Pentagon fear monger of the day

Defense One - A top US commander warns Caribbean and South American countries are unable to track 100 foreign fighters that could return from Syria.

The war in Syria has attracted roughly 100 foreign fighters from the Caribbean who could easily make their way to the United States, said the top U.S. military commander for the southern hemisphere.

With little ability to track and monitor foreign fighters when they return, it would be relatively easy for those fighters to “walk” north to the U.S. border along the same networks used to traffic drugs and humans, according to Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command.

“They don’t have that ability to track these folks,” Kelly said at a Pentagon briefing on Thursday.

Kelly said he worries whomever is radicalized enough to leave for Syria would return with greater terrorism skills and motivations.
 
Great moments in the Southern Command

NY Times, 2014 - Although President Obama pledged last year to revive his efforts to close Guantánamo, his administration has managed to free just one low-level prisoner this year, leaving 79 who are approved for transfer to other countries. It has also not persuaded Congress to lift its ban on moving the remaining 70 higher-level detainees to a prison inside the United States.  “It’s a long way from being closed,” said Gen. John F. Kelly, the leader of the United States Southern Command, which oversees Joint Task Force Guantánamo.

Atlantic, 2014 -   General John F. Kelly, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, testified last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he argued, as generals tend to do, that he has inadequate resources to fulfill the missions assigned to him.

Here's how the Associated Press summed up his statement:

The U.S. doesn’t have the ships and surveillance capabilities to go after the illegal drugs flowing into the U.S. from Latin America, the top military commander for the region told senators Thursday, adding that the lack of resources means he has to “sit and watch it go by.”

Gen. John Kelly told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he is able to get about 20 percent of the drugs leaving Colombia for the U.S., but the rest gets through.

Think about that.

Though the U.S. spends billions of dollars each year fighting the War on Drugs, and despite having done so for many years, 80 percent of the drugs from one of the countries we've focused on the most still gets through all of our interdiction efforts.

Sam Smith, 1996 - General McCaffrey headed the US Southern Command, which provides military backup for American policy in Latin America -- a policy long linked with support of dictatorships, suppression of dissidents, human rights abuses, death squads as well as chronically ineffective and corrupt management of drug smuggling. The price of this policy has been heavy: for example, over 100,000 people have been killed since 1960 in Guatemala, many of them by armed forces and police trained and supported by the US.

One former US ambassador to a Central American country says of Southcom, "I wouldn't even let them in the country" because Southcom would "inexorably militarize political problems." Today, he added, "very few countries outside of Central America welcome visits" from the commander of Southcom.

A Pentagon official describes Southcom's role as "military to military diplomacy." Rather then functioning like an old-fashion colonial army -- "they're not like the Bengal Lancers" -- they go in and work quietly with the local military to make sure the right elements are in charge and show them how to put down dissidents and how to interrogate.