Imagine you had a neighbor who is always offering to help others clean their houses, but instead of tidying up he leaves things behind worse than it was to start with.
Would you let such neighbor help you clean your house?
I’d rather have Mexico drowning even more in blood and violence by the cartels than having the US militarily intervene to “help us fix things”. Beyond a matter of sovereignty, the US has never, ever, left a country better that it was after invading, or militarily intervening. Instead it has left behind more violence, sectarianism, and mostly spiraling chaos.
Are the cartels terrorists organizations, surely. Is security in Mexico a shit show, certainly. Will the US bombing Mexican soil fix the issue, it would only make it worse.
If the US was so worried about violence in Mexico they could start by cleaning their side of the fence by stopping the flow of weapons. Their previous campaigns of international droning had served little to weed out the bad guys. The ranks of terrorist cells are filled by those who were radicalized by “collateral damage”.
Lastly I’ll share a short story:
In 2014, the state of Washington had just legalized weed, and shortly after that the attorney general of the state came to the office to give a presentation about local laws (or something like that). After his presentation the floor was opened for q&a, there were around 150 people in attendance. I asked him when would weed be legal all across the US. Everyone laughed, truth be told my own naivety prevented me from realizing such question would had made everyone think I was a huge weed enthusiast who just wanted to smoke all across the country. Not wanting to pass a perfect opportunity to make everyone cringe at their selves, I quickly amended my question by adding the following: “I’m only asking because I am Mexican and in my country a lot of people die because of drug and cartel violence so that you can all enjoy your drugs”. Laughter immediately changed to awkward silence, I smiled internally.
The memory of the people is short, it’s ignorance is infinite and it’s common sense is often not common at all. Thus, self serving politicians are bound to do politics at the expense of others.
Mexico will stop providing drugs when the appetite of the American market ceases. In turn the country will pacify itself when the supply of weapons stop.
