Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Making Peace With Drug Cartels?

The latest idea coming out of the Mexican war against the drug cartels that have turned Mexico into a tourist peril has me laughing at the sheer ridiculous nature of it. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, perhaps illustrating why he’s the former president argues that the “levels of cruelty that we are seeing and experiencing are enormous” and that the solution is to call violent groups to a truce and evaluate the advantages of an amnesty law.” Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2011/0902/Why-a-truce-between-Mexico-and-the-drug-cartels-makes-no-sense.

The very well written commentary mentions several factors that would make an 1980’s early 1990’s style truce difficult: the splintering of two drug cartels into hundreds of localized groups, more adversarial political climate, and simply Mexican democracy, as the public has no appetite for a truce with the cartels.

It’s also a lame idea because in my eyes, drug cartels are terrorist groups and we haven’t declared a truce against Al Qaeda, so why should the drug cartels who have littered Mexican streets with bodies get this treatment?

The drug cartels would like to turn Mexico into a absolute narcotic playground, a country-wide sorting, packaging, and distribution center for drugs throughout the world. Obviously if the Mexican government wants to be seen as legitimate, they must beat back the cartel challenge somehow and provide security to the populace. So if we can’t give the cartels what they really want, a truce is likely to just be a breather in a long war with no end in sight.

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