MarijuanaNews.com : Lou Dobbs and the Second Mexican War. Has It Already Begun? Counting the Costs of the Drugwar.

Posted February 16, 2006
Analysis by Richard Cowan
See

Mexico, the Drugwar and the US National Interest: Never Mind Iraq; We Need To
Pay Attention to What We Are Doing to Our Southern Neighbor.

CNN Anchor Lou Dobbs has a regular feature on his show
called “Broken Borders”, but, despite the use of the plural borders,
Dobbs really just focuses on problems with Mexico, and they are real enough.

Last August, in a column in
the Arizona Republic, Dobbs said, “This year, in fact, remittances back to
Mexico from the estimated 20 million Mexican citizens living in the United
States, most of them illegally, surpassed oil as Mexico’s No. 1 source of
foreign revenue.”

He is no longer alone in
raising such concerns. Yesterday, columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, who specializes
in foreign affairs wrote, “Indeed, every day there are stories about the Mexican
military crossing into the United States, for unknown but surely aggressive
purposes. The last fiscal year, ending on Sept. 30, saw 778 drug-smuggler
attacks on Border Patrol agents, up from 374 in the previous year.”

Today, an article in the LA
Times reports, “Mexico isn’t
generating anywhere near the 1 million jobs it needs each year to keep up with
population growth. Illegal emigration to the U.S. is believed to be at an
all-time high. And China is grabbing market share in the U.S., the destination
for more than 90% of Mexico’s exports.”

Day before yesterday, the AP reported, “Two police
chiefs were shot and killed within hours of each other in a violence-plagued
region near the United States where drug smugglers have been battling for
control of key routes across the border.”

One victim had only held office for a month. Of course,
last June, Alejandro Dominguez was riddled with bullets just eight hours after
taking over as police chief of Nuevo Laredo.

That even got the Washington Post’s attention. A front
page article on June 16, 2005, “Border Police Chief Only Latest Casualty In
Mexico Drug War More Than 600 Killed This Year Despite Aggressive Crackdown”,
reported, “Mexican authorities this week disclosed for
the first time that 90 soldiers had been killed in drug-related violence since
President Vicente Fox took office in December 2000, vowing a “war without mercy”
on Mexico’s drug cartels. In addition, at least 65 agents of the Federal
Investigative Agency have been killed since it was formed in 2002…

A number of analysts have
begun pointing out that Fox’s much-applauded effort against drug traffickers has
not reduced the supply of drugs reaching U.S. streets from Mexico. Instead, they
said, all Mexico has gotten for its effort is more violence and a rapidly rising
drug consumption problem.

“The good news is that there
are more capos in jail; the bad news is that it doesn’t change anything,” said
Jorge Chabat, an academic who studies justice issues. “There’s no change in the
amount of drugs available on the street, and you have more violence. The logical
question is, ‘What are we doing this for?’ “

That is about as close to heretical questioning of the
drugwar as the Post usually gets. Nonetheless, the American media have begun to
notice that being a reporter in Mexico can be as dangerous as being in Iraq.

On Tuesday an editorial in the Burlington North Carolina
Times-News

http://www.thetimesnews.com , “Mexican Press Faces Bullets For Their Drug
Stories” noted that “at least four men attacked
the editorial office of the newspaper La Manana with automatic weapons and a
hand grenade last Monday. Reporter Jaime Orozco Tey was hit five times. If he
lives, he will never walk again, doctors report. Orozco Tey, 40, worked with
the paper 14 years. He has two daughters, ages 9 and 7. Witnesses said the
goons kept shooting him even as he fled to cover.

Nuevo Laredo journalists were already walking on
eggshells — they have told the Associated Press that names of drug-gang victims
have been omitted and stories held after traffickers have called and threatened
reporters. And now they are throwing in the towel. On Tuesday, Ramon Cantu
Deandar, the owner and general manager of La Manana, announced a
“zero investigations” policy regarding the drug trade.
“They are forcing us to do that, to not inform about violent incidents so that
the city’s image and credibility are not stained,” he told the Laredo ( Texas )
Morning Times…

Cantu Deandar’s public surrender may seem craven, but
what is he, or any other threatened Mexican journalist, supposed to do? If the
police can’t or… won’t protect journalists, and they cannot protect themselves
– Mexican law imposes virtually total gun control, except for those who have
bribed their way to “impunidad” — they have no choice but to go silent.

In America, there has been
much talk and worry about securing the border from terrorism. In Mexico,
shamefully, control of the border appears to have been largely yielded.”

