TIJUANA, Mexico, Aug 12 (Reuters) - American businesswoman Veronica was stepping out of her car in California when two men forced her into the passenger seat at gunpoint, pushed her teenage daughter into the back and drove them into Mexico.
Taking advantage of lax Mexican security at the San Diego border, and with U.S. authorities focused mainly on those entering the United States, the kidnappers took the two women to Tijuana in January and held them for a month before their family paid a $100,000 ransom.
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An unintended consequence of Mexican efforts to weaken drug gangs, drug traffickers around Tijuana are turning to abducting U.S. citizens and residents in southern California and holding them in Mexico as a new way to get funds, U.S. and Mexican authorities say. [Reuters [8]]
This is precisely why there is no such thing as progress in the drug war. The enemy doesn’t give a f$%k about anything. The harder you push, the harder they push back. New criminal opportunities emerge within the culture of violence and corruption the drug war produces and we haven't seen a fraction of the brutality that's in store for Mexican and American citizens if our governments insist on fighting this out in the streets.
The concept is simple: the harder we try to win the drug war, the greater the crime and violence we must endure. There is no threshold to be crossed, no day of reckoning for the warlords we've nurtured and empowered by placing an infinite tax-free economy in their icy death grip.
Just watch as violence against Americans leads to calls for more drug war funding, which in turn leads to more violence against Americans. The drug war itself is the coal that sustains this raging fire and anyone preferring to believe otherwise should probably just go ahead and turn off their TV.