RIGHT SPEAK: Why Drug Legalization And Hugs For Terrorists Won’t Solve The Border Crisis

As Thucydides hinted, often when people are either afraid or malicious, they have historically tried to garb their fear or malice in the language of rationalization. After the ghastly massacre of Americans miles from the southern U.S. border, the firebrand Mexican leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declined the help of Mexico’s northern neighbors in eradicating drug cartels.

“We have to act independently and according to our constitution, and in line with our tradition of independence and sovereignty,” he replied after President Trump’s tweet offering to “wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth.” Obrador added, “War is irrational. We are for peace. It is a characteristic of this new government.”

This comes after his military was told to stand down and surrendered after losing an urban battle to El Chapo’s cartel last month. The rationalization then was similar: that war is brutal and there’s no point in risking life and blood to catch criminals. The criminals in this instance are those same gangs, which are now a law unto themselves.

This is nonsensical. Obrador’s policy since his election of “hugs not bullets” is similar to a lot of American progressives who believe in reformative justice. The reality is, of course, far more humbling. Mexico is now, at best, a failed state wherein large swaths of territory are controlled by different armed groups, similar to Afghan or Libyan warlords. There is no writ of the Mexican state or the Mexican army or police, and no law and order in these regions.

The drug cartels are as brutal as ISIS, if not more so. In the latest massacre, the cartels burned women alive inside their cars and shot kids while they were running away. That is the best-case scenario.

The worst case is that Mexico is a rogue state, actively hostile to regional peace. It is too early to ascertain which way it is, but the actions and rhetoric of the Mexican president after every massacre and episode of violence do not fill onlookers with optimism.