HELP ON THE WAY FOR MEXICO'S LONELY BATTLE

The intricacies of the Mexican drug war suggest that former dictator
Porfirio Diaz was onto something with his memorable lament: "Poor
Mexico, so far from God - and so close to the United States."

On a recent weeklong trip south of the border, I found plenty of
Mexicans who believe Americans are making a bad situation worse. Some
of that is just the familiar and tiresome Mexican tendency to blame
their problems on their northern neighbors. But, this time, the
Mexicans are not entirely wrong.

The Mexican tourism industry, which usually takes in more than $12
billion annually, is suffering. The spring break crowd has been light
this year at coastal resorts, with Americans cautiously avoiding even
the safe parts of Mexico due to the violence on the border. The timing
couldn't be worse. Mexico is also experiencing declines in other
sources of foreign income: exports, oil revenue, and remittances from
Mexicans living in the United States. As the Mexican economy
flounders, expect more folks to enter the drug trade.

The drug war has caught Washington's attention. Last week, Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon to
show support for his war against drug traffickers. This week, Homeland
Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder
are due to attend an arms trafficking conference in Mexico. And in a
couple of weeks, President Obama will meet with Calderon to discuss
how the United States can help defeat the cartels.

The White House has also released a plan to send 500 more agents to
the U.S.-Mexico border. It intends to crack down on the large
quantities of guns and ammunition being smuggled from the United
States into Mexico. Tapping into $700 million of funds approved by
Congress to aid Mexico under the Merida Initiative, the Obama
administration said it would provide five helicopters for the Mexican
army and air force, and a surveillance aircraft for the Mexican navy.

That's a good start. But the administration could also deploy the
National Guard to help patrol the U.S.-Mexico border to keep drugs
from coming in and guns from going out. It could even - as a U.S.
naval commander told me recently - authorize U.S. special forces to go
beyond training the Mexican military and engage in combat operations
if Calderon requested it.

If only the American people were taking this as seriously. We should
stop using illicit drugs and then romanticizing the drug lords who
supply them. At the moment, Mexican officials are fuming over the fact
that Forbes magazine listed Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the reputed
head of the Sinaloa cartel, as the 701st richest person in the world.
Forbes claims that Guzman is worth about $1 billion - at best a
"guestimate," since drug lords aren't known for their bookkeeping.
Calderon criticized the U.S. media for "not only attacking and lying
about the situation in Mexico, but are also praising criminals."
Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora blasted Forbes for
"comparing the deplorable activity of a criminal wanted in Mexico and
abroad with that of honest businessmen."

Americans are not innocent bystanders in this crisis. "Our insatiable
demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," Clinton said Wednesday
on her way to meeting Calderon. "Our inability to prevent weapons from
being smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the
deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians."

Calderon is fighting a brave and lonely battle against long odds. And
contrary to the impression one might get from the U.S. media, there is
some evidence that he is winning. Law enforcement agencies have made
more than 20,000 arrests. They've cut into the profit margins of the
cartels by seizing tons of drugs and cash.

The criminals must be feeling the pinch. Why else would the drug lords
be terrorizing the Mexican population with one hand and bribing it
with the other - all in an attempt to undermine support for the
government? As with all Mexican presidents, Calderon can only serve
one six-year term. So the political strategy of the cartels seems to
be to deal the president's party a crushing blow in the July midterm
elections in the hopes that a divided Congress will curtail Calderon's
crime-fighting for the rest of his term.

Good luck with that. Those of us who know Calderon - and I have since
we were graduate students together a decade ago - understand that, no
matter what happens from here, he won't quit. He will dig in and fight
on. And so should his friends and allies on this side of the border.