Imagine a country where the military occupies one of its own cities to stop rival gangs from killing people in a war over the right to supply drugs to a neighboring country. Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine that, because it’s happening right now to a country that borders these United States of the War on Drugs America: Mexico.
More than 1,500 Mexican troops have moved into a city on the US border being fought over by rival drug gangs.
Soldiers moved into Ciudad Juarez to try to regain control of a city in which more than 2,000 people have been murdered over the past year.
Officials say they intend to have 7,000 troops and police in position by the end of the week.
This occupation force is in addition to the 45,000 troops already deployed by Mexican President Calderon to combat the drug gangs. This also is one of the bitter fruits of the worldwide economic crisis. Just as bootleggers became rich and powerful during the Great Depression because they were selling one of the few products that was relatively immune to the ups and downs of the legal economy, so have drug cartels maintained their profitability while other “legitimate businesses” around the globe are tanking. Since drugs like Marijuana, Meth, Ecstasy, etc. are as illegal (and as profitable) as alcohol was during the Prohibition era, murderous criminal gangs have been fighting to control the drug trade. And Mexico, particularly Northern Mexico, where unemployment and poverty has soared because the Great US Consumer Machine has ground to a halt, has literally become a battleground.
I don’t have the answers to all the problems associated with the use and abuse of recreational drugs, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize that all our efforts over the last half century or so in the Drug War have done little to stem either production or consumption of these substances. What the War on Drugs has accomplished is to put more Americans in prison than ever before, increase exponentially the power and reach of the drug cartels and create a full blown crisis on our borders. The corruption of politicians and law enforcement officials both here in the US and in Mexico is another consequence of our failed policies, one that was entirely predictable based on our own history.
Any government can be corrupted by the influence of money (see, e.g. the undeniable corruption of members of Congress associated with K Street Lobbyists during the last two decades). That the Mexican government is sending in troops to occupy one of its own cities is a sign of desperation. It’s evidence of a complete breakdown in civil society, and of the possible descent of Mexico into chaos and lawlessness. And the spread of such chaos would not be easily limited by national borders. It could quickly move into regions of the United States if our economy continues to decline at the same pace it did in the last quarter of 2008, when our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell at an adjusted annual rate in excess of 6 percent, a drop so precipitous that it has even doomsayers like Nouriel Roubini alarmed.
I have to wonder what contingency plans for use of the US military inside our borders are already in place. We know that Bush had legal opinions written to provide him with the cover necessary to justify use of US military forces inside the borders of our country. We also know that in the last year of the Bush administration a separate command or “response force” of thousands of troops was created specifically for the purpose of “homeland defense” including instances of “civil unrest.” To date, I’ve seen nothing that shows that Obama and/or people in his administration have ordered the elimination of this “response force” which is under the direct authority of Northern Command. Indeed, plans continue for the construction of six FEMA detention centers on US military bases.
This isn’t a Left vs. Right issue, at least in in my mind. It’s a civil libertarian/constitutional issue that President Obama must address sooner rather than later. I’d hate to see the occupation of a major American city by the military such as the one we are witnessing in Ciudad de Juarez by Mexican troops. I’d hate to see similar instances of civil disorder in the US which could tempt President Obama to take such extreme extra-constitutional measures as the ones President Calderon has employed.
Gives a whole new meaning to the stated desire of certain conservative leaders that Obama’s economic recovery program fails, now doesn’t it.
