U.S. MAKING MEXICO DRUG WAR WORSE

The increasing involvement of the United States in Mexico's drug war
is only going to make a bad situation worse.

It will likely lead to more deaths. It will be a drain on our
treasury. And it's unlikely to stem the flow of drugs. This is because
U.S. intervention ignores the root causes of the drug trade and the
spreading international character of the cartels.

U.S. involvement began with the "Merida Initiative," a $1.4 billion
aid package signed by President Bush in 2007 to provide training and
equipment to Mexican drug enforcement efforts. It coincided with
Mexican President Felipe Calderon's initiation of a military offensive
against the drug cartels.

President Obama then expanded the scope of the Merida Initiative in
2009, emphasizing coordination and information sharing, including the
establishment of joint command and control centers in Mexico. This has
led to the training of thousands of Mexican agents, the transfer of
high-tech weaponry, the deployment of unmanned drones within Mexico
and now the direct involvement of Drug Enforcement Administration and
CIA agents, U.S. military personnel (from the Pentagon's Northern
Command) and private contractors.

Since the launch of Calderon's military operation, an estimated 35,000
people have been killed. And the death rate has been increasing for
each year of the conflict.

Mexico has now surpassed Colombia in kidnappings and has seen a
dramatic spike in assassinations of journalists and political figures.

Corruption has exploded, as drug money has been poured into politics
to subvert the war effort from within. A study of the Mexican Senate's
Commission of Municipal Development has found that six out of every 10
municipal governments in the country are infiltrated by drug dealers.
Mexico's Department of Public Security estimates that 62percent of
police nationwide have also been corrupted by drug money. Rather than
suppress the drug trade, the war has driven it deeper into the social
and political fabric of Mexico and has spread it to other countries in
Central America.

U.S. society is intimately tied to the Mexican drug trade. Earlier
this year, for instance, 34 U.S. citizens and legal residents were
convicted of running weapons to cartels from Arizona. According to a
2010 Washington Post report, more than 60,000 U.S.-origin guns have
been linked to drug violence in Mexico. Some U.S. banks have been
implicated in laundering drug money. And according to Justice
Department statistics from 2010, the cartels now operate in 231 U.S.
cities, taking in nearly $40 billion in annual sales from within our
country, as the consumption of illegal drugs in the United States is
increasing.

The Mexican government is losing the drug war. That's why the Obama
administration is now sending U.S. security forces directly into the
war zones in Mexico as never before.

But U.S. intervention won't make it any more winnable, and will only
draw more personnel and resources into a costly and bloody quagmire.