Mexican President Takes Stock

Reporter Tracy Wilkinson, of the Los Angeles Times writes about the recent Mexican national security summit, "Calderon delivers blunt view of drug cartels' sway in Mexico".

Reporting from Mexico City — Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Wednesday delivered an uncommonly blunt and dispiriting assessment of the broad sway held by violent drug traffickers throughout the besieged country.

From the "most modest little towns" to major cities, Calderon said, traffickers attack, intimidate and blackmail Mexican citizens as part of an illegal business that goes far beyond the simple transport of narcotics.

"Their business is no longer just the traffic of drugs. Their business is to dominate everyone else," Calderon said. "This criminal behavior is what has changed and become a defiance to the state, an attempt to replace the state" by exacting war taxes and taking up arms more powerful than those used by outgunned government forces.

This confirms, I believe, what I said the day before.

Coming to a city near you.

And here is President Calderon on drug legalization

Although Mexico last year decriminalized small amounts of some drugs, government officials, partly in response to U.S. pressure, have resisted further liberalization.

But Calderon's office issued a statement late Tuesday saying that while he remained opposed to legalization, he no longer opposed a debate.

"Drugs no longer taboo," headlined an editorial in El Universal newspaper, praising the president's change of heart as "democratic." Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, one of the main U.S. groups favoring legalization, also hailed Calderon's comments as a "big step forward" toward ending the violence and called on President Obama to join the debate.

At the conference, Calderon came under withering criticism from some participants who said the government had failed miserably in keeping the Mexican public informed about strategy and progress in the drug war.

And the US Government was pressuring Mexico to legalize drugs?

Regards  —  Cliff

Corruption is not Just in Mexico

Over at Hot Air is a comment on the indictment of Mr Paul Magliocchetti♠, of the eponymously named PMA Group.♥ 

Also mentioned is Representative Peter Visclosky, of Indiana.  Per Wikipedia Mr Visclosky has been honored by a citizen's group:

In 2009, Visclosky was named one of the 15 most corrupt members of Congress by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

From a 29 March 2009♦ New York Times article we have this quote:

“All the combustibles are here for a very salacious set of allegations that could go far beyond his campaign finance problems,” said Stanley Brand, a veteran Washington criminal defense lawyer known for representing Democrats.

A friend of mine related to me, a couple of years ago, about how he ran into one of the PMA Group folks in a parking garage.  It sounded almost like Deep Throat and Woodward and Bernstein.  My friend knew this person when this person was still in uniform and before this person had joined PMA Group.  My friend asked a question in passing and since the friend's company had retained the PMA Group as a lobbyist, the chap went in and billed the time in the garage—but didn't answer the question.

So, are there no bright lines for our politicians?  Or have they so waffled the edges of the issue of corruption and selling votes with sub-sub-sections that it is easy to get lost?

Hat tip to the Instapundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  The link at Hot Air is dead at this writing.
♥  If it had been PMAA, it would have been the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, a firm my wife worked for, for a couple of years.
♦  Whatever happened to the idea of a speedy trial?

Drug Cartels and Corruption

I neither speak nor read Spanish, but someone did a translation of this article from 3 August in a Spanish language publication.

OK, so there is probably a certain journalistic hyperbole in this article, but at the center is a very important point.  Drug Cartels will be looking to enter legitimate businesses and take them over, or at least skim money from them.  Corruption breeds corruption.  We can see that in the case of US Prohibition in the 1920s and early 30s.

Mexico, D.F.—During the last 10 years, scores of government officials heading various departments of Petroleos Mexicanos, (PEMEX) have reported the infiltration of narcotraffickers into the workforce and politics and have robbed the company of around 30 billion dollars annually.

Pemex is the principal business of the government, with revenue totaling around 100 billion dollars annually, and is the third largest oil producer in the world. Criminal organizations steal a third of that, according to company figures.

According to the daily newspaper La Opinion, the former Pemex treasurer, Armando Leal Santa Ana, says that since 2002 criminal organizations with the characteristics of narcotraffickers have used enormous amounts of money to corrupt the supply chain to include transporters, watchmen and directors.

This past July 16th, Federal Police arrested five employees of Pemex who were working with the Zetas to steal petroleum products clandestinely in the State of Veracruz where they had skimmed 45% of the production.

Nonetheless, politicians in various states report that the thefts extend into other regions where they have not occurred before, like the States of Mexico, Tamaulipas, Guanajuato, Michoacan, and Nuevo Leon.

Francisco Guizar, a Pemex worker from 1974 to 1993, has stolen petroleum products for 20 years, the last 5 of which were under the protection of the Zetas in Veracruz and La Familia in Michoacan, each the enemy of the other.

"It was obvious from the first moment that these criminal organizations were involved in a very lucrative enterprise with little risk," said Samuel Villa, an analyst with the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, "Any other activity would have been more dangerous," he said.

