Day 8 of 1000

I visit National Review Online’s The Corner often.  Some of the regular posters like Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Steyn, and Kathryn Jean Lopez are without peer.  Quite a few of them are excellent most of the time, but have a little bit of that country club, neo-con, RINO thing going.  That would include Stanley Kurtz, Jonah Goldberg, and Jim Geraghty.  The thing about the second group is the so often write great stuff that, when they hit a sour note, it grates more than it would if they were not such stellar writers.  Then there are the writers like Ramesh Ponnuru and John Derbyshire who I really wanted to like and kept reading way longer than their material warranted, although Derbyshire has had a few good articles on educational pretension, more than you can say for Ponnuru.  At any rate, Mark Kirkorian was not really on my radar as a distinct personality until today.  He has been one of those authors I knew I had read before, but his writing never made such a strong impression on me that I associated him with any topic in particular.  That is, until now. 
Kirkorian posted an article that is just wrong on many, many levels.  It is profoundly ignorant to say “the attack had nothing to do with drugs (the perpetrators were with a protection racket) and nothing to do with guns (they used gasoline bombs).”  It turns out that the perpetrators of the firebombing were members of the Zeta Drug Cartel and they carried guns into the casino when they went in to firebomb it.

In Felipe Calderon, Mexico has the best president they have had in many years, possibly ever.  He is in an ugly situation.  In the speech Kirkorian cites, Calderon accepts culpability for Mexico’s part in this, but the fact of the matter is that drug consumption in the U.S. drives much of the insidious violence in Monterrey, the beautiful colonial city where the attack took place.  The drug cartels are in Monterrey for its proximity to the U.S. markets and because they launder a LOT of their dirty, drug money in Texas.  What does the American government do?  They send powerful weapons to the drug cartels that are used to murder not only innocent Mexicans, but innocent Americans including a Federal Border Patrol Agent.  Calderon is doing everything within his power to get Mexico’s problem under control; why can’t we prosecute those people in the American government who are selling guns to the bad guys.  In addition to that, there are many reasons to deal with our drug problem here in the U.S. than just to help Mexico.  William F. Buckley, Jr. was flat wrong about drugs.  Drug legalization is just wrong.  If drug addiction is harmful to society, and it is, we should do everything we can to stop it, but that is another topic for another day.

Mexico has its problems, but they are fighting for their lives right now and they are is our neighbor and our friend.  We talk to people on Skype everyday who live in the middle of what was the most peaceful and prosperous large city in Mexico just a few years ago.  We SHOULD help them, not write sanctimonious letters about the evils of Mexico.  We used to be able to go to Mexico to visit our children’s grandparents.  A couple of weeks ago, a man was pushed out of a car onto his knees, shot in the back of the head, and left in the middle of the street, a couple of houses down from those grandparents.  There are too many horrifically violent stories to tell that have directly involved our friends and family in Monterrey including home invasions, a murder, armed robberies, kidnappings, and on and on.  These are the kinds of things that are perpetrated by the drug cartels.  Our insatiable appetite for drugs is a big link in the chain.  Good people on the street on both sides of the border know that this is a problem that belongs to all North Americans, even those in drug addled Canada.

Update:  ATF chief steps down because of the guns to Mexican drug cartels scandal.  The claims of Mark Kirkorian in his shameful article appear even more scurrilous now.