Assailants on Tuesday gunned down the mother, aunt and siblings of a marine killed in a raid that took out one of Mexico's most powerful cartel leaders—sending a chilling message to troops battling the drug war: You go after us, we wipe out your families.This is just the next nation over. And it is our drug habit that is fueling this.
Without great intelligence, it would be hard to fight this kind of thing. We need to get a handle on the "war on drugs" now or risk falling into a 1920s like lawlessness akin to Prohibition, or worse. I would describe Mexico as worse than Prohibition, where President Felipe "Calderon's crackdown against organized crime ... has seen more than 15,000 people killed by drug violence since it began in 2006...".
As one person with some knowledge commented:
It's worth considering that these same cartels are now deeply and directly involved in controlling the drug trade inside the U.S. as well.I wonder what our Senators are doing to prevent the spread of this killing spree to the United States. This is not something we can opt out of. In Mexico the drug cartel soldiers even go into gated communities.
Regards — Cliff
The cartels have already crossed the border and killings are up along the border cities.....and arguably even as far north as Seattle and Chicago. Not too long ago, there was a murder and arrest of Mexican drug folks here in NH.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am not a fan of drug use per se, the arguments against today are the same as were posed against the use of another drug, alcohol. I think if we want to get a handle on the drug wars in the US, we need to take the profitability out of the distribution of drugs. If we legalize them, we take a practice that is currently epidemic and largely sub rosa, and bring it into the public domain openly. In this manner, we can as a society begin to deal with the medical consequences of addiction to the extent that addictive behavior allows, and as a side benefit, we can shift the cash flow associated from drug use from the cartels to the US treasury.
The problem for the American society is that we absolutely must disconnect the morality and emotionalism of our unprecedented and deal with it objectively and practically.
The problem is NOT with Mexico or even Columbia. The problem is with America and our refusal to face our problem head on.
If we decriminalize drugs and then make them available through the marketplace, we will at least know who is using them and we will also replace a corrupt supply line with a legitimate, controllable channel.
Drug abuse is already going on.....and its legalization has absolutely nothing to do with the decisions made to use them. THAT is a separate problem.
Happy New Year....
Neal
Some former Army War College Professor (obviously not me) commented:
ReplyDeleteQUOTE
One of the first reactions to cartel and gang stories is "legalization would cure it," or some-such. If you read the story carefully, you see that the gangs extort, kidnap and steal as well as deal drugs. It's true that marijuana is the cartels' major cash crop, but that's not the real problem. The real problem is a Mad-Max criminal world beyond the reach of law that does anything for money. Same pattern in this country, though our cops are pretty good at dampening the violence.
UNQUOTE
Gee, I was hoping, along with Neal, above, that decriminalization would thwart the cartels, but maybe not. I would hope that DHS and Secretary Janet N has a think tank or two working on this.
Regards — Cliff