A few thoughts from Joe From Texas
As we get closer to Pearl Harbor Day, a day on which we remember the December 7th, 1941, attack by Japan that brought the United States into WWII, Joe From Texas decided to compare the number of lives lost during that attack to the number of drug-related deaths attributable to Biden’s border crisis.
The National WWII Museum has a quote on their website from Ph.D. Rob Citino that sums up the way most Americans, at least those with a sense of history, still feel about the attack on Pearl Harbor some 81 years later: “No moment in the history of the United States casts a longer shadow than Pearl Harbor. “Remembering” it has become a national imperative, a patriotic duty for the American people, and reminding us of that duty has become a ritual of media and political discourse—repeated so often and in so many ways that it’s become part of the routine of our communal life.”
There are many reasons that we continue to remember Pearl Harbor. The first among these is that our country was viciously attacked with no notice, and seemingly, no provocation. Although there had been tensions between the U.S. and Japan for some time, there did not seem to be any real belief that these tensions would lead to war. In retrospect, it is obvious that Japan had been planning the attack for some time and that it had the initial impact the leadership of Japan intended. America was caught sleeping and, as a result, we paid a heavy price. According to PearlHarbor.org, “there were a total of 2,335 military personnel killed, including 2,008 Navy personnel, 109 Marines, and 218 Army. Added to this were 68 civilians, making the total 2,403 people dead. 1,177 were from the USS Arizona.”
The day after the attack, President Franklin Roosevelt stood before Congress to give one of the most famous speeches in U.S. history. The speech opened with Roosevelt stating, “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” After providing a passionate account of events leading up to Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt concluded the speech with a request for a declaration of war. “I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”
Unfortunately, we also have other, more recent, attacks that we now remember each year. They also occurred on American soil and led to great loss of life -- the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. The 2,403 people lost at Pearl Harbor and the 2,978 people lost on September 11th, are among the deadliest days in American history. If you exclude disease and natural disasters, they are very near the top of the list in terms of deaths caused by the violence of man in a single day in our nation’s history. The response of the U.S. in each case was swift and unwavering. As we have already seen, President Roosevelt asked for a declaration of war the day after Pearl Harbor. Similarly, once we determined who was responsible for 9/11, the U.S. prosecuted a war on terror in an effort to defeat those who, like Japan many years earlier, attacked us on our home soil.
Fast forward to 2022. Parents Against Illicit Narcotics (PAIN) is a grassroots organization founded by Virginia Krieger, who lost her daughter to an accidental fentanyl overdose in 2015. The organization seeks to support children, families, victims, and the countless communities adversely affected by illicit narcotics. In addition to support services, they track drug statistics. According to PAIN, America is losing 389 lives every day to drug-related causes. This equates to roughly 16 deaths per hour, with a total of 1,368,113 lives lost since 2013.
If you do the math at 389 lives lost per day, you will find that we lose more people each week to drug-related deaths than we lost in Pearl Harbor. You will also find that we lose more lives to drug-related causes every 8 days than were lost in 9/11. We are being attacked daily by a very deadly enemy, yet President Biden and the Democrats, who have complete control over the power apparatus in Washington, D.C., do nothing. Well, you may say, this is a big and complicated problem…what can they do? This is a great question and Joe From Texas is very glad that you asked. In an earlier post for this site on the topic of the border, he made the case that drugs coming over our southern border are a major factor, if not the driving factor, in the current drug crisis. About 90% of heroin makes its way into U.S. communities through our southern border, and it is safe to assume this is true for other drugs as well. In late August of 2022, four pounds of fentanyl powder was seized by CPB in Nogales, AZ — enough to kill the entire population of Dallas, TX. Additionally, CPB has seized over 10,000 pounds of fentanyl since October 2021.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), concurs that most illegal drugs enter the U.S. through Mexico. Unfortunately, they believe that only a small fraction of these drugs is being seized. In a July 2022 report for CIS, Andrew Arthur explained that drug seizures at the border are down significantly for the year, and he makes the case that this is not because fewer drugs are entering the United States. Arthur states that CDC statistics, which show an increase in U.S. drug overdose deaths from 67,367 in 2018 to 107,622 in 2021, clearly illustrate that the flow of deadly drugs is increasing. He makes the case that drug cartels are finding innovative ways to smuggle drugs into the U.S. and that CPB agents, who are already stretched thin by the overwhelming number of illegal immigrants crossing the border, do not have the resources to effectively combat this problem.
Except for Joe Biden and Democrats in congress, no one believes that our southern border is secure. If you accept the premise that an unsecure border provides the drug cartels with almost unchallenged access to move their product into the United States (if you don’t accept this premise, just Google it and you will be educated) then it becomes clear why we are having problems with drug deaths on a scale that we have never seen.
Unless you live under a rock, you have heard stories about the deadly drug fentanyl, which is showing up more frequently in the U.S. China, a country run by a Chinese Communist Party that is no friend to the United States, is a big producer of fentanyl. Chinese suppliers were having some difficulty in getting the drug directly into the United States up until a couple of years ago when they came up with an alternate plan. A news story that appeared on the ABC News website in October 2022 outlined how that plan works. “Investigators said Chinese drug suppliers send the ingredients to make fentanyl to cartels in Mexico. After creating the fentanyl, either in raw powder or pill form, the cartels would ship them across the border in trucks, according to investigators.” Unfortunately, the drug cartels also exploit humans to carry fentanyl and other drugs across the border. A June 10th, 2022, article in the New York Post outlined how they regularly use “backpackers,” which are couriers who cross the border to deposit sacks of drugs at predetermined locations in the U.S., or hook up with traffickers on the U.S. side that then transport the drugs across the country. The article described two instances of this last year near El Paso, Texas. In the first instance, CPB agents found fentanyl strapped to the groin area of a 30-year-old man, and in the second they found a 48-year-old woman who admitted that she was carrying drugs stuffed inside of her body cavity.
So, back to the question you posed to Joe From Texas earlier about what Biden and the Democrats can do about the current drug crisis. His answer is simple, stop denying the problem and take action! Treat the issue at the border as a national crisis. Declare war on the border problem and bring every available resource to the table to win the war.
Sadly, Joe From Texas is under no illusion that Biden and the Democrats will actually do this. Perhaps that is because they think that you don’t really care. Joe From Texas is counting on you to prove them wrong on November 8th, 2022, when you go to the polls to vote. We are losing more people to drugs every week than we lost in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Democrats continue to do nothing! Joe From Texas is asking that you vote for Republicans this year in hopes that they will treat this issue with the focus and seriousness that it deserves.
Congressman Ben Cline, a Virginia Republican, recently wrote an opinion piece concerning the border for the Daily News-Record, a local newspaper in Virginia. Joe From Texas has continued to be puzzled by the repeated claims of Biden and the Democrats that the border is secure; however, the headline for Congressman Cline’s piece has finally provided him with a clue as to what Biden and his co-conspirators must actually mean when they say the border is secure. The headline stated, “The Border is Secured All Right, By the Drug Cartels.”