First, in the interest of
reducing violence, I would like to suggest to the leaders of the Mexican cartels
that instead of killing reporters, they should just send them to intern at major
US media outlets like the Washington Post, Time Magazine, the New York Times,
etc. There they would quickly learn never to ask questions about the drugwar.
Instead of risking their lives reporting an endless series of murders, they
would just parrot the prohibitionist line from the government, like Lou Dobbs.
See

Bush Should Have John – Comical Ali – Walters Explain The Iraq War, Then The
Media Would Never Ask Any Embarrassing Questions. Doctrine Of Drug Czar
Infallibility? Blame Canada, Again.
and

Time Magazine Reports BC Bud 20% Less Potent Than Four Years Ago?? Incompetent
Prohibitionist Propaganda and Even Worse Journalism. As Some Reporters Die to
Find the Truth Others Live to Lie.
and

Front Page Fantasy: The New York Times Pushes Fact Free Journalism Supposedly
About “BC Bud”
and

The Myth That The Washington Post and John Walters Are ‘Harmless’; Drug Czar
Puts Hyperlying About Cannabis At The Center of the War on Freedom.

Yes, Mexico is the immediate source for most of the
illicit drugs in DEAland.

Last November, Larry Holifield, the DEA’s director for
Mexico and Central America, told The Associated Press that “Mexican cartels
are now the most powerful in the world.”

In 2003, Mexican traffickers
supplied 77 percent of the cocaine that entered the United States. Last year, it
was 92 percent, Anthony Placido, the top DEA intelligence official, told a
congressional panel in June. The other 8 percent moved through the Caribbean.

Mexican gangs also dominate
the growing methamphetamine trade, producing 53 percent of the drugs on the
market in “super-labs” in Mexico as the U.S. tightens its laws. Much of the rest
is made in clandestine labs in California, also run by Mexicans, U.S. officials
say.

And as has been the case for
nearly 100 years, Mexico is the biggest marijuana supplier to the U.S. and
produces nearly half the heroin consumed north of the border, behind only
Colombia.
See

Now, How the Narks Created Smack in Mexico. Replacing Marijuana With Poppies.
The Iron Law of Prohibition Keeps Working, But The Media Don’t
and

RCMP Report On The “Drug Situation in Canada – 2004” Contradicts The
Prohibitionist Party Line – Again. Mexico Supplies US With At Least 25 Times
More Than Canada. Ontario Rivals British Columbia .
and

Mexican Governors’ Proposal for “Legalization” Becomes “Decriminalization” In
The New York Times. Meanwhile Canadian Senate Committee Says Something That
Sounds Like “Legalization” But Is Ignored.

Second, it should be obvious that if the Mexican side of
the border is out of control, the American side cannot be secure, and it is not,
because the smuggling also goes both ways.

On January 8th, the Los Angeles Times
reported, “Guns Flow Easily Into Mexico From the U.S.”

The article by Héctor Tobar began with this great
sentence: “NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — The most popular instruments of robbery,
torture, homicide and assassination in this violence-racked border city are
imported from the United States.”

As we hear Mexico and other countries excoriated for
supplying “illegal drugs” to poor, helpless America, it is important to note, as
Tobar reports, “An estimated 95% of weapons confiscated from suspected
criminals in Mexico were first sold legally in the United States, officials in
both countries say.

Guns are the essential tools of a war among
underworld crime syndicates that claimed between 1,400 and 2,500 lives in 2005,
according to tallies by various newspapers and magazines…

There are fewer than 2,500 registered gun owners in
the entire country. Yet Mexican police confiscate an average of 256 weapons
every day from suspects, officials from the attorney general’s office said
recently.

Javier Ortiz Campos of Mexico’s Federal Preventive
Police says traces by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives on weapons confiscated in Mexico often lead to the gun shops, gun
shows and flea markets of Texas. The U.S. state has some of the most liberal gun
laws in the country and a porous, 1,240-mile-long border with Mexico.

Mexican police have, in recent years, confiscated a
handful of bazookas from organized-crime groups. Mexican and U.S. officials say
a very small amount of military surplus from recent wars in Central America has
found its way into Mexico. But U.S. officials say a bazooka recovered recently
from suspected drug cartel hit men in Mexico was traced to an Army depot in
Arkansas — the weapon had been deposited there and last accounted for in 1967.”

Mexico is not the only country that is being further
destabilized by the drugwar. It southern neighbor, Guatemala makes Mexico look
like Switzerland.

Last November, a long article in the Texas Monthly, “The
Untouchable Narco-State, Guatemala’s Military Defies The DEA” by Frank Smith
reported, “More than 200,000 people were killed in
Guatemala in what stands as Central America’s bloodiest conflict during the Cold
War.

