A LITTLE TRUTH CAN BE TOUGH TO TAKE: CALDERON WAS RIGHT

Mexican presidents who visit Washington are expected to show up on
time for the photo ops, dress appropriately for the state dinner, and
then flash a warm, neighborly smile as they board the plane to leave.

They aren't supposed to behave the way Felipe Calderon did last week
when he addressed a joint session of Congress.

The Mexican president told U.S. lawmakers that they must ban automatic
weapons, and he called Arizona's new immigration law a "terrible idea"
that undermines civil rights. As annoying as anything, he talked past
his audience of lawmakers and spoke directly to the more than 7 million
Mexican illegal immigrants living in the United States:

"I want to say to the migrants - all those who are really working hard
for this great country - that we admire them, we miss them (and) we're
working hard for their rights."

Well, sir, this did not sit well with many lawmakers, particularly
Arizona's two Republican senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl. They
complained that President Calderon had no business commenting on U.S.
domestic affairs, let alone meddling in them. The response was another
example of the hypocritical lack of understanding that distorts U.S.
policy toward our southern neighbor. When you share a 2,000-mile
unsecured border with a country, its domestic issues become your
domestic issues, and vice versa.

President Calderon has every right to complain about U.S. gun laws
because 80 percent of the illegal guns in his country are smuggled in
from this country. Drug violence in Mexico has claimed about 23,000
lives over the past four years, most of the murders by illegal
weapons. The U.S. government is spending $1 billion on the Merida
Initiative, a four-year plan to train and equip Mexican law
enforcement to battle the cartels, yet U.S. lawmakers aren't serious
about stopping the flow of firepower to some of the most dangerous
criminals in the hemisphere.

And who can blame President Calderon for criticizing the Arizona law?
For decades, Americans have scolded Mexico for human rights violations
and overreaching police tactics. Mexicans were told that the United
States was the model for civil liberties and due process. But the
Arizona law, even the revised version, is something an authoritarian
Mexican government could have written several decades ago.

Congress misses the paradox in President Calderon's view from the
south. He sees U.S. businesses recruiting and depending on illegal
workers, while some Americans vilify Mexican migrants for being here.

Americans are as complicit in our immigration problems as we are in
the drug smuggling across the border. The U.S. demand for workers and
cocaine sustains the market for illegal trafficking. But it's easier
just to blame Mexico than to change behavior in U.S. cities and businesses.

President Calderon actually pulled his punches. He could have lectured
Congress on hypocrisy in environmental issues. For decades, the U.S.
has complained about pollution in Mexico - how the air was awful in
Mexico City, and how Mexican farmers and factories were ruining the
waters the two countries shared. There were also complaints about
inept and corrupt Mexican regulators.

President Calderon didn't hear much of that on his trip to Washington,
in the oily wake of the BP disaster. As it turns out, U.S. regulators
were inept and probably corrupt, and some of the oil could be drifting
toward the Yucatan before long.

About 10 percent of the U.S. population, roughly 30 million people,
are of Mexican descent, and President Calderon is a voice for many of
them. What he said to Congress was: Let's be more candid with each
other, let's see each other's point of view, and let's work together
to solve our common problems, because that's the only way we'll solve
them.

What's wrong with that?

Nada.

Dan Moffett is a former member of The Post Editorial Board.