Editorial: Let’s call Mexico’s cartels what they are: terrorists

Published 07 April 2011 06:13 PM

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, gets it. When drug cartel thugs order mass kidnappings, explode bombs, murder scores of public officials, behead victims or hang them from overpasses, and post signs in border-area cities warning of more violence if they don’t get their way, that’s not mere drug trafficking. That’s terrorism.

Finally, someone in Washington is taking action in response to the unprecedented threat on America’s southern border. McCaul, chairman of a House Homeland Security subcommittee, has introduced a bill to add Mexico’s six dominant cartels to the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.

It’s time to take the gloves off and stop treating these cartels as Mexican versions of the neighborhood pusher. These gangs have murdered 35,000 people since 2006 — more than 10 times the number killed in the 9/11 attacks. That’s terrorism.

“The violence and its raw, often sadistic, brutality form an ever-present backdrop to daily life in Mexico. … I think many of us here have failed to grasp the profound impact of this narco-terrorism on the lives of Mexican citizens,â€