How alarmed and angry would Americans be if they knew armed foreign nationals are protecting Mexican marijuana cartels growing pot on U.S. soil?

Well, get angry -- it's happening.

This is just one more ugly manifestation of our porous borders allowing potential terrorists, gang members and thugs virtually unfettered access to our country. Mexico's pot growers are a new brand of criminal for law-enforcement authorities to contend with.

As if it's not awful enough that illegal aliens are growing bounteous fields of unlawful marijuana in our nation, they're doing it in the most magnificent wilderness areas of the U.S. -- and polluting our national forests and parks to a dangerously sickening degree. The residue of toxic chemicals necessary to grow the pot is what's doing the environmental damage, says the U.S. Forest Service.

California's 1,800-square-mile Sequoia National Forest is the hardest hit, with up to 700 grow sites found in the past two years. Sites have also been found on federal wilderness lands in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia. The cartels, which are reportedly protected by armed thugs, some of whom may be veterans or active members of Mexico's armed forces, use rat poison and weed and bug sprays that are banned in the U.S. to kill deer, bears and other wildlife that endanger their pot plants. U.S. taxpayers spend millions every year to find and uproot the pot-growing operations, but no money is budgeted to clean up the polluted mess.

There's been a move in Congress to provide clean-up funds, which is all well and good. But it makes more sense to clean out the cartels and their thug protectors before any mess is made.

What's our military for, if not to repel aggressors?

Then we should seal off the borders, also using the military if necessary. We wish we could say this kind of action was in the works, but we can't. It won't happen until the American people get angry enough to demand it. If Mexican pot cartels polluting our national parks and killing our wildlife doesn't get us angry enough, then what will?