Mexico At War?

It is true, or at least I believe it to be. So do many others.

But just who would they be at war with, you might ask. For news junkies such as myself, the answer is rather obvious. The drug cartels! True, they have been at each other for a while now. Violence has escalated. But look deeper into the stories and you will come to the same conclusions as I have if you are honest with yourself. War does not have to be declared to exist.

One by one the cartels take a town. Now and again the government sends in troops to retake control, but everywhere they go there is still uneasiness and fear. In response, the drug lords taunt the government, sometimes by hanging banners with statements mocking the government. Eventualy though, the cartels reign once again.

How did it get to this point? The government has long been in the pockets of the cartels. It has probably been the worse kept secret that the drug lords have been paying off officials to look the other way while they continue their nefarious deeds. But lately, the price has been getting too high, and the government is under a lot of pressure to reign in the cartels so they attempted to put on a show the cartels did not like.

To keep the drug and human smuggling rings working and all the lanes of traffic open, the cartels started getting more and more violent, bringing more pressure on the government from places such as the United States to get control of the violence that has been spilling across the border. It has finally come to the point that the cartels have decided to simply take over the entire country.

The cartels have not officially declared a war on Mexico. It would not be a wise move. For one, an open and declared war would not only force the government to send out the entire military at once to stop the cartels, it would force the United States to step in, and possibly even the UN. (They can peacekeep the drug lords to death! The smugglers would end up laughing themselves to death!) All of this would distract the smugglers from their business and cut too deep into their profits which amount to billions each year.

So, they continue as they are, openly recruiting the police and military as they go, one town at a time. As the cartels are much better armed, trained and financed, the government is almost helpless to stop them. Without intervention from outside, which the government is not all that willing to ask for since they would have to admit to having some real problems that are actually very painfully obvious to everyone outside, they do not stand much of a chance of winning.

But, can the United States tolerate a country on their southern border that is run by these criminal gangs?