stoics and the friendship of old Marines are the only comfort she can count on as she deals with a crisis that should never have happened.
Don’t you know life is like a military campaign? One must serve on watch, another in reconnaissance, another on the front line. . . So it is for us—each person’s life is a kind of battle, and a long and varied one too. You must keep watch like a soldier and do everything commanded. . . You have been stationed in a key post, not some lowly place, and not for a short time but for life.
Epictetus Discourses, 3.24.31-36
Stay the course, Bev, and stay strong; you are an inspiration to more people than you realize, and we love you for it.
Saturday’s No Kings protest in McAllen was well-organized and peaceful. Hundreds of protestors lined up outside the Federal Courthouse along the Business 83 throughfare, waved a mix of American, Mexican, and Fuck Trump flags. Many homemade signs advocating for keeping federal hands off families made no sense, and the professionally made No Kings Day signs were totally inappropriate, as we Americans celebrate No Kings Day on the 4th of July.
At the height of the protest, there were a few hundred people. I found it boring, and after walking past the assembled protesters on both sides of the street, I headed home. I wasn’t the only one to leave early. It just wasn’t that interesting.
There were shouted obscenities directed at passing traffic about The Bad Orange Man but no cigarette smoking because there were bambinos present, and nobody wanted to set a bad example for them.
I walked through the crowd in my Seatec SPF 50 Patriot hoody, knowing the red, white, and blue motif would identify me as one of the opposition. I encountered the opposite of hostility; everyone was being exceedingly polite to each other. Ever the gentleman, I said excuse me several times as I moved through the crowd, and several women complimented me on the cool hoodie. I don’t think the Patriot shirt does what I thought it does for the IFF (identify friend or foe) equation.
Does this shirt look right-wingish to you?
There were two Antifa Larpers dressed in all black with respirators around their necks, and one deranged-looking old woman wearing a respirator and eye goggles. Nobody else in the crowd was dressed for rioting. The white folks in attendance were mainly sedentary boomers with pot bellies and ponytails. The rest of the crowd was Hispanic, and I’d estimate 70% of them were women.
There were a couple of McAllen police vehicles staged on the periphery, a few uniformed Federal officers staged in the shade behind the courthouse, but no visible police presence in the crowd. As I walked around the corner of Business 83 down Bicentennial Avenue, I ran into a knot of cigarette-smoking men who were furious that the state prosecutes drunk drivers for having a blood alcohol level of .08 when everyone knows you’re not drunk until your BAC is in the .10 to .12 range. They were adamant that the current drunk driving laws are culturally insensitive and not shy about telling anyone in earshot all about it.
This is a look down Bicentennial Ave – the smokers’ corner/DUI protesters were at the end of this line. Note the crazy woman in a respirator and goggles. People dressed like her make me nervous.
As I walked through the crowd, the signs held aloft and coordinated Viva La Raza chants evoked a vibe of Mexican nationalism and reactionary Hispanic cultural revanchism. It is so weird walking through a crowd of young, attractive Hispanic women just 4 miles from the Mexican border that none of them are stupid enough to cross. Femicide is an enduring, intractable problem in Mexico, and young, attractive Mexican American women know it but never talk about it. The younger generation may not know much about current news or history, but they all know about the four Mexican coeds (and five male teens with them) who went missing last spring and were found dismembered in the truck of a car.
Spring Break vacations are dangerous for Mexican coeds who are subject to abductions, multiple rapes, hideous torture and a brutal death. That happens to seven women every day in Mexico. This woman pictured here was one of the coeds who disappeared last March.
I don’t understand how Americans, regardless of ancestral heritage, support millions of undocumented Hispanics demanding access to and benefits from a State they are hostile toward and have no legal right to enter.
Antifa was in attendance – the guy on the right kept his camera like that until I moved on. I guess I made him nervous.
By 1 p.m., the crowd was reduced to a few women huddled under shade trees waving American flags, and a group of Hispanic women with small children across the street, getting blasted by the sun while waving Mexican flags. Even the cattle in South Texas know to get out of direct sunlight and huddle under any available trees, so I have no idea why those women stayed in the sun, but they looked miserable.
The man walking down the street was one of the organizers who politely asked the participants to stay on the sidewalk. There were no attempts to impede traffic, despite the numerous vehicles that passed, with drivers giving the protesters the finger.
I walked around the area in the late afternoon to find the sidewalks completely free of litter and refuse; the organizers had stayed around to clean up after the crowd dispersed. That’s an impressive end to an unimpressive protest. It is safe to assume that most of the 1400 No Kings protests were peaceful affairs where people on both sides of the issue treated each other respectfully.
As I and hundreds of others have pointed out, these protests were financed by NGOs that have received millions of our tax dollars. Why is this still happening? I thought we had shut down USAID, I thought we were clawing back that money, I felt that Congress would take the hint we delivered with the election of President Trump. I expected them to complement DOGE by addressing the fraud, waste, and abuse. Where the hell is the 20 billion dollars that the autopen running Biden’s failed administration dumped into just eight NGOs?
As is often the case these days, AI-generated memes reveal a truth that the media ignores.
During the Biden era, 10, 20, maybe 30 million (we have no idea how many) desperate, unskilled, illiterate line jumping ingrates came into our country expecting a handout. They got it too from democrats at the state and federal level, and the NGOs they lavishly support with our taxes. How do we rectify this situation? Who is going to be held to account for this invasion of malcontents? How do we get our country back?
Congress isn’t up to the job, as they demonstrated with their pork-laden Big Beautiful Bill. The President can’t do it alone and is being hamstrung by the liberal progressive judiciary. The only administration to successfully deport millions of illegals was the Obama administration and we all know why he could do it without the liberal media going bat shit crazy.
Four hours after the protest ended, there was not a scrap of paper on the ground. No Kings McAllen is hereby officially recognized for being great citizens by this mention in dispatches.
When Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” He famously replied, “A republic if you can keep it.” Suppose we allow the 20 to 40 million illegals to stay. In that case, they will be counted by democrats in our 2030 census, allowing the democrats to establish a one-party rule countrywide just like they did in California. We will no longer be a republic but a dysfunctional third world shit hole just like contemporary California. If that happens, the chances of a hot civil war will be nearly 100%.
I cannot imagine living in California today
The Rio Grande Valley remains Trump country. The light turnout at the heavily marketed No Kings protest proved that. The premise behind No Kings, that President Trump is a dictator, was silly, but the people manipulated into protesting by progressive NGOs and Walton family sociopaths were polite, friendly, and picked up after themselves. Let’s hope the spirit of friendliness and tolerance across the political divide holds in our divided nation. I’m sure it will in South Texas because an armed society is a polite society.
