Why Is Barack Obama Silent on the Drug War?
Red Areas Show Intense Fighting with the Three Cartels
The Mexican drug cartels are now operating in over 200 cities of the United States. They are now the dominant suppliers of both cocaine and methamphetamine to the illicit drug market in the United States. They also having increasing marijuana growing operations frequently located on United States public lands near the Texas-Mexican border.
Since 2006 the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon has tried to directly take on the cartels with mixed results at best. Thousands have been killed without any clear winner. So much corruption and intimidation of local police authorities by the drug cartels has occurred that along the border and in most of north central Mexico a state of marshal law now exists because the military is the last entity left that has not been extensively bribed or killed off. Go to any Mexican city across from the U.S. border and you will see rooftop military snipers and a weary local population more reminiscent of the Middle East than our memories of “Old Mexico”.
Unfortunately this situation is affecting not only the border regions of the United States but also her largest cities. Federal authorities are now reporting links between Afro-American gangs controlling large neighborhoods in America’s inner cities and the Mexican drug cartels. A county sheriff in Rio Grande City, Texas has been arrested and charged with conspiring with Mexican drug cartels. Border Patrol agents have been fired upon by Mexican drug cartel caravans crossing the border with paramilitary support, possibly the Zetas, a mutinous spin-off of Mexican Army Special Forces.
Dallas Texas is suffering an epidemic of deaths in their public school system from “Mexican cheese heroin” supplied by the drug cartels. So called “Black tar heroin” and “Brown powder cocaine” made in Mexico are becoming the most common forms of illicit drug found not only in Houston and Dallas but increasingly in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and spreading rapidly into America’s heartlands.
Despite the recent capture or killing of several cartel leaders there has not been a definitive victory in Mexico. The situation can at best be described as a stalemate with much of the state of Sinoloa and the city of Tijuana having become dangerous “no man’s land”. Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso became so severe that state officials had requested that the American military be placed there because several times gun fights broke out almost crossing the border when retreating overwhelmed Mexican police escaped to the United States. Drug cartel incursions into the United States for kidnapping, grand theft, revenge killing, and other evil is now an everyday event according Congressman Poe from Humble, Texas. Authorities recently discovered a cartel controlled kidnapping ring that was grabbing young women to be sold as prostitute slaves along the Texas-Mexican border.
Incredibly we are hearing nothing about this situation from the leader in the Presidential race, Barack Obama. In a search of speeches and statements about this issue I can find none. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama likened drug dealers to just folk that are unemployed doing their best to help the community. He did not want them to face criminal penalties but instead be put in job training programs. He consistently voted against using conspiracy as a prosecutorial tool against gang members and does not believe that gang members who commit murder for hire should face the death penalty. His website seems oblivious that there is a “drug problem”.
Islamic terrorists are now in Mexico actively trading drugs for guns with the drug cartels. Several suspicious Middle Eastern illegal aliens have now been caught trying to cross the Southwestern border of the United States. Instead of focusing on increasing human intelligence on this threat, Mr. Obama wants to concentrate on making law abiding American small business owners go to jail for not doing what the government should do in securing the border.
We cannot have a President that is giving a “green light” to drug pushers and cartel leaders in the United States.
Tony Magaña grew up in McAllen Texas, attended Texas A&M University, holds a doctorate from Harvard University. The co-founder of Contempo Magazine has participated in Valley business for over 20 years.He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
