Confronting terrorism
30 September 2008
The grenade attack on the Independence Day Grito in Morelia was called, among other things, a Mexican 9-11.
The upcoming celebration of Morelia’s namesake, Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon will go on as scheduled… with President Calderon in attendence. And… Crown Prince Felipe of Spain and Princess Leticia.
No panic… no sense that “everything has changed,” no calls for radical legal changes and — beyond a one-day media blitz of politicians posturing about a return of the death penalty (saner people, including the Bishops, put the kibosh on that one)… the best response to terrorism is simple. Refuse to be terrorized.
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mexfiles.net 
works so well for Spain doesn’t it? Yet you do not seem to support legalizing drugs in Mexico? Isn’t that the source of most terrorism in Mexico?
Drugs are quasi-legal here now (if you remember, a proposal which would have codified what was and wasn’t “for personal use” caused the U.S. Embassy to flip out and Pres. Fox to veto the bill), but legalization is more an issue with the buyer than the seller. Mexico has to realistically deal with a nuclear power with a very large military — and its number one foreign customer for all its other products — right next door. Until they buy off, Mexico just can’t do it.
The Morelia attack MAY have had to do with any number of issues within Michoacan… water rights, the cattlemen v. farmers fights, the leftwing state government v the conservative federal government, etc. Throwing a grenade into a crowd of people isn’t a usual narco tactic, so who knows. The point is that terrorism seeks to terrorize, and refusing to be cowed by what’s probably a single incident makes more sense than freaking out and changing your whole way of life to meet what might not be the cause of the problem.
Cheers
If you remember, September 11th was not the first terrorist act on US soil. There have been other terrorist acts commited before this. Today you could possibly say that only a handful have occured since 9/11. These incidents (like the Virginia Tech shooting for example) are not considered real acts of terrorism by most people.
The idea that people should have to put up with terrorism occuring is a little absurd to me, if anything I would say that most of the security measures have been effective over the last 7 years. While it has been annoying, most people would rather be alive and anoyed rather than dead and “free”.
Of course people are not rational about death either, this is why there is a big push for nationalized health care and increased industrial regulation but less emphasis on safe driving laws. If people were rational they would realize that you are going to die no matter what you do and that the greatest chance of you dying is going to come from driving wrecklessly rather than eating Mexican Jalapenos or Imported Chinese food products.
When people are comfortable with death, there will be less emphasis on “free” socialized health care and industrial regulation and more emphasis on living a better and more fulfiled joyous life, possibly a hedonistic one. Religion, the belief in human guilt, and the possibility of imortality are the proboble reasons that keep people from embrasing personal choice.
Terrorism is nothing more than a violation of your rights as a human being. To ignore terrorism is as stupid as not trying to find the murderer or not trying to find the theif. Terrorist oganizations must be stopped, they seek to promote their ideas through the use of force, and they do not care who they have to kill in order to accomplish their goals. This is why we stopped ignoring it in America, because we recognized the political instability that it would bring. Mexico would be wise to do the same thing, but it is likely that those organizations have deep roots in Mexico and it would be very difficult to severe these organizations without a huge backlash, yet ignoring them will only result in the tyranny by theses unelected organizations. That is the challenge for Mexico, but they will only succeed if they can ignore US pressure to continue the war on drugs. Doing this, and going after the real criminals who do commit human rights violations is the only way for them to succeed. This goes as well for the US and the rest of the world.