Criminals Aren’t the Only Ones Getting Killed in the Drug War
Via Pete Guither, here's another breathtaking example of the drug war's indiscriminate violence:
It's sickening that the Mexican President would dare insinuate that these innocent young victims somehow deserved their fate, but misplacing blame is an essential and instinctive defense mechanism when drug warriors are confronted with the consequences of their desperate crusade. None of this comes as a surprise, but it does bother me that this incident happened back in January and I overlooked it amidst the overwhelming number of bloody tragedies just like this one that take place every day in Mexico.
We couldn't ask for a more perfect exhibit in the complete failure of drug prohibition on every imaginable level. At this point, the only thing that still surprises me is that so many among us persist in failing to understand what the problem is.
President Calderón has sought to make his drug war palatable by asserting that the country’s war dead—estimated at 23,000 since January 2006 for the country as a whole—deserved to die: their deaths implicate them in illegal activities.
When he first learned about what Juarenses have come to call the “massacre at Villas de Salvarcar,” Calderón hinted that the thirteen teenagers who died at the hands of professional executioners were common criminals and city low life. He could not have been more wrong. In fact they were honor students and athletes who had gathered to celebrate a friend’s seventeenth birthday. They had the misfortune of belonging to a football club whose initials, “AA,” were mistaken for the initials of the Sinaloa cartel’s local enforcers, the Artistic Assassins. And so, in the middle of the night, while the teens danced in a room cleared of furniture, they were gunned down. Seven hours later, when the first daylight photos were taken, the concrete floor where they died still glistened with their clotting blood. [Boston Review]
It's sickening that the Mexican President would dare insinuate that these innocent young victims somehow deserved their fate, but misplacing blame is an essential and instinctive defense mechanism when drug warriors are confronted with the consequences of their desperate crusade. None of this comes as a surprise, but it does bother me that this incident happened back in January and I overlooked it amidst the overwhelming number of bloody tragedies just like this one that take place every day in Mexico.
We couldn't ask for a more perfect exhibit in the complete failure of drug prohibition on every imaginable level. At this point, the only thing that still surprises me is that so many among us persist in failing to understand what the problem is.
Looking for the easiest way to join the anti-drug war movement? You've found it!
Caldero`n made drug possession legal,in small quantities
[email protected],Vancouver,B.C.CanadaWith the cartels said to be fighting for the local markets that doesn't seem to have helped.It is obvious that he spoke out of frustration and a complete loss at what to do next.If the US would stop sending Mexico huge sums of money to continue the war on drugs they would quit fighting tomorrow.The cartels are a drug war creation,just like the bootlegger gangsters in the twenties.If people could get their drug of choice at a secure location,with quality control and realistic pricing no one would be risking their life trying to smuggle drugs across the border.Even the medical marijuana outlets are charging far more than they should be.The Mexican President's statement was as disgusting as it was uninformed.Like everything in this drug war the drug warriors are incompetent,uninformed and violent far beyond what is necessary.
U.S. Fundamentalist Inspires La Familia Michoacana Violence
Southern Poverty Law Center journalist Joseph Michael Reynolds writes, in May of 2009:
In From Focus On The Family to La Familia Michoacana, Reynolds quotes a Mexican Justice Department report:
John Eldredge’s Christian evangelizing promotes male violence, aggression and intolerance. The cartel loves him for it. More can be found on John Eldredge and his ministry’s attraction to violence and its influence on Mexican organized crime here.
Giordano
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