Thread: Mexico ambassador: Our cartel leaders are businessmen

Mexico ambassador: Our cartel leaders are businessmen, not terrorists

By Tod Robberson, Editorial Writer
trobberson@dallasnews.com
10:48 AM on Tue., Apr. 12, 2011


I wanted so badly to include some other photos with this blog item. Our files are full of the most gruesome photos imaginable. There are dismembered corpses dumped on the sidewalk. There's one of a mother and her child dead on the floor, their bodies bloodied and pockmarked by bullets. This one is the least offensive I could find while still making the point that Mexico's drug cartels are terrorist organizations.

In a letter to the editor today, Mexico's ambassador, Arturo Sarukhan , comes to the defense of these mass murdering, torturing, dismembering, bombing, beheading, kidnapping and drug trafficking organizations, arguing that they are businessmen, not terrorists. Folks, we have a first here. You will not, until now, have seen any top Mexican official actually defending the cartels to this extent. But Sarukhan, taking issue with our editorial last week in defense of a bill before Congress to put Mexico's six biggest cartels on the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, strongly disagrees.

Yes, they are very violent criminal organizations, he says. But "they pursue a single goal. They want to maximize their profits and do what most business do: hostile takeovers and pursue mergers and acquisitions."

Again, in their defense, he says they have "no political motivation or agenda whatsoever beyond their attempt to defend their illegal business."

So, when they kill dozens of mayors, police chiefs, soldiers, journalists, newspaper editors, businessmen, mothers, children, American visitors, immigrants, farmers, truck drivers, musicians, dancers, teachers, etc., etc., etc., we are to believe this is just business? Part of a new mergers-and-acquisitions strategy? And when they hang signs from overpasses, along with a body to punctuate their point, warning that this is their territory, not the government's, there's no political message there?

Perhaps the ambassador should read up a bit on these entrepreneurial business groups to see what they're really up to. There's any number of articles, in English or Spanish, describing their political motives. Here's something I found from a 2009 piece by John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, two guys who know the difference between terrorists and businessmen:

Unlike Pablo Escobar's Colombian reign of terror in the 1990s, the Mexican cartels are engaged in serious insurgent campaigns. Armed with military infantry weapons, their gunmen use complex small-unit tactics that differ from the usual "pray and spray" methods beloved by criminals. Cartels run training camps for assassins on the border. They attempt to agitate the populace against the Mexican military through political subversion. And they control towns and neighborhoods that the military tries to retake through force.

Mexico's cartels are evolving distinct political aims. La Familia is exemplary in this regard. Using social services and infrastructure protection as levers in rural areas and small towns, they are building a social base. In urban areas, they are funding political patron-client relationships to extend their reach. Reinforced by corruption, propaganda, political marches and demonstrations, as well as social media such as "narcocorridos," such activity helps to shape the future conflict.

This is no longer about drug policy. This is about fighting terrorists. And they are present right across the border in Mexico, and we need to call them what they are.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnew ... assad.html

the Letter Mentioned above from the Mexican Ambassador to the Letter to the Editor part of Dallas Morning News:

Choose labels carefully

Re: "Let's call México's Cartels what they are: terrorists," Friday Editorials.

The editorial should be better headed "Let's Call Mexico's cartels what they are: very violent, well-financed transnational criminal organizations."
These transnational criminal organizations, which operate in both our countries, are not terrorist organizations. They are very violent criminal groups that are well-structured and well-financed. They pursue a single goal. They want to maximize their profits and do what most business do: hostile takeovers and pursue mergers and acquisitions. They use violence to protect their business from other competitors as well as from our two governments' efforts to roll them back. There is no political motivation or agenda whatsoever beyond their attempt to defend their illegal business.
Misunderstanding the challenge we face leads to wrong policies and bad policy making. If you label these organizations as terrorist, you will have to start calling drug consumers in the U.S. "financiers of terrorist organizations" and gun dealers "providers of material support to terrorists." Otherwise, you really sound as if you want to have your cake and eat it too. That's why I would underscore that the editorial page should be careful what it advocates for.

