We won’t get fooled again… or will we?

Newsweek, under the alarming section header “Terror Watch” reports:

After fierce resistance from the gun lobby and its allies in Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder has dialed back talk about reimposing a federal assault weapons ban to help curb the spiraling violence in Mexico.

As much as 90 percent of the assault weapons and other guns used by Mexican drug cartels are coming from the United States, fueling drug-related violence that is believed to have killed more than 7,000 people since January 2008, according to estimates by Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials. But the political obstacles to addressing the U.S.-to-Mexico weapons flow are dramatically underscored by Holder’s experience in just the last few weeks.

Certainly, the carnage caused by those U.S. weapons is terrifying to the residents of the communities bordering the United States where there has been out-of-control violence during the Calderon Administration’s imposition of military force against gangsterism. The violence, suggests ABC News, could get worse:

…according to a confidential federal law enforcement assessment obtained by ABC News.

“We have a criminal insurgency by organized crime that may well be a precursor to civil anarchy in part or all of Mexico,” warns the assessment.

At least ABC admits there is such a thing as “legitimate insurgency” (at least one assumes that’s the opposite of “criminal insurgency”), but I don’t know who’d really be surprised by this sort of warning. Those of us who’ve opposed U.S. interference (aka “help”) in solving the U.S. drug crisis have been warning since the beginning that there is a real danger of making gangsters into “insurgents” just by giving them legitimacy as a “national security danger” rather than treating them as just plain ordinary criminals.

And not everyone in Mexico supports the militarization of the anti-narcotics crusade.  Painting those who oppose it — often for the best of reasons (“violence begets violence,” and “rural development is a more effective strategy“) — and who see U.S. “assistance” coming not for Mexico but for the Calderon Administration — are likely to be painted as “terrorists” themselves, and subject to military persecution.

While it’s a step forward that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said in Mexico City today (Wednesday) that

“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the death of police officers, soldiers and civilians,” Clinton told reporters during her flight to Mexico City.

“I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility.”

… the U.S. is still in denial about WHO is responsible. It’s not Mexico’s fault that with the collapse of agriculture, there are few rural employment opportunities, and few legitimate craps that the United States will pay a fair market price for. It’s not Mexico providing the guns and money.

Since it appears that even a mild attempt to control the gun-running trade is unlikely to come to fruition, it might have been better if the Secretary of State had stayed home, and worked on getting Mexico a United States Ambassador (not having an Ambassador means the Secretary of State is going to have to deal with Mexico City’s complaints about the U.S> Embassy’s zoning irregularities, instead of dealing with what should be more substantial issues*).  You would think that when President Obama said Latin America was a priority for his administration, a little thing like appointing an Ambassador to Mexico might have crossed someone’s mind.

Sorry to sound so cynical, but after the previous U.S. administration (and it’s really moronic ambassador, who no one will miss) made extravagent promises to “fix” Mexican-U.S. relations — sort of the way the Clinton, BushI, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman… Monroe  administrations all said things would be different this time.

* UPDATE:  The Obama Adminstation today (Thursday) named  Carlos Pascual as Ambassador to Mexico. Pascual  is a vice-president of the Brookings Institute and a specialist in East European affairs (he was Ambassador to Ukraine) whose only Latin American experience is having been born in Cuba and emigrating to the United States as a baby.