If you enjoy psychopathic nonsense that passes itself off as informed political analysis, I can't recommend Erick Erickson's blog Red State highly enough. Much like the great Kevin Smith's forthcoming movie of the same name, Red State is a place where religious zealots rampage (mostly about how you can't be a fiscal conservative unless you're also a social conservative) and not infrequently speak in tongues.Tired of being regarded as a respected news source, CNN hired Mr. Erickson as a contributor because, hey, who's as credible as a fucking blogger? But ultimately, Red State is a hillbilly version of the Daily Kos, which makes it endlessly entertaining to read.
One of the greatest joys in my life is when mouth breathing bloggers try to address foreign policy in a coherent way. In that those posts demonstrate the blogger's almost painful ignorance of both the world around them and history behind it, it really shouldn't be missed.
A few days ago, a RedStater improbably named LaborUnionReport posted an article called "Like it or Not: Mexico is America’s Next Afghanistan" which is so wrong as to be almost hallucinogenic. Ironically, it just happens to address what Red State thinks the American response to the Mexican drug war should be. It's just too magnificent to let it pass your attention.
I've always had problems with the American War on Drugs. There is no longer any credible reason for supporting it. The nicest thing that you can say about it is that it has been a colossal failure. There's also the libertarian philosophy of keeping the government, especially the federal government, out of the lives of the citizenry. Since crime is potentially infinite and prison space is not, mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders has had a nasty habit of releasing violent sex offenders onto the streets.
Finally and most importantly, the War on Drugs has gone a long way in destroying countries that aren't the United States. Americans, being Americans, think it perfectly natural that every other country on earth not only support, but actually enforce, American law and policy. Why other countries should do this is rarely, if ever, actually addressed, but that support often brings dreadful consequences for those countries.
The Mexican drug war has now been killing Mexican citizens at a faster rate than the Vietnam War killed Americans. Since one can reasonably assume that your average Juan and Pedro aren't doing legendary lines of blow or smoking bales of marijuana in single sittings, the war is being fought at Washington's behest. As some recent WikiLeaks cables - which Red State also thinks should be destroyed - reveal, the war isn't going well.
LaborUnionReport laughably takes it as a given that an American military intervention is going to be required in Mexico, sooner rather than later. This despite the fact that surprisingly little of the Mexican violence has spilled over into the United States.
It's a patently absurd assumption upon which to write a patently absurd article. The American military, for those of you who haven't been paying attention, has been rather busy of late. Quelling the insane levels of violence in Iraq nearly broke the armed forces and it bled political support for the Bush administration white. No matter what American and NATO forces do in Afghanistan, it is resisted by the Taliban insurgency. Yet the Red State party line is to begin a third war in a country with a, shall we say, complicated history with the United States.
Where the men and material come from is of course left unaddressed by LabourUnionReport. What Republicans (because these people are definitely not conservatives) forgot about 10 years ago is that war is a tricky business that requires overwhelming force. It also requires you to expect the worst. If Americans have learned anything at all from the Iraq debacle, it should be that the Mexican people might not like American soldiers occupying their country any better than they like the sociopathic drug cartels that are tearing it apart.
LaborUnionReport then introduces the most balls-out crazy idea of all: The outright annexation of Mexico.
First, this would be illegal under international law, no different than Iraq's attempted annexation of Kuwait in 1990. It would destroy U.S relations with Central and South America, probably forever, and could possibly be responded to with massive non-Islamic terrorism in the United States. Needless to say, it would also make the United States a pariah nation in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Second, even if the Mexican people begged for annexation, the U.S economy couldn't afford it. The German economy is still suffering from reunification, and that happened twenty years ago. Oh, and West Germany didn't begin that process on the verge of bankruptcy, which is exactly where America is now. Bringing Mexico up to the American standard of living would require vast investment. There would be 112,000,000 new Americans that would like comfy Nikes and flatscreen TVs too and wouldn't be afraid to vote themselves those things. Where do you suppose Congress would get the money? Does anybody think that America's Stalinist masters in Beijing are going bankroll that?
Third and most importantly, it isn't even very likely that the conquest of Mexico would be militarily attainable under current conditions. Nearly a quarter of a million troops are engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, which don't have half of Mexico's population between them or the same contentious history. The same Red Staters that want to "fix" Mexico are also demanding wars that will "fix" Iran and North Korea. Even with a World War II-size draft, I'm not certain that the American military could survive the experience. If there was any Mexican resistance at all, the army could collapse under the weight of the added commitment ... if it didn't destroy the American treasury first.
LaborUnionReport's arguments are so weapons-grade idiotic that I can't believe that I'm engaging them. But stupidity amuses me and Red State has a truly big and boneheaded audience, which could very well be dumb enough to take ideas like this seriously. More importantly, Republican politicians actually listen to these jackoffs.
I also love reading the analysis on Mexico by Republican blogs like Red State because, without exception, they ignore the twin elephants in the room that tell you why Mexico is disintegrating. This collapse is a completely "Made in the U.S.A" problem.
As I mentioned earlier, the drug traffic isn't happening to service the non-existent Mexican market. Since Americans consume about half of the world's illegal drugs, it's a reasonable assumption that the majority of the world's drugs are going to America, irrespective of where they come from. But in an incredibly idiotic example of supply-side law enforcement, the American government has had foreigners attempt to address a purely American demand for drugs for thirty years now. That hasn't worked out well for the countries that have cooperated.
Moreover, it's a challenge to have a war worth its salt without lots and lots of guns, and the Washington Post this week stated the obvious about where those guns are coming from. Texas. The drugs come in, the guns go out and everybody's happy, except of course for the Mexicans that are getting dead in truly horrific numbers. That also stands to reason. If the Mexican army needs to be supplied by the United States, it follows that Mexico's psychotic and murderous cartels would, too.
Don't expect to hear that from the paranoids at blogs like Red State, however. That would involve somehow interfering with their "Second Amendment remedies" to virtually everything. Never mind that there are already any number of laws barring the sale of weapons to non-resident foreigners and non-federally approved exports of weaponry, the American government is singularly unable or unwilling to enforce those laws.
LaborUnionReport's demented ramblings aside, this has nothing to do with "border control." If large quantities of Afghan heroin is getting into a closed society like Iran, Mexican cocaine and marijuana are always going to their way into the United States. Even awesomely retarded ideas like annexing Mexico would be ineffective, because the drugs would just come in from Guatemala and Costa Rica. And they'd be coming into a much larger and more lucrative market.
Let's forget the U.S for a second and concentrate on Mexico. The Americans can't sensibly address their own demand for drugs and they won't control the flow of their guns. It's foolish for anyone to think that the United States is going to save Mexico, more so if you take the dark fantasies of blogs like Red State seriously. And when Mexican citizens are being slaughtered by the ten of thousands, they shouldn't rely on anyone else to save them.
Having said that, it isn't the responsibility of Mexico to keep Americans away from drugs, especially when the United States won't keep its Second Amendment within its own borders. Mexico City could stop the violence - and the domestic demand for heavy weaponry - overnight.
All it needs to do is completely decriminalize the drug trade. If no one is opposing the traffic in Mexico, there's a reasonable chance that the brutalization of the Mexican military, police and people would stop. Moreover, private business could probably wipe out the cartels with the power of the free market in short order. Criminals will always monopolize a criminal market, but they wouldn't likely survive very long in a free one.
Would Washington like it? No, but could Washington make things any worse in Mexico than they are now?
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