U.S. politicians should focus on drug war in Mexico

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/

United Mexican States

The United Mexican States(Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos, commonly known as Mexico (English: /ˈmɛksɪkoʊ/) (Spanish: México [ˈmexiko]), is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost 2 million square kilometres (over 760,000 sq mi), Mexico is the fifth-largest country in the Americas by total area and the 14th largest independent nation in the world. With an estimated population of 111 million, it is the 11th most populous country. Mexico is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a Federal District, the capital city.

In Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica many cultures matured into advanced civilizations such as the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacan, the Maya and the Aztec before the first contact with Europeans. In 1521, Spain conquered and colonized the territory, which was administered as the viceroyalty of New Spain which would eventually become Mexico as the colony gained independence in 1821. The post-independence period was characterized by economic instability, territorial secession and civil war, including foreign intervention, two empires and two long domestic dictatorships. The latter led to the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system. Elections held in July 2000 marked the first time that an opposition party won the presidency from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Spanish: Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI).

As a regional power and the only Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since 1994, Mexico is firmly established as an upper middle-income country, considered as a newly industrialized country and has the 13th largest nominal GDP, the 11th largest by purchasing power parity, and also the largest GDP per capita in Latin America according to the International Monetary Fund. The economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners Despite Mexico's position as an emerging world power, the increase in drug-related violence and uneven income distribution remain issues of concern.

Source:en.wikipedia.org