Right under the noses of Americans and on our doorstep, a bloody war with eerie parallels to the bloodletting in Iraq is escalating while Washington hems and haws about urgent requests for help.
The war—Mexico's stepped-up campaign to purge police and Army ranks of corrupt officers who protect drug cartels and thus aid the shipment of illicit drugs into the United States.
Thousands have died since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and launched his war on drugs and corrupt officials—4,125 deaths of law enforcement officials and drug cartel members in just a year and half. So far this year, 1,378.
But the actual toll on Mexican soil may be a trifle compared to the eventual "casualties" among drug users in the United States that rely on cartels to satisfy their habits and police enforcing drug laws.
President Bush has asked Congress for $1.4 billion over five years to help the Mexican president's war on drugs for new equipment, training and advanced intelligence methods. President Calderon has methodically purged hundreds of crooked officials and replaced them with better-educated, thoroughly investigated, honest young officers.
Without a "surge" of help from Washington, which has been generous in fighting terrorism a half a world away in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mexico's war on its own brand of bloody terrorism will mean untold gang wars and drug addiction misery on the streets of American cities much closer than Baghdad if the cartels south of our border aren't broken up and their corrupting influence on Mexican law enforcement ended.
