It's A Shooting War On This Side Of The Border

The Geek did not ever meet Rob Krentz. But, he knows other men like the murdered Arizona rancher. Mr Kentz and his dog met death at the hands of a Mexican, an illegal entrant to the US, probably a member of one of the drug smuggling syndicates so active in this part of our country.

By all reports the murdered fifth generation rancher was like most of the breed found here in the vast, sparsely populated area of harsh hills and white hot deserts--self-reliant, independent, ready to help those in need (including illegal aliens), wresting a living from a territory which is unforgiving and unkind in the extreme to those who are weak of will, mind, or body. Scoffed at as shambling last remnants of an obsolescent way of living by the sophisticated denizens of urban America, a relic of our past environmental "insensitivity," ranchers such as Mr Krentz have had nearly daily acquaintanceship with two high profile areas of modern life known only in the abstract by the majority of our fellow citizens.

The Great Emptiness extending to a depth of a hundred or so kilometers along the US-Mexico border interrupted only every now and then by towns is the line of contact along which the Americans fight out their "battles" against the flow of imported, illegal drugs, and the danger zone through which hundreds of thousands of economic opportunists, political fugitives, must pass. Like Mr Krentz and all the ranchers like him in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, the Geek has encountered exhausted, hungry, border-crossers in need of aid. Likewise, the Geek has observed the mule trains and low flying aircraft bringing their very profitable cargoes to the bottomless maw of American appetites.

It is for all these reasons of commonality that the Geek feels a particular sympathy for Mr Krantz, or, more accurately, his family and friends. Mr Krantz was collateral damage in the long failed American "War on Drugs." His death was incidental, perhaps even unintended. It was coolly impersonal as if he were simply a person unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Be that as it may, Mr Krentz died as a direct consequence of an American policy which has existed for well over a decade as a monument to the power of misplaced belief. The "Drug War" has been a conspicuous failure for its entire forty year existence by any and all rational measurements. A cost-benefit analysis would--and does--show that the costs, economic, social, political, and personal have far outweighed any benefit.

In recent years the costs--particularly those measured in lives lost--have escalated significantly. No where has this been more evident than along the Mexican border. The violence associated with "market share enhancement" has turned the city of Ciudad Juarez into a place so soaked in blood as to make Kabul safe in comparison. (OK, Caracas still is far ahead of Juarez in the Murder Derby.)

In the past twenty-seven months, over five thousand have been KIA in El Paso's sister city. Neither the body count nor the use of thousands of troops have lowered the violence. Quite the contrary. Unlike the killing of Krentz, the destruction of Juarez has been a deliberate act of policy executed by the rival syndicates but (inadvertently)aided and abetted by the Mexican government. For years the government and elites of Mexico have welcomed the drug trade as a necessary underpinning for the wheezing Mexican economy.

Now that the drug monster has grown to proportions that threaten the country's continuation as a viable polity, the government is trying too little and far too late to regain control of its own territory. Only during the past two or so years has the Mexican government finally taken real as opposed to rhetorical action in the US declared "War on Drugs." However, the Mexican authorities are unconcerned about the "Drug War" per se, only about their retention of power.

While it is irritating to listen to Mexican officials and journalists blame the totality of the current mess on the US, there is a very large germ of truth behind their portmanteau charge of American culpability. The proposition that the drug "war" would end if Americans curtailed their seemingly insatiable desire for an altered state of consciousness is accurate.

There is only one viable means to remove the problem of illegal drugs. That method is to remove the word "illegal" from the phrase. While education (whatever that might mean or imply) and treatment (whatever that might mean or imply) may serve to lower the desire for mind altering substances over time, the only practical way to abate the drug problem is to legalize the drugs.

To be sure battalions of moralists and brigades of those with a vested interest in the status quo will howl that legalization will be the end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it. So what? By what rational process using what data sets can it be shown that the consequences of legalization will be worse than a continuation of the status quo?

Leaving aside the domestic results of continuing the same old, same old, the foreign policy concerns and national interests of the US require we start the long, tortured process of political debate with a view to ending the "War on Drugs." This does not imply that we must at some future date declare "unconditional surrender" to our desire for an altered state of consciousness; rather it implies that we must sign a rational truce with the consequences of our harboring this desire deep in our brains.

