Pubdate: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 Source: Dallas Morning News (TX) Copyright: 2009 The Dallas Morning News, Inc. Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/lettertoed.cgi Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117 LONG-TERM BORDER SECURITY COMMITMENT The administration's border security plan, unveiled Tuesday, offers a long overdue response to Mexico's growing drug violence and the U.S. dollars and guns feeding it. President Barack Obama appears committed to end American neglect of this issue, although it's far too early to know whether, like his predecessors, he'll let his attention stray. With seeming conviction, successive administrations also have launched programs to tackle the Mexico-U.S. drug problem. But more pressing issues like Islamist terrorism or faraway wars always seemed to justify relegating Mexico to second-tier status. As a result, this problem has festered to the point that Mexico has become all of our worst security nightmares rolled into one. For Mexico, the euphemistic "war on drugs" is now real war. It has killed more Mexicans since 2006 than the U.S. death toll from 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. Large-scale kidnappings, once the problem of distant drug capitals like Bogota, are now occurring regularly in U.S. cities like Phoenix. Some politicians have labeled this the "spillover" effect, but the more accurate term is inter-linkage. Each country is feeding the other's problems. Mexico estimates that 2,000 U.S. firearms are smuggled southward every day. America's illicit drug consumers send billions of dollars annually to Mexico's cartels, funding the bloodshed while helping put drug kingpins like Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman onto the Forbes list of the world's richest people. To his credit, Obama is not using the current economic crisis as another excuse to continue neglecting Mexico. Instead, he is dispatching top Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to coordinate strategies with their Mexican counterparts. The Treasury and Homeland Security Departments will send hundreds of extra federal agents to the border. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will open three new offices and shift 100 agents to monitor arms smuggling. The administration correctly identifies the problem on this side of the border as a law-enforcement issue. Despite calls from Gov. Rick Perry, among others, for a military response, the White House is wise to remain noncommittal. Troops cannot break up kidnapping rings in Phoenix or arrest the Mexican drug gangs operating in Birmingham or Dallas. The so-called spillover has little if any military dimension on the U.S. side of the border, and so far, Mexico has rejected the notion of American military assistance inside Mexican territory. Perry's idea is a non-starter. Despite grandstanding about the border crisis, Congress still hasn't fully funded the $1.4 billion in assistance pledged under the Merida drug-fighting initiative, and military-grade helicopters promised in the package might not be delivered until 2012. That hardly conveys a sense of urgency. Like the economic crisis, the border drug problem was years in the making and will require years of attention and a vast commitment of resources to solve. Among Obama's biggest challenges going forward will be matching his words with action. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake