Mexico makes Afghanistan lok civilized

Published: Sunday, August 01, 2010, 5:55 AM
John Farmer/The Star-Ledger

(photo) EPAMexican soldiers escort the convoy which is carrying the corpse of drug lord Ignacio Coronel Villareal from Zapopan municipality to Forensic Medical Service entity in Guadalajara, Mexico, yesterday.

There’s a sameness about the news — more killings of the security forces and civilians, kidnappings, beheadings, roadside extortion and corruption that infects the army, police and government officialdom alike.

The country is a failed state, a narco-state even, unable to protect its people or provide jobs. The young are forced into the drug trade for employment. Ordinary families live in fear as much of the military and police as of the terrorists. Many have lost faith in the war. Afghanistan is indeed in dreadful condition.

But the state we’re describing here is Mexico.

Its bloody and apparently losing battle against brazen drug cartels provides a grim background to the struggle in the streets, the press and the courts of this country over illegal Mexican immigration and what to do about it.

The violence along the U.S.-Mexico border is worsening and raising fears it will spill over into this country. In recent days, 17 Mexicans were brutally gunned down — at a birthday party of all things. The first car bomb also was set off, shades of Afghanistan. And, as in Afghanistan, whispers are heard in Mexico that the war against the drug terrorists is not worth the cost.

There another similarity, too — the tendency of Mexican politicians, like Afghanistan’s, to blame the United States for their troubles.

A case in point is former Mexican president Vicente Fox, who was asked last week by an all-too-accommodating New York Times columnist if “you think the United States is causing Mexico’s crime wave?â€