Last evening on CNN, Wolf Blitzer ran a respectful piece about a young Mexican politician who has been murdered by a local drug gang because of her efforts to put an end to violence in her city. Blitzer alluded to the estimate that up to 50,000 people have now perished in what he referred to as "Mexico's drug wars".
But they're not Mexico's drug wars, are they? How many Mexicans would have died in drug-related violence if it were not for the insatiable demand for illegal substances on the streets of US cities? Mexicans are dying in their hundreds because no US politician dares admit that if there's a war against drugs, the drugs are winning it.
Yet it's "poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States"* that gets tagged as a "failed state".
* Quote attributed to Porfirio Diaz, who was President of Mexico in the late 19th century -- although there's no evidence that he actually said it!
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