Watched it...

Too bad that wasn't a Netflix view... the nine-minute segments are distracting.

The show made me think though... is there another time in history when one man has had the ability to play the "thorn in the side" of our nation the way bin Laden has? I don't want to make unjust comparisons or give undue credit or glory to a pig like this, but his role in American history since 1993 seems almost unparalleled. Who would be a good comparison? John Brown in the 1850's? Or is he America's version of Guy Fawkes? Will his death eventually be celebrated in the US the way November 5th is in England?

This thought leads me to another...

Reports are becoming more and more common of gun fights and bombings in the border towns along the Mexican-side of the southern border. Reports of "mass graves" of dozens of torture victims have been found, threats against police and law enforcement personnel, and the ever-present cries against the number of "guns" the bandits have in their possession are heard almost daily on the radio. There is the very real possibility that as many as 32 Americans have been killed in the drug-trafficking violence these bandito-gangs are instigating, and these people have been killed on both sides of the fence.

Now, this sort of violence does have an historical parallel... the raids by Pancho Villa into New Mexico and Texas in 1916, which led to the punitive expedition of five thousand American troops led by Gen "Blackjack" Pershing into Mexico to stop the cross-border violence. In fact, Jambo and I, in our youth, counted among our friends and fellow ice-fishing "buddies" one classmate's grandfather, John Oshenbauer, who went with the Pershing expedition as a mechanic on the newly-deployed Army Air Corps' Curtiss "Jennys". Besides having fought in WWI (again, an airplane mechanic and someone who had met and shook hands with Eddie Rickenbacker), he also was a veteran of America's last "invasion" of Mexico... and I will always remember talking to him about his memories of that time.

The parallel isn't complete, of course... we didn't catch Villa (he was assassinated)... but we did stop the cross-border attacks and forced the Mexican Revolutionary Government to address the violence in the northern states. The analogy is even a bit better than that, though... Villa would never have attacked the US had Wilson not overturned GOP policy with Mexico and revoked support of the established Mexican government and instead decided to support the "revolution" in hopes of ending conflict, which made Villa a "revolutionary" overnight, rather than an ally of the US. Now, nearly 100 years later, Pancho Villa is a reverred name in both Mexico and the US, even thought he attacked civilians and burned at least two unarmed American towns to the ground and killed at least 24 American civilians. More examples of radical "Democratic" policy bringing death and destruction to Americans, I guess.

So, anyway... I'm OFF today (my first day off since we opened on the 11th), and I'm looking at a six-day schedule for the forseeable future... better than nothing, believe me.