NEW YORK POST: As he visits Washington today, here’s something for Mexican President Fe lipe Calderon to discuss with President Obama: Calderon’s war on the drug gangs is costing a lot in American money and Mexican blood — and he’s losing.
His goals are admirable: Erasing the huge and criminal underground economy would show Mexicans that their country can become, like the US, a land where the rule of law benefits everyone and therefore deserves respect. We’d gain, too, from the drop in cross-border violence. Calderon, who launched this war shortly after his 2006 inauguration, would become a national hero.
In reality, the Mexican president’s poll numbers are in the dumps. And Americans almost universally ignore the bloodbath south of the border, unless the occasional gringo gets killed, as when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata recently got caught in gang-war crossfire. Mexicans, meanwhile, increasingly resent shedding blood because of our insatiable appetite for illegal drugs. (Especially when legal “medical” marijuana is on the rise.) … (more)