Of the 914 bird species listed by the American Birding Association, over 500 of them can be found in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). Eighteen bird species reach the northern limits of their ranges in the Rio Grande Valley and cannot be found elsewhere in the United States. I’ve listed those birds here, not to brag on them, but because my wife has accused me of never writing posts that are happy and positive. What could be more uplifting than seeing a Plain Chachalaca, White-tipped Dove, Groove-billed Ani, Common Pauraque, Buff-bellied Hummingbird, Harris’s Hawk, Gray Hawk, Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl, Ringed Kingfisher, Green Kingfisher, Northern Beardless Tyrannulet, Great Kiskadee, Green Jay, Long-billed Thrasher, Clay-colored Thrush, Botteri’s Sparrow, Olive Sparrow, or the ever colorful Altamira Oriole?
Green Jays are beautiful birds, but they hit bird feeders like Navy jets hit carrier decks: fast, loud, and flashy.
The most common bird in my backyard is the large black great-tailed grackle. I spend a lot of time watching the males fluff their feathers and dance around trying to impress female grackles, who ignore them as they eat bugs from my lawn. Male grackles can be annoying; they are loud and urbanized, so they mostly ignore humans while they pester females with their crazy dancing and fights with other males. They must annoy other bird species, as I often see little two-ounce mockingbirds relentlessly attacking the much larger male grackle. I’ve seen mockingbirds wear out feral cats who come too close to their nest, too. There’s a reason why they are the Texas State Bird.
The Great Kiskadee is just as colorful as a Green Jay, but more mellow and musical. It makes you feel calm and peaceful just looking at it, right?
The Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival will be in Harlingen this year from the 5th through the 9th of November, and you can’t find a more positive, happy, wholesome family event. Events like this make me proud to be a Valley resident, so never let it be said I don’t write in favorable terms about my home because I just did.
Birding is no longer of interest to me after I discovered the Hawk kettles I mentioned often on the All Marine Radio podcast were turkey vultures who congregate here in the winter—fake hawks who fly around defecating on their legs to cool off. Real Hawks move down the Mississippi Flyway to winter in the tropics, returning up the flyway in the spring. They often form large kettles flying in a circular pattern on warm thermals that lift them several thousand feet so they can glide towards their destination without expending energy. I kept seeing these kettles long after the migratory birds had passed, and often reported to the All Marine Radio fanbase that I was seeing hawk kettles after they should have moved through the area.
My wife heard me talking about hawk kettles on the podcast one evening and told me they were turkey vultures that winter in the RGV and spend the evenings surfing the thermals, much like a bunch of stoners on skateboards. Those nasty fake hawks played me like a rube, fooling me into thinking they were massive real Hawks, so I’m done with the birding. But I’m not done heaping praise on my valley home.
Just last week, ICE and Border Patrol agents spent a few days visiting construction sites on Padre Island and Brownsville to round up illegal migrants. As you can see in the photo below, these are well-paid heavy equipment operators working those sites. The response from the local majority Hispanic population has been muted. Residents of the Valley of the Birds understand why so many illegals are given such high-paying jobs. It’s not about reducing project payrolls but the employer’s exposure to OSHA fines and lawsuits from injured workers.
Illegal labor reduces employer exposure to OSHA violation fines and injured worker lawsuits.
Suppose an American worker loses some fingers or has a foot shredded on the job site. That accident and the injuries must be reported to OSHA, and you can bet that soon after, one of the ambulance-chasing lawyers with the same digit phone numbers will be suing. If an illegal is badly injured he is shit out of luck, no OSHA protection, no lawyers suing on his behalf, he might get some extra cash to limp back across the border to heal up if he’s lucky.
As is often the case in our current media environment, memes reveal a truth that is evident to everyone not employed in the media.
Mexico has a long history of blaming its problems that it doesn’t export to the United States on the United States. This deeply rooted victim mentality has served the Mexican state well when dealing with fickle American officials from past administrations. Now they have to deal with President Trump and a cabinet full of uber competent Americans who are uninterested in fleecing American taxpayers. President Trump is revoking visas of high-ranking, obviously corrupt Mexican officials; he has closed the border, and he is going to start taxing remittances.
The ever-prescient Joshua Treviño of the Texas Public Policy Foundation diagnoses the dilemma facing the Mexican government when dealing with President Trump succinctly:
Though the Mexican regime does not particularly care about the welfare of its people – having presided over an internal war that has seen the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Mexicans by its own cartel allies and sometimes its own armed forces – it does care for its own position and privileges, and so an economic collapse alarms it in ways that death and cruelty among its own people does not.
When a country develops a permanent victim mentality, it becomes incapable of understanding the history behind its current state of malaise and incompetence. People with no understanding of their past will have no control over their future. That is why Mexico attempted to combat the endemic violence plaguing the country by suing American gun makers. The Supreme Court dismissed this frivolous lawsuit with a rare unanimous decision last week.
Another meme, nobody in the No Kings organization or the American media understands
Rio Grande Valley history supports the thesis of the recently published The Culture Transplant. The introduction of a handful of Scots-Irish entrepreneurs who accumulated their wealth in the traditional way of my people transformed the valley into an economic powerhouse. They gained power and land by marrying into wealthy Hispanic land grant families. I admit to being the descendant of those handsome rouges with technical educations and good dental hygiene. A few hundred years ago, dental hygiene was of critical importance when romancing comely daughters of the land-owning Hispanic aristocracy.
A book written by an academic that reflects reality, not a progressive narrative? Will wonders ever cease? If you want to live in the thrid world shit hole vote democrat.
Then the newly minted landowners spurred economic growth, transforming the once-tragic soil of the Rio Grande Valley into magic soil. They started with the Steamboat landings in Brownsville and Rio Grande City to stimulate commerce. They established safe, secure, honest banks where their Mexican relatives could stash money, accumulating compound interest rates without fearing periodic Peso devaluations or confiscation by the corrupt Mexican federal government. Anglo engineers figured out how to build a gravity-fed irrigation system, turning the RGV into a farming paradise.
The visuals of the LA riots perfectly represent the magic versus tragic soil theory first propagated by Steve Sailer when addressing the topic of white flight:
So that explains white flight: whites who lived in Compton in 1950, like those white families that included two future Presidents, depleted the Magic Soil, leaving only Tragic Soil for all the blacks who moved in, causing them to shoot each other and make rap songs about it.
I’m not sure how to explain why Compton got less shooty after the Latinos pushed most of the blacks out, but no doubt future advances in Soil Theory will answer that question too.
This is not how to win friends or influence people, unless you’re a democrat, in which case this is just a peaceful protest by hard-working people who deserve never to be held accountable for anything they do
Today’s LA riots don’t look anything like the 1992 LA riots due to the conspicuous absence of black rioters. There are some to be sure, and they seem to have cornered the high-end store looting market, but their numbers are a fraction of what they once were in LA. That has nothing to do with white people, so it is ignored by the legacy media, who despise facts that run counter to their preferred narrative about the evils of Caucasians.
The Mexican Americans in LA are rioting to protest the enforcement of our immigration laws. They are looting, burning cars, assaulting cops, and destroying property while waving the Mexican flag as if there is a reason to be proud of the history of Mexico. Mexican history is a nightmare of callous incompetence, unwarranted arrogance, and total disregard for the people of Mexico. The sole exception to this rule is Mexicans living in the United States; for them, the Mexican government will advocate, insisting that they be able to send remittances untaxed.
