CONDESCENDING TO MEXICO

The U.S. Cuts Funding For Its Neighbor To Fight The Drug Cartels.

As Americans read about the massacres, beheadings, kidnappings and
assassinations that have become commonplace in Mexico, they might
reasonably conclude that its government could use all the help it can
get in its war against the powerful drug cartels perpetrating these
atrocities. The Obama Administration takes a different view.

The State Department recently announced that it would withhold $26
million in funding for the $1.6 billion "Merida Initiative" until the
Mexican government could make "additional progress" on its human
rights record. The Administration wants the Mexican government to
prosecute soldiers accused of human rights violations in civilian
courts rather than military tribunals, and to expand the authority of
its National Human Rights Commission. Not surprisingly, the Mexican
government was not pleased.

It's hard to fault the Mexicans for taking umbrage at this Obama
nickel-and-dime. The country is paying a frightful price for fighting
the criminal gangs that feed off America's drug habit. And while the
Administration did allow the release of $36 million in previously
scheduled funds, the U.S. had expended only $141 million of the
allocated funds as of March 31, when the Government Accountability
Office last examined the Initiative. By way of comparison, in 2009 the
U.S. gave more money to Zambia and Mozambique. Does the U.S. have an
interest in these countries comparable to our interest in a secure
Mexico?

No wonder there's a creeping sense among Mexicans that the war against
the cartels isn't being won. According to the GAO report, Merida
Initiative funding has so far helped Mexico to purchase 26 armored
vehicles, five helicopters, 100 polygraph kits, 13 armored Suburbans
and various other pieces of equipment. It has also paid for several
thousand Mexican officials to get various kinds of specialized
training. That's all to the good, but given that the drug cartels earn
somewhere north of $10 billion annually in illicit income, the
Initiative isn't exactly paying competitive wages.

If the U.S. wants to be serious about helping Mexico, it ought to look
to its own experience in Colombia. As former DEA Administrator Robert
Bonner notes in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Colombia's drug
wars dwarfed Mexico's, with a murder rate that at one point was eight
times what Mexico's is today. Colombia also had, in addition to its
Medellin and Cali cartels, the narcoterrorist FARC to contend with,
something that so far has no equivalent in Mexico.

What Colombia did have, however, was a well-funded and generally
well-executed U.S. assistance strategy known as Plan Colombia.
Contrary to myth, the intention of the plan was never to stop drug
trafficking per se, but, as Mr. Bonner points out, to destroy the
cartels and the threat they presented to Colombia's democracy.

By that measure, Plan Colombia was an extraordinary success. The plan
also did not abet human rights abuses, despite what many of its
critics alleged. On the contrary, by helping defeat the cartels and
the FARC and making Colombia governable, this U.S. aid abetted the
greatest boon to human rights in the country's history.

That's something the Obama Administration ought to think about in its
own approach to Mexico, which deserves better than a petty exercise in
moral fault finding. Mexico is not a perfect country-and as President
Obama is so fond of pointing out, neither is the United States. But
like the U.S., Mexico is a democracy with a robust civil society that
is fighting to preserve its own rule of law against modern-day barbarians.

As the U.S. has a vital interest in the outcome of that war, the
Administration might want to reconsider the appropriate balance
between offering meaningful support and doling out cheap
condescension. And if the Administration declines, then border-state
Senators and Governors need to speak up.