Juliette Kayyem, CNN’s national security analyst and former Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, is really, really upset that the U.S. does not have an Ambassador to Mexico during “our time of need” which, in her mind, is the arrival of Hurricane Patricia in Mexico.
Apparently, we are greatly disadvantaged by not having an Ambassador to “do the right thing”, because “helping other nations is the right thing to do”. So, following Kayyem’s logic, our proximity to Mexico and their subsequent (and almost assured) sufferings from the “strongest storm ever recorded” will impact us in extraordinary ways. We simply can’t respond adequately because we have no Ambassador to lead the way into our necessary intervention into Mexico’s meteorological problems.
Kayyem’s statements of “our time of need” and “so where Mexico goes, so do we” are intended to establish a link between–or maybe a fusion of?–our two countries by subtly erasing that nationalist idea of a border. She continues in that vein with the comment about “shared ideas, people, and industry across a border.”
The question is almost begged: why bother having a border at all, if we share everything, anyway?
As for Kayyem’s stated solution to the problem? Well, getting an Ambassador—or rather, a specific Ambassador–put in place would certainly help. But, alas, that is not to be. Kayyem tells us that U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez are holding up the appointment of the perfect person for the job: Roberta Jacobson, a “veteran State Department official” and ardent supporter of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba.
So essentially what Kayyem is saying is that a storm heading to Mexico–that fizzled out as quickly as it became the “strongest recorded storm ever”–has now been transmogrified into a national security event for the United States that we must respond to and that can best be presided over by a communist-sympathizer, lifelong, unionized, federal government worker.
Marco and Bob, thank you.
photo credit: ABC News
