From Columbia to Clausewitz and Peru to Prussia, I love it.

"'This is emphatically not the old, "comfortable" Mafia, and legalizing drugs, even if it were possible, would not make these trans-national criminal organizations go away, particularly when they have the support of narco-states like Venezuela has become."

Where does the good Col. think that money for narco-states comes from? Seriously, Venezuela and Cuba have multi-billion dollar production industries that can support paramilitary operations abroad lying around, untapped, that they've been waiting for drug legalization to tap into? That if their great cash cow in the Western drug markets were to dry up, they'd just, 'shift to other sources of income?' Don't be absurd.

Let's be very clear about what disruption to these cartels will do. Supply will initially be cut, and this will increase prices of drugs coming in, and those increased prices will increase the supply of drugs to the United States, further enriching the industry, though a handful of key players will be severely penalized for their participation. Until the market is eliminated in the United States, this will always be the case.

"Drugs are just the venue."

I don't understand this statement at all. I mean, maybe this is just my inner civilian, but I would figure an alliance of narco-states, funding an extra-national paramilitary force, for the express purpose of securing drug routes to the most lucrative markets, would make drugs less the 'venue' and more 'the only reason any of this is going on in the first place.' Wouldn't that pretty much make drugs, and drug policy, the center of gravity in the conflict?

Let's not forget that the CIA and guys like Ollie North actually were involved in helping earlier versions of Colombian organizations bring in coke to the US. It was never really followed up by the media here - the Sacramento Bee did a series but was shut up quickly - but the stories I always heard invloved C-130s from Tegucigalpa to Homestead AFB in South Florida.

The goofy theories about how the CIA introduced crack into the US market to keep African Americans down are a bit far-fetched, but there have been persistent rumors and stories about how Ollie North's rouge operation helped fund the contras by smuggling coke using USAF aircraft. It isn't a stretch considering how they were happy to sell arms to Iran for the same purpose.

So there is some indication that the situation in Mexico today was abetted 25 years ago by scumbags using the huge hard drugs market in the US as a means to the end of funding the Contras off the books.

I am NOT a conspiracy nut. I believe Oswald acted alone. I believe we really did go to the moon. I don't believe in black helicopters or the great UN conspiracy to create a world government to destroy our sovereignty. And I don't think the smuggling (if it did in fact occur) was with any nasty domestic policy in mind - it was just another way to make dough to fund the Contra operations at that time.

CORRECTION: after a quick Google is was the San Jose Mercury News that ran the series, not the Sac Bee. And it was private contractor aircraft - DC 7s, and whatever, not USAF C-130s.

Here are a couple of links:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_North

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/index.htm

There are also persistent rumors that the use of the US military to invade Panama simply to arrest a guy (Noriega) involved his cooperation with the spooks when we were still buddies with the guy. He's due to get out of stir eventually - I wonder if he'll yak at that point or if he'll make it out alive.

This is just abjectly silly. Why do you think that narcotics networks engage in fights over territory, launder money, etc.? For fun? And their strength and funding is totally unconnected with the lucrativeness of the drug trade? And Iran and Venezuela are going to take over Mexico? But we shouldn't overreact to these superhuman drug gangs and their narco (but not really narco!)-state sponsors that want to seize control of the Rio Grande...

I'm going to be VERY skeptical about anything that CNAS produces on Latin America in the near and medium term, because this is just nonsense.

If illegal drugs became legal overnight with the government supplying and overseeing the use and distribution through pharmacies, drug related violence and crime would disappear overnight. Addicts would be able to hold steady jobs and live with their addictions instead of becoming social outcasts and criminals. The funding for these thugs and bandits would disappear and they'd have to find some other lucrative trade. We've seen this before with the Prohibition of alcohol. While the crime gangs didn't go away, the violence they perpetrated lessened as their turf wars and disputes subsided because their revenue stream from alcohol smuggling and distribution dried up.

