Posted on 03/06/2009 6:27:54 AM PST by kellynla
Heeding the advice of Gen. David Petraeus, Barack Obama has committed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan and will keep 50,000 in Iraq after U.S. combat operations end in August 2010.
But are U.S. vital interests more threatened by what happens in Anbar or Helmand than in the war raging along our southern border?
Prediction: After all U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea have come home, there will be a U.S. army on the Mexican border. For this is where the fate of our republic will be decided, as the fate of Europe will be decided by the millions streaming north from the Maghreb and Middle East, sub-Sahara and South Asia.
Last year, 6,000 Mexicans died in drug-related killings in a war where the tactics are massacre, murder, kidnapping and beheading.
President Felipe Calderon has ordered another 5,000 troops and 1,000 police to the border. Primary target: Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso.
Some 2,500 federal troops are already in Juarez, where in 2008 there were 1,600 drug-related murders. Gun battles occur every day. Nationally, 45,000 army troops and police are committed to this war that Mexico is not winning. For, according to the March 3 Washington Times, the Pentagon now estimates the cartels field more than 100,000 foot soldiers.
The chief of police of Juarez just resigned after a cartel threatened to kill an officer every 48 hours if he did not. To prove its seriousness, the cartel murdered four cops, including the chief's deputy. Last year, 50 police officers in Juarez were murdered.
"The decision I am taking is one of life over death," said Chief Roberto Oduna. The chief would seem to have a point. In January, his predecessor's head was found in an ice cooler outside a police station. The mayor keeps his family in El Paso, as they have been threatened with decapitation.
Friday, the State Department declared, "Corruption throughout Mexico's public institutions remains a key impediment to curtailing the power of the drug cartels." Calderon retorts that, while the murders may be committed in Mexico, the cash and guns come from the United States.
With oil revenue down since the price dropped $100 a barrel, and remittances down from Mexican workers in the United States as the U.S. economy tanks, tourism, too, has begun to die. Beheadings in and around Acapulco have not helped. Warnings have been issued to U.S. college kids to avoid Mexico on spring break, as kidnappings for ransom are rampant. Restaurants and bars in Juarez that catered to folks from El Paso and soldiers from Fort Bliss are shutting down.
In February, in the resort town of Cancun, a retired army general sent to create an elite anti-crime unit was kidnapped, tortured and shot. Mexican troops raided Cancun's police headquarters and arrested the chief and dozens of his officers in connection with the murder.
Add a collapsing global economy to a losing war with drug cartels, and Mexico is at grave risk of becoming a failed state, a narco-state, with a 2,000-mile border with the United States.
How does one win a drug war when millions of Americans who use recreational drugs are financing the cartels bribing, murdering and beheading to win the war and keep self-indulgent Americans supplied with drugs?
There are two sure ways to end this war swiftly: Milton's way and Mao's way. Mao Zedong's communists killed users and suppliers alike, as social parasites. Milton Friedman's way is to decriminalize drugs and call off the war.
When Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1972, Milton, writing in Newsweek, objected on ethical grounds:
"On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs."
"Am I my brother's keeper?'" asked Milton, answering, "No."
Americans are never going to adopt the Maoist solution. For the users of drugs are all too often classmates, colleagues, friends, even family. Indeed, our last three presidents did not deny using drugs.
Once, a Christian America outlawed and punished homosexuality, abortion, alcohol, loan-sharking and gambling, all as criminal vice. Now, homosexuality and abortion are constitutional rights. Gambling and booze are a rich source of government revenue. And loan-sharking is done by credit-card companies, and not just the Corleones.
Will we raise the white flag in the drug war, as well?
Which is the greater evil? Legalized narcotics for America's young or a failed state of 110,000 million on our southern border?
Some choice. Some country we've become.
Geez, what ever happened to knifings and shootings, ya know the good old way. Now they’re beheading people? Sickos.
You are exactly correct.
sooner or later we're gonna have to secure BOTH borders and “take out the trash!” ...unfortunately it won't happen under Hussein's administration so we've got at least another four years to wait...and wait...and wait...and wait...
P.S. again.
I don’t like the Mexican culture.
We'll always have criminals. We'll always have organized crime. It's always been that way and it always will be that way. We can though create situation where crime flourishes, where organized crime grows. We did it with Alcohol Prohibition. That was a heyday for organized crime. Street gangs became very powerful organizations. A lot of people were getting rich and this attracted a lot of folks who weren't really professional criminals, people who probably wouldn't have engaged in criminal acts without all the opportunities and temptation Prohibition provided. When Prohibition ended, most of the people involved did not just move on to some other kind of crime. The mobsters did. The professional criminals did. But there were millions involved in one way or another who did not go on to other forms of crime. My grand dad cooked up a little hooch in the woods with his brother to sell to supplement his income from his carpentry business, and after Prohibition they became contractors building homes and eventually whole subdivisions. A guy like Joe Kennedy had money to finance alcohol smuggling operations that made him a lot more money and after Prohibition he focused on legitimate businesses and politics. We had bootleggers who became stock car drivers. Prohibition created a lot of opportunities for people to make money, it created a lot of temptation, and millions of people were involved to varying degrees with the production or smuggling of alcoholic beverages, transporting them, selling them and so on. Most of them didn't move on to other criminal enterprises after Prohibition and the same would be true if we did something like legalize marijuana. The billion and billions of dollars being made in the illegal drugs industry does fuel criminal behavior.
