DRUG WAR IN MEXICO

Some worry that Afghanistan will become President Obama's war, but a
nearer conflict requires dispassionate analysis before we become
immersed in yet another quagmire. I refer to the bloody drug war in
Mexico ("Gangs oust police chief with threats on officers," Feb. 21).
In Iraq last year, 2,592 allied forces were killed. In Mexico, twice
that number of people were murdered, many of them police. That facile
drug-war label may not relate to reality.

Given increased border security, how do these so-profitable drugs get
through? Given the massive aid to the rightwing Colombian government,
how are the drugs produced? Given the overwhelming anti-terrorist
initiatives of the last administration, how do thousands of American
guns go south? Either we are being lied to or our government is
ignorant of the true conditions. "Bush Pattern Misinformation" is a
familiar constant. Texas must have some interests here; what are
they? If not a smuggling dispute, is this an insurrection? If so, who
is revolting? Who can find out?

The history is clear. Drugs have been a ready cash source for covert
entities for decades, since at least the Iran-Contra conspiracy. Who
benefits? Where does all that money go? Criminals are rarely
socialists; to the contrary, they are often reactionary. And it is
probably not a cabal of liberal gun dealers supplying the shooters.

We need to find out what is going on here before the unrest affects
and infects the untold millions of Mexican nationals and descendants
who live here, in the north.

Stephen T. Wishnevsky

Winston-Salem