The war next door

IBD:

Remember when al-Qaida targeted tribal leaders and local officials to assert power in the Iraq War? Today, the story repeats itself on our own doorstep. But incredibly, the Beltway crowd doesn't seem to care.

Mexico's war against drug and alien-smuggling cartels grows ever more similar to the horrors of Afghanistan and Iraq. Beheadings, stonings, car bombs and terrorist attacks speak to a lust for power every bit as implacable as that of the Afghanistan's Taliban or the insurgents of Iraq.

The cartels may seem to be just a police problem, but Mexico's own officials know better: President Felipe Calderon warns that everything about their actions says they mean to take over.

But even with such a nearby threat, there are no U.S. crisis task forces or special envoys. The Northern Command hasn't been bolstered. The unbuilt border fence is one excuse after another, hostage to domestic and electoral politics.

President Obama can't even be bothered to visit the borderlands in Arizona, where, for the first time in history, U.S. control and sovereignty over our own territory is being ceded to foreign cartels.

Does anyone care that a cartel has threatened to destroy a dam in Texas? Oregon officials report huge new cartel marijuana fields on a scale never seen earlier.

The Los Angeles Police Department even warns that five cartels have set up logistics operations in America's second-largest city.

It should be a national security crisis of the highest priority, right?

...

For Obama, it is not so much. He sees it as another foreign policy issue and is more concerned with Mexico's reaction to an Arizona law than with helping them deal with their real problems. What is most urgently needed is help in training their forces in counterinsurgency operations and in protecting the people. This is one of the most vicious insurgencies anywhere in the world right now and it is too close to ignore.

Those of you who follow this blog regularly know I have been talking about the problem longer than the national media has. I am glad to see IBD raising its voice on the issue.