"Poor Mexico, So Far From God, So Close To The United States"

Huffington Post by Sandy Goodman Sandy Goodman | Mar. 1, 2009 (Special Report)

Those oft-quoted words of the late Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz came to mind today when I read still another horrific story about how ruthless, terrifying gangs of Mexican narcotics traffickers, competing for which of their products end up on American streets, and battling their government's efforts to stop them, have turned huge swaths of their own country into killing grounds. The gangs murder, decapitate, kidnap and threaten innocent people on a daily ... Full Story »

Posted by Doug Greer

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3.4

by Naomi Isler - Mar. 2, 2009

It;'s really a very personal article, expressing the author's regrets over paradise - or at least a nice place - lost, and the threats to some of its officials. What the article doesn't do is go into how Mexico really got there - and the losses in the Mexican war don't count! How did drugs and their gangs gain so much power? Why could this not be stopped when it was a small problem? And Secretary Gates is apparently thinking about extending the already unsuccessful wars on drugs from other Latino countries to Mexico - give me a break! Why should they work there any better than in Colombia or Bolivia?

And as long as Americans want illegal drugs it's going to go on and on and on. I don't think full legalization is realistic or desirable - but somehow the profit has to be taken out of the drug trade. The violence won't stop until the profits do.