MEXICO CRISIS IS DEEPENING

You don't have to go halfway around the world to find a major
security threat. It's right across Arizona's southern border.

President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy priorities need to
recognize that U.S. demand for recreational drugs has created a
crisis in Mexico, and U.S. domestic security depends on helping
Mexico deal with that crisis.

Mexico's drug cartels, which have slaughtered in excess of 5,300
people in Mexico this year, "are as ruthless and brutal as any
terrorist organization," Arizona's Sen. John McCain told The
Republic's editorial board Thursday.

Mexico's government is in an "existential struggle" with traffickers
whose violence can "easily spill over to our side," McCain says.

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels when
he took office in 2006. The United States is now helping through the
Merida Initiative, a multiyear, $1.4 billion aid package.

In response to Calderon's move, the cartels have targeted
journalists, law-enforcement officers and elected officials. They are
also going after each other in escalating turf battles that have
claimed innocent victims.

The Mexican public sees little progress in the government's war
against traffickers, according to opinion polls. What's more, there
are increasing charges that Mexico's military is violating human
rights as soldiers pursue the traffickers. Yet so far, the people of
Mexico support Calderon's fight.

But what if they tire of the violence and demand surrender?

The idea of Mexico descending into anarchy or narco-dictatorship is
frightening enough.

But U.S. domestic tranquility is also threatened. The Justice
Department's National Drug Threat Assessment for 2009 calls Mexico's
drug cartels "the greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States."

According to the Justice Department report, cartels "maintain drug
distribution networks or supply drugs to distributors in at least 230
U.S. cities."

Phoenix, Glendale, Peoria and a number of Arizona border towns are on
the Justice Department's map of cities reporting the presence of
Mexican cartels.

The level of violence Mexico is enduring because of drug trafficking
has not yet jumped the line. But the purveyors of that violence are
setting up shop in our cities. Obama and his Homeland Security
designee, Janet Napolitano, need to focus intense and sustained
attention on making sure the Mexican government prevails over the
cartels.