LIFE IN THE MIDDLE

While Americans are busy trying to find ways to extricate ourselves
from a war halfway around the world, a war has been raging right next
door that may prove deadlier by far than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That may not seem possible, but if you analyze it carefully, even the
terrorists in the Muslim world have only been able to convince other
Muslims, their own people, to commit suicide in behalf of their
cause. The war to end all wars is the one that makes ordinary people,
good people, the kind of people who live right next door to you and
I, maybe even people within our own homes, willing accomplices in
their own destruction. This seemingly impossible feat is accomplished
every day of the week by the gardeners, chemists, money launderers,
traffickers, kingpins, dealers and pimps of the drug world.
Narco-terrorism is the deadliest and perhaps the most pervasive form
of warfare in the world today. Deaths are mounting not just from
illegal drugs, but from the proliferation of prescription painkillers as well.

For a shot of heroin or a handful of oxycontins, many young mothers
have abandoned their own children. For a hit on the crack pipe,
countless men and women have deserted their families, committed
crimes and sold their own bodies. Others have turned shacks and
trailers into methamphetamine factories while their own children
lived in them, and many have died from the explosions and fires
ignited by the volatile chemicals required to make meth. Drug
overdoses are now the second leading cause of unintentional death in
the United States, second only to motor vehicle accidents. To put
this in context, we have now have now lost more than 3,000 troops in
the almost six years we have fought the War in Iraq. But in 2005
alone, there were 22,400 deaths due to drug overdose, as compared to
17,000 homicides. It adds up to approximately 100,000 deaths from
drug overdoses in the same amount of time we lost 3,000 soldiers in Iraq.

In other words, for every soldier we lose in the war in Iraq, we lose
about 32 of our husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters,
sisters, brothers, and friends in the war on drugs. And that's just
the ones who die. It is not popular or politically correct to talk
about drugs when you talk about Mexico. Many Hispanic citizens have
immigrated to America legally, work hard, pay their taxes and are a
positive contribution to the country they now call home. They've
become a sizeable voting block eagerly courted by every major politician.

But that does not erase the fact that the border between Mexico and
the United States has become a major target of drug traffickers
looking for every way possible to smuggle their wares into the United
States. Those who would take the bodies of dead children, remove
their vital organs, refill that space with bags of cocaine, dress
those bodies, pack them in a coffin and send them to America ­ will
do anything to get their deadly product across the border.

Opium-based painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin are cheap in
Mexico, and pass through our borders as readily as any illegal drug.
For these reasons, the war against the proliferation of
narco-terrorism must transcend every political consideration. We
cannot afford the luxury of political correctness in this fight.

Classic example: In the week before Sept. 11, 2001, then president of
Mexico, Vicente Fox, was in America lobbying for a lifting of
restrictions on trucks going across the border between Mexico and
America. The proposed legislation would have left in place the
mandatory random inspections and searches required of American
vehicles, but would have exempted Mexican vehicles from the same kind
of policing. The only thing that stopped this suicidal policy from
being implemented was the attack of 9/11. Politically correct though
this legislation may have been, it was also suicidal and stupid.
Mexico is the last stop in an artery of drug traffic that begins in
the jungles of Peru, Bolivia and Columbia, flows north through
Central America, and lands in Mexico on its way to the United States.
The almost limitless profits realized from this drug trade represent
a huge part of the underground economy that sustains this chain of
poor, underdeveloped nations.

Proposing this kind of legislative policy is tantamount to proposing
that we allow shipping containers from Iraq and Afghanistan, two of
the largest growers of opium in the world, to flow into our nation's
ports without any kind of regulation, or search and seizure policy.
We wouldn't dream of doing anything this suicidal and stupid because
we're at war with Iraq and with the terrorists using Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Iran as shelters from the war zone. No matter how
uncomfortable and politically incorrect it may be, it is time that we
admitted that the narco-terrorists who have killed more than 400
people in Mexico in January alone, who are using the border between
the United States and Mexico as one long drug corridor, and who
threaten the very stability of the Mexican government, are every bit
as deadly a threat to America as any Muslim terrorist.

And having finally acknowledged that blindingly obvious fact, it is
the foremost duty of the current administration to renew the war on
drugs, and to fight it as if we mean it. As if our children's lives
depend on it. Because they do.

These terrorists are every bit as real as any suicide bomber in Iraq,
and they're living right next door.