DRUG WAR AS USUAL IS A SCRIPT FOR SURRENDER

The news from south of the Rio Grande is the stuff of nightmares.

As we pay attention to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is
a full-scale war going on in Mexico that makes the New York gang wars
of the 1800s, the Chicago gang competition of the 1920s and the Boston
bloodletting of the 1960s and '70s resemble skeet shooting matches.

Drug cartels are engaged in the typical organized crime practice of
eliminating competition, while at the same time battling law
enforcement personnel ranging from frightened local cops to the army
and federal police.

There are casts of thousands. It's a struggle to pick out who is after
whom on any given day. And it doesn't help that corruption has too
long been a way of life in law enforcement agencies.

As in any war, the innocent suffer. Those who have not been wounded or
killed in crossfires fear to leave their homes or talk to strangers or
even neighbors. Drug running has become big business in Mexico; some
cynics might contend it's the nation's leading industry. Say something
wrong to some neighbor who secretly works for a cartel, and who knows
what might result?

The bad guys are heavily armed. They are not depending on
switchblades. They have fully automatic weapons.

Police, both the corrupt cops and the straight shooters trying to
impose peace on this insanity, are targets, and rank has no privileges.

Early last month, the federal police commander was ambushed and killed
in his apartment.

President Felipe Calderon has inundated trouble spots with federal
police and soldiers, but there are too many such spots and not enough
troops equipped with the kind of street intelligence they need to
shortstop the violence.

The violence has been escalating for more than two decades, as our
fellow citizens north of the Rio Grande cannot seem to sate their
appetites for meth, coke, weed, smack whatever.

"It doesn't matter how many millions the government pours in here to
stop drugs," a Mexican lawyer told a New York Times [NYT] reporter.

"As long as Americans keep buying them, this business is never going
to stop."

The fellow said that in 1986.

One need not have majored in economics to understand that if a market
exists for a product, entrepreneurs will show up to sell to and profit
from that market. Al Capone, after all, used to insist that he was
nothing more than a businessman as he peddled illegal hooch to willing
buyers.

Even if Mexican drug dealers were somehow stopped at our southwestern
borders, they and others would find a way into our lucrative market,
just as, during Prohibition, Irish, Jewish and Italian mobsters
shipped and trucked in booze, and the Scotch-Irish of Appalachia
cooked it up in back country stills.

If we Americans were serious about the drug war, we'd be fighting it
not only aggressively at our borders and beyond, as we do, but also at
home by treating our addicts with every manner of medical,
psychological and social program we could invent.

The betting in this corner is that it'll never happen. What will
happen is more gunfire to the south and more addiction in the north.