DEMOCRATS WRONG ON CUTTING MEXICAN ANTI-DRUG AID

The murder of the acting chief of Mexico's federal police amid an
unprecedented wave of drug gang attacks on security officials will
soon become a major issue in the U.S. presidential candidates'
escalating war for Hispanic votes.

Until now, Republicans and Democrats had tried to make as little
noise as possible about the Bush administration's Merida Initiative,
a request for $500 million to help Mexico fight its drug cartels.
They hoped to pass it quietly, fearing that a high-profile debate
would stir up political passions on both sides of the border and kill
the proposal.

But with drug war violence in Mexico escalating to record levels in
recent memory, that's changing fast.

Likely Republican candidate Sen. John McCain will probably try to cut
into the Democrats' growing lead among Hispanics by saying that their
proposal to reduce the Merida Initiative by up to $190 million
amounts to "abandoning" Mexico at a time when President Felipe
Calderon's government is facing a bigger than ever attack from the
drug cartels.

It may be much like when McCain blamed Democrats for "abandoning"
Colombia by resisting ratification of the U.S.-Colombia free-trade
agreement. Only that, in Mexico's case, the political stakes at home
are higher because more than 65 percent of the more than 10 million
Hispanic voters are of Mexican origin.

When I asked the McCain campaign Friday evening for a reaction to the
Democrat majority-proposed cuts to the Merida Initiative, I got a
statement from McCain's top foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann
that sounded like the opening salvo of the coming Republican offensive.

"At a time when we have a Mexican president willing to take the fight
to vicious narco-traffickers, it is appalling and irresponsible that
congressional Democrats would cut funding," Shuenemann said. "This is
just the latest example of Democrats undermining our allies."

Carl Meacham, a senior Republican staffer at the Senate Foreign
Relations, said that last week's killing of acting federal police
chief Edgar Millan Gomez is "a huge thing." He added, "An escalating
war is raging along the U.S. border, and many in Congress are
refusing to assist a neighbor who has come for our help."

The slain police chief was the highest-ranking of about 200 officers
killed by drug trafficking gangs over the past year and a half in
apparent retaliation against Calderon's military offensive against
the drug cartels.

According to a U.S. Senate report authored by Meacham, 2,600 Mexicans
have lost their lives in police actions against drug traffickers over
the past year, and the Mexican government has invested $3 billion and
deployed 30,000 troops in an effort to combat the drug cartels.

The Merida aid package is aimed at helping Mexico buy eight transport
helicopters, improve intelligence sharing, and reduce the massive
smuggling of .50 mm rifles, grenades and other high power U.S.
weapons to Mexico. The plan does not contemplate the presence of U.S.
troops in Mexico.

Most Democrats in Congress say they want to vote for aid to Mexico,
but they object to what they say is an excessive focus on military
aid at the expense of institution-building assistance, and they note
that some anti-immigration Republican legislators are opposing the
Merida initiative.

Senate Western Hemisphere subcommittee chairman Chris Dodd of
Connecticut told me in an e-mail that "we are planning to provide the
Mexican government with critical financial assistance, while at the
same time ensuring that we can also address various humanitarian
emergencies around the world."

On Friday, the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers, which are baking
the Democrats in the November elections, called for blocking the aid
plan, citing concerns over human rights abuses.

My opinion: In this column a week ago, I ripped McCain for moving
increasingly closer to anti-immigration hawks in his party, and for
leaving behind the comprehensive immigration plan he once supported
to embrace a new stand that I described as economically stupid,
politically unwise and dangerous from a national security point of view.

Today, it's the Democrats' turn to be singled out for caving in to
the populist-isolationist wing of their party, and irresponsibly
turning their back to an escalating war against the bad guys on the
U.S. border. Unless Democrats and their candidates give their full
support to the initiative, they should face a backlash among some of
the growing numbers of Hispanic voters who have flocked to the
Democratic Party in recent months.