America is the cause of Mexico's and Columbia's drug related violence. Since drug use in America is not likely to decline anytime soon despite the fact that our prisons are full to overflowing, it might be time to reflect on our 40 year drug policy and consider it a failure. Rather than lessening the problem, the Controlled Substances Act and other laws are failures from a social point of view. Their only reason for existence now is as a source of alternative funding for police and other law enforcement organizations since the police get to keep assets seized from drug dealers and traffickers, and as a value added tax or hidden cost on prescription narcotics and other legal drugs that can be abused. The opportunity to amass so much money and wealth is likely corrupting individual police and other law enforcement officials either through asset seizures or bribery.

The geopolitical problems outlined above will decline if the drug revenues from America are removed. Governments who support the drug trade will just have to find another revenue source. And, perhaps relations between Latin America and the United States will improve since Americans are no longer directly funding the narcotics producers and traffickers any more and whose money is undermining the legitimate governments opposing these cartels. I'm not saying that this is the only answer, but it gets to the heart of the problem which is that American money is funding this violence and trying to counteract that violence without shutting off that funding source is just throwing good money after bad as well as causing a lot of unnecessary misery and suffering.

enemy drug army runs on oil, same as our counter-offensive. The difference is that our state is guaranteeing theirs access to the stable economy and infrastructure they need to run their drug businesses. All the drug money, material and operators move thru public spaces, subject to regulation and privilege limits.

Illegal commerce is complicated, with lots of moving parts: supply, demand, big pharma oxycontin alternatives, civil rights, diplomacy and all that. But some of those parts are vulnerable. We now possess new means of control of the part that takes place on US pavement, in our homeland, in the above-ground economy.

We now have automated information tools to observe, track and analyse all motor traffic coming across the border, into cities, and/or emanating from distribution sites. We can and should tighten up on cars sold to unregistered owners, fake plates and driver's licenses. Plenty of potential informants in prison, on the streets.

The number of cars/trucks, banking sites and lawyers available to facilitate drug distribution is huge but limited, and under our law in our sandbox. Freeway offramps are numbered, airports even more so. Drones can follow, loiter and record. Workarounds reveal themselves as patterns. If we can calculate every bank account in the US to the penny in real time, we can screen for illegal transactions, follow that money.

Prohibition is not the solution, slow attrition isn't the goal, and a police state is a risk. But efficiently shrinking the business, forcing our loadies back to domestic pot & alcohol, medical addiction or intervention, and reducing the market and motivation for guns on the street, is worthwhile in itself.

While were doing that, we can reconsider the role of expensive lawyers and cheap guns in the equation.

If "shifting to new sources of revenue" were easy everyone would have done it, and drug gangs would have already exploited then new sources, in addition to drugs.

Even if we avoided the obvious solution of legalization, I wonder if you couldn't be more effective if you spent your anti-drug dollars on reducing demand, rather than curtailing supply.

According to a study done by Glen Greenwald working for the Cato Institute, Portugal's experience has been overwhelmingly positive. And I agree with the other posters, what does the good Col. think that these narco-states (hopefully soon to be post-narco-states) and gangs will do for profit? Everything else that is produced in Latin American can be had fairly cheaply in the US.
I guess they could always fall back on cocaine. Or they could establish contact with the Taliban or Karzai's brother via Turkish outlaws, some of whom already have networks in the US and with the government if Sibel Edmonds is correct, and they could then set up a heroine network. But that seems like a whole lot of trouble, and being a middle-man isn't enough paydirt to really have a decent narco-state.
While we are on US-funded blowback, isn't it lovely to see Reagan's 1980s dirty doings bearing fruit in the form of the MS-13. Way to go Ron.

Dear Mr. Killebrew,

I notice that you tag yourself as a "Correspondent". Could you please desribe from the below definitions of "Correspondent", which definition fits you best.