Thank you I have been trying to make that point here for years. We are already seeing them moving into kidnapping in a big way.
Another big problem with legalization (which I am not necessarily against) is our product liability laws. Yes you could legalizes pot and some company would market it, but coke, meth, heroin GHB etc. are very dangerous substances and no company would except the liability to produce or distribute them.
Obama is really scary. I know we often complained about president Bush, but I do miss him. Obama has NO class, NO wisdom, NO experience, NO nothin’ honey. How could people have been so dumb? I am amazed at the Christians I know who voted for him. They need a club side of the head moment!
Good article. He’s laid out the options. Neither is good, but I haven’t heard anyone give a third option. That, of course, would be to try and make drugs socially unacceptable. Good luck with that.
The cynical view would be since the U.S. has been invaded already and the border insecure, time to invade Mexico in a counter-attack and seize drug cartel assets. Classic geopolitics. But Buchanan lost his bid for the presidency and Obama, obsessed with making the U.S. a Third World socialist country, is unlikely to follow that lead. They have to secure that border.
look at countries that do not tolerate illegal drugs...
I mean you don't even wanna think about bringing illegal drugs into those countries...
we need to secure BOTH borders, start deporting ALL illegals including the incarcerated foreigners and continue to educate children of the dangers of these drugs. I know it won't be easy and it will take years and years but the legalizing these drugs will just make a bad situation worse...more drugs, crimes, overdose deaths and stupidity!
“Good article. He’s laid out the options. Neither is good, but I haven’t heard anyone give a third option. “
A third option would be to just legalize marijuana and use some of the money we’ll save and generate in tax revenues to crack down on what remains of the illegal drug trade.
“we need to secure BOTH borders, start deporting ALL illegals including the incarcerated foreigners and continue to educate children of the dangers of these drugs.”
I agree with all that but it won’t stop the flow of drugs. The drugs will keep coming as long as there is lots of money to be made. And it’s a good idea to educate people on the dangers of drugs, but we’ve been doing that for a long time now and it doesn’t stop many from messing around with drugs.
“I know it won’t be easy and it will take years and years but the legalizing these drugs will just make a bad situation worse...more drugs, crimes, overdose deaths and stupidity!”
I agree with that when it comes to the hard stuff. Pot doesn’t cause that many problems though and I think most people who want to smoke it already smoke it. Over a 100,000,000 Americans have already tried it. According to the government’s self reported statistics more than half of all people under 60 have smoked it. Use couldn’t go up that much. It would go up some but that would be a small price to pay when you think about the money we’d save, the damage we’d do to organized crime, the tax revenues we’d generate, etc.
“more than half of all people under 60 have smoked it.”
That should read “more than half of all American _adults_ under sixty....”
and 100% have made dumb mistakes...
doesn’t mean we should legalize stupidity. LOL
I KNOW the younger generation today is smarter about drugs than we were in the 60’s & 70’s because we KNOW more about these drugs and their dangers today than we did then... I’m just not ready to “throw in the towel”...yet...
When basically moral people get desperate, they sometimes do “what is necessary” to survive. That’s human nature. The problem arises when societal morality erodes to the point where corruption takes root as a way of life and as an acceptable norm. That is an entirely different sort of problem and history has few examples of societies extracting themselves from such a trap peacefully. Mexico has long crossed this line and the real danger to the USA is that this culture of corruption takes root here.
-snip-
The study was funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Dutch Ministry of Health.
http://www.ucsc.edu/currents/03-04/05-03/drug_study.html
______________________________________
Does anybody on our side know it?
“The problem arises when societal morality erodes to the point where corruption takes root as a way of life and as an acceptable norm. “
Giant black markets contribute to this problem. So many are sucked in by the temptation to make this money, and they aren’t all desperate people. Did you read about the Mexican drug czar, Noe Ramirez, who was making up to $450,000 a month helping a drug cartel? That’s a pretty big temptation and the temptation for law enforcement and government officials to take bribes like this in Mexico has to be really strong, not just because it’s hard to make a good living in Mexico, but because these thugs down there kill police and other government officials who will not take their bribes. We have a lot more drug trade related corruption going on in this country than you would think too. No doubt it’s a lot worse in Mexico but we have our share of cops, prosecutors, judges, border guards, etc., who have been corrupted by drug money. The more money being made in the black market, the more corruption there will be. That’s just the way it is and eventually it does lead to a culture of corruption.
Coming soon to an Amexican barrio near you, thanks to our open border traitors.
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