There are moments of greatness, compassion, and kindness in Mexico’s history. One of them was the treatment of the five boys captured after the defeat of the 1842 Meir expedition. That expedition was little more than a filibuster operation, and if you don’t know what those were, read The Blood Meridian. The five boys captured by the Mexican army were treated with kindness and affection by Santa Anta and his generals. And not the kind of affection lavished on boys in Afghanistan, I’m talking old-fashioned, appropriate Christian European affection traditionally afforded to children. But I’m saving it for the next time my lovely wife accuses me of not writing positive, uplifting blog posts.
The progressive gringos funding this protest do not understand how hot it is in McAllen in mid-June.
This Saturday, McAllen, along with hundreds of other cities, will experience the joy of No Kings protests. The social media announcements for this protest stress that they are “volunteer organized” which is absolute bullshit. No Kings receives millions of dollars in grant monies from all the usual suspects, meaning you, the taxpayer, are funding the riots and destruction of your cities. They are receiving additional funding from Christy Walton, the heir to the Walmart fortune. Like all the Walmart Waltons, she is an imperious psychopath who gleefully destroyed the independent hardware, clothes stores, sporting goods dealers, pharmacies (the list is endless) across the United States. Mexico, too, for that matter, where their supercenters are called Wally Martinez
Your tax money is hard at work thanks to democratic criminality. This Screenshot is from the Data Republican X account.
The McAllen protest is scheduled from 10:00 am to noon, and the weather forecast is for bright sunshine and 99-degree temperatures, which far exceeds the tolerances of most local citizens. The closest businesses to the planned protest site are rooftop nightclubs, but there are no Roof Koreans around here, so they are, in theory, vulnerable.
There are several rooftop bars and nightclubs with names like Santa Diabla tucked behind the Federal Courthouse. They open after 9:00 pm and often featured Mexican bands singing narco corridos, before Mexico made corridos ballads illegal. Then the narcos started killing the bands off for refusing to sing them. Now we’re stuck with the Mexican folk bands who still have visas, and they always have accordion players. If there is a musical instrument more obnoxious than an accordion, I have thankfully never heard it.
I expect American flag-waving counter protesters will outnumber the No Kings crowd just like they did when President Trump visited McAllen during his first term. But it’s going to be a scorcher this Saturday, so there may not be many people braving the heat, leaving only the paid agitators to stir up a riot. LA has Roof Koreans, Mexico has Roof Dogs*, if Saturday’s protesters try to riot, they will be introduced to a new phenomenon: Roof Mexicans. We’ll have to wait to see how this plays out.
*Do not look at the roof dogs link if you love dogs – it will upset and red pill you into supporting mass deportations.
Last week, in an act that combined desperation and stupidity with ingenuity and hard work, a Narco group built a raft to float a pickup truck across the Rio Grande River near Brownsville. The raft was constructed of blue 55-gallon drums and plywood, and it got the truck safely across. Upon reaching our side of the river, the pickup sped off through an open gate in the border wall. The driver then noticed Border Patrol and State Police trucks waiting for him on the levee once he cleared the wall, so he turned around and drove right back into the river.
You have to give these dope smugglers an A for effort, but an F for planning
Several Mexican nationals then swam to the truck to recover some of the bundles of drugs; the rest floated downstream and were retrieved by the Border Patrol. The large bundles contained marijuana, which raises questions. Thanks to American ingenuity, weed in the form of delta eight and delta 10 THC is (for the time being) legal in Texas. Delta 9 is the high-inducing tetrahydrocannabinol found in legalized weed, but Deltas 8 and 10 will get the job done, especially in smokable concentrates, vapes, or ingested via gummies, drinks, or brownies.
Potent THC hemp derivatives blindsided Texas lawmakers, who claim they legalized hemp for industrial purposes, not psychoactive gummies, so this September, the multimillion-dollar industry built on hemp buds is scheduled for eradication. I’ve gone from supporting THC products as a safe alternative to alcohol to acknowledging that THC is an addictive drug that robs one’s vitality and drive while being difficult to quit. The only safe alternative to alcohol is not drinking alcohol. Still, I’m not sure closing the hemp weed loophole is the best idea because it will encourage Mexicans to build flimsy rafts and float pick-up trucks across the Rio Grande River. The Rio Grande is polluted enough, so adding trucks and whatever was in the blue plastic drums to the water is Eso no es bueno. For readers who do not live in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV), I’m obliged to inform you that it is never correct to say “no bueno.”
Why did the weed smugglers go to all that trouble when the market for shitty Mexican weed is so depressed? Granted, the border appears unguarded because illegal crossings are now rare, but the Border Patrol isn’t stupid. They watch the open gates in the wall and have a Tethered Aerostat Radar Systems (TARS) and Ground-Based Operational Surveillance Systems (GBOSS), both of which can see a long way. The federales claim the TARS is used for detecting aircraft, but I watched a contractor using one at Combat Outpost Lonestar in the Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan to smoke check a few miscreants. He had observed three dudes planning an IED on the road leading to Tora Bora and summoned a soldier from the fire direction center, who dropped some 155mm artillery on them. The TARS system can see plenty on the ground, just like the smaller GBOSS.
Tethered Aerostat Radar System Site Lajas, Puerto Rico.
Photographer: Donna Burton
Even when the border looks empty, there are plenty of eyes watching it, and they don’t miss much.
Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were a constant menace for me in Afghanistan, and they have now made an appearance in the RGV. Last February, a local rancher, Antonio Céspedes Saldierna, was killed by an IED on the Mexican side of the border near Brownsville. Mr. Saldierna, like many RGV ranchers, has property on both sides of the border and was traveling to his Mexican Hacienda when he hit the IED. His son, Ramiro Céspedes, an army vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was injured in the blast. An IED that kills the driver but not his son or wife, who were in the truck with him, isn’t much of an IED. I assume the Gulf Cartel has yet to tap into terrorist expertise from Afghanistan or Iraq. Mexico imports tons of calcium ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which is easily converted into a powerful homemade explosive.
Ammonium nitrate IEDs with simple, easily fabricated pressure plates. These were recovered in Nimroz Province, Afghanistan. It is only a matter of time before these are deployed in Mexico and the United States.
In a recent interview on Chuck Holton’s Hot Zone podcast, Mexican Journalist Oscar Ramirez claimed that the Arellano-Félix Cartel in Tijuana has already imported Taliban from Afghanistan to train them on tunnel digging and IED construction. It’s just a matter of time before we start seeing the boom in Mexico and on this side of the border. It’s more effective than throwing children into the Rio Grande River (a routine occurrence during the FJB administration) to distract American law enforcement so they can complete their nefarious missions.
Our side of the border is like a ghost town, while Mexico is filling with ghosts. Last Tuesday, Ximena Guzmán, the personal secretary to the mayor of Mexico City, Clara Brugada, and José Muñoz, a municipal advisor, were shot and killed in the Moderna neighborhood of Mexico City. It has been five years since there was a high-profile assassination in Mexico City. That shootout was triggered when sicarios from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) ambushed the chief of police.
