LONG-TERM BORDER SECURITY COMMITMENT

The administration's border security plan, unveiled Tuesday, offers a
long overdue response to Mexico's growing drug violence and the U.S.
dollars and guns feeding it. President Barack Obama appears committed
to end American neglect of this issue, although it's far too early to
know whether, like his predecessors, he'll let his attention stray.

With seeming conviction, successive administrations also have
launched programs to tackle the Mexico-U.S. drug problem. But more
pressing issues like Islamist terrorism or faraway wars always seemed
to justify relegating Mexico to second-tier status. As a result, this
problem has festered to the point that Mexico has become all of our
worst security nightmares rolled into one.

For Mexico, the euphemistic "war on drugs" is now real war. It has
killed more Mexicans since 2006 than the U.S. death toll from 9/11
and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. Large-scale kidnappings,
once the problem of distant drug capitals like Bogota, are now
occurring regularly in U.S. cities like Phoenix.

Some politicians have labeled this the "spillover" effect, but the
more accurate term is inter-linkage. Each country is feeding the
other's problems. Mexico estimates that 2,000 U.S. firearms are
smuggled southward every day. America's illicit drug consumers send
billions of dollars annually to Mexico's cartels, funding the
bloodshed while helping put drug kingpins like Joaquin "El Chapo"
Guzman onto the Forbes list of the world's richest people.

To his credit, Obama is not using the current economic crisis as
another excuse to continue neglecting Mexico. Instead, he is
dispatching top Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, to coordinate strategies with their Mexican
counterparts. The Treasury and Homeland Security Departments will
send hundreds of extra federal agents to the border. The Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will open three new offices
and shift 100 agents to monitor arms smuggling.

The administration correctly identifies the problem on this side of
the border as a law-enforcement issue. Despite calls from Gov. Rick
Perry, among others, for a military response, the White House is wise
to remain noncommittal.

Troops cannot break up kidnapping rings in Phoenix or arrest the
Mexican drug gangs operating in Birmingham or Dallas. The so-called
spillover has little if any military dimension on the U.S. side of
the border, and so far, Mexico has rejected the notion of American
military assistance inside Mexican territory. Perry's idea is a non-starter.

Despite grandstanding about the border crisis, Congress still hasn't
fully funded the $1.4 billion in assistance pledged under the Merida
drug-fighting initiative, and military-grade helicopters promised in
the package might not be delivered until 2012. That hardly conveys a
sense of urgency.

Like the economic crisis, the border drug problem was years in the
making and will require years of attention and a vast commitment of
resources to solve. Among Obama's biggest challenges going forward
will be matching his words with action.