Like it or not, the only way we will see the shooting stop on our side of the border as well as the Mexican, is to heed the counsel of experience gained by the blood of so many including Rob Krentz.

Shootin' 'Em Up South of the Border

The Geek lives (in)conveniently close to the Mexican border. In the old days the Geek liked to go south, down to Palomas and Juarez.

(That is he liked to before the Heimatsicherheitsamt acting in accord with a typical piece of Congressional fear driven legislation built the Great American Security Fence backed by the arrogant paranoids of the border crossings made the experience unpalatable in the extreme.)

Now, even if the badge and gun toters of DHS were to morph into gladhanding members of the Welcome Squad, the Geek would hesitate before seeking either bargains or cross-cultural enjoyment in Mexico.

Not since the glory days of Pancho Villa and the possibility of a grandstand seat in El Paso for the Revolution across the Big River has life in the borderland become such a risky business.

Of the roughly 3500 people killed to date in the virtual war between drug gangs and between the Mexican security forces and the druggies, approximately 1,000 of the corpses have been hecho en Juarez. Not long ago the police chief of Palomas nipped across the border to Columbus (that's Columbus, New Mexico in case you were thinking of the one in Ohio) seeking sanctuary from the narco-shooters.

Los Zetas, the highly trained, very well equipped para-military force has undertaken very successful and quite lethal operations deep in the border states of Arizona and Texas. A hit list containing targets in the Land of Enchantment (as New Mexico quaintly but not inaccurately calls itself) has been found in the pocket of a Zeta-ista.

(The Geek's name was not among the chosen probably because he never called anyone when the dope smuggling aircraft disturbed his sleep by flying too low over the wrong canyon.)

There is nothing humorous in the current bloodshed in Mexico. Since Mexican president Caldereon declared war on the narco-traffickers, the violence has increased geometrically. Fifty died in one week in Tijuana. The Zetas heaved hand grenades at an independence day ceremony. The noise level of the drug wars both between gangs and between government and criminals in no way obscured the growing levels of "normal" crime such as kidnappings for ransom and standard issue murders.

While the Mexican population initially supported the Caldereon crackdown overwhelmingly, recent polls show that only forty percent now do and an alarmingly low figure of twenty-five percent feel themselves to be safer now than when the anti-drug gang campaign started. More than a few Mexicans in the middle and upper classes feel that the wheels are coming off.

(An interesting sign of the times is the hottest new fashion boutique in Mexico City features bullet resistant clothing with prices running to $7,500.)

On this side of the Great Fence some are beginning to fear full-fledged civil war breaking out with an attendant flood of refugees and overflow of violence. The Geek is not among this alarmist group.

The Mexicans have shown a great capacity to persevere during times of extreme instability and violence. Their society survived the decades of internal war which ensued upon the ending of the Diaz dictatorship a century back. While the wars didn't come to a final end until the early Twenties, they did end. Since then the country and its people have outlasted regional separatist movements, most recently in Chiapas a little more than ten years ago.

Mexico has survived the collapse of the peso. It survived the mass shootings of dissident students (perhaps as many as 300) at the universities in Mexico City forty years ago this month. It has survived earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes. It even survived the graft, corruption, inefficiency, and arrogance of the Permanent Revolutionary Party during that crew's long, long decades in power.

And, lest we Norteamericanos forget, Mexico even survived losing a war with us, losing a great swath of territory and the profound feelings of humiliation which accompanied that defeat over a century and a half ago.

The heavy weight of history indicates that Mexico will both survive the current exsanguination and prevail over the drug thugs. It will be a long, hard fight and will require both understanding and assistance from the United States.

There is little doubt that both the violence and the friction between the US and Mexico will worsen as the effects of the current global credit collapse make themselves felt in the land to our south. The issue of illegal immigration (from our perspective) or "migration" from the Mexican point of view will once again charge forward in the American consciousness. The role of Americans as the largest consumers of the drugs produced or moved through Mexico will become a larger and more contentious issue between the two countries. Beyond that the question of de-nationalising the off shore oil resources of Mexico so as to allow necessary foreign investment will provide another point of diplomatic and political disagreement between Washington and Mexico City.

Get a grip on the bottom line reality: Mexico is a critical country in our national interest on multiple levels. We ignore it at peril. In a real sense we need them more than they need us.