Murders on busy streets in broad daylight are depressingly common south of the border—photograph by Teun Voeten from his book Drug War in Mexico.
This hit indirectly targeted La Presidencia, Claudia Sheinbaum. It’s a safe bet that one of the Sinaloa cartels carried it out, targeting associates of allies of President Sheinbaum because they are afraid to target her directly. It is an undeniable fact (according to my Blanco Brujos neighbor, who knows things) that she’s a powerful Negros Brujos. I, too, am afraid of her after she flooded out the RGV in a 3-hour supernaturally powerful rainstorm.
The following day, protestors from Reynosa closed the international bridge connecting their city to Pharr, Texas. They were protesting the disappearance of five musicians from the Grupo Fugitivo band, who may or may not have been writing and performing narco corridos. Corridos are ballads that portray powerful Narcos as Robin Hood-like figures. Singing Narco corridos songs in Mexico is now illegal. Not singing Narco corridos in Mexico is deadly. A few days after the protests, the bodies of the five men were found outside Reynosa.
Luis R. Conriquez, a 28-year-old Sonoran singer with hundreds of millions of views on YouTube
I’ve been told the mark of a true gentleman is one who can play the accordion—and doesn’t. I’m not a fan of regional Mexican folk music, but those guys have it hard. President Trump, probably acting under a spell cast by Mexico’s chief Curandero, President Sheinbaum, won’t give corridor bands visas so they can’t rake in the big bucks playing venues in San Antonio, Houston, or Robstown. If they play their original ballads in Mexico, they’ll get arrested. If they don’t play them, they’ll be disappeared. It’s not like they can turn themselves into American law enforcement, confess to playing the accordion, and request asylum.
When Conriquez announced he would no longer sing Narco Corridos or corridos belicos (warlike ballads – a term he invented), his fans in Texcoco rioted, ran him and his band out of town, smashed their drum set and amplifiers, but didn’t trash his accordions. Can you believe that?
There are over 124,000 Mexicans listed as disappeared by Mexican authorities. Seven women go missing every day in Mexico. The usual fate for these poor souls is rape, torture, and a gruesome death. Protests and vigils by the family and friends of the missing are a near-daily occurrence, as is the discovery of mass graves, illegal crematoriums, or acid bath operations. There are thousands of heartbreaking stories about mothers dedicating their lives to organizations like Madres Buscadoras (searching mothers).
Cecilia Flores, a member of the “Searching Mothers of Sonora and Jalisco” group. Photo from Israel Fuguemann of NPR
The earliest known madre buscadora is Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, whose son Jesús Piedra Ibarra was forcibly disappeared in 1974. These women lead teams of volunteers on searches throughout Mexico for mass graves, and they stage protests at government offices or popular border crossings. They garner their share of sympathetic international press, but this has been going on for over 50 years and it is obvious the powerful elites of Mexico don’t give a damn about them or their missing children.
The last known photo of 18-year-old Debanhi Escobar, which went viral and was featured on the front page of many Mexican newspapers after she was kidnapped in April 2022.
The elites might give a damn now because Marco Rubio has quietly put them in a very uncomfortable position that will cost them the one thing they care about: money.
Our Department of State is revoking the US visas of Mexican politicians, police, and military officers linked to the Narco cartels and/or fuel theft rings. I have never seen our State Department working for the interests of the American people, or the Mexican people, for that matter. They have always pursued their own progressive globalist agenda, but now their agenda seems to be President Trump’s agenda, and President Trump is putting the American people first.
The most common drug war trope from Mexico is that America’s thirst for drugs fuels the drug war. That is nonsense. What Americans have is lots of money to pay exorbitant rates for drugs. Countries like Mexico don’t have people with much disposable income but they still have plenty of junkies who pay fire sale prices for the same poison that is smuggled into el norte. photograph by Teun Voeten
He is also lending a hand to La Presidencia, Sheinbaum, by placing pressure on bad actors. Not having an American Visa is, for the wealthy elites of Mexico, a serious problem. Being on an American revoked visa list negatively impacts banking and investment, hurts business relationships, and international credibility. I am not implying that every rich Mexican national has amassed their wealth illegally; that would be rude. There must be a way to accumulate millions of dollars in Mexico legally. . . I guess, but check out the names that have been published in the press:
Marina del Pilar Ávila, Baja California governor
Américo Villarreal, Tamaulipas governor
Rubén Rocha Moya, Sinaloa governor
Alfonso Durazo, Sonora governor
Samuel García, Nuevo León governor
Layda Sansores, Campeche governor
Mario Delgado, federal Education Secretary
Ricardo Monreal and Adán Augusto López, Morena power players
Several mayors from Tamaulipas and Chihuahua
At least four high-ranking generals
According to the Gringo Gazette Alberto Granados, the mayor of Matamoros, had his visa revoked while attempting to cross into Brownsville. He denied it. But the story didn’t go away.
The Mexican elite can find other countries to bank their wealth, educate their children, and purchase vacation properties. But the modern, enjoyable, safe, and investment-friendly places like Dubai or Singapore are off-limits to them. Those countries, mui eso no es bueno, the drug business. If they’re on the State Department shit list I doubt many European tax havens would welcome them either.
Will putting the soft power screws to the monied elites change anything in Mexico? Who knows, but the cartels are losing tons of money and the head Negros Brujos is keeping the pressure on them. Mexican Marines have been raiding “mega drug labs” in Sinaloa for months now, seizing tons of methamphetamine. Fentanyl seizures are plummeting at the border, although it is unclear why. Illegal border crossings are down 94%, and it is very clear why. The big question is how long the cartels will continue to lose money before they start getting dangerously desperate and resort to powerful IEDs for leverage in Mexico and revenge in the USA.
This article first appeared in the November 1998 issue of Proceedings magazine, earning my father, Maj. Gen. J.D. Lynch, USMC (Ret.), author of the year. With his permission, I’m repurposing it for a Memorial Day tribute. It is a story of the price paid by grunts for the incompetence of higher headquarters. It is also an elegant testament to the grit, determination, and resilience of American infantrymen thrust into an impossible situation.
The 2d Battalion, 26th Marines, rarely appears in the Marine Corps’ illustrious combat history. The battalion saw only brief service during World War II—long enough to land in the assault wave at Iwo Jima. Later, during the Vietnam War, it reappeared for a few years before its colors were once again returned to the museum curators.
Major JD Lynch, USMC working the DMZ during the fall of 1968
Its daily Vietnam experience was usually far less stressful than the Iwo Jima operation, but Vietnam had its days – and when it did, the late 1960s Marine of 2/26 experienced the horrors of war at the same level of intensity faced by the generation that fought its way up the black ash terraces beneath Mount Suribachi. This is the story of one of those days: 16 September 1968.
