Do your homework, Hillary!

I wasn't planning to write more about drug cartels, but yesterday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made some comments comparing Mexico and Colombia that were so embarrassing, I can't ignore them.  I admire some things about Hillary Clinton, and never thought of her as a fool, but yesterday  she sounded like a naive person who knows very little about how the world works and, yet, thinks she has all the answers to the world's problems.  It seemed to me that she was tossing out ideas that crossed her mind without thinking them through, and making comparisons based on very superficial and misleading information.  Yet, because she's a very important person and the world pays attention when she speaks, her casual and thoughtless remarks will have a huge impact.  They'll become engraved in the minds of millions of people as "truth," and Mexico will be dismissed as just another one of those violent, turbulent countries where bad things happen, where Americans shouldn't go, unless it's through military intervention.

First, let's think about her choice of words:  She called the Mexican drug lords "insurgents."  Some people might argue that words don't matter, but I know they do.  Words have literal meanings, but also historical and cultural connotations that cause people to form opinions and attitudes based on the labels they use to name things.  Mexico is just a few days away from it's Bicentennial celebration of Independence from Spain.  Last week, when I was helping the 11-year old daughter of a Mexican friend with her history homework, she found the word "insurgents" in her lesson and asked me what it meant.  Literally, it describes people who take up arms against the government for a political cause.  In Mexico, it has much more specific meaning. It's a term used to describe the Mexican patriots who fought for Independence from Spain.  Miguel Hidalgo,  José María Morelos, Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama - these men were "insurgents" who took up arms against the Spanish crown.  They were men who died for a political cause, who inspired other people to continue the fight and demand sovereignty from Spain.  When Mexicans hear the word "insurgents," these are the people they think of.  What do drug lords have to do with them?  Nothing.  They aren't insurgents. They're criminals.

In the U.S. we have words with special historical meaning.  When we talk about Revolutionaries, we usually mean men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams.  These were the men who guided our own Revolutionary War, or struggle for Independence from Great Britain.  We use the word Rebels to talk about members of the Confederacy of southern states who broke away from the Union in 1861, who fought (and lost) a Civil War in an attempt to form a sovereign nation with its own constitution and president.  I've never heard anyone in the U.S. use words like Revolutