Unrelenting Drug Cartel Violence and Untenable Solutions From the Political Class

It never seems to end - continuing and increasing violence in Mexico as a result of drug cartel violence and operations. Consider the latest from this unending violence:


- The Associated Press (AP) reported on February 18, 2011 that four men, who had their hands and feet tied together and their heads covered in duct tape, were thrown over a bridge and plunged to their death 600 feet below. Reports at the scene indicated that the four were alive when they were tossed over the side of the bridge. Authorities believe that this was just another escalation in the drug cartel wars in Mexico. These four were just some of the 13 people that had been killed that same day in the same area.


The same article also reported that Mexican soldiers killed eight suspected drug cartel members in two fights outside of Monterrey when the soldiers encountered people with high powered rifles and a grenade launcher. In yet another incident, when gunmen fired on soldiers in Juarez, a firefight erupted that resulted in three of the gunmen being killed. In total, 35,000 people have been killed in Mexico since the President of Mexico deployed troops and federal police four years ago to fight the cartels.

- The AP reported on February 20, 2011 that twelve taxi drivers or their fares had been killed in drug cartel related violence in Acapulco. Police announced that four suspects had been taken into custody and were believed involved with the attacks. They were armed with guns, a grenade, and machete that they may have used to decapitate some of the victims.

- A U.S. Federal agent was killed and another was wounded when they encountered a roadblock in Mexico and were mistakenly ambushed by members of the Zeta drug cartel. The gunmen thought they were executing members of a rival drug gang. The most amazing fact from the story is that the Mexican government does not allow U.S. anti-drug agents operating in Mexico to carry weapons for self defense.

- The AP reported on February 24, 2011 that gunmen opened fire on six children playing in the backyard of a house in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Some of the children were as young as eight years old. Police believe that the gunmen were targeting the father of two of the kids in a drug related dispute.

In the same article, the AP reported that three teenagers in another town were wounded in a shooting attack on a car but that three adults in the same car were killed. Gunmen also killed the head of a police organization in charge of prosecuting car thieves. Over one hundred shell casings were found at the site of that shooting.

Further reporting in the same article reported that in Acapulco, police found a man's hacked-to pieces body in five plastic bags. And finally, also in Acapulco, police arrested two young men were arrested with four assault rifles and five hand grenades.

What a horrible situation. Kids getting killed, kids doing the killing, thousands of people killed every year over the drug trade, unspeakable violence and torture. So what is the political class on both sides of the border doing about the situation?  According to an AP article on March 3, 2011, that reported on a face-to-face meeting between President Obama and the Mexican President (Felipe Calderon), not much:

• Obama wants an exemption to Mexican law that allows U.S. agents in Mexico to carry weapons but Calderon is against it.
• The U.S. is seeking extradition of several suspects in the killing of the Federal agent discussed above but the article gave no indication that the request would be granted.
• Obama declared that his administration would continue to send aid to fight the drug cartels to the tune of about $1.4 billion, probably a very small fraction of the financial resources available to the drug cartels.
• The two leaders also discussed how they would make truck traffic easier to cross the border

Kind of underwhelming, isn't it? Lots of talk, more violence but no solution while our leaders talk about truck traffic procedures. And who knows if the two leaders would ever have the imagination and creativity to stop the violence given the report in another AP article, this one from March 6, 2011:

• Despite a concentrated effort to stop the flow of illegal guns and weapons from the United States over the past two years, the effort has only intercepted 386 guns, less than one gun a day.
• The article states that experts believe over 2,000 guns pass over the border EVERY DAY.
• In a recent 11 month period, the Mexican authorities seized 32,000 illegal weapons, just over 1% of the total number of weapons that U.S. agents intercepted in a two year period.
• This negligible result has happened even though Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stated in 2009 that: "You've got to interdict the arms. You've got to stop them from going into Mexico." Thus, even with top government support, we intercept less than one gun a day.
• The government seized about $64 million in drug cartel cash in the past two years at the border, which is probably a very, very small fraction of the tens of billions of dollars involved in the drug trade.
• 90% of guns that Mexican authorities have obtained at crime and killing scenes have been traced back to the United States.
• The Federal agent killed in Mexico was killed with a gun purchased in Joshua, Texas by an American who sold it to the Mexican drug cartel that used it to kill another American.

Very depressing situation. Despite interest by the highest levels of both governments, the violence continues, the violence gets worst and more gruesome, guns flow over the border into Mexico to feed the violence, government actions are virtually useless. Maybe it is time to take a completely new view of what we are doing. The war on drugs, started over forty years ago under the Nixon administration, has gotten us to this near hopeless point.

I think that at some point in time, we have to consider either drug decriminalization, drug legalization or a shift from drug law enforcement to drug usage reduction or a combination of all three. Whatever we are doing now and however we are doing it is not working. Not when kids get killed and live humans are thrown over 600 foot bridges.

Step 26 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" might be a good first step. Step 26 would impanel a commission of smart American experts from a variety of disciplines, drug treatment, law enforcement, sociology, economics, etc., and have them come up with a viable set of alternatives that consider the problem from all perspectives, including a detailed review of successes and failures that other governments have had with drug problems in their societies. This work would be done without political class interference since their efforts over the past forty years have just made a bad situation far worse, despite untold billions of dollars being spent and wasted.

Unless we fix this soon, these horrors will eventually jump over the border and, heaven forbid, we also end up using troops in our cities to combat the drug cartels and start burying our own kids who get caught in the crossfire. Unfortunately, we are in a vicious cycle of unrelenting drug cartel violence and political class untenable solutions. 





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