MexicoBlog Editorial: U.S. Drug Warriors Continue Delusional Arrogance

This past week the prominant story about the drug war was the New York Times revelation that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the Justice Department was actively participating in helping Mexican drug cartels launder millions of dollars, including transporting it via government airplanes back to banks in the U.S..

The actions of the DEA are all too like those of its fellow Justice Department agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), in the "Fast and Furious gun walking" escapade, for which Attorney General Holder was again apologizing to Congress this week. The Times reported that some former D.E.A. officials "rejected comparisons between letting guns and money walk away. Money, they said, poses far less of a threat to public safety."

Far less threat? It not only pays for the guns, it is the life blood for which the cartels violently battle! The comment also says nothing about the U.S. banks that are taking the money.

When asked about all of this by the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, Todd Robinson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the U.S. Department of State (which oversees the Merida Initiative), said the authorities in his country and Mexico "will use every tool we can to combat organized crime and narcotics trafficking."

This bespeaks the continuing arrogance and blindness of the U.S. government in waging the so-called "war on drugs." The Obama administration--as evidenced by these attempted "stings" that involve major collusions with  the "enemy"--continues this forty-year-old, delusional "war" strategy. It is based on a cops-and-robbers mentality that begins by defining the sale and consumption of certain drugs as outside the law. The "cops" then go after the "outlaws" with "every tool" they can devise, including collusion.

President Obama expressed this mentality most clearly in his July 19 announcement of his administration's Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime. He stated, "... this strategy is organized around a single, unifying principle: to build, balance, and integrate the tools of American power to combat transnational organized crime and related threats to our national security..." As a "national security strategy," great emphasis is placed on "intellligence gathering," aka spies.

As both Fast and Furious and this latest money laundering tactic demonstrate, these spy "tools" include any means conceivable. Meanwhile the government continues to deny that the root of the problem lies in its making the consumption and use of these drugs illegal. Without the illegality, there would be no "robbers" and, thus, no need for the "cops," aka the DEA, and its spy-thriller undercover agents.