Carl Hiaasen
Some of the world's most vicious terrorists live a short drive from
With well-founded fearlessness, the bosses of
There is no American military presence, covert or otherwise, to deter the narco-terrorists. Our government is expensively preoccupied chasing jihadists on the other side of the world.
Perhaps that explains why the mayhem in
Yet, if body counts are a measure of true public menace, the Mexican drug barons are a force to be feared. About 30,200 people have died since President
More than 2,000 of those murder victims were local, state and federal law-enforcement officers. During a recent 24-hour span in
Border towns where drug gangs compete are strangled by fear, and those who stand up (and some who don't) are brutally silenced. Some bodies are delivered home in vats of acid, as a lesson.
Recently, a few municipalities have chosen women as mayors and police chiefs, on the theory they are less likely than men to be targeted by narco-assassins.
A case could be made that what's happening in
Cartel-connected shootings have been reported in
Then, as now, the drugs themselves weren't the big danger. It was the killings, the easy cash and, of course, the corruption.
Although they also traffic in heroin and methamphetamine, Mexican cartels specialize in moving marijuana, which should have been decriminalized and regulated a long time ago in this country. It would have put guys like
From a foreign perspective, the Mexican drug wars are easier to overlook by taking the naive view that gang members are just killing off each other. If only that were true. The cartels have targeted prominent figures from every democratic institution -- from the courts to the media to the legislative assemblies.
No one who speaks out is safe, an intolerable state of affairs in a nation that is supposedly one of our most important allies.
Meanwhile, in
One gang of killers and kidnappers, defectors from the Arellano Felix drug organization, operated for three years in a
The U.S. has given
Few U.S. leaders seem willing to admit the obvious.
As they have for 40 years, the smuggling cartels will thrive as long as marijuana is illegal and American consumers are hungry to buy it.
At the same time, it's impossible to stem illegal immigration as long as
Sending in the 82nd Airborne probably isn't a politically viable solution, although it would certainly get El Chapo's attention. At the very least, somebody in
For Americans, the stakes could be just as high as in
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At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes
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(C) 2011 The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services Inc.