Mexico Drug War Aid Delays Investigated

Somewhere between President George W. Bush announcing in 2007 that the U.S. would give México $1.4 billion dollars to fight drug cartels (Mérida Initiative) and now, just $362 million in equipment and aid have made it to Mexico. Red tape and bureaucracy are to blame, apparently, and border lawmakers are going to start investigating why.

Some of the stuff promised to México under this agreement: seven UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, training for police, judicial and law enforcement reforms, gamma ray scanners to see drugs and money in vehicles, and probably bribes, too, but that’s just my opinion.

All of this kind of fails before it begins because, quite frankly, there have been tens of thousands of deaths in México related to drug cartels since this “groundbreaking” deal was struck. Some Mexican journalists put the figure as high as 50,000 since President Felipe Calderón took office in 2006. And as Calderón helpfully pointed out (while taking the money), there’s no way you can stop the drug war without attacking the U.S.’s proclivity for using drugs and selling guns to the cartels.

So here we are, in the middle of a recession, with untold millions out of work and unemployment benefits, trying to figure out what happened to hundreds of millions of dollars we promised to a country to fix a problem we are a part of but don’t really want to do anything to solve — except throw money at it.