Originally Posted by
Stavros
No 1 is that the core issue is the trade in banned narcotics. My assumption is that the economic downturn has actually reduced demand in the USA and that this drop in revenue is as much a part of the inter-cartel conflict in Mexico as the general business argument -I have read various reports of the drug trade being worth X billion $ in one paper with a different figure in another. It is still worth a lot of money, but the business exists because it has customers; greater public awareness of the costs of that snort and that fix (which usually comes via Afghanistan and Pakistan) could, over time, persuade the next generation to try something else to get their kicks; I don't think the current generation of users cares one way or the other how many Mexicans get killed.
The 2nd issue is the hardy perennial of gun control -the USA is addicted to killing, the right to bear arms has been debated again and again and again, but if you are going to reserve the right to buy them, at least make obtaining a weapon as hard as possible, and how can any sane individual want to own an automatic weapon that looks like something out of a war film? What is that used for? Even hunters must surely believe that you have one shot to get the deer, isn't that how they rank each other's ability?
The 3rd Issue is that if the Obama administration devised this policy and it has failed, they must admit it, and find something else. The Obama administration has less of an impact on the cartel wars than drug users, I feel you are trying too hard to smear the Obama administration with any and every calumny you can think of -even the 'neo-cons' didn't bomb the cartels residences into rubble yet they were indifferent to the rubble left behind in Iraq -on day 1 they blasted a private house into dust because someone told them Saddam was eating dinner there -he wasn't, 25 people were killed, and none of them got any compensation. And Mexico's crime has direct impact on the USA in a way Iraq never has.
There is a 4th Issue, and that is whether or not the Calderon administration in Mexico went about this issue the wrong way, and has actually generated more violence than would have happened had the focus been on the manifestly corrupt military and police services of that country. The rule of law? Whose law?
I used to know a well-educated Mexican here in the UK who despaired of his country's political administrations -an oil rich country with plenty of oil that hasn't been discovered in the Gulf, none of which 'trickles' anywhere near the pueblo. In the end, he said, you create a niche for yourself and your family in some town or some city, try to stay in work, eat, pray and play and just hope the reality that is sometimes only metres away doesn't come through the front or the back door.
Ultimately, the drugs trade is just an illegal part of the capitalist system, a system that has no emotional sentiment or morals; it has one motive -to make money: undermine that and you undermine crime syndicates at the level of the cartels, given that there will always be some criminal underworld -but there is no reason why anyone should live in a country where organised crime is, in effect, a parallel government. After all, some people believe elected governments are not much different.