Late 1968 found the 3rd Marine Division serving in the extreme north of I Corps, the northernmost corps in what was then the Republic of Vietnam, controlling ten infantry battalions: those of its organic 3rd, 4th, and 9th Marine Regiments, plus 2/26. The division’s operational concept – an effective one – was as easy to understand as it was difficult to execute. Relying on few fixed defensive positions and even fewer infantry units to defend them, the defense was offense. Battalions stayed in the bush for weeks on end, covering North Vietnamese Army (NVA) infiltration routes and, in general, looking for trouble. They moved constantly on foot or by helicopter, and when they encountered an NVA unit, all hell broke loose until it was destroyed.
MajGen JD Lynch USMC (Ret) speaking at an LZ Margo reunion in May 2019. Today, he is 92 years old and still going strong
Our battalion – I was the operational officer – celebrated the Fourth of July in an area near the coast called Leatherneck Square, where it was responsible for defending the square’s northern and western sides. In late July, the battalion was reinforced to conduct amphibious assault operations and designated Battalion Landing Team (BLT) 2/26.
After training with the reinforcements, BLT 2/26 embarked on the Amphibious Ready Group Alfa ships, including the famous World War II Essex-class carrier Princeton (LDH-5), now an amphibious assault ship. Initially, there was talk of landings just south of the Ben Hai River inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), but the pattern of NVA operations had shifted westward, and the amphibious talk died out. An early-September landing well inland marked a temporary end to our amphibious experience and the beginning of service as one of the division’s maneuver battalions. Despite the change in mission, the battalion kept its reinforcements – among them a tank platoon, a 105mm artillery battery, and a 4.2 inch mortar battery.
Operational control shifted to the 3rd Marines, headquartered in Camp Carroll, but several days of aggressive patrolling yielded no enemy contacts. About 7 September, the BLTs’ field elements were trucked to Camp Carroll. They staged for two contingencies: a helicopter assault in Landing Zone (LZ) Margo, a barren hilltop just south of the DMZ, roughly 17 kilometers west-northwest of Camp Carroll – or a shift of operational control to the 4th Marines and return to Khe Sanh, where the battalion had served throughout the early-1968 siege.
To the relief of those who had served at Khe Sanh, the Margo operation prevailed—an assault into the LZ followed by movement north to the high ground on the southern border of the DMZ, where the battalion was to turn east and sweep the high ground. The orders emphasized the need to take prisoners.
A typhoon brushed the coast, and although the tree-covered mountains inland showed no outward signs of rain, movement became impossible—the war ground to a halt. Finally, the weather began to clear, and on 12 September, the commanding officer of the supporting helicopter squadron flew in for the Zippo brief – a planning and coordination meeting attended by the battalion and squadron commanders and their staffs.
Zippos were businesslike affairs. Lives were at stake, and the assaulting battalion and supporting squadron had to reach complete agreement and understanding. On the plus side, Margo was easy to find due to its location on the north side of the Cam Lo River, inside a distinctive, kilometer-wide and more than kilometer-deep U-shaped bend. Unfortunately, this plus was offset by several minuses, most of which stemmed from the tiresome but necessary subject of terrain.
The spring – used for a water resupply point in LZ Margo
Margo, which resembled a broken bowl, was smaller than the maps indicated. Using north as 12 o’clock, the rim from 5 to 10 o’clock was the dominant piece of ground within the LZ. The southern side of the rim dropped sharply to the Cam Lo River, actually more stream than river at this point, while the interior slope provided good observation over the landing zone and north toward the DMZ. A spring near the center of the zone fed a stream that had cut a deep draw, which meandered eastward and exited Margo between 2 and 4 o’clock. From 10 to 2 o’clock, Margo’s northern rim varied in height but was lower than the southern rim. Its exterior sloped sharply downward for a kilometer or so before reaching the steep approaches to the terrain fingers that led to the high ground in the DMZ. At its highest point, Margo was about 150 meters above sea level. The hills to the north were three to four times that height, while the intervening terrain dropped to low points of about 50 meters.
It was rugged, forbidding country, made all the more so because, although Margo was clear, the heights and intervening areas were covered with double – or triple-canopy forest.
The terrain inside the LZ made Margo a “one-bird zone” – helicopters had to land and unload one at a time. This was hardly unusual, but it slowed the rate of assault dramatically. Margo was also too small to accommodate the entire BLT. Since the intent was to retain only G company, the BLT command group, along with the 81mm mortar, engineer, and reconnaissance platoons, in the zone for any length of time (a few days), the size of the LZ did not seem to be a major factor. Its rock-hard soil, however, was another problem. Digging in took time.
Finally, there was Margo’s history. For a brief period, some months before, it had been used as an artillery fire support base, and the North Vietnamese were known to keep such positions under observation. The terrain and history summed to the point that BLT 2/26 was landing, one aircraft at a time, into a zone that was:
Too small to hold the entire BLT
Dominated by high ground to the north
Probably the subject of continuing NVA attention, at least to the point of registering mortar fires.
Not good . . . but not unusual.
Friday the 13th of September 1968, a date not lost on many of the Marines, marked the beginning of several days of cloudless skies and comfortable temperatures. By 0700, a thousand or so Marines and corpsmen were waiting quietly in the Camp Carroll pick-up zone, smoking, talking, thinking, and maybe – especially in Golf Company – which was landing first – praying. They were grunts, a term coined during the Vietnam War. While it may have been a derisive term, the sting was long gone. With a certain pride, it is what they called themselves.
Believing that the chances of infection dramatically increased with the amount of clothing worn when wounded, they were deliberately underdressed. Boots, socks, and trousers were the standard: no underwear and often no shirt during the day. Their faded helmet covers sported an elastic band around the outside intended to hold camouflage material when the wearer sought invisibility in the bush. More often, it held either a main battle dressing for use if the wearer’s luck turned bad or, in the case of optimists, a bottle of mosquito repellent. The graffiti on most of the covers addressed a variety of subjects, but many tended toward the religious. David Douglas Duncan’s striking photographs of the 26th Regiment Marines at Khe Sanh captured the phenomenon.
A David Douglas Duncan photograph from Khe Sanh
They all wore flak jackets, never zippered because shell or grenade fragments taken in the wrong place could jam the zipper, making it difficult for the corpsmen to remove the jacket and treat the wounded man in the field.
The flak jackets, if anything, were dirtier than the helmet covers. Sweat-stained from long wear by a series of owners, they had the same faded color as the camouflage covers, but their graffiti, for whatever reason, tended to more basic thoughts than those found on helmets.
They carried a haversack holding a box of venerable C-rations, a poncho, a poncho liner, and, most importantly, an extra two or three pairs of socks. They also carried extra radio batteries, mortar ammunition (although not mortarmen), rocket launchers, grenades, at least four filled canteens, and as much extra rifle and machine gun ammunition as possible.
They were typical grunts and corpsmen, normally unwashed, usually underfed, always overloaded, and, more often than not, tired. The lucky ones, those who avoided disease, wounds, or death, did not enjoy a hot meal or cold shower for weeks.
Shortly before 0800, the CH-46s began landing in the pickup zone with their distinctive whumping blade sound – unforgettable for those who rode them into combat. As the first wave launched, the sound of the artillery preparatory fires in the distance and the roar of the fast movers orbiting overhead helped ease the tension.
