How Wall Street, the US Army and Obama Benefit From Militarizing Mexico's Drug War

06-04-2011 • CounterPunch.org

Imagine what your reaction would be if the Mexican government agreed to pay Barack Obama $1.4 billion to deploy US troops and armored vehicles to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago to conduct military operations, set up check points, and engage in fire-fights that end up killing 35,000 US civilians on the streets of American cities. If the Mexican government treated the United States like this, would you consider them a friend or an enemy? This is exactly how the US is treating Mexico, and it's been going on since 2006. America's Mexican policy--The Merida Initiative--is a nightmare. It's undermined Mexican sovereignty, corrupted the political system, and militarized the country. It's also resulted in the violent deaths of thousands of mostly poor civilians. But Washington doesn't give a hoot about "collateral damage" as long as it can sell more weaponry, strengthen its free-trade regime, and sluice more drug profits into its big banks. Then everything is just Jim-dandy. There's no point in dignifying this butchery by calling it a "War on Drugs"? That's nonsense. What we're seeing is a giant powergrab by big business, big finance and the US Intel services.