{"id":12817,"date":"2011-11-18T15:38:24","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T23:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=12817"},"modified":"2011-11-18T15:39:40","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T23:39:40","slug":"still-pushing-the-failed-militaristic-approach-to-the-drug-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/18\/still-pushing-the-failed-militaristic-approach-to-the-drug-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Pushing the Failed Militaristic Approach to the Drug War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Juan Carlos Hidalgo at the blog for the Cato Institute<\/a>, this graph illustrates how Mexican President Felipe\u00a0Calder\u00f3n’s militarized approach to the drug war not only didn’t quell the violence, but reversed the downward trend that had been going on for over a decade.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And now, of course, the violent drug cartels are as dominant as ever. Mr. Hidalgo informs us that now\u00a0the new president-elect in Guatemala, “Otto P\u00e9rez Molina, has promised to deploy the army to fight organized crime,” even explicitly citing “Felipe Calder\u00f3n\u2019s lead in declaring an all out war against drug cartels.” This, despite the fact that, as he writes, ”\u00a0instead of placating violence, the deployment of the army helped to magnify it.”<\/p>\n

So, what’s the U.S. role in this? Well, as President of Mexico,\u00a0Calder\u00f3n has received a large amount of U.S. support<\/a>, and in fact that support increased sharply after he began his all-too-literal war in his own country. As I wrote about recently<\/a>, the 50,000 Mexican troops and thousands more federal police officers that\u00a0Calder\u00f3n unleashed on the streets to fight the cartels were and are trained and supported by the United States<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cGeorge W. Bush backed Calder\u00f3n\u2019s militarization with a $1.8 billion package of helicopters, police training, and intelligence cooperation,\u201d\u00a0wrote\u00a0The New Yorker\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Steve Coll recently<\/a>. \u201cObama has continued the program\u201d and \u201chas reportedly sent drones to help Mexico track cartel leaders and traffickers.\u201d And\u00a0Human Rights Watch just\u00a0released a report<\/a>\u00a0detailing Mexico\u2019s U.S.-supported security forces participating in \u201cmore than 170 cases of torture, 39 \u201cdisappearances,\u201d and 24 extrajudicial killings since Calder\u00f3n took office in December 2006.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States has been pushing a military approach to the drug war<\/a> for a long time. Similarly violent approaches have failed miserably<\/a> in Colombia<\/a>, and now there is much news about Honduras<\/a> being a war zone for paramilitaries and the Drug Enforcement Administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Guatemala<\/a>, the government is also receiving a significant slice of U.S. booty<\/a>. There, the drug war is ravaging the society, and as\u00a0entrepreneur and educator\u00a0Giancarlo Ibarguen recently told Reason.tv<\/a>, “the war on drugs in the United States [is to blame]\u00a0for what is happening here in Guatemala.” Despite the Guatemalan military’s ties to drug gangs<\/a>, State Department diplomats keep calling for more of the same militarized approach. Dialogues in WikiLeaks cables have reveal talk of Guatemala as “an embryonic Colombian situation\u201d which \u201crequires greater assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

I’m with Cato’s Hidalgo here: the new Guatemalan president should not follow the same destructive policies as Mexico. But with all this U.S. influence, I’m afraid we’re in for it anyways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Juan Carlos Hidalgo at the blog for the Cato Institute, this graph illustrates how Mexican President Felipe\u00a0Calder\u00f3n’s militarized approach to the drug war not only didn’t quell the violence, but reversed the downward trend that had been going on for over a decade. And now, of course, the violent drug cartels are as dominant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-12817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12817"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12822,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12817\/revisions\/12822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12817"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}