Arturo Sarukhan, Ambassador of Mexico to the U.S., Washington, D.C.

http://letterstotheeditorblog.dallasnew ... and-v.html

These two were also on the page at the same link

Blame drug prohibition
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and The Dallas Morning News don't have a clue on how to solve the horror and misery that is Mexico today. They naively believe that tougher penalties will have an impact? Please. As a retired detective, I know that drug dealers accept, as a condition of employment, death and long prison terms.
Drug prohibition is the cause of all the beheadings. To end Mexico's death and misery, we need to repeal our drug prohibition just like we did in 1933. As women and children are shot dead every day in Mexico, it is immoral for our country to continue this failed, trillion-dollar modern prohibition.


U.S. must stop gun flow
Re: "Dallas-area guns arm drug killers -- Cash fuels legal sales, illegal resales that put firepower in cartels' hands," Sunday news story.
In the current Mexican drug war roughly 30,000 lives have been lost within the past four years. This week, the Mexican ambassador to Washington again blamed lax American gun laws for fueling the drug conflict in Mexico.
There have been recent successes in gun seizures at or near the border. This summer, police in Texas got a tip that two men in a truck were moving a cache of weapons through Laredo. The authorities found 147 assault rifles and more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in the vehicle, which they believe was headed for Mexico.
What exactly is our government doing to fight this drug war? Will this become another war where America sits on the sideline and watches people attempt to reclaim the balance of goodness?

http://letterstotheeditorblog.dallasnew ... and-v.html

The real issue for all this is the mexican people need to stand up for themselves and stop expecting citizans of the US to change their laws as to give the catrels less power! If we were to make all drugs in the us legal you've just rewarded the cartels instant legal bisness and then they'll run to other countries and set up shop because the price of the same drugs over there will be higher this is no solution contary to the ambasators additude these aren't busness men by any means these are durg maniafacturing, distributers, and thugs in a criminal interprise and his statement to contary showes how high the courption really goes and the fact most mexicans buckle under any real oppisition! If mexico decides to turn a blind eye to the cartels I feel as a citizan of the USA that mexico owes us 4 billion for that dumb that agreement we made with them! All criminals in the US should head down to mexico you comit enough crimes and get rich your no longer a criminal but a bisness man

Originally Posted by jamesw62

These two were also on the page at the same link

Blame drug prohibition
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and The Dallas Morning News don't have a clue on how to solve the horror and misery that is Mexico today. They naively believe that tougher penalties will have an impact? Please. As a retired detective, I know that drug dealers accept, as a condition of employment, death and long prison terms.
Drug prohibition is the cause of all the beheadings. To end Mexico's death and misery, we need to repeal our drug prohibition just like we did in 1933. As women and children are shot dead every day in Mexico, it is immoral for our country to continue this failed, trillion-dollar modern prohibition.


U.S. must stop gun flow
Re: "Dallas-area guns arm drug killers -- Cash fuels legal sales, illegal resales that put firepower in cartels' hands," Sunday news story.
In the current Mexican drug war roughly 30,000 lives have been lost within the past four years. This week, the Mexican ambassador to Washington again blamed lax American gun laws for fueling the drug conflict in Mexico.
There have been recent successes in gun seizures at or near the border. This summer, police in Texas got a tip that two men in a truck were moving a cache of weapons through Laredo. The authorities found 147 assault rifles and more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in the vehicle, which they believe was headed for Mexico.
What exactly is our government doing to fight this drug war? Will this become another war where America sits on the sideline and watches people attempt to reclaim the balance of goodness?

http://letterstotheeditorblog.dallasnew ... and-v.html

Gee I wonder what the "retired detective" is smoking? Mexico doesn't have the death penalty and their "jails" are offices for the cartels. Yeah, a deterent all right. Start executing these scum and let's see if that'll work. Prohibition? Gee, ya mean drugs are legal in mexico? Another thing, why are we to blame for mexico being incompetent?

As for the second fool, who do you suppose is smuggling those guns into mexico,hmmm??? Mexican nationals, by far. The solution here is to deport every single mexican national who is here illegally, along with their extended families and ban them from ever setting foot in the US. The only lax laws we have are the refusal to enforce immigration laws against mexican nationals. We don't seem to have a problem deporting people from other countries though, why is that?