Can you see what the Ambassador has done here? He has equated the Cartels with Capitalists.
ByTod Robberson / Editorial Writer
trobberson@dallasnews.com | Bio
10:48 AM on Tue., Apr. 12, 2011 | Permalink
wanted so badly to include some other photos with this blog item. Our files are full of the most gruesome photos imaginable. There are dismembered corpses dumped on the sidewalk. There's one of a mother and her child dead on the floor, their bodies bloodied and pockmarked by bullets. This one is the least offensive I could find while still making the point that Mexico's drug cartels are terrorist organizations.
In a letter to the editor today, Mexico's ambassador, Arturo Sarukhan, comes to the defense of these mass murdering, torturing, dismembering, bombing, beheading, kidnapping and drug trafficking organizations, arguing that they are businessmen, not terrorists. Folks, we have a first here. You will not, until now, have seen any top Mexican official actually defending the cartels to this extent. But Sarukhan, taking issue with our editorial last week in defense of a bill before Congress to put Mexico's six biggest cartels on the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, strongly disagrees.
Yes, they are very violent criminal organizations, he says. But "they pursue a single goal. They want to maximize their profits and do what most business do: hostile takeovers and pursue mergers and acquisitions."
Again, in their defense, he says they have "no political motivation or agenda whatsoever beyond their attempt to defend their illegal business."
So, when they kill dozens of mayors, police chiefs, soldiers, journalists, newspaper editors, businessmen, mothers, children, American visitors, immigrants, farmers, truck drivers, musicians, dancers, teachers, etc., etc., etc., we are to believe this is just business? Part of a new mergers-and-acquisitions strategy? And when they hang signs from overpasses, along with a body to punctuate their point, warning that this is their territory, not the government's, there's no political message there?
Perhaps the ambassador should read up a bit on these entrepreneurial business groups to see what they're really up to. There's any number of articles, in English or Spanish, describing their political motives. Here's something I found from a 2009 piece by John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, two guys who know the difference between terrorists and businessmen:
Unlike Pablo Escobar's Colombian reign of terror in the 1990s, the Mexican cartels are engaged in serious insurgent campaigns. Armed with military infantry weapons, their gunmen use complex small-unit tactics that differ from the usual "pray and spray" methods beloved by criminals. Cartels run training camps for assassins on the border. They attempt to agitate the populace against the Mexican military through political subversion. And they control towns and neighborhoods that the military tries to retake through force.
Mexico's cartels are evolving distinct political aims. La Familia is exemplary in this regard. Using social services and infrastructure protection as levers in rural areas and small towns, they are building a social base. In urban areas, they are funding political patron-client relationships to extend their reach. Reinforced by corruption, propaganda, political marches and demonstrations, as well as social media such as "narcocorridos," such activity helps to shape the future conflict.
This is no longer about drug policy. This is about fighting terrorists. And they are present right across the border in Mexico, and we need to call them what they are
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