The actual landing was anti-climactic. Although there was no opposition, it still took a considerable amount of time. Echo, Fox, and Hotel companies quickly assembled and began moving north. Echo struck out for the finger on the right, which led to the high ground, while Fox and Hotel headed up the other finger on the left. Golf Company, the command post, the 81mm platoon, and others established defensive positions in the LZ and began digging in. Friday the 13th passed quietly.
Inserting BLT 2/26 into LZ Margo
On Saturday, 14 September, the companies continued moving north at first light. While there were well-worn trails in the area and occasional sounds of movement ahead, there were no contacts. Even so, the companies called artillery fire on possible targets to keep the fire-support system active. About midday, Hotel Company’s point, leading movement up the left finger, saw movement ahead and signaled the company to move off the trail and wait. Their patience was rewarded as they watched a North Vietnamese soldier, weapon at sling arms, striding down the trail toward them.
The point team was in an excellent ambush position and easily could have killed him. That they didn’t was a testimony to discipline and the emphasis on taking prisoners. Waiting until the NVA soldier had passed, the point man re-entered the trail and, in Vietnamese, ordered him to halt, which he did promptly. The capture was reported to the company commander, relayed to battalion, and within a matter of minutes, the 3rd Marines had learned of a potential guest speaker. Within the hour, the prisoner had been flown to Camp Carroll for interrogation.
BLT 2/26 command post, the author is the second Marine from the right.
Throughout the war, most higher headquarters consistently failed to pass timely intelligence information down to the battalion level, where it could be acted upon. The 3rd Marines did not make that mistake. Just before sundown, 2/26 learned that the prisoner had intended to surrender because he had been at Khe Sanh when the Marines first arrived. Stating that he “had a love of life,” he added that he wanted no more of anything remotely resembling that battle, a confrontation that had a psychological hold on both sides. Of greater interest was his disclosure that the lead company – Hotel Company – would be attacked at about 2000 that evening. All three companies were alerted.
Echo, Fox, and Hotel halted for the night and began registering artillery defensive fires. Hotel Company’s artillery forward observer (FO), controlling a supporting 155mm howitzer battery, had just started registering fires to cover a listening post located on the western side of the finger when the Marines manning the post reported hearing movement through the draw to their direct front. Since the registration rounds were on the way, they could only wait. Seconds later, as the roar of the explosions died away, the listening post reported screams and other sounds of panic. The FO immediately called “fire for effect” and swept the draw with 155mm rounds. Other than some moans and the sounds of some movement in the draw, the remainder of the night was quiet.
15 September dawned clear and cloudless. Visibility was so good that Marines could watch outgoing 81mm mortar rounds until they reached their apogee. Again, keeping the mortar and artillery fire support systems active, E, F, and H companies resumed their slow climb toward the high ground. Signs of enemy presence were plentiful, but there was no contact.
The 81mm Mortar platoon fire direction center moments before the shit hit the fan
The trouble started at noon, when a radio message from 3rd Marines ordered the BLT to pull its companies back to the LZ and prepare to shift operational control to the 9th Marines. The message was cryptic – it had to be because none of the radio transmissions with any of the battalions in the 3rd Marine Division’s area were secure. The encryption equipment of the day was too heavy to be carried in the field and, in any case, seldom worked in the heat and humidity of the bush. Problems with getting shackle sheets (code) down to the company level precluded using even decades-old encryption. Everyone assumed that the North Vietnamese heard most of the radio traffic.
Communications security problems notwithstanding, the order was received with incredulity. There was little doubt that the NVA would follow the companies back to the landing zone, and less doubt that mortar and perhaps infantry attacks would follow. The three rifle companies were told to halt and then move south to Margo; meanwhile, the order was strenuously argued. The regimental commander made it clear that he agreed with the battalion’s tactical assessment of what lay in store. Obedience would have a price; that much was obvious. What was not obvious was how much.
After a few hours, the three companies were instructed to halt, reorient, and resume their original northwest advance. We had to know if the trailing enemy theory was correct. The order did not specify how long to follow the reverse course, but did tell the company commander something they already knew – to expect contact. It came quickly on both ridges as small NVA units were surprised to find the Marines heading north again. Breaking contact, the companies once more turned south toward Margo. So far as 2/26 was concerned, the point had been proven. We reported this to the 3rd Marines and forcefully recommended cancellation of the withdrawal order.
The reply was more enlightening than helpful. The battalion was told that its arguing and temporary resumption of the offensive had caused some difficulties (it wasn’t phrased quite that way) and that there would be a 24-hour postponement. Furthermore, the entire battalion was to concentrate in LZ Margo, south of the 61 grid line – an east-west map line that split the LZ – by a specified time early the next afternoon, 16 September. In the meantime, the BLT was authorized to take whatever actions it deemed necessary to prepare for the return to the LZ. The maneuver companies were turned north again; within minutes, they bumped into NVA troops following them down the ridgelines.
The enlightening section of the order was the part about moving south of the 61 grid line. It made no sense because the area remaining in the LZ south of the grid line was too small to accommodate the BLT in anything resembling a tactical position. Even worse, it did not permit defense of the LZ, especially against infantry attacks coming from the most logical direction – north. It was apparent that the order had emanated from a headquarters other than regimental or division, neither of which would have displayed that level of tactical ignorance. This, and the urgency associated with the 61 grid-line provision, led to the conclusion that an Arc Light – a high-altitude B-52 area bombing mission – was imminent.
It might seem strange to those steeped in the traditions of obedience to orders, but the BLT now confronted a dilemma. If its tactical assessment were correct, the order returning the maneuver units to the LZ would result in some form of NVA attack: if, on the other hand, the Arc Light guess was right, there were other problems. The timing and target area were unknowns and, for security, would remain unknowns at the battalion level. Further, the tactically inane directive to move south of the 61 grid line indicated that the Arc Light was going in north of Margo – but close.
The dilemma was stark and straightforward: Comply with the order and risk NVA action, or move the companies toward Margo, retaining some semblance of tactical deployment north of the LZ, and risk the Arc Light. To those who have seen a proper Arc Light, the choice was easy. The companies were directed to hold in place and begin moving south to the LZ early the next morning. But as a concession to common sense, that portion of the order regarding the 61 grid line was interpreted rather loosely. We would defend Margo.
The weather on 16 September matched the brilliance of previous days. Today, the Vietnamese Bureau of Tourism would tout the weather; on that day in 1968, however, it turned into a scene from hell.
Occasionally stopping to engage the NVA units following them, the three rifle companies slowly made their way back to Margo. Echo company came in last. Commanded by Captain John Cregan, now a Roman Catholic priest, the company began to climb Margo’s northern slope and, by approximately 1430, was taking up its assigned defensive positions on the northern perimeter. Even after ignoring the order to stay south of the 61 grid line, there were too many troops in too small an area – and they had to contend with Margo’s rock-hard ground. Digging in took more time.
