Jaime Daremblum at The Weekly Standard uses math to prove that Mexico's drug war is getting results:

But despite the continuing violence--in a particularly vicious attack on September 2, 18 people were killed execution style at a Juárez drug-rehabilitation center--Calderón's efforts have not been in vain. A new report from the U.S. State Department observes that "more than 43,000 individuals connected with the major cartels were arrested between December 2006 and February 2009," including senior members of the cartels. Mexican authorities confiscated 4,220 weapons in 2006 and 9,500 a year later; all told, they have seized "more than 27,000 since the beginning of 2008." Since January 2007, they have also confiscated some 65 metric tons of cocaine, nearly 1,250 kilos of methamphetamine, and roughly 4.2 million kilos of marijuana. These achievements are not insignificant.

He's right. These achievements are significant indeed. They got 7,500 people killed last year.

Don't you understand that the exact activities you're rooting for are the reason people are dying? What is so complicated about this? It's a simple formula: more drug war = more death. It's perfectly incoherent to root for arrests and drug seizures, while simultaneously expressing hope that the violence will subside. It doesn't work that way. Anyone struggling with this concept should just pull up a chair and watch what happens next.

According to a new expert analysis, Mexico's brutal drug war is costing the country a whole hell of a lot of money:

Tobias estimates the economic cost of Mexico’s violence is 2 percent to 3 percent of GDP, and the total cost is $120 billion, or about 12 percent of Mexico’s $1.085 trillion GDP in 2008. The estimate by Bulltick, a Miami-based brokerage with offices in four Latin American countries, includes prevention measures, prison costs, lost foreign direct investment and expenses to victims and businesses. [Bloomberg]

What I just can't understand, no matter how hard I try, is why on earth anyone ever expected a different outcome than this. It is literally the goal of Mexico's chief drug war strategists to reduce violence and save their nation's reputation. That is what they thought would happen if they cracked down on the drug trade. Instead, every single problem they sought to address has gotten worse.

And as bad as things have gotten, you can bet that the leaders of the Mexican drug war will look at this data and say that it shows the need for more aggressive strategies to finally defeat the cartels.

According to Esquire, it may be as many as 15,000. It's awfully hard to calculate with any certainty, but the author's point is to demonstrate that Mexico's frightening drug war death toll isn't the only one worth discussing. Americans are also paying a great price for our disastrous drug policy and it's time to take a closer look at how those numbers add up and how ending the drug war can bring them back down.

Predictably, Mark Kleiman has a problem with the article's pro-legalization angle and expresses his doubts about the 15,000 figure. My question for Kleiman is this: if that number is wrong, then what's the correct number? How should it be calculated? The bottom line here is that people are getting killed constantly in the war on drugs and we're trying to do something about it.

Kleiman hypocritically attacks both sides in the drug war debate for failing to use what he considers "factually and logically sound arguments," while simultaneously insisting – without any proof -- that legalization will create catastrophic spikes in drug use. He could be right, but we don’t really have any way to find out other than by doing exactly what he says we shouldn’t do. Personally, my gut instinct is that Kleiman is partially right, but that the benefits of reducing the collective harms of prohibition will decisively outweigh the new harms he anticipates. Again, there's only one way to find out.

Moreover, it's just crazy to accept the current body count based on the assumption that alternatives can't possibly work. LEAP's Neill Franklin nails this point:

But what about the argument that drugs will spread like wildfire if we don't keep bringing down the hammer?

"First, there's no concrete study to support such a belief — it's all completely speculation," Franklin insists. "So in my left hand I have all this speculation about what may happen to addiction rates, and then I look at my other hand and I see all these dead bodies that are actually fact, not speculation. And you're going to ask me to weigh the two? Second, if the addiction rate does go up, I'm going to have a lot of live addicts that I can cure. The direction we're going in now, I've got a lot of dead bodies."

Regardless of how legalization might impact addiction rates, it's just a fact that people are presently getting shot to death over drugs on a daily basis. If you think it has to be that way, you're wrong. People do not have to be murdered in the streets constantly. We can change that, we really can, and then we can do some more number crunching and decide if regulating drug sales is worth it or not.

I've had a creeping feeling for a while now that the cartels might try to take things to the next level:

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has captured a drug smuggler believed to have been plotting to assassinate President Felipe Calderon in revenge for the army's crackdown on trafficking, a senior police official said on Monday.

Dimas Diaz, a mid-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel in northwestern Mexico, was arrested on Sunday in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan with four other traffickers, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police's anti-drug wing.

