I have been writing for years about the illegal immigration situation in the United States.
It seems that drug gangs based in the north of Mexico have grown enormously wealthy and powerful by using the same routes illegal aliens use to enter the US to smuggle their product. They were so flush with cash, in fact, that they were even able to bribe troops in the Mexican Army to act as bodyguards for some of the smugglers.
The government in Mexico decided to do something about this situation, and they went to war with the drug cartels two years ago. So far, things have not been going very well for the good guys. Assassinations and murder on a scale that boggles the mind.
Now, it would seem, things have taken a turn for the worse. The headline reads “US Military Report Warns ‘Sudden Collapse’ of Mexico Possible”. (Hat tip to Glenn.)
I’m wondering if the US is going to finally do something to help the democratically elected government of our southern neighbor. A good start would be to reduce the profits the drug gangs use to kill all those innocent people. We could do that simply by enforcing our own laws and secure our borders.
Something tells me that won’t happen.
(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)
Unfortunately, Mexico relies to much on remittances from illegal aliens to consider how poor U.S. border security hurts Mexico by making drug smugglers rich and powerful.
Military intervention could be justified because we’re causing the problem in Mexico by our inability to deal with our own problems with illegal drugs. The externalities of drug laws for the people of Latin America are very real and dire. Assuming that drugs laws here do save lives, they do so at the expense of the lives of people in other countries.
In Mexico, for decades corrupted politicians looked the other way while drug lords grew powerful and spread through the country. The drugs lords would occasionally throw a bone and let the federal police catch a cargo here and there, so as to give the impression the authorities were doing something about it, and there were no decapitations or killings in the streets. It was all a farce.
Now there is a real war against the drugs going on in Mexico, the federal government, the administration of President Calderon has confronted the drug cartels from day one, giving them no rest, engaging the army and police in the fight, they have cleaned and destroy thousands of plantations and laboratories, they have caught many big drug lords, many of them have been sent to the United States for prosecuting, the results are very visible but there have been many policemen and soldiers killed too, this is not window dressing, and this is the first time we ever seen the drug war taken such a high toll on our police and military, it had not happened before.
The federal government has made all its efforts public, they run a campaign on television and radio to warn the population about the danger of drugs and drug cartels and encourage them to denounce the drug dealers, and they also publicize the results of the war on drugs.
The cartels have responded by running their very own terror campaign to terrorize the population with killings and decapitations, their efforts are two-fold, to cause fear in the population and to ridicule the government’s efforts.
But I beg to differ with the notion that Mexico can “collapse”, the presence of the state is strong through out the country and the federal government has the full support of the United States, there’s a very strong and collaborative relationship that goes back many years.