http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/24/obama.mexico.policy/

Osi, this is like the prelude to a wet dream for you isnt it? Pretty sure even if you like this plan you won't admit it since it came from Stali...i mean Obama.

Well, there is a state of emergency on the other side as a war between the drug runners and the government has broken out. This war is especially a problem as "spring break" is in full swing, US citizens being kidnapped by Mexican drug cartels at an all time high (~400 from Phoenix last year alone). It isn't to keep illegals out, more to keep out the drug war and violence / kidnappers / etc.

It's also an attempt to stem the flow of arms to a troubled Mexico.

( Secretly I think it's because the Red Dawn scenario is about to play out )

!!!

Well, there is a state of emergency on the other side as a war between the drug runners and the government has broken out. This war is especially a problem as "spring break" is in full swing, US citizens being kidnapped by Mexican drug cartels at an all time high (~400 from Phoenix last year alone). It isn't to keep illegals out, more to keep out the drug war and violence / kidnappers / etc.

That war "broke out" years ago, and spilled over already too. I have to think the key aim is now that we have an obvious crisis (Mexican cartel killings in whitebread Georgia) and the requisite panic response has hit, is to appear to be doing something, anything.

Well the State of Emergency wasn't declared in Mexico until the day after my flight landed in Cancun two weeks ago :)
Maybe it "broke out" a long time ago, but their government just recognized the issue recently

Well the State of Emergency wasn't declared in Mexico until the day after my flight landed in Cancun two weeks ago :)
Maybe it "broke out" a long time ago, but their government just recognized the issue recently

There's no maybe to it, the govt had to do something while there was someone still in office alive to do something about it.

The whole thing, even the kidnapping rings, is predicated upon the criminalization of drugs. I wonder how long Senor Capone will have to stare us in the face before enough see the obvious Prohibition parallels and implement the only fix that can possibly be effective?

Mexico has been pushing for that for years, guess who doesn't want to play? Maybe when we have every police department paid off by Don Chapo, we might understand what they've been saying all these years -- you're better off standing in front of a train than standing in front of the flow of the money.

Wonder where all the Drug lord's monies and ambitions will go once that faucet dries up? I don't think anyone here is stupid enough to think the border will suddenly become Heaven on earth the day drugs are legalized.

Without money, these things fall apart. It's not as if they're running on a passionate zeal for the horticultural pleasures of growing and harvesting drugs.

We already have a model for what happens once they run out of funding through legalization. There was turmoil after Prohibition was repealed, but it was short-term and it was no where near as bad as the legislated crime industry that Prohibition had created.

Otherwise, what? Should we just keep exacerbating the problem by stubbornly sticking to policies that enrich and empower those guys? Do you think making them richer and/or more powerful will somehow help anyone's situation other than theirs?

Nowhere in my post did I take a position stating we should continue with the status quo.

I was merely pondering what would take place. I highly doubt it'll go into that good night quietly. Their , the drug lords, inventories are such that I wouldn't be surpised we'd turn to them for purchasing with some sort of plea deal.

I think everyone would settle for it simply not being hell on earth. There were on the order of 6700 drug-related murders in Mexico last year that we know about, beating out total occupation deaths in Iraq since 2003. There is death cult there than even operates openly now. Police officers are being executed on a daily basis in some areas, and the various Federal agencies down there are now on their .. third? .. complete attempt at a personnel purge to remove corrupted agents.

It's conceivably possible the cartels will find something equally bad to do with their time, but I can't imagine that given they aren't already doing it.

Nowhere in my post did I take a position stating we should continue with the status quo.

I was merely pondering what would take place. I highly doubt it'll go into that good night quietly. Their , the drug lords, inventories are such that I wouldn't be surpised we'd turn to them for purchasing with some sort of plea deal.

More likely, their inventory would be seized by their governments and sold just like any other legally seized merchandise. Stereos, BMWs, and weed at the court auction!

Even if forgiven for previous trafficking, that is really a minority of the crimes the cartels down there commit. Murder, bribery, blackmail, kidnapping, etc are their specialties. I can't imagine anyone would continue to deal with them as their power structure crumbled.

You have to remember that their power is completely built upon profit margins that are orders of magnitude higher than they would be if the substances were legalized. When you drop from a billion dollar enterprise to a $100,000 home business, all of those resources for violence and political control vaporize almost instantly.

