NARCO-INSURRECTION

IMAGINE if our country were so ravaged by drug cartels that the
president sent the military into a third of the states to break the
terror.

That's where Mexico is today. We all pay the price.

Narcotraficante infighting took over 3,000 lives in Mexico last year
as the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels struggled for turf. With government
officials and police officers facing the old choice of "silver - or
lead," out-of-control corruption plagued the country.

Entire states fell under the influence of the drug lords.
Narco-violence spread to previously safe regions, such as Monterrey -
the most prosperous city between the Amazon and the Rio Grande. By
late 2006, Mexico faced its gravest internal crisis since the
Revolution of 1910.

In response, Mexicans elected a tough president, Felipe Calderon. And
President Calderon took action, ordering the army into nine states and
deploying troops to cities such as Tijuana and the run-down resort of
Acapulco.

But the drug lords are fighting back. Today, the level of violence
transcends mere crime. Mexico faces a narco-insurrection. And its
government needs help.

The Bush administration is working with Calderon's team to craft a
counter-drug aid package that would provide surveillance equipment,
transport aircraft and training. The program could be announced when
the leaders of the U.S., Mexico and Canada meet in Quebec on Aug. 20.
The finalized program will probably cost several hundred million dollars.

Money well spent.

It's not only the Mexicans who are lucky to have Calderon in office.
We're lucky, too. Calderon broke a foreign-policy taboo to extradite
over a dozen high-level drug criminals wanted in the United States.
Previously, kingpins could count on staying in Mexico if arrested. Now
they're scared.

But this is going to be a long struggle. Ninety percent of the cocaine
and much of the heroin and methamphetamine entering the United States
now transits Mexico. For us, the immediate problems are addiction and
crime. Drug abuse was behind many, if not most, of the 1.8 million
violent crimes committed here in 2005. And urban property crime is
drug crime.

We can't just blame this problem on Mexico. Without the U.S. market
for illicit drugs, Mexico's transit-corridor problem wouldn't exist.
And the high-powered weapons arming the cartels flow south from the
United States. The arms and cash driving Mexico's narco-insurgency
come from El Norte.

Mexico's the victim here, not the perp.

In 1994, while still in the Army, I was sent on a mission to study the
narcotics problem in the Andean Ridge. A key conclusion I reached was
that the ultimate victims of the drug trade were going to be the
transit countries, the Central American states, Brazil - and, above
all, Mexico.

Now, here we are. And we've got to do something. Because Mexico's
problem is our problem.

There's reason for optimism. After more than a century and a half of
bad blood between our countries, rational actors on both sides of the
border see the need to cooperate - and the challenges of Islamist
terrorism notwithstanding, Mexico remains the most important country
to our national security.

The drug trade and its consequences have killed far more of our fellow
citizens than al Qaeda or the struggle in Iraq. Of course, it's not a
choice of "which war to fight." We have to fight both enemies,
terrorists and drug lords. And the two often overlap.

Calderon needs and wants our help. But history demands that the issue
be handled sensitively (we won't see large numbers of U.S. trainers
deploying to Mexico). On this side of the border, the greatest threat
to cooperation will come from posturing lawmakers and from demagogues
who reduce our southern neighbor, with its 110 million population, to
the issue of illegal immigration alone.

A lot more comes across that 1,951-mile border than just economic
refugees.

Want to cut illegal immigration? Help Mexico become a rule-of-law
state where crime and corruption no longer inhibit economic
development.

For their part, the drug lords aren't stupid. They've taken a lesson
from Islamist extremists and they're already playing the human-rights
card with gullible gringos - blaming the Mexican army for civil-rights
violations while narco henchmen chop off heads, assassinate
journalists and gun down honest cops and straight pols.

Thanks to his crusade against the narcos, President Calderon is
himself a prime candidate for assassination.

Help him, and we help ourselves. This is one insurgency that must -
and can - be defeated.