Who Threatens Whom?

Hillary Clinton officially stated: “We face an increasing threat from a well-organized network, drug-trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency, in Mexico,” comparable to Colombia in the ‘70s. Mexico countered, saying the drug trafficking is no insurgency, nor are we like Colombia. Obama offered clarification, saying that Mexico is not Colombia and praised Calderón’s democracy. The Mexican government, grateful, forgot the matter.

Obama’s clarification is false; the United States insists on a Mexican insurgency that threatens them. The U.S. Justice Department asserts that Mexican cartels are “the greatest organized crime threat to the U.S.” Sen. Dick Lugar, a senior Republican, asked the president to use the army to help confront the cartels that seek to control the Mexican government.

Appearing in the U.S. Senate, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano responded to questions from Sen. John McCain, agreeing with the statement that “the Mexican cartels pose a terrorist threat to the United States.” Robert Mueller, FBI director, also appeared and agreed that this “increases the national security threat on the other side of our border”; in addition, McCain claimed that Mexican cartels control “230 U.S. cities and are in all regions of the country.”

Here, ever-present Ambassador Pascual, when asked about the mentioned insurgency, said: “It doesn’t matter what we call it.” But of course it matters. For the State Department and the U.S. Army, insurgency is not a word; it is a military policy. The strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan is “the counterinsurgency.”

Both wars, they argue, seek to “build stable democracies,” enlisting the support of the populace through investment in public services. The Counterinsurgency Manual calls for “the population to accept the (imposed) government as legitimate,” which has not happened because governments in Iraq and Afghanistan are rejected as corrupt, but that does not matter. What is essential is the building of local armies, so that Iraqis and Afghans are the ones who suppress fellow citizens who resist the established order — the perfidious “insurgents.”

By characterizing drug-trafficking in Mexico as an insurgency, they apply this doctrine to us — even though its complement, the alleged building of a democratic society, has already been achieved, because, according to Obama, Calderón represents it. To understand the ongoing operation, remember that recently the U.S. War Cabinet came to Mexico to meet with Mexican officials and that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, reported that they are training the Mexican military in “irregular warfare.” Why? Also remember that violence from Calderón´s war has been a pretext to impose Americans in our institutions, customs, migration, intelligence, and security — a guardianship that our government submissively accepts.

The U.S. officially asserts that Mexican traffickers control hundreds of American cities. So what are the authorities doing? Are they powerless over this domain? It is known that organized crime is a business operating in the market, which implies corrupt integration between criminals, governments and society. They are infiltrating the legal, economic and financial systems in Mexico, Colombia and the United States.

They drive us to violence — the Merida Initiative and selective assassinations in Afghanistan. Although trafficking and consumption are enormous in the U.S., and the corruption is just like anywhere else, they tell us that only in Mexico between $18,000 and $30 billion are laundered. They do not say how much is laundered in the United States.

No! The violence here is not a threat to the United States. It is a threat to the thriving business there, the money laundering there and the river of dollars and weapons trafficked from there. As long as this reality is not truly confronted and the U.S. is not just looking for scapegoats, there is no hope for a solution.