Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Cartel truce best hope for ending Mexican drug violence

Holy crap! Drug cartels in Mexico are getting bolder and bolder. According to the BBC:
on Monday, armed men forced their way into a prison in the northern city of Torreon, and killed three inmates.

The dead men were being held for kidnapping and murder, and were transferred to the prison less than two hours before the incident.

The gunmen also released nine other inmates from the prison before they escaped.

Breaking into a prison for an assassination ... Good God! That takes some stones.

Meanwhile, the Mayor of Cancun, the Caribbean resort town, brought in a retired Army general as a security consultant who was promptly abducted, tortured and killed. And who's the prime suspect? Why, the local municipal police chief!

I'm not one who buys into the idea that the Mexican state is on the verge of collapse, but neither do I think for a second that current strategies, or for that matter, the Merida initiative, will be sufficient to curb the growing tide of violence in that country.

I'm hopeful the cartels themselves will reach a truce of their own accord, because neither the Mexican nor US governments appear capable of even denting the problem.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sad to say, but the only real answer is to legalize drugs. More tax money and lots more for rehab. Just look at history. Human beings have always, and always will, seek ways to change their reality.

Anonymous said...

As much as I desire to disagree, that is one of the options we have yet to try. Unfortunately, we may have to live with increased DWI crimes and thse crimes would be evenly spread between narcotics and alcohol.

Anonymous said...

Anon 05:38 said:

Unfortunately, we may have to live with increased DWI crimes and these crimes would be evenly spread between narcotics and alcohol.

Evenly? If present indicators are any determinant of future expectations, you may expect alcohol to continue to outpace 'drugged driving'. But what is alcohol but another drug, so, really, where's the distinction?

Part of the reason why there has been a marked reduction in alcohol-related fatalities on our roads has come from the 'social engineering' efforts of groups like the (early, not the contemporary) MADD, which has led to a shift in the public's perception of such behavior. Such efforts would have to be taken again with regards to re-legalized drugs.

But we lived with said drugs before, albeit in quieter times, prior to their being made illegal (again, out of 'social engineering'; the the blade cuts both ways) and we can do so again, by returning to a combination of reinforcing the ideals of personal freedom balanced by personal responsibility...and passing laws to guarantee that failing to adhere to those principles lands you in the legal hurt locker.

Anonymous said...

NO there is another option. get rid of all these bleading hearts out there and start shooting people who come across the border illegally (its what happens in most other countries where people do it) and then quit hamstringing law enforcement and let them do there job. damn liberal politics are killing this country..

Anonymous said...

Anon 10:54, what I am proposing, in the main, is a return to the very traditional (not the NeoConservative mutation of) conservative values.

The same kind of values that were abandoned by the twisting of the Commerce Clause, done by the very same kind of 'liberals' you deride. By doing so, they opened Pandora's Box, and made it possible for the huge expansion of government into our daily lives we presently suffer from. (Which is part of the reason why the landmark Supreme Court case Raich/Monson was shot down, as ruling in its' favor would have forced a massive deconstruction of Federal power, something a lot of the supposed 'conservatives' on the SC didn't want to have happen.)

All to keep the 'degenerate races' (meaning 'minorities' yup, such nice 'liberal' sentiments, huh?) from getting their hands on dope, which was supposed to make them all into homicidal maniacs. Yeah, right.

And given that many of the drug cartels are heavily into the 'coyote' end of the Mex Diaspora, and that they tend to be armed, your suggestion of shooting trespassers might prove impractical.

If we really want to hurt the cartels, I mean really hurt them, there's only one way, and that's going to require some political jiu-jitsu on the part of our pols, and do what our Grandparents did to Al Capone: gut their finances by re-legalizing present illicits. The funding will dry up almost immediately, and the cartels will shrivel up and blow away. Half the problem gone.

And as to the trespassers, well, the bad economy here is proving enough of an incentive for them to not bother, as things will soon be so tight, there'll be no jobs for them, not as much as before. Remittances are down, a lot are going home, and fewer are crossing the border into El Norte...just like what happened during the Great Depression, in which there was a similar reverse exodus.

Sometimes, if you have enough problems, they start to solve each other. This could well turn out to be a golden opportunity for this country to deal with multiple problems...but only if our pols have the courage to buck 30+ years of anti-drug hysteria and propaganda, and finally put their money where their supposedly conservative mouths are.

Anonymous said...

Kaptinemo, You said, "Sometimes, if you have enough problems, they start to solve each other."

That's a new thought to me. But I think I see what you mean.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

What many people fail to realize is that legalization isn't going to create millions of "new" users overnight. Many of the people that would partake are already doing it...it would just be legal now. I don't see the incidences of "drugged driving" getting anywhere near to where the levels of alcohol are.

Anonymous said...

The Meridia Initiative has definitely been a mistake (an expensive one). The only solution is to end the fruitless "war" on drugs. We are wasting so much money and it is time that lawmakers quit living in denial.