Conservative

By John Fay

One of the saddest realities about the human condition is that people are constantly being tortured, oppressed and brutalized by other people. In fact, it is for this reason that nations and governments exist — to protect those whom they govern from the excesses of their fellow men.

The mandate of the U.S. government is to protect U.S. citizens first, and its legitimacy can be judged by the degree to which it fulfills this mandate. Yet our government, like all others, faces a moral quandary about the degree to which its responsibility extends to those people who are not its citizens. Such is our problem when faced with Mexico’s drug crisis.

The most bizarre aspect of the Mexican crisis is that so many Americans are personally affected by it, but so few actually understand what is going on. In a nutshell, when he took office in 2006, President Felipe Calderon decided to make it a priority to crush the drug cartels that have been dominating much of Mexican society for decades. He then called in the military because he deemed the local police forces unreliable. The result has been a fierce clandestine battle between the Mexican federal government and the drug lords. Conservative estimates indicate that at least 9,000 people have been killed, more than twice as many as the number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq after six years.

The potential for this crisis to degenerate into a civil war is very real. It is estimated, again conservatively, that the drug cartels have some 100,000 men under arms, a pretty dangerous foe for a Mexican army of 180,000. One story that is particularly shocking is that the sheriff of Ciudad Juarez was murdered by drug gangsters for refusing to resign. The fact that these men could issue such an order, and enforce it with lethal power when it was ignored, indicates that some parts of Mexico are essentially de facto drug states. In these places, the government no longer has the ability to protect its citizens. Yet, if the Mexican government cannot protect its people, what must we do?

The one thing we must do is be honest with ourselves. The American left would be well advised not to delude itself into thinking that things in Mexico will be just fine if we just legalize all dangerous drugs and criminalize all firearms — which they wanted to do before this current crisis, surprise, surprise. It is true that drugs provide money for gangsters in Mexico, but if you legalize them, there are always new illegal items, like guns, to be smuggled through Mexico into the United States.

It will cost us to help the Mexican people: in money, in men and in time. Colombia was engaged in a drug conflict for 40 years before Mexico, and to help, we gave military advisors and billions of dollars in aid. Even so, it took decades for the situation in that country to noticeably improve, and it is still not wholly resolved. If our government really wants to make a difference in Mexico, we probably have to do everything we did for Colombia, at minimum. It’s a steep price, but it’s far more effective than simply making a few speeches and passing self-serving laws.

The most honest approach for our government is either to do nothing and allow Mexico to descend into chaos, or be prepared to do anything, even if it means to militarize the borders. It’s an unpleasant choice, but the reality is that when it comes to these sorts of problems, there are no easy solutions.

Reach columnist John Fay at opinion@dailyuw.com.

Liberal

By Greg Ryan

The failure of the U.S. government’s “war on drugs” has long been cliché. The billions of dollars spent to no effect, the prisons overcrowded with pot possessions, the racial and economic disparity, the gangs, the kids, the 80s … anybody feeling a flashback coming on?

We’ve heard it all before. Recently, during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Mexico City in March, we heard all that high talk again. Now, as we look back over the two weeks since she left our embattled neighbor and see no new vibrant national conversation about drug-policy reform and no bold new initiative by the Obama administration, the rhetoric is clearly coming down.

The drug war has finally jumped the shark, and I’m not hallucinating.

Clinton’s trip drew unprecedented attention to the problems facing Mexico’s crackdown on the drug cartels, but this half of the equation is not new. Our drugs have always come from Mexico. The new Mexican crackdown initiative, which has been erupting violently on the border and in Mexican cities, has been going on since early 2007.

Also old news is Clinton’s mea culpa on the part of the United States. The United States shares responsibility for Mexico’s drug problems and violence because we provide the demand for drugs and weapons. “Duh” was the response in this country from all but some cranks on the right. Yet, there was a feeling that it had never been stated so clearly — not by the U.S. government, anyway.

Could there be anything so obvious? The problem is the demand for drugs in this country. The failure of the war on drugs can be summed up as a failure to curb that demand. Instead, U.S. drug policy has declared war on the people who embody that demand, ruining their lives and perpetuating their addictions.

But, what of Clinton’s proclamation? For a moment, there seemed an opportunity to reorient our battle plan against the drug problem. Will anything come of this? The administration did not seem interested in taking the bait. Sending more money to Mexico for their war and putting troops on the border are consistent with the same old drug war we know and love. As long as we keep smoking the same stuff, we’re never going to find that better high.

Attorney General Eric Holder did recently announce that the Justice Department would no longer prosecute marijuana cases in which the local marijuana laws were being observed, such as in the use of medical marijuana in California. This is an important step. But the optics are procedural, not revolutionary. Where was the calm, wise and convincing speech from the president, echoing the secretary of state and calling for change?

I would love to propose a long-game theory about the Obama administration’s good intentions on reforming drug policy, but I’m not sure I see it. Maybe there is a plan. Maybe Clinton’s remark was just the hit in a long-term, mind-expanding campaign the administration will unleash on the public over a period of years. Maybe that’s just a pipe dream.

Reach columnist Greg Ryan at opinion@dailyuw.com.

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