Threats to American society live a lot closer to home

Since those ISIS killers came a-ridin’ out of the deserts of Iraq and Syria like those bad guys out of Arizona and Texas in the 1890s, there’s barely been a spit o’ news about anything else.

And this is strange, because the United States has a problemon its southern frontier not at all unlike the threats that ISIS poses, not only to Iraq and Syria, but tomuch of the world.

ISIS trains fighters fromall over the world to take over others’ lands and accrue bags full of gold; the threat at our border reaches shamelessly into American society and creates gangs to sell drugs, to muscle and murder people, and thus to devilishly weaken American society. ISIS has turned its own capital, Raqqah, into a hellon-earth; the group threatening America has turned its societies of origin into the capitals ofmurder for the entire planet.

If you don’t know by now that I am speaking of Central America — and, in particular, of El Salvador and Honduras — prepare for a shock. And if you haven’t realized that they export vicious gangs like theMS-13 into the United States, where they unceasingly recruit and then murder other gang members, it’s time to think about it.

In theWashington papers, if one looks far enough back in the local sections, one regularly sees the evidence. “Four teens charged in gang-style slaying,” TheWashington Post headlined last month. “Slayings are tied to resurgence of MS-13, police say.”

Developments like these always have their roots; nothing comes out of nowhere. And so we find that killings rose nearly 70 percent last year in El Salvador, giving that massively overcrowded and gang-infested little Central American nation the dubious distinction as the world’s most violent country.

The Salvadoran national police director officially announced that there were at least 6,657 homicides in 2015, compared with 3,942 the previous year, thus seizing the “most violent” title from previous front-runner Honduras. The noir drama then moves to the American border. These numbers — these realities — in dead bodies found daily, as local boys involve themselves in drugs, kidnappings and extortion rackets, reappear in American schools far away from the Central American isthmus.

The gang boys in theU.S. were among the tens of thousands of youngsterswho crowded across the American border in 2014 and then again in late 2015. Infact, inOctober andNovember, more than 10,500 children crossed theU.S.Mexico border by themselves, most fromHonduras and El Salvador and some fromGuatemala. Large numbers are expected again this spring.

But once they get here and are supposedly safely in school, police say many of them, after escaping the gangs at home, become gang members here. It is, again, a question of poverty, oftentimes the absence of parents and/or pressures put upon them by the gangs.

Thus, the comparison between theMiddle East situation with ISIS and theWestern Hemisphere with the street gangs reveals differences on important levels, but parallels on many others. We see here now desperate, violent outsiders forcing themselves upon a society illegally and then, instead of being transformed into new Americanmen, working within the society to poison it.

In a bit of dramatically late concern, Congress voted last year to grant $750 million to tackle the violence and poverty plaguing Central America. Thiswas like throwing a dime in the Fountain of Trevi.

What we are witnessing is a sad part of our history in which we cared about Central America only when we perceived it as a military or economic threat. Instead of putting our diplomatic focus on this, our ownWestern Hemisphere, we have, sinceWorldWar II, wasted our power and our creative seed on the faraway Vietnams, Iraqs and Afghanistans of the world.