These guys are going to peace right on out with whatever nest egg they're sitting on, not squander it on a losing business. Just like the gangsters did after Prohibition was repealed.

The whole thing, even the kidnapping rings, is predicated upon the criminalization of drugs. I wonder how long Senor Capone will have to stare us in the face before enough see the obvious Prohibition parallels and implement the only fix that can possibly be effective?

Well, some of the kidnapping rings are fueled by drugs. However, there is a thriving kidnapping industry in Mexico that has zilch to do with drugs. If you have money, you are a target. I foresee that becoming a replacement industry for the drug lords if the narco-dollars begin to dry up.

If you look at the chain of corruption that makes the kidnapping rings possible, it leads back to the drug money. Kidnapping alone isn't lucrative enough to buy off governments and law enforcement. It's a side-effect of everyone already being corrupted by the drug money.

What's the excuse in the Middle East then? Why is it lucrative there, but not in Mexico? Does the involvement of a Religion make it more lucrative?

Money doesn't (directly) have much to do with the lawlessness in the Middle East. Not sure what your point is?

What he's referring to is the age old practice in the Middle East of kidnapping for cash. We all recieved warnings/briefings on the practice when we served over there.

Kidnappings for cash did happen every now and then in Nuevo Laredo even before the drug cartel conflict heated up there; curiously enough, it was rarely tourists, but far more frequently the young, attractive, and stupid children of the wealthy locals on the Laredo side who were 'known quantites' as far as marks went.

Down in southern Mexico, the opposite is true, of course; the highways connecting the major tourist destinations are particularly bad and when I took a bus across the interior of the Yucatan about 10 years ago I was warned not to wander from the single stop we made at a secure bus depot on the toll road (which is better policed for bandits, of which there are fewer).

If decriminalization happens, I think activity of all sorts at the southern US/Mexico border will drop, and the centers of criminal activity will move back to the well populated coastal resort areas and Mexico City, because there just isn't much of interest in those border towns to attract the well-heeled, and without the metric tons of law enforcement dollars being poured into the border towns, legitimate economic activity in them, and thus their southern partner cities, will drop off significantly as well, and they'll go back to being the sleepy backwater towns they once were.

I dearly hope that Obama will have his Gorbachev 'This cannot go on' moment and wipe the slate clean with regard to national drug enforcement policy, but I don't think he has the stones to go up against the collective forces of those who benefit from all that money spreading around...

Regards,
Nydia

If you look at the chain of corruption that makes the kidnapping rings possible, it leads back to the drug money. Kidnapping alone isn't lucrative enough to buy off governments and law enforcement. It's a side-effect of everyone already being corrupted by the drug money.

Well that I agree with. Of course, Mexican society was notoriously corrupt long before the narcotics took over. I think it is a social thing, almost tradition there. Sort of like the love of firearms is in the US.

Even if you could wave your fingers and magically make the drug problem go away, Mexico has some serious structural issues and is headed for a collapse anyway. 40% of the government's revenue comes from Pemex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemex), the oil company. The US is the largest customer of Mexican oil and natural gas, and from the persepective of the US (http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html), Mexico fell from being the 2nd largest supplier to being the 3rd, and by next year I expect MX to be the 4th largest supplier. Between collapsing production, the collapse in crude oil prices last year and rising internal consumption, the revenue from oil is dropping very significantly. I expect Mexico to stop being an oil and natural gas exporter sometime between 2015 and 2020. Cantarell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantarell_Field) is their largest oil field (and the second largest in the world), producing about 60% of Mexico's oil. Production at Cantarell peaked in 2003 and is dropping about 15% each year (http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/7/12/10421/4972). The Mexican press routinely reports that they have discovered a new oil field even larger than Cantarell, and those reports have always turned out to be false.

Furthermore, the drug problem in Mexico is the consequence of cracking down on Colombian drug smuggling. Even if your magic fingerwaving would make the Mexican drug smuggling rings go out of business, the next country that becomes their haven will collapse into this same sort of kidnapping and violence that both Colombia and Mexico have seen.

Decades of attempting to control drug supply, while doing nothing to curb demand show that we have exactly zero intention of winning "the drug war."