The New Frontier; Drug Wars

As the wars of the recently rejected occupied White House wind down, the employment situation for mercenaries would appear to be diminishing. Resourceful as ever in inventing ways to get on welfare, your hired warriors have a new field of operations. Violence along the southern border has heated up, and Mexico may be the next occupied state.

While you may have read recently about the gang wars in states as far from the border as Tennessee and the Dakotas, fertile soil is being dug by 'contractors' in the area this country controls nearest to Mexico. They can start there and spread inland like, say, boll weevils, if past experience is an indicator.

Alarmed by spiraling drug violence along their shared border, U.S. and Mexican officials say they foresee an enhanced U.S. role in the battle against powerful cartels, including joint operations that could involve private American contractors or U.S. military and intelligence personnel.

The U.S. and Mexican officials say their cooperation could go beyond the current practice of "sharing intelligence." They say that historical concerns about Mexican sovereignty may be overcome by the challenge in restoring stability to key regions, particularly along the border.

Several officials, interviewed separately and on the condition of anonymity, stressed that specifics about an enhanced U.S. role remain unclear and that the timing is also unclear and will largely depend on the widening violence.

But "everything is on the table," one Mexican official said, including "joint operations."

"I agree with that statement," said a senior U.S. counternarcotics official agrees. "I think the cooperation is unprecedented, and it's yielding unprecedented results."
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The number of gangland slayings more than doubled in 2008 from the previous year, to more than 5,700. U.S. officials say they view the violence as a national security threat because routes to transport drugs north could be exploited by terrorists.

Underscoring those concerns are new alarms being sounded, including a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command that says lack of security puts Mexico and Pakistan at risk of becoming failed states.

That assessment is challenged by senior U.S. and Mexican officials, including Mexico's Interior Minister Fernando Francisco Gómez Mont and Garza.

"Mexico is not even close to becoming a failed state," Garza said. "You can bet there will be more violence, but we need to be supportive of this administration's efforts and build alliances with Mexico, not slip back into a climate where we blame first and think later."

Next month, the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute, a Washington research organization, will recommend that both governments "establish joint or combined binational law enforcement units capable of quick response to cartel activity."

To deal with issues of mistrust, one analyst suggested, the U.S. government will need to allow Mexican federal law enforcement investigators on U.S. soil, albeit in limited roles.

Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, a political consultant, predicted that "joint operations on both sides of the border will be a key decision made by the Obama and Calderón administrations in the months to come. Otherwise, joint operations will be unacceptable for the Mexicans."

Mexican agents are already being posted in key U.S. agencies, he said.

"We're talking about a transnational threat that doesn't stop on the Mexican side," he added.

Of course, with drug activity becoming the new frontier for hired war personnel, the hope for an end to prohibition by drug laws, greatly diminishing the population inside our U.S. jails and commercially run prisons, is greatly reduced. Blackwater and Co. have shown they have great lobbyists, and even have managed to operate outside the law inside Iraq. The border has always been far removed from that rule of law we like to think the U.S. enjoys. It is under a threat in this operation of being put altogether into the Abandon Hope category if the mercenaries are in charge.

Hopefully we will have a Department of Justice back in operation before long. The return of a law-abiding government would be a good point to start in putting this Drug War back into rational containment.