Drug-War Logic: These Costly, Failed Policies Must Continue Indefinitely

[n2doc]

by CONOR FRIEDERSDORF

Did you know that the U.S. has been operating surveillance drones in Mexico, providing air support for the Mexican military, tracking the movements of Mexican citizens, sharing state of the art spy technology with Mexican officials, and sending CIA agents to help Mexico train drug informants? Did you know the DEA has more employees stationed in Mexico than any of its other foreign posts? That Mexican nationals trained and bankrolled by the CIA raid Mexican drug cartels? Or that the CIA runs high-tech "fusion centers" in Mexico City, Monterrey and elsewhere?

"For the past seven years, Mexico and the United States have put aside their tension-filled history on security matters to forge an unparalleled alliance against Mexico's drug cartels, one based on sharing sensitive intelligence, U.S. training and joint operational planning," Dana Priest reports in the Washington Post. "But now, much of that hard-earned cooperation may be in jeopardy." Enrique Pena Nieto, Mexico's new leader, reportedly dislikes the status quo, and was shocked, on taking office this December, at the degree of United States involvement in his country.

The article is worth reading in full.

What I can't help but remark upon is the way that it handles the spectacular failure of the War on Drugs. It notes "mounting criticism" that whatever success has been had against cartel leaders has also helped to incite "more violence than anyone had predicted, more than 60,000 deaths and 25,000 disappearances in the past seven years alone." Put another way, the period of maximum American involvement has coincided with a horrific spike in drug-related violence.

"Meanwhile," Priest continues, "the drug flow into the United States continued unabated. Mexico remains the U.S. market's largest supplier of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine and the transshipment point for 95 percent of its cocaine." So the strategy was high cost, low reward.

It increased violence and did nothing to reduce the drug supply.

more

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/drug-war-logic-these-costly-failed-policies-must-continue-indefinitely/275410/

[Fumesucker]

1. Mama Friedersdorf's little boy is a touchingly naive

The drug war is doing precisely what it was designed to do right from the beginning and the people running it know exactly what they are doing.

[Arctic Dave]

2. What I find disturbing is the incredable uptick in violence in Mexico

since the US has started to "help" them.

This is my CT of the day.

Was the US running guns into Mexico to help create the violence we are there to help stop? Was the problem a fabrication so we could "fuse" ourselves into their police/military structures like we do all over the world?