"Government intelligence reports led us to find out the threat was from the Sinaloa cartel, with Dimas Diaz entrusted with the details of a possible attack," he told reporters. [Reuters]

The magnitude of all this is quite incredible to behold. We've reached a point where anything is possible in Mexico (anything, that is, except victory in the bloody war on drugs). The prospect of a Presidential assassination is a deeply unnerving reminder that the situation in Mexico could actually become considerably uglier than it already is.

I shudder to think what effect such an event would have on the already problematic level of U.S. involvement in Mexico's disastrous war on drugs. Please, let's just stop this now before it literally destroys everything there is to destroy.

President Calderon's epic drug war escalation is rapidly becoming an unprecedented exhibit in the absolute futility of everything drug prohibition stands for. The harder you fight, the more you lose, and that realization is increasingly beginning to sink in:

There are now sustained calls in Mexico for a change in tactics, even from allies within Calderón's political party, who say the deployment of 45,000 soldiers to fight the cartels is a flawed plan that relies too heavily on the blunt force of the military to stem soaring violence and lawlessness. [Washington Post]

No kidding. How are soldiers supposed to "stem soaring violence" when their deployment is causing it? Violence is what soldiers do for a living.

U.S. officials said they now believe Mexico faces a longer and bloodier campaign than anticipated and is likely to require more American aid.

They didn't anticipate this. Seriously. Anyone who's surprised by this outcome has no business working on international drug policy, let alone allocating American tax dollars towards programs that do the exact opposite of what they think.

U.S. and Mexican government officials say the military strategy, while difficult, is working.

What does that even mean? You said you were trying to reduce violence and you increased it. Unless your goal is to eventually kill everyone in Mexico, it's not working.

"This battle is a full frontal assault," Monte Alejandro Rubido, Calderon's senior adviser on drug policy on Mexico's National Security Council, said in an interview. "There are no alternatives."

Yes there are. And the only rational and humane choice you have is to begin discussing them now before thousands more lives are needlessly lost. There is only so much the Mexican people can tolerate and it's really just a matter of time before the war has to be stopped. This plan didn't work last year and it won’t start working next year.

It's not hard to understand the reluctance of so many who bear responsibility for this to admit that they've been wrong all along. The countless lives lost and destroyed are not something anyone wants on their conscience and the human mind is a powerful tool for shielding desperate people from uncomfortable truths. Still, the battlefield that smolders before us is obviously here to stay as long as we continue down the hopeless path our governments have chosen for us. As long as this has gone on, it nonetheless stands to reason that it cannot continue forever.

It is vastly nobler to admit failure in the name of progress than to continue it out of fear and shame.

In a report on the latest massacre of federal police in Mexico, the Los Angeles Times points out that the Mexican people seem to be losing faith in President Calderon's escalated campaign against the cartels:

"We cannot, we should not, we will not take one step backward in this matter," Calderon said Tuesday.

Mexicans seem skeptical. In a new poll, more than half of respondents said they believe the government is losing the war. Only 28% said it is winning, according to the survey, published Tuesday in the daily Milenio newspaper.

That frustration is becoming a big problem for Calderon:

MEXICO CITY - President Felipe Calderon suffered a setback in midterm elections yesterday when the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party unseated his party as the largest force in Mexico’s fractured Congress in a vote that turned on the global economic crisis and the government’s crackdown on drug traffickers. [Boston Globe]

And it's only going to get worse. Calderon's crackdown has produced the opposite of its intended effect, which is exactly what one should always expect from aggressive tactics in the war on drugs. Violence and corruption will only continue to escalate and Calderon will inevitably be fighting for re-election amidst daily episodes of horrific street violence brought about by his own policies.

Calderon's predecessor Vicente Fox is now advocating discussion about legalizing drugs and it's probably just a matter of time before that debate becomes the central question in Mexican politics.

As summer arrives in Afghanistan, it's not just the temperature that is heating up.

A Danish court has ruled that the residents of Copenhagen's Christiania neighborhood have no right to use the property they have called home since 1971.

Prohibition has made the drug lords so powerful that the jails won't hold them:

Mexico City - A convoy of cars carrying more than two dozen suspected drug cartel members disguised as Mexican police officers arrives at the Zacatécas state prison before dawn. Their helicopter hovers overhead. Minutes later, the men help more than 50 inmates – many of them suspected drug traffickers – flee the prison. A countrywide manhunt ensues.

No, this is not a script for a B movie. It's just another day in Mexico's high-stakes war on drug trafficking – Saturday, in fact. [Christian Science Monitor]

Nothing works in the Mexican drug war. Nothing at all. Anyone who thinks we're on pace towards addressing any dimension of this problem will be proven wrong over and over again.

Calderon and Obama think their bloody war sends a message to the cartels, but the drug lords are just laughing their asses off:

Rather than hiding in remote mountain redoubts, Mexico's most wanted traffickers — some with prices of 30 million pesos ($2.1 million) on their heads — are partying openly. In April, police arrested the alleged top recruiter of another cartel, La Familia, at another baptism party held by capos at a resort in the western state of Michoacan.