Echo Company Marines moments before the first attack
Early in the afternoon, ominous sightings of North Vietnamese soldiers with mortars fording the Cam Lo River west of Margo were reported. Artillery fire was called, probably without effect. At the same time, there was a minor flurry of activity as the BLT shifted to the operational control of the 9th Marines, and radio frequencies were changed and tested. That done, the chatter of troops and the clanging of their entrenching tools were the only sounds disturbing the quiet.
At 1500, Captain Ken Dewey, an F-4 pilot serving as the battalion’s air liaison officer, was looking north toward the left of the two hills that had been the original objectives when suddenly a mirror started flashing – followed immediately by the soft “thunking” sound of mortars firing in the distance. Within seconds, Margo was blanketed with exploding 82mm rounds from several compass points, especially the northern arc. The battalion began its “time on the cross,” as the French put it earlier in the Indochina War.
The noise was deafening. Each explosion filled the surrounding air with black, stinking, greasy-tasting smoke. The mortarmen poured it on until 200 to 300 rounds had pummeled the Marines and corpsmen, a good percentage of whom had no protection beyond that of shallow fighting holes. As the fire eased, the LZ sprang to life and First Lieutenant Al Green’s 81mm platoon began counterbattery fires, an action that won them concentrated NVA attention.
Battalion machine gunners on Margo’s southern rim saw some enemy mortarmen and began to engage them at long range – attracting in turn, their share of incoming. The exchange continued for a few minutes until a mirror on the high ground flashed again. The incoming barrage slowed, then stopped – but the noise in the LZ grew to deafening proportions as hundreds of rifles went into action. At first, it seemed as if frustrated Marine riflemen were wasting ammunition on out-of-range NVA mortarmen, but a radio query to First Lieutenant Bob Riordan, the Golf Company Commander, revealed that from his position on the southern rim, North Vietnamese soldiers could be seen moving uphill to assault the LZ’s northern side.
Then the rifle fire stopped abruptly, and, within seconds, the southern rim and center of the LZ was alive with Marines running to the northern side. Their fires had been masked by those manning the northern slope defenses, and they were leaving their own positions to get into the fight. The enemy never has a chance. The NVA commander who ordered the assault likely had fewer troops than he thought, due to previous contacts. In any case, the reactions of the defenders were too violent. No more than 20 minutes had elapsed. The cost to BLT 2/26 was more than 150 dead and wounded. The cost to the enemy was unknown.
Marines filtering back to their positions after repulsing the NVA ground assault
At 1700, the mirror flashed again, and the mortars went to work. Once more, rounds rained down on Margo – fewer this time and without an infantry attack – but the BLT’s casualty list grew longer. For the first time since the attacks began, medical evacuation of the wounded now seemed possible. It was likely that the NVA had expended most of their mortar ammunition and would not interfere with the helicopter evacuation.
The casualties had been separated by category . . . emergency, priority, and routine . . . and the “permanent routine,” a euphemism for the dead that had crept into the radio operator’s lexicon. We hoped to medevac at least the emergency and priority wounded before nightfall. Several CH-46As and gunships arrived about 1830, and the laborious process of loading the casualties, one at a time, began as soon as the lead bird touched down.
As usual, the strength and example can be found in the casualties. I saw Staff Sergeant Donner from the reconnaissance platoon, covered in blood, as he was being escorted to the medevac staging area. He was refusing to leave, insisting that he was okay. I told him that he would leave.
Late in the afternoon of 16 September, I watched as an unwounded Marine rapidly searched the rows of wounded looking for a friend. Suddenly, a large arm reached out and waved. “There you are” said the first as he took the wounded man’s hand and squatted down to talk. They held hands quietly until the medevac helicopters arrived. The wounded Marine had been hit badly. I do not know if he survived. Nor do I know if his friend survived our subsequent encounters with the NVA. What I do know is that the wounded Marine was black and his buddy white. I remembered thinking at the time how much better people would be if we were all like those two.
Recently, we have been told that the best and the brightest did not go to Vietnam. When I heard that, I thought of those two Marines so long ago, the hardships they endured, and their obvious respect for each other. Maybe they weren’t the brightest, but they were the best.
Realizing that there would be no other medevacs from Margo that night, the last pilot insisted on overloading his aircraft with wounded. Over his objections, the loading stopped, and the pilot was told to launch. He must have been good. If not good, he was very lucky. The overloaded 46 resembled a giant praying mantis as it struggled into the air, tail down, nose swinging back and forth in a wide arc, as though searching for escape from a trap. Finally, he nursed it a few feet higher, leveled, and began slipping sideways, just above the trees, down the slope that formed Margo’s northern rim. Again, the LZ filled with Marines running north; convinced that the 46 was about to crash, they were moving to assist the survivors.
One of the Medevac helicopters waits patiently for the casualties to be loaded.
The helicopter disappeared from view behind the trees and, an eternity later, came back into view, this time in full flight, nose-high on a southernly course, jettisoning fuel to lighten the load and clear the ridge to Margo’s east. All movement stopped as everyone in the LZ watched the miracle claw its way over the ridge line, taking the wounded to safety.
Quiet settled over Margo. As the troops returned to their positions, the silence was broken by a single “thunk” off to the north. This time, it was only one round, but it landed precisely where the medevac birds had loaded. It was Charlie saying he knew what had been done and could have stopped it at any time. He was also saying he was a pro. We knew that already.
The XXIV Corps Commanding General visited Margo the following morning. His worries about morale evaporated as he watched the Marines improving their defensive positions. He then looked toward a large group of wounded waiting to be evacuated. In response to a question, he was told they were the routine medevacs. Behind them were rows of poncho-covered objects. He looked at them, saying nothing, knowing what they were. Finally, a Marine broke the spell. “The dead go last, sir.”
Epilogue
The Arc Light went in five or six kilometers north of Margo on the afternoon of 16 September. Maybe too much had happened, or maybe there was an unusually high number of duds. Regardless, it was unimpressive. Paradoxically, it hurt 2/26 more than it hurt the enemy.
Early on 17 September, Golf, Fox, and Hotel Companies returned to the familiar trails, attacking north. Echo Company, having lost nearly 70 Marines in the mortar and infantry attacks, remained behind. The LZ was mortared twice that day, but there were few casualties. Margo’s final toll will probably never be known precisely. We evacuated more than 200 dead and wounded, some of whom doubtlessly died later. Before we left, we filled 18 external helicopter nets with packs, weapons, and other equipment that was no longer needed.
Weapons and gear collected from the casualties
Eventually, after another long period of torrential rains, the attacking companies reached the high ground, where Golf found a graveyard – 18 graves with markers aligned in rows near where the mirror had flashed before the mortar attack. They evacuated a few to confirm that it was a graveyard. They also traced the extensive writing on the markers and sent them to the rear for translation. The writings turned out to be a history of each of the casualties. We learned we had gotten the NVA battalion commanding officer and much of his staff. The CO had been a soldier since joining the Viet Minh in the late 1940s: he was a professional. I think whoever ordered all the writing put on the markers did so, at least in part, so that we would not dig up their dead.
