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September 30, 2013
An Escalation in Border Futility
My first year in the US Army (1958-59) was spent working in a dispensary at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Then I was transferred across the highway to William Beaumont General Hospital to do a 4 year residency in General Surgery.In five consecutive years on the Border I never heard of a marijuana arrest. The most serious "drug-related" problem we dealt with was when drunken GIs got into Saturday night bar fights in Juarez; fairly common events that produced at least two GI deaths I can recall.
Since 2006 and before, the most egregious modern examples of federal "drug control" futility- and American media hypocrisy- have been the smuggling operations of brutal Mexican cartels moving tons of marijuana into the US across and around the border while engaging in brutal turf battles with each other that have killed an estimated 60,000 Mexicans since 2006. Juarez, a city I used to visit frequently without trepidation became one of the the world's most dangerous and remains so despite a recent reduction in killings.
Also, an improbable change in cartel tactics just reported by a New York tabloid is nevertheless convincing: American GIs, desperate for money and trained to kill in Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited to function as cartel hit men on the American side of the border.
The most obvious questions then become: how much longer can our "mainstream" media pretend not to notice such blatant federal hypocrisy? Also, how long can the Obama administration pretend Mexico is on another continent while Nixon's DEA squanders millions in its pursuit of failure?
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at September 30, 2013 12:41 AM