"This indicates, along with another famous wedding that happened, that they don't have any fear at all of the authorities, none at all," said Samuel Gonzalez, Mexico's former top anti-drug prosecutor. "They are sending a message that they aren't afraid." [AP]

Maybe the reason they aren't afraid of getting caught is that they can just break out of jail anytime they want.

Via NORML's Russ Belville, CBS's Bob Schieffer asked President Obama about the drug war violence in Mexico and got this surprising response:

President Obama:  Well, what’s happened is that President Calderon I think has been very bold and rightly has decided that it’s gotten carried away. The drug cartels have too much power, are undermining and corrupting huge segments of Mexican society. And so he has taken them on in the same way that when, you know, Elliot Ness took on Al Capone back during Prohibition, oftentimes that causes even more violence. And we’re seeing that flare up.

I honestly cannot believe the president is looking towards alcohol prohibition for a little perspective on our present predicament. Everyone knows that story. Elliot Ness didn't defeat those cartels. Legalization defeated them.

The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) met this week in Vienna to draft a

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Does Felipe Calderon even know what he's doing?

MEXICO CITY (AFP) — President Felipe Calderon Friday acknowledged the country's drug war is bloodier and tougher than he thought when he first took office in 2006, but vowed to eradicate the "cancer" that is consuming Mexico.

Really? That's odd because this has gone exactly as I expected and I haven’t been to Mexico in 20 years. He's the president. Why is he struggling to understand the basic dimensions of his own drug war?

If he admits that he didn't know it would get this bad, one wonders what else he doesn’t know. There were 6,000 people killed in Mexico's drug war last year alone and things appear to be getting worse, not better. Even Calderon's updated assessment may be proven horribly naïve.  

How much longer can the leaders of the drug war continue feigning surprise when their policies fail?

Sandwiched between violent cartels and a brutal military occupation force, the Mexican people are understandably running out of patience:

Hundreds of people in Mexico have blocked key crossings into the US in protests against the deployment of the army fighting drug traffickers.

Traffic was brought to a halt on a number of bridges in several border towns in northern Mexico.

The protesters accused the army of abuse against civilians. [BBC]

We tend to view the U.S. and Mexican governments as well as the cartels as the primary actors in shaping the discussion of the nation’s drug war, but the Mexican people themselves will likely begin to play a more visible role as the situation further deteriorates. Rampant civil rights abuses by the Mexican military are quickly becoming regarded as a cure worse than the disease and it may only be a matter of time before public sentiments tip in favor of a dramatic change of course.

As one might expect, the Mexican government has been quick to dismiss the protestors, even going so far as to accuse them of collaborating with the drug traffickers:

…the governor of one state - Nuevo Leon - said he believed the Gulf drugs cartel and its armed wing, the Zetas, were behind the border protests.

"There are reasons to believe it has to do with the Gulf cartel and the group known as the Zetas," Governor Natividad Gonzalez said.

Unbelievable. I guess the idea that the citizens of Mexico would complain about human rights violations by their own military is so inconceivable that it simply must be the drug lords who made them do it.

Ultimately, it should prove difficult for the government to continue portraying public opposition as a PR experiment sponsored the traffickers. Trivializing public sentiment is a losing proposition in the long term, especially when you’re thoroughly unprepared to address the conditions that are pissing everyone off.

If anyone is serving the political and financial interests of the drug traffickers it is the U.S. and Mexican government officials who continue to champion the failed drug strategy that is ripping Mexico apart before our eyes.

Pete Guither and Dave Borden already mentioned it, but I just can’t get enough of this quote from the Wall Street Journal:

"If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence," a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence "because these guys are flailing. We're taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now."

So let me get this straight. According to the U.S. government:

No violence = drug war is failing
Intense violence = drug war is going well

So when do we win the drug war then? When everyone’s dead?

A blue-ribbon commission of Latin American leaders has issued a report saying that the US-led war on drugs has failed and it is time to consider new policies, particularly treating drug use as a pu

Lately, the drug war is sounding less and less like an actual government policy and more like a distopian future from a science fiction movie:

As the nation's drug war rages on, with its weekly tallies of headless torsos, it is getting harder to produce a shock wave in the Mexican media. But the gruesome recipes of "The Stewmaker" have gripped public attention here, as authorities describe how a "disposal expert" working for a Tijuana drug cartel boss allegedly got rid of hundreds of bodies by dissolving the corpses in vats of caustic liquid. [Washington Post]

They call him "The Stewmaker" and his henchmen attacked the police station with machine guns after he was captured.

