CIUDAD JUAREZ A BATTLEFIELD IN A DANGEROUS WAR

The earth outside of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, is coughing up a bloody
and brutal picture of Mexican drug cartels. The number of bodies could
exceed 100, including those of 22 Americans, believed to have been
killed and buried on two ranches there.

If the suspicions prove true in this case, the reasons it's referred
to as a drug "war" will be at least a hundredfold and will be
shockingly corporeal.

But as sensational and sad as the headlines are, some perspective is
required on this grisly landscape. The killing fields of the drug war
are far from confined to two ranches in Northern Mexico, and the
victims, though not usually found in 100-body clusters, are among
many, many more who pass from among us on a steady, usually
unmentioned basis.

The lives that illegal drugs -- and the crime associated with them --
take and destroy number far more than 100. Some argue that
legalization of drugs somehow would magically dissolve the crime
connections. But that's naive for at least two good reasons.

One is that while some crime might fall in the short term, the
big-time, bloodthirsty criminals who traffic in drugs would quickly
find, and already are finding, other avenues to prey on human vices
and depravities.

But more to the point, legalization would certainly increase the rate
of drug abuse. China and Pakistan, where drugs were either legalized
or are very cheap and available, are but two examples of places where
this has proved to be the case.

We can only wait to see what Mexican authorities and the FBI uncover
across the border from El Paso. But we need not wait to understand
that it really is a war with a vicious enemy.