Noun 1correspondent - someone who communicates by means of letters
letter writer

communicator - a person who communicates with others
pen pal, pen-friend - a person you come to know by frequent friendly correspondence
2.correspondent - a journalist employed to provide news stories for newspapers or broadcast media newspaperman, newspaperwoman, newswriter, pressman

foreign correspondent - a journalist who sends news reports and commentary from a foreign country for publication or broadcast
journalist - a writer for newspapers and magazines
war correspondent - a journalist who sends news reports and commentary from a combat zone or place of battle for publication or broadcast

Adj. 1. correspondent - similar or equivalent in some respects though otherwise dissimilar; "brains and computers are often considered analogous"; "salmon roe is marketed as analogous to caviar"
analogous
similar - marked by correspondence or resemblance; "similar food at similar prices"; "problems similar to mine"; "they wore similar coats"

Col. Killibrew is right in that there is more to the current situation in Mexico than just chasing drug trafficers.

However, I think the real serious issue in Mexico is when the behavior and legitimacy of the Mexican elected government becomes the question as it did during the 1911 election that started the Mexican Revolution.

I think we will be seeing in the next year just how important the behavior of the Federal Police and Mexican military "in fighting of the drug war" is to the future of the Mexican government. Continued use of the policies and practices in the" that restrict civil rights while appearing to increase the number of people killed while not reducing the power of the "cartels" could very well be THE issue of the next election.
An attempt by the PRI or PAN parties to run on the current tactics combined with the historical election manipulations of the party in power could very well lead to a majority of the public not accepting the election. (Something that almost happened last time around.) If the majority of public were to reject the legitimacy of the next election, there would be quite a vacuum of power to be filled. And who would fill it?
Looking back at the Revolution one only has to remember that Villa, Zapata, and other leaders were called bandits by the political establishments in Mexico City and Washington DC. So, I do not think it would be unlikely that various politicans and cartels would form alliances to gain power.
Perhaps its time to starting reading up on the Revolution: Time to learn how Zapata and Villa wrestled power away from the Mexico City power brokers only to be betrayed.Time also to study the series of truly stupid moves made by the US that still sully US-Mexican and Latin American relations..

Prohibition has decimated generations and criminalized millions for a behavior which is entwined in human existence, and for what other purpose than to uphold the defunct and corrupt thinking of a minority of misguided, self-righteous Neo-Puritans and degenerate demagogues who wish nothing but unadulterated destruction on the rest of us.

Based on the unalterable proviso that drug use is essentially an unstoppable and ongoing human behavior which has been with us since the dawn of time, any serious reading on the subject of past attempts at any form of drug prohibition would point most normal thinking people in the direction of sensible regulation.

By its very nature prohibition cannot fail but create a vast increase in criminal activity, and rather than preventing society from descending into anarchy, it actually fosters an anarchic business model - the international Drug Trade. Any decisions concerning quality, quantity, distribution and availability are then left in the hands of unregulated, anonymous, ruthless drug dealers, who are interested only in the huge profits involved.

Many of us have now finally wised up to the fact that the best avenue towards realistically dealing with drug use and addiction is through proper regulation, which is what we already do with alcohol & tobacco --two of our most dangerous mood altering substances. But for those of you whose ignorant and irrational minds traverse a fantasy plane of existence, you will no doubt remain sorely upset with any type of solution that does not seem to lead to the absurd and unattainable utopia of a drug free society.

There is an irrefutable connection between drug prohibition and the crime, corruption, disease and death it causes. If you are not capable of understanding this connection, then maybe you're using something far stronger than the rest of us. Anybody 'halfway bright' and who's not psychologically challenged, should be capable of understanding, that it is not simply the demand for drugs that creates the mayhem; it is our refusal to allow legal businesses to meet that demand.

No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, diminution of rights and liberties, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safer; only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?

If you still support the kool aid mass suicide cult of prohibition, and erroneously believe that you can win a war without logic and practical solutions, then prepare yourself for even more death, corruption, terrorism, sickness, imprisonment, unemployment, foreclosed homes, and the complete loss of the rule of law.

"A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Abraham Lincoln

The only thing prohibition successfully does is prohibit regulation & taxation!