Does any of this sound like the story of a drug policy that works? How much more of this unfathomable gory mayhem do we feel like putting up with? We’ve crossed the line into some seriously dark territory here and it’s way past time something is done about it, something completely different from everything we’ve tried before.

They’re even doing their own diplomacy:

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – Mexico's warring cartels are negotiating a truce that, if it holds, could end one of the bloodiest eras since the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution, according to a U.S. official and experts familiar with the talks.

A peace agreement would be the second in two years and, like the last one, its chances of surviving are slim, the U.S. official said.

"In the end, greed prevails over reason," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. [Dallas Morning News]

Actually, it was the drug war that prevailed over reason. We were all watching when Calderón declared war on the cartels and…wait for it…a huge bloody war broke out! Why is anyone acting confused or surprised by what happened? It’s all perfectly clear. If you throw rocks at a beehive, expect swarms of angry bees.

The fact that they’re negotiating their own peace agreements does not reflect well on the decades-long war that was supposed to disrupt the drug industry. They’ve become a second government that even controls its own territories:

Already, the violence is crippling regions and cities, some of them on the border with Texas. Some top U.S. officials and analysts describe these cities, including Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, as "failed cities," in which cartels, not city or police officials, have control. [Dallas Morning News]

Amazingly, the U.S. and Mexican governments actually believe we should continue the policies that produced this outcome.

Someone help me understand what Mexico’s U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza is thinking:

"Calderón must, and will, keep the pressure on the cartels, but look, let's not be naïve – there will be more violence, more blood, and, yes, things will get worse before they get better. That's the nature of the battle," Garza said. "The more pressure the cartels feel, the more they'll lash out like cornered animals." [Dallas Morning News]

This is correct except for the part about how Calderón has to do this (no, he doesn't) and the part about how things will get better (no, they won't). We’ve heard all this a thousand times before and it just gets sillier every time. The bottom line is that cracking down on the cartels either works or it doesn’t. It makes no sense to say that aggressive drug war policies will create violence in the short term, and then eventually that same approach will begin reducing bloodshed. That’s not logical.

The drug war causes violence. Just admit it. Stop pretending that it’s going to produce the opposite result at some point in the future. It isn’t going to.

Every day, the stories coming from Mexico get worse. Nothing surprises me at this point. Not even this:

MEXICO CITY – Elementary school teachers are the latest victims of an exploding extortion racket in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, as criminal gangs threaten educators to either hand over their coming Christmas bonuses or see harm done to their families or students, teachers' groups say.

With Monday a school holiday and news of the threats spreading in the media, on the Internet and by word of mouth during the long weekend, there were fears that an increasing number of parents would keep their children at home today, forcing additional schools to close. [Dallas News]

Is anybody going to come forward and claim this is just a temporary problem? Shall we double our drug war donations to restore law and order? Let’s get real. The drug war is destroying the entire country before our eyes and there’s no limit to how bad it can get.

It’s amazing to witness the criminal feeding frenzy that is now erupting all over the country now that the drug war has turned Mexico’s justice system into a complete mockery. Dangerous levels of police corruption have created a horrific laboratory in which violent criminals have begun experimenting with all sorts of terrible schemes. Can you even imagine what’s next?

If anything can solve the crime problems plaguing Mexico, it will have to be the exact opposite of everything we're doing right now.

The harder we push back against Mexican drug cartels, the more violence we’ll begin see within our own borders. Just look what’s happening in Pheonix:

A CBS News investigation has discovered that as of last weekend, there have been 266 reported kidnappings and 300 home invasions this year alone. Sources say the real figures could run as much as three times higher because so many go unreported.

"It wasn't uncommon to have a new kidnapping case coming into our offices on a daily basis," Burgett said.

Law-enforcement sources say the kidnappings signal the brutal expansion of the raging Mexican drug wars spilling across the border.
…
Now CBS News has learned enforcer gangs just south of the Mexican border have added military-grade hand grenades to their arsenal - something special agent Jose Wall expects to see in Phoenix any day.
…
It's not just hand grenades, kidnappings and home invasions that have law enforcement on edge. They say it's only a matter of time before innocent civilians are caught in the crossfire. [CBS News]

It’s really just amazing that this can continue to escalate before our eyes without provoking a widespread, spontaneous revelation that something is fundamentally wrong with our drug strategy. How much more obvious could it be? The harder we push the worse it gets. That’s how this works. It’s the only outcome the drug war formula ever produces.

The only thing we’ll get in exchange for the hundreds of millions we’re pouring into the Mexican drug war is more violence within our own borders. Nothing short of a full reversal in our strategy can prevent that result. And since Obama has pledged to continue this madness, we can be reasonably sure this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.