Bush and Calderon's Wars

Under an effective yet undeclared state of emergency caused by the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has ordered the systematic demolition of the U.S. constitutional order. Under the pretense of keeping with security principals, Bush has taken on extrajudicial powers through arbitrary presidential decrees and decisions (secrets which have become a normal practice in the state). Bush has instituted illegal espionage operations within, has wrapped itself in pre-emptive wars abroad and has resorted to “legalized” torture–disappearance and abduction of suspected terrorists, while maintaining under arrest indefinite thousands of “non-enemy combatants” who are detained in an archipelago of clandestine prisons, a “floating prison,” controlled by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

From the beginning (in what later became known as part of a pre-established secret plan that took advantage of the September 11 “opportunity” attacks allegedly caused by an “asymmetrical enemy,” but always timely Al-Qaeda), the deconstruction of the constitutional order was deployed in a context of war indefinitely, omnipresent, without borders or temporary space. In 2002, introducing a national security strategy at the White House, Bush assimilated the “vulnerability” of the United States to “terrorism” to a “new condition of life.” Thus, since the beginning of the twenty-first century “war on terror” was designed to be waged simultaneously in several countries for many years. In 2006, the new version of the strategy of national security reads: “The United States are going through the first years of a long struggle, a situation similar to that faced by our country at the beginning of the Cold War.”

In this state of emergency, exceptions turn into the law. In the case of The United States, the war became the foundation on which the nation functioned. Through the years Bush has governed through fear, encouraging nationalism and exploiting racial, ethnic and religious prejudice of his fellow countrymen.The swelling power of Al Qaeda and other threats may seem overwhelming and terrifying if it were not a method of the government to hide the intentions of authoritarian rule and the late imperial and neo-colonial domination. It is a dangerous game that feeds the essentialist hatred towards those who are considered the Other, the enemy, the barbaric. In the case of the Middle East, the “clash of civilizations” prophecy of propagandist Samuel Huntington has been gradually becoming true.

For various reasons-including the existence of oil, natural gas, water and biodiversity, and the emergence in the juncture of a peaceful civil resistance, is still searching for alternatives to the current system of domination by various legal channels, or anti-systematic- one of the privileged locations of Bush’s perpetual war in Latin America is Mexico. Here, as in Colombia, the pattern of U.S. intervention took the form of a war on narcatic associated terrorism by including de facto Mexico in the “security perimeter” of the United States via the Alliance for Security and Prosperity of North America (ASPAN) and Merida Initiative, analogous to the “Colombian Plan”.

In the division of the role, the representation with propagandist means corresponds to Felipe Calderon with his convenient and his irritated “Enough’s!” Similar to the bellicose confrontations of mentor Bush, Calderon’s “war” against “organized crime” is wrapped in blackmail. And as a result Bush wants to “Colombianize” Mexico. As part of a system that protects corruption,(impunity of criminals chains embedded in state institutions, banks and large companies), the recipe is more narcotics related; tough and torturous, dirty games, disappearances, and arrests emerge, as well as mercenaries, criminalization of social protest, militarization of society. The U.S. goal is to plunge the country into chaos and destabilization in order to penetrate the security of the nation further diluting national sovereignty and accentuate the dependency.

In this scheme of domination, leading to the formation of a new kind of banana republic in Mexico, narcotics related violence–with its failed car bomb attacks, their mini submarines, psychotropic occasion and their colourful Iranian connections–can take the form of “asymmetric enemy” and “deterritorialization,” just the thing to place the country in the context of an endless war resulting in a permanent state of emergency. To do this, as in Colombia, Washington and their local accomplices are deploying a far-reaching psychological war and resorting to terrorism media. That is, the destabilizing propaganda of the radio and television stations under monopolistic control, legally part of the regime and functional at the time of providing facts and consensus. There we go. Only that, as in the case of the “clash of civilizations,” commander in chief Calderon could also see his prophecy become a reality.