The violence left the
military firmly in control of Guatemala, and it did not take long for this
stability to catch the attention of Colombian drug syndicates. First the
Medellin and then the Cali cartels, according to Andean drug experts, began
searching for new smuggling routes to the United States after their more
traditional routes closed down by the mid-1980s due to greater U.S. radar
surveillance over the Caribbean, especially the Bahamas.

They chose Guatemala
because it is near Mexico, which is an obvious entrance point to the U.S., and
because the Mexicans have a long-established mafia…”

DEA special agents began
detecting Guatemalan military officers running drugs as early as 1986, according
to DEA documents…

Today the shadowy structures
of Guatemala’s intelligence commands are so embedded with organized crime that
the Bush administration, for one, is already calling in the United Nations….

Over the next nine years, according to the same U.S.
documents, DEA special agents detected no less than 31 active duty officers
running drugs.”

Ironically, because Guatemala is so poor and violent,
Mexico has some very familiar sounding problems on its southern border, but
these problems are largely a result of US policies, past and present.

There are a number of reasons for Mexico’s economic
problems and the consequent mass migration north, and they are off-topic for
MarijuanaNews, but it is absurd to talk about controlling the border or even
modernizing Mexico’s economy while the drugwar undermines its stability.

Sadly, Lou Dobbs is so blinded by his commitment to the
prohibitionist ideology that he gets the problem exactly backwards. In the
Arizona Republic column, he wrote, “Failure to secure
our borders means that we will continue to lose the war on drugs and lose a
generation of Americans to those drugs.”
See

Lou Dobbs Plays Arthur Andersen to The Drug War’s Enron. A Week of
Prohibitionist Propaganda And 91% Of His “Pseudosophisticate” Viewers Still Vote
for Decrim.

No, the failure to recognize
that the drugwar is a counterproductive fraud means that we will continue to
undermine the stability of Mexico and other countries in Central and South
America. That instability will further weaken their economies and drive millions
of people to seek peace and prosperity in the US.

Prohibition is an enormous
subsidy to organized crime in these countries and especially to smuggling, and
both terrorists and their instruments of destruction are harder to find in the
river of other contraband that is encouraged by the drugwar.

If, as Tobar wrote, ‘The most popular instruments of
robbery, torture, homicide and assassination… are imported from the United
States,’, then how can we complain about their merely smuggling “drugs” – or
people?

And if our policies undermine law enforcement in these
countries, how can we complain about poor people breaking our immigration laws?

And if we concentrate our finite resources on going
after marijuana smuggling (which is the bulk of all contraband) instead of
terrorists, then aren’t our priorities completely insane?

Last June, the very prohibitionist San Diego
Union-Tribune reported, “Local FBI faulted for pre-9/11 errors. Report: FBI
Office too fixed on drug investigations.”

The article by Kelly Thornton said, “The FBI failed
to seize at least five opportunities to intercept two 9/11 hijackers before the
attacks, including two instances in San Diego County when the terrorists lived
with an FBI informant and were befriended by a subject of a previous FBI
investigation.

According to a report released yesterday by the Justice Department’s Inspector
General, the FBI office in San Diego erred by focusing too much on drug
investigations before Sept. 11, 2001.”
See

The Endless Cynicism of the Drug Warriors. The Drug War and Terrorism.
MarijuanaNews Analysis by Richard Cowan
and

Did The Drug War Claim Another 3,056 Casualties On 9-11? Ariana Huffington’s
Extraordinary Indictment.

Vigilantes have organized to fight illegal immigration
and some of them are even talking about going to war with Mexico. Pat Buchanan
has described Mexico’s encouragement of illegal immigration into the US as an
act of war, and he may be technically correct.

Given the fiasco in Iraq, it is very unlikely that we
would actually declare war on Mexico, but we could hardly do more damage to our
neighbor than we are already doing.

In fact, we are really at war with ourselves. When we
arrest 750,000 Americans every year for marijuana possession, we are waging war
on our own people. When we arrest and jail people who use medical cannabis we
are at war with our own principles. When our media fail to question the drugwar,
they are undermining our democracy in a way that no foreign enemy ever could.

Dobbs ended his Arizona Republic
column thus, “Reform begins with the truth. And our elected officials must
begin to recognize the reality that a war on terror and war on drugs can be won
only by securing our borders and that any reform of our immigration policies
must begin first at the front line of the crisis: our border with
Mexico.

Anything less is just another sad joke, and we know
at whose expense.”

One should not invoke the truth
if one is committed to maintaining a lie, as Dobbs and other supporters of the
drugwar must be. Indeed, they would do well to remember the line from Pogo, “We
have met the enemy, and he is us.”