This is not a good thing.

However we come down on illegal immigration we have to be all out in helping Mexico deal with the problem of the drug cartels.  If we don't they will inevitably spread to the US.  The cartels have an insatiable appetite for making money and for taking control of activities that make money.  My Father used to tell me that some day the insurance companies will own everything.  These days I worry that our future may be the drug cartels owning too much of the US.

Regards  —  Cliff

Preemptive Attack

The essential principle is immutable:  we should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack. Never. And never again.

So says Joe Klein of Time Magazine, in a article♠ titled "Iraq: Requiem for a Profound Misadventure".

I am with Mr Klein in being opposed to the war before the invasion.  War is a very uncertain thing, like childbirth.  We should not go to war easily.

That said, one has to ask "Never"?  "We should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack"?  What if Germany had not declared war on us in December 1941?  How would that have worked out?  For those who believe that our two nuclear weapons on Japan did not end the war, but rather the Soviet attack into Manchuria in August 1945, should the Soviet Union have never attacked Japan?

I agree with the principle, but "never" is a very long time.

Retired Army Colonel John Collins (54 years between the Army and Congressional Research Service, including time as a Professor at the National War College) suggested the following:

For elaboration, see Command Decisions, ed. by Kent Roberts Greenfield, Army Center of Military History, 1960, Chapter 1, Louis Morton, "Germany First: The Basic Concept of Allied Strategy in World War II."

Yes, the world today would be different if Germany hadn't declared war on us or we had ignored that declaration.

UPDATE:  I brought Colonel Collins out from deep cover and put his name on his quote, with his permission.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Or maybe it is an OpEd.

65th Anniversary

On this date in 1945 the United States dropped a nuclear weapon on the Japanese City of Hiroshima.

The "Silverplate" B-29, Enola Gay, dropped the "Little Boy" bomb at 0815 Hiroshima Time.  The results were horrendous.

This was followed, on the 9th of August, by a second bomb, on Nagisaki.

Many argue that the use of nuclear weapons brought about the end of the war with Japan in 1945.  Others argue that it was really the Soviet declaration of war and their offensive against the Japanese Army in Manchura, which saw quick victory over the Japanese Kwantung Army.

Either way, 14 August 1945 (15 August in Japan) was the end of the war, although the surrender was not signed until 2 September.

The question remains, should the United States have dropped nuclear weapons on Japan.  Many service members from that era say yes, as they did not look forward to Operation DOWNFALL, the invasion of the Japanese homeland.

One of the questions is expected casualties.  The Japanese had lost its Navy and much of its air forces, but it still had manpower.  A gentleman I count money with at the Immaculate Conception Parish was a SeeBee at the time and later went to China to help repatriate Japanese Army soldiers.  He said they were told there were one million men to return to Japan, but it was more like two million.  In his view they were fresh and not like those defeated by the Soviet forces just a short time before.  It is likely there would have been high US casualties and even higher Japanese losses, both military and civilian.

The other factor in favor is that, as someone noted about Presidents Lincoln and Truman, there is a theory of a hard war and a soft peace.  Japan knew the terrible things the United States was capable of (just as the United States knew the terrible things of which the Japanese were capable).  So, post-war resistence did not really exist.  This made the occupation much easier for all sides.  This is in contrast to our wars with Iraq, where efforts to use precision weapons and minimize overall casualties by a doctrine that emphasized speed and maneuver resulted in not influencing either the government or the people that it was time for a soft peace.  Instead, after the first war we got a belligerent President Saddam Hussein and after the second a series of deadly insurgencies.

In the past we have compared von Clausewitz's ideas about war,

It is “composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason....”

with the People, the Army and the State.♠  The idea is, that unless we get the attention of "the People" we are not going to get a real peace.

You may not like this view, but it is one possible explanation of the situation.  War is an ugly business and, as Clausewitz tells us, we are fooling ourselves if we talk about bloodless battles, Sun Tzu notwithstanding.

Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst. The maximum use of force is in no way incompatible with the simultaneous use of the intellect.

But, Clausewitz notwithstanding, was the use of nuclear weapons disproportional, in Just War terms?

I am afraid that the answer to that must be left to each individual reader.

However, I would note something my wife said to me a while back.  If Pakistan or India use nuclear weapons it might well tear away the veil that allows us to all see nuclear weapons as too terrible to use.  If either employed nuclear weapons and the world did not come to an end it would be a very bad thing for all of us.

There are calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons.  I admit that I am dubious about the ability to do this.  In particular, I think that reductions are dangerous, as small numbers of nuclear weapons give an advantage to the side that can hide a hundred warheads or so.  Thus, the only option is total abolition.  This is workable as long as we are all prepared to accept the idea that some terrorist organization or rogue nation might cobble together a few crude weapons and use them.  We will have to be ready to call the bluff on any nuclear blackmail.

