Three days ago in Mexico City a group of heavily armed gangsters ran into a house party. The ensuing rain of fully automatic gunfire left 13 teenagers dead and 17 others wounded. Witnesses to the slaughter say they believe the victims were innocent civilians who were mistakenly targeted by one of the area’s drug cartels.
Unfortunately, while a death toll of 13 innocent civilians in a single attack is disturbing, it is far from surprising in a country where more than 16,000 people have died as a result of drug related violence since 2007 according to the Los Angeles Times. In recent years, Mexico’s numerous drug cartels have resorted to guerilla warfare in the battle for access to the U.S. drug markets. Despite the fact that these cartels get all of their money, power and weapons from the U.S., the Obama administration has shown little desire to address the issue.
Over the last several years, tightened border security has meant Mexican cartels have found it more difficult to transport drugs into the U.S. The increased difficulty of accessing the U.S. has led many of these organizations to use other mafia style methods to earn money, including extortion, countless robberies and murdering anyone who stands in their way. This paired with Mexican President Felipe Calderón actively fighting the cartels when previous administrations simply collected large amounts of money from them, has turned the streets of our southern neighbor into urban warfare. In Juarez, a city directly across the border from El Paso, Texas, 2,000 people died last year alone as a result of the violence according to Gaurdian.co.uk.
Recently, U.S. politicians have been forced to acknowledge the war in Mexico, as it has begun spilling across the border into U.S. towns. Violence has erupted in U.S. streets, and people have even been kidnapped and taken back to Mexico and held ransom. The Obama administration has pledged $700 million to Mexican law enforcement in their war against the drug cartels according to CNN. Unfortunately, this money will likely have little or no impact. Mexico’s law enforcement agencies are among the most corrupt in the world; the cartels own as much of Mexico’s police force as Mexico does. As a result, even while President Calderón actively fights to stop these cartels, half the law enforcement is fighting to protect them.
Even the former head of Mexico’s drug enforcement agency has been charged with taking bribes from cartels. In such conditions it’s likely as much of the U.S.’s money will be used to protect drug lords as will be used to fight them. If we are only willing to supply money without man power we might as well do nothing at all.
If there is one country in the world the U.S. should have troops in, it is Mexico. I don’t normally advocate the U.S. military in foreign countries; in fact, I am almost universally against the idea. But when the U.S.’s actions directly create urban warfare in a neighboring country, it is sickening for the U.S. government not to take action.
The obvious reason many will argue we cannot militarily assist Mexico is our troops our already spread to thin.
The real question here though is how has the U.S. government allowed this to happen? How can we send a 40,000 troop surge to Afghanistan when just feet across our border a violent war is claiming four times as many lives a year as the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it is being funded entirely with U.S. dollars? This is on top of the fact that no matter how hard we attempt to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into viable democracies, they will almost certainly revert back into dictatorships, and probably ones that hate America, within 25 years. If the Obama administration truly wished to create the kind of change he campaigned on, he would start fighting the war we have a moral obligation to fight, the one we created, the war at our doorsteps.
Source:kstatecollegian.com/
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