Monday, June 16, 2008

Disingenuous Mexican Critics Compare Drug War to Iraq

By Patrick Corcoran

At some point in the last 18 months, comparing Mexico’s drug violence with the ongoing warfare in Iraq became a fashionable indictment of Felipe Calderón. The whole trend started, I believe, with a typically sensational cover on the newsweekly Proceso a few months after Calderón took office, and it has continued right up to the present day with prominent columnists like Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez and Jorge Zepeda Patterson recently jumping into the analogical fray.

There are, of course, some superficial similarities between the two conflicts: lots of bloodshed, lots of interested parties constantly switching sides, and lots of frustration from policy makers. But then again, there are some superficial similarities between a Volkswagen Beetle and an aircraft carrier, but no one would seriously compare the two.

Iraq and Mexico are likewise more different than alike, in ways that are both encouraging and unsettling. The most obvious difference is the scale of violence. Yes, more Mexicans are killed in drug violence than American servicemen, but Mexico remains a far safer country than Iraq. The estimates of Iraqis who’ve died violent deaths since the invasion range from 80,000 to one million, or anywhere from 16,000 to 200,000 per year. In a country one quarter of Mexico’s size, up to sixty times as many people are being killed.

The magnitude of the killing in Iraq is a reflection of a society much more scarred than Mexico’s. Saddam Hussein’s reign left the country divided along tribal, ethnic, and religious lines, and those deep splits are now driving the conflict. In Mexico, on the other hand, the fighting is about money, a much less personal motivator. This is a reason for relative optimism in Mexico; if Mexico’s government can reduce the monetary incentive for drug runners, drug running will tail off. Convincing the embittered Shiites to overlook their difference with their Sunni Arab and Kurdish countrymen is, by comparison, far more daunting.

The challenges facing Mexico and the United States are also very dissimilar. The US, having invaded a country about which it knew nothing, quickly found itself in over its head. Much of the past five years has been spent learning the terrain and adjusting its tactics. In contrast, Mexicans are not struggling in an unfamiliar land against unknown enemies; they’re suffering at the hands of the corrupt cop walking the beat. There’s no reason to think that simply through the passage of time, Mexico’s security forces will improve to the degree that the American military has in Iraq.

Calderón’s critics are much more concerned with the broad similarities of Iraq and Mexico than the vital differences. That’s because the goal of the comparison isn’t to illuminate, it’s to link Calderón to the most unpopular American president in the modern era, to imply that Calderón is Mexico’s Bush. It’s a strictly political attack that gives us no clues as to how to proceed in the drug war. 

Equating Calderón to Bush misunderstands the real tragedy of the Iraq War, which lies not merely in its mortality but in its needlessness. Bush had an alternative to war. As distasteful as it would have been for some, he could have worked to reinforce sanctions and let the UN take the lead. Indeed, Bush’s government would almost certainly be better off today had he done so.

That’s not the case for Calderón. Certainly the Mexican president could have employed alternative strategies, but there’s simply no way this fight could have been avoided. The war with the drug cartels was already boiling over when Calderón took the oath of office.

The situation in Mexico has a lot in common with an American conflict, but not Iraq. Much more relevant is the crack epidemic in American cities in the 1980s. In both cases, the local police forces were as overwhelmed as the communities they served. In 1990, nearly 25,000 Americans were murdered, close to ten percent of that number in New York City alone. It was broader societal changes and shifts within the drug industry that eventually brought about a substantial lessening in the violence, though more effective public policy certainly helped.

Similarly, changes in the drug trafficking industry (reductions in demand, consolidation of different cartels) have as much potential to bring some calm to Mexico as do government tactics.

One final point: sooner or later an American president is going to pull all of the American soldiers out of Iraq. It will likely be a controversial decision, attacked by the right, but whatever the consequences Americans will cease dying in Iraq.

Calderón has no such option; Mexico can’t pull out of Mexico.

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Patrick Corcoran, a MexiData.info columnist, is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila.  He blogs at Gancho.