Mexican newspaper to drug cartels: What do you want from us?

If the problem is bandits from Mexico becoming rich and powerful by smuggling and selling illegal drugs to Americans, maybe there's a better way to deal with the issue than annexing Mexico.

 

"You only cover us when we kill a couple of your reporters!"

As a reader, I found that note jarring in its insensitivity to the hundreds of others who have been killed in cartel violence. I'm sure if the U.S. wasn't presently occupied they would probably be a bigger focus right now.

 

Jarring and cowardly. Or it might have been sarcastic. I wasn't quite sure, honestly.

 

These gentlemen agree with you...

 

I don't think so. The US going to war against the cartels in Mexico would be like Bama playing Furman in the second-to-last game of the year.

 

Wow. That's a cool photo. Sort of like a pre-game warmup snap between Villa, Pershing et al.

I don't know. It sounds like your basic whack-a-mole situation. Destroy one cartel and another one pops up elsewhere.

 

As we've seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places, it just depends on the rules of engagement.
Get the cartel goons out in the open for a firefight? Then it's Cumberland-Georgia Tech on the battlefield.
Try to fight them the way we've done on Colombia, by going after crops? Then the cartels win.

Unless you fight them like an insurgency -- utilize the public's outrage and desire for a normal life to gin up support for your cause -- then you won't win. And as long as the root causes of Mexico's problems remain (poverty, a shoddy economy, poor education), and the cartels continue to show they can get to anyone anytime they please, it's a hard battle to fight.
The one thing that would help is that the cartels have overplayed their hand. There's only so much hell you can unleash on a populace before they start fighting back in one form or another, and the cartels have passed that tipping point.

 

Instead of sending drug users to jail send them to Chihuahua.

 

If you can't beat the narcos, join them. Offer them ad space. Free house ad to the biggest spender?

 

Or feature them on your society pages

Lupe Muerte cuts a rakish figure with his double AK-47s and combat boots at the monthly Narco ball ....

 

We have sent drones to cover the entire US-Mexico border. So far, they aren't equipped with Hellfire missiles.