One of the 18 external loads of weapons and gear evacuated from LZ Margo
We stood by to attack to the west. It never happened. Near the end of September, the BLT moved by helicopter into another one-bird zone in the DMZ just south of the Ben Hai River, nearly 15 kilometers north and east of Margo. In a series of assaults, BLT 2/26 routed an enemy force defending a headquarters complex and artillery positions. During the last assault, Marines of Echo and Hotel Companies were treated to the rare sight of North Vietnamese troops fleeing in panic.
The Marines and corpsmen of 2/26 formed a typical grunt battalion. They fought a dirty, unpopular war, and they did it well. They never claimed to be the best. All they said was that, if they met somebody better, they hoped he was on their side.
Famous son of the Rio Grande Valley, Joshua Trevino, the Chief Transformation Officer at the Texas Public Policy Institute, made a startling admission on the Hard Country podcast about Mexican Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum. Joshua admitted he was wrong about the la presidenta, who is not a placeholder for the Morena party but a talented executive. She has better managed Mexico’s relationship with the United States than any Mexican president. Joshua observed that the Mexican government cannot guarantee public safety or clean water, but it is an expert at dealing with the United States Government.
My non-expert opinion is that Claudia Sheinbaum is a Brujas Negras (Black Witch) Curandera. Sheinbaum is a non-religious Jew and a lifelong leftist who reads every policy paper she is handed and is preternaturally alert for every second of hours-long policy meetings. She’s a disciplined, sober female version of Bill Clinton without the sex addiction or lazy disinterest in detail. The true face of evil can be found in any human who enjoys multiple, hours-long, policy meetings. It’s not natural.
Last week, I thought the Brujas Negras had struck again when I saw Grubhub had declared McAllen the most overweight and obese city in America. How had the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) suddenly become populated by food blisters? I detected the hand of bad voodoo, only to remember that polite people here never mention obesity or its downstream effects. We’ve been the fattest city in America for years, but nothing is done about it, and nobody talks about it, so it’s easy to forget.
The RGV has been shrouded in a miasma of black magic fog, the fog of woe, that allows people to ignore the obvious. The average resident should stay the hell out of Starbucks, donut shops, and double-fried taco stands. But every day, a new Starbucks, donut shop, or taco stand opens to serve people a few years away from needing daily dialysis. The Catholic Church should be battling this obvious demonic assault on the faithful. But they’re focused on illegal migrant rights because that’s where the money is. . . Or was it before DOGE uncovered the billions of dollars flowing to the dioceses from USAID to facilitate human trafficking via dozens of ‘NGOs’.
Sister Norma Pimentel, Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, greets a group of some 25 asylum seekers at a bus station in Brownsville, Texas. No mention is ever made about the millions of dollars USAID has given her. That fact is lost in the RGV fog of woe (photo: John Moore / Getty )
This obesity epidemic in the Rio Grande Valley has disrupted the retirement plan I established in 1985, following my first reading of Lonesome Dove. After retiring, I wanted to be an old, tricky, tough bastard living on the Rio Grande River. But there are no cattle rustlers to fight, and I wasn’t sure my plan made sense until the Narco wars started and President Trump declared them terrorists. There was no doubt that all sorts of miscreants had invaded us. I saw it with my own lying eyes for four years running. Suddenly, my dream of replicating Gus and Captain Call seemed to be answered until I researched Narco sicarios.
What happened to the tough, self-reliant Mexican peasant? Where is the self-sacrificing ethos of the Mexican soldiers who overthrew the Spanish, defeated the French, and fought with courage against the Americans?
See what I mean? These two fat bastards couldn’t run 100 yards but still think they’re bad asses. Plus they have man boobs – a clear indicator of low testosterone.
I live close enough to the Rio Grande River to see the border wall lights at night. During the evening, I sit on my back porch, scanning the river bottoms, just like Augustus McCrae or Captain Call, but without a rifle or jug of whiskey, because I don’t want my neighbors to think I’m antisocial. This is Texas, where many people still carry a pistol, but who needs a gun to deal with pudgy nitwits? Having a charged AED at the ready, along with IV fluids, is more practical given the lack of desperados swimming the Rio Grande and the physical condition of the local population.
Who carries around an automated external defibrillator and IV kits? Sheepdogs – I know quite a few of them and we are all much happier to bring a cardiac arrest victim back to life than shooting a scumbag trying to take a life. The savings in legal fees alone make that a winning proposition. I still carry a concealed pistol in honor of Gus and Captain Call. Reality may have crushed my retirement plan, but a man can still dream.
Narcos are not a problem for the law-abiding citizens of the RGV. Many have vacation properties in the Valley and send their children to school here. Lots of Mexicans send their kids to school here, a constant source of aggravation for property tax-paying Winter Texans. This is another topic rarely discussed in polite company because it raises the ugly specter of racism, even though skin color has nothing to do with being Hispanic. Fluency in the Spanish language determines who is and is not Hispanic in the RGV.
The Narcos are a problem for local politicians, lawyers, and law enforcement. They have too much money, and finding a lawyer, politician, or police chief who would not sell their soul to the devil (or a Bruja Negra) for a few million dollars is as rare. The only defense against multi-million-dollar bribes is strong religious faith. A man alone cannot reject that level of illicit wealth; he needs a strong angel riding shotgun. I have St Michael, who I found guarding my six in Afghanistan. Hopefully vulnerable RGV titans have a similar guardian to with which to battle Santa Muerte.
The appearance of tranquil, law-abiding prosperity is another consequence of the invisible black magic fog that infects the RGV. Everything appears normal, which is abnormal given the corrosive effects of abundant Narco money. Lifting that fog falls in the realm of spiritual warfare, the province of curanderas, now that the Catholic Church has abandoned normal Americans.
Aztecs are all the rage in Mexico, given the popularity of Santa Muerte, a cross between the Grim Reaper and the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Mexico’s patron saint. But the Aztecs weren’t Mexican Amerindians; they were colonizers from the North. Their Náhuatl language is unrelated to Central Mexican Mesoamerican native languages but closely related to the Ute and Comanche languages. History has become a profound, dark mystery because it is actively subverted in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Understanding legitimate, verifiable history is a superpower that allows you to instantly cut through the bullshit inflicted on us by the elite managerial class.
Santa Muerte swag in Mexico City
If a culture that mocks tradition and devalues sacrifice fails to renew itself, what happens to a culture that calls for holy war against the catholic church while conducting human sacrifice? Mexican Narcos can’t grasp the concept of aspirational sacrifice because they are low-testosterone and low-IQ psychopaths. The Stoics tell us that rudeness, meanness, and cruelty are a mask for deep-seated weakness. You can add man boobs, the physical manifestation of low T, to that list.
Which brings up another crushing disappointment. Old retired guys can’t hang out in smoky bars dispensing the distilled wisdom of an aged International Man of Action. If they do, they risk looking like everyone else around here. Who wants to see another old fool with a beer gut thinking he’s a badass? Not looking like a dangerous man is no way to honor the memory of the best two fictional Texas Rangers in the Western canon, or the canon of Westerns. I’m not sure how to make that point. It is a vivid reminder not to base your aspirations on fictional characters created by the same author who wrote Brokeback Mountain.
