If the Drug War Reduces Violence, Please Explain What's Happening in Mexico
The debate should be over now. All you have to do is look south to learn that the drug war is worse than a failure; it causes massive violence, corruption, and death. From The New York Times:
"When the commander, Commissioner Édgar Millán Gómez, the acting chief of the federal police, died with eight bullets in his chest on May 8, it sent chills through a force that had increasingly found itself a target.""Top security officials who were once thought untouchable have been gunned down in Mexico City, four in the last month alone."
"Drug dealers killed another seven federal agents this year in retaliation for drug busts in border towns."
"Drug traffickers have killed at least 170 local police officers as well, among them at least a score of municipal police commanders, since Mr. Calderón took office."
"The violence between drug cartels that Mr. Calderón has sought to end has only worsened over the past year and a half. The death toll has jumped 47 percent to 1,378 this year, prosecutors say. All told, 4,125 people have been killed in drug violence since Mr. Calderón took office."
"Several terrified local police chiefs have resigned, the most recent being Guillermo Prieto, the chief in Ciudad Juárez, who stepped down last week after his second in command was killed a few days earlier."
So what does Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who instigated the massive increase in drug war violence, have to say about all this?
The president has vowed to stay the course, portraying the violence among gangs and attacks on the police as a sign of success rather than failure.
Wow. Well, I guess you've got it all figured then, Mr. President. That's good to hear, because for a second there, it sounded like everything was going to hell.
digg
reddit"creating chaos and instability" = Success!
Comment posted by aahpat on Wed, 05/28/2008 - 11:17am"The international traffic in illicit drugs contributes to terrorist risk through at least five mechanisms: supplying cash, creating chaos and instability, supporting corruption, providing “cover” and sustaining common infrastructures for illicit activity, and competing for law enforcement and intelligence attention. Of these, cash and chaos are likely to be the two most important."
Insanely, this same report concludes:
"American drug policy is not, and should not be, driven entirely, or even primarily, by the need to reduce the contribution of drug abuse to our vulnerability to terrorist action. There are too many other goals to be served by the drug abuse control effort."
Illicit Drugs and the Terrorist Threat: Causal Links and Implications for Domestic Drug Control Policy, Congressional Research Service, April 5, 2004
That's what I always say
Comment posted by sicntired on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 4:45amsicntired@mac.com,Vancouver,B.C.Canada Look to the south I mean.Here in Canada it looks so much worse down there yet our Prime Minister still is hell bent on following the Bush example.Mexico has allowed the possession of small amounts of all drugs but their lust for the money available in feeding the American drug market has made the move go virtually unnoticed.Now the bloodshed has come home in a big way and the bodies are piling up.Here,I mean.It's difficult to tell where the carnage is the worst.Looks a lot like the roaring twenties.
Coming Soon to a Neighborhood Near You...
Comment posted by Giordano on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 1:24pmIt appears the term ‘drug war’ has become a self-fulfilling prophesy in Mexico and in other parts of the world. It’s truly a bitch when the enemy shoots back as in a real war, is it not?
Perhaps the Mexican government can adopt the U.S. strategy in Iraq where the effective government and defense apparatus is housed inside a bunkered compound comparable to the Green Zone in Baghdad, also known as ‘Emerald City’, or ‘The Green Zoo’; complete with daily incoming rockets and mortars.
And all of this just to enforce some paranoid, puritanical anachronism. Silly apes.
Giordano
Book of Virtues
Comment posted by Anonymous on Wed, 05/28/2008 - 10:49amWhen William Bennett ("The Book of Virtues") was drug czar, he made a similar argument. There was a big surge in the murder rate in cities all over the US. He claimed that it was evidence that the war on drugs was working. Because people didn't want to use drugs any more, the drug traffickers had to be more aggressive in staking out their territory.