There have also been calls for the US to apologize for the use of nuclear weapons.  And calls for the US President to visit Hiroshima.  I say visit yes, but apology no.

UPDATE:  I just came across an EMail from yesterday in which someone point out that:

Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, for which the United States was a prime mover, provides (in somewhat unartful language):

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

Since the United States ratified this treaty, it is the "supreme law of the land," and the president has the constitutional responsibility to "faithfully execute" it. While it does not establish a timetable for pursuing any particular measure of arms control, the mandate for "good faith" negotiations is a commitment that the United States voluntarily assumed; the phrase "at an early date" is also vague and subject to various interpretations -- but it surely cannot mean "forever".

There is some food for thought.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  This understanding is undergoing some revision, as noted here.

Meanwhile, Over in Europe

The situation with the Dutch Government sank below my horizon after the June elections, but it was just that I wasn't paying much attention.  Here is The International Herald Tribune on the formation of a new government.

Note that the elections were in June and this is August.  Here is the gist of the outcome from those elections:

They follow elections in June in which Mr. Wilders’s Freedom Party increased its number of seats in the 150-seat Parliament to 24, from 9.  The center-right Liberal Party, led by Mark Rutte, which emerged as the largest party in Parliament, hopes to enter a coalition with the Christian Democrats, who led the last government.

But the two parties would have to rely on Mr. Wilders to get important legislation through, including austerity cuts expected to total about $24 billion.  If the deal comes to fruition, Mr. Wilders will follow in the footsteps of Denmark’s populist, anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, which has stayed out of government but supported a minority center-right administration.

Ah, Mr Wilders and his Freedom Party.  That is where the headline, "Dutch Opponent of Muslims Gains Ground", might appear to be trying to defame Mr Wilders.  Is it that Mr Wilders is an opponent of Muslims or is it that Mr Wilders is an opponent of new immigrants who are not assimilating into the Dutch culture?  Reporter Stephen Castle, or perhaps the IHT seems to have a strong view on this.  The lead paragraph goes with "bigot against Muslims" rather than a patriot trying to maintain the tolerance and accommodating approach of the Dutch over the past decades.

Geert Wilders, the anti-Muslim politician who has campaigned for a tax on head scarves and a ban on the Koran, seemed poised Thursday to emerge as a prominent player in a new minority government in the Netherlands.

The Dutch have a reputation for being accepting of minorities and not only accommodating them, but protecting them.  Unlike, say, Belgium or France, the Netherlands was a land, like Denmark, where protection of Jews was a notable factor in the early 1940s occupation by Germany.  On the other hand, Mr Wilders has been quoted as saying "We [in the West] are all Israel".  So, perhaps he is anti-Muslim.  Either way, he is now a power broker.

Yes, Mr Wilders does have sort of "destroy the village in order to save it" reputation.  And, he will not be without power:

While the outspoken and populist Mr. Wilders would not gain a ministerial appointment, the proposed deal to form the government would make him one of the most influential politicians in the Netherlands.

The future developments in this situation will be interesting to follow.

I hope that this will be a signal for increased tolerance on all sides within the Netherlands.  Things like the murder, in plain view of many, of artist Theo van Gogh, are the things that need to go away.  And, Muslim immigrants are not the first to cause trouble in Post-War Holland.  There were a series of incidents in the mid-late 1970s, perpetrated by the South-Mollucans, including a plot to kidnap the queen and a couple of train hostage incidents.  On the other hand, a sharp turn toward oppression of any immigrant group would be very bad for all concerned and for democracy in Europe.

The Netherlands will surely be a laboratory for observing how a very open society, like the Netherlands, can live while accommodating a very traditional oriented group, one that is not very tolerant of things like an open accommodation of homosexuality.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Electoral College, Again

Over at SISU:  The Light Fantastic we have a link to this OpEd by Columnist Jeff Jacoby—"Massachusetts for Palin?".

I had meant to blog about this action by the General Court of Massachusetts when they voted to join the "National Popular Vote" compact", but got OBE'd.  Then when Mr Jacoby did his column I was reminded, but got OBE'd again.  So, this time I am taking advantage of the Sissy Willis blog post.

This is all about the General Court voting that the Electoral College Votes of our Commonwealth will be cast, not for who was the winner in Massachusetts, and not in a proportional way, based upon how WE voted (like in Maine), but for whoever wins the popular vote for President out across the fruited plain.

This was another less than heroic action on the part of our legislators.  If they felt strongly about this they should have gone for a Constitutional Amendment.  It isn't like this hasn't been done a couple of dozen times in our nation's history. We got popular election of US Senators via a Constitutional Amendment.

Or, they could have could have given us proportional voting, which would have been the fair and just thing to do.

But, no, not our Legislature.

Regards  —  Cliff