June 20, 2007

Memo From Mexico, By Allan Wall

Mexican Government Vs. Those “Absurd” American Gun Rights

Nature abhors a vacuum. When the U.S. government ceased to care about controlling the U.S.-Mexican border, the region descended into anarchy.

We now have illegal aliens and drugs moving north and Mexican drug smugglers even setting up listening and observation posts north of the border. There is an intrinsic relation between drug and alien smuggling, with drug smugglers using illegal aliens, sometimes as drug runners, sometimes as decoys.

But open borders work both ways. Recently, the Mexican government has been getting upset because of south-bound smuggling: of guns. Its preferred solution: the U.S. should abolish the right to keep and bear arms.

Don’t laugh—if the Bush-backed drive to marry Mexico prevails, gun control will happen.

In Mexico, the drug cartel wars go on and on. The last report I saw put it at 1263 slain in drug killings so far in calendar year 2007.

President Calderon, inaugurated in December, has made smashing the cartels one of his main priorities. Calderon has shown a lot of resolve and determination, in contrast to the passive response of Vicente Fox at the end of his presidential term. The Mexican public seems to support Calderon. A poll taken in May indicated a more optimistic Mexican public than the same poll taken 10 months earlier (July of 2006), despite the fact that killings have increased since then. In addition, 67% of Mexicans polled agreed that national security was at risk.

Nevertheless, crushing the cartels is an enormous challenge.

Jailing cartel chiefs doesn’t solve the problem, since they can continue to run their cartels from jail, or they’re just taken over by a relative, or a struggle for supremacy breaks out within the cartel.

Really eradicating the cartels would involve going after their funds, which are laundered to utilize a legitimate business as a cover. It also involves going after crooked cops, of which Mexico has no dearth. It’s been estimated that half the cops in the country are paid off by a drug cartel. [Police corruption undermines Mexico's war on drugs, By Robin Emmott, Reuters, May 22, 2007] Some cops actually function as drug runners and hitmen.

Calderon has chosen the army as his principal weapon against the cartels because the Mexican army is one of the most respected institutions in the country and the president has more control over it than over the police. Nevertheless, the military route poses problems as well. The Mexican army has a high desertion rate. Some ex-soldiers find their way into the cartels, where the pay is much higher.

And, let’s face it, part of the problem is the enormous demand for drugs in the United States. It’s not a simple question of evil Mexican drug dealers and innocent Americans. There is a significant population of Americans who are voluntarily buying drugs. Americans are thus the principal financiers of Mexican drug cartels.

Our own “War on Drugs” has been an abject failure. So now that our own government is more and more integrated with that of Mexico, we pressure Mexico to go after the cartels—although we can’t even reduce demand.

The late Milton Friedman was a critic of the war on drugs, and the deleterious effects it has on other countries. In 1998, Friedman described it thusly:

“Our drug policy has led to thousands of deaths and enormous loss of wealth in countries like Colombia, Peru and Mexico, and has undermined the stability of their governments. All because we cannot enforce our laws at home. If we did, there would be no market for imported drugs. There would be no Cali cartel. The foreign countries would not have to suffer the loss of sovereignty involved in letting our advisers and troops operate on their soil, search their vessels and encourage local militaries to shoot down their planes. They could run their own affairs, and we, in turn, could avoid the diversion of military forces from their proper function.”  It’s Time to End the War on Drugs, Hoover Digest, 1998, #2

That was in 1998. Now the Colombian cartels have been replaced with Mexican cartels, but the basic analysis is the same.

(Of course, Milton Friedman also said that "It’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state." They didn’t listen to Friedman on that topic either!)

As for weapons smuggling, that goes the other way. Mexican drug cartels send people to the U.S. to buy weapons, then they bring them back into Mexico.

Mexico has much stricter gun laws than the U.S. There are big signs on the border warning people about this. So how do they get them in?

According to members of the Mexican congress, it’s because of corruption in the Mexican Customs Department. The cartels have infiltrated their people into customs, and so they help their cartel companions get the guns into Mexico. In fact, about 2,000 illegal weapons enter the country daily.

And according to our own ATF, 60% of the illegal arms in Mexico come from the U.S. (which would also mean that 40% of them come from elsewhere).

The Mexican government is unhappy with the U.S. because of all these weapons entering its territory. Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora recently had this to say:

"American law seems absurd to me, because ….the citizens can easily acquire arms. American society lives the consequences of this on a daily basis, and it has begun to be reflected upon as a result of that Korean  not long ago." [VDARE.COM note: If an American Attorney General referred to a mass murderer by race, he’d be looking at early retirement. You are invited to imagine what would happen if John Ashcroft referred to the Washington Snipers as “Those black guys,” or even “Those Muslims,” to get some idea of how much more insensitive Mexicans are about these things.] ["Cínica", la política antidrogas de EU; su ley es "absurda": Medina Mora, Alfredo Mendez, La Jornada, June 15, 2007]

So the Mexican government doesn’t like our gun laws, eh? Well, just as American drug buyers feed the Mexican cartels, so Mexican demand for guns feeds that market.

And although Mexican gun laws are stricter than ours, that hasn’t stopped plenty of Mexicans from getting their hands on automatic weapons, grenades and rocket launchers—all of which are utilized by drug cartels.

Mexican officials want to have their cake and eat it too. They want an open border for Mexicans to go into the U.S. whenever they want. But they don’t want Mexicans in the U.S. to buy weapons and bring them back into Mexico!

If you really want open borders, you’d better be prepared for who and what comes across them, and for whatever reason.

In fact, the increasing integration of the two countries exacerbates the problems.

After all, if one country doesn’t like the drug or gun laws of its neighbors, that wouldn’t be a problem if each were a sovereign nation minding its own business, would it?

And, consider this. If all these Council on Foreign Relations-inspired Security And Prosperity Partnership and North American Union developments continue apace, these border problems will be “solved” by eliminating the border.

The CFR 2005 report Building a North American Community called for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" that has a common "outer security perimeter". It proposes that the North American Community’s "boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe."

What our elites are moving toward is the elimination of the U.S.-Mexican and U.S.-Canadian borders and their replacement by the "outer security perimeter" around North America.

(And eventually, even that border would no doubt be subsumed into an even larger globalist entity).

So what would happen to the guns, drugs and illegal aliens now crossing the border?

In the case of the illegal aliens, they would be allowed to continue crossing because they wouldn’t be aliens anymore.

In the case of drugs and guns, their legality would be determined on the basis of the new legal system of the globalized entity…not by the old-fashioned U.S. constitution.

We are unmistakably headed for the loss of U.S. sovereignty, and the sovereignty of neighboring countries, to be replaced by rule by a transnational globalized bureaucratic elite.

That’s what the future looks like—if we don’t stop it now.

American citizen Allan Wall (email him) resides in Mexico, with a legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived here his "Dispatches from Iraq" are archived here his website is here.