Secretary
of Defense James Mattis visited U.S. troops at the border twiddling
their thumbs (at great cost to American taxpayers) awaiting the
"invading caravan" that Donald Trump
has, post-election, seemingly forgotten about and, as far as I'm
concerned, done the president one better. He compared that unarmed
caravan of sufferers, including women and children, to Pancho Villa's
armed cross-border raiders of 1916. Truly pathetic. Tom
"While en route to McAllen, Tex., to meet with some of the 5,900 troops
recently deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border by President Trump, Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis offered a history lesson of sorts on Wednesday in
defense of the hastily arranged military response to the caravan of
migrants called an “invasion” by President Trump.
"Before citing
the active duty troops sent by the Clinton administration to the border
in the ’90s and the National Guardsmen deployed by Presidents George W.
Bush and Barack Obama as reasons for why the deployment was needed,
Mattis reminded the press gaggle aboard his plane of the lengths to
which President Woodrow Wilson went to counteract the forces led by
Mexican revolutionary Gen. Francisco “Pancho” Villa more than a century
ago.
“I think many of you are aware that President Wilson 100
years ago — a little over 100 years ago deployed the U.S. Army to the
Southwest border,” Mattis said. “The threat then was Pancho Villa’s
troops, a revolutionary raiding across the border into the United
States, New Mexico in 1916."
"As a lifelong student of military
history with a personal library that reportedly once had more than 7,000
volumes, Mattis citing Wilson’s action against against Villa in the
context of a caravan of men, women and children immediately raised
eyebrows.
"The threat that Trump said would come in the form of a
caravan of thousands of Central American migrants, many of them women
and children, moving north through Mexico has not materialized. Critics
saw the dispatch of active duty troops to the border as a pre-election
stunt.
"Pancho Villa, on the other hand, did actually lead a
cross-border raid that killed 18 Americans in the small town of
Columbus, N.M. His actions caused thousands of American troops, led by
Gen. John J. Pershing, to pursue him for close to a year, nearly
starting a war. Villa’s attack is considered by historians one of the
first, if not the first, acts of terrorism on U.S. soil.
“The comparison makes absolutely no sense,” tweeted Univision anchor León Krauze.
"After initially earning the support of Wilson around 1913, who once
called Villa “a sort of Robin Hood,” the rebel leader felt betrayed by
the American government when Mexican leader Venustiano Carranza came
back into the president’s favor during the early part of the Mexican
Revolution. The rebel leader then targeted the U.S. in January 1916. A
group of Villistas, the common word for Villa’s army, killled 18
American passengers on a train in Mexico.
"General John J.
Pershing, at the head of his men, fords a stream in Mexico in 1916 while
leading the United States troops there in pursuit of Pancho Villa. (AP
Photo)
"Villa’s next move came in the early morning hours of
March 9, 1916, Villa was joined by hundreds of Villistas in a raid on
Columbus, a bustling New Mexico town of 250 residents located three
miles north of the border. The Villistas — reportedly shouting “Viva
Villa!” and “Viva Mexico!” — burned the town, looted the homes, hotel
and stores, and killed 18 civilians and American soldiers.
“I was
awake, they were asleep,” Villa later bragged, according to historian
Mitchell Yockelson in the Daily Beast, “and it took them too long to
wake up.”
"Wilson moved swiftly to pursue Villa, wrote Yockelson,
author of “Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing’s Warriors Came of Age to
Defeat the German Army in World War I.” Almost a week after the attack
in Columbus, Pershing led a punitive expedition (later referred to as
the Mexican Expedition) of more than 14,000 troops to Mexico in hope of
capturing the violent terrorist.
"Perhaps one of the only common
elements between now and then was that it was an election year. Wilson’s
1916 presidential reelection campaign trumpeted the slogan, “He kept us
out of war,” in hope that his anti-war image would appeal to those
against conflict with Mexico or Europe, according to “Woodrow Wilson: A
Biography.” (He narrowly won a second term over Charles Evans Hughes.)
"With the U.S. close to entering World War I, the expedition would
officially end nearly a year later in February 1917 without capturing
Villa. (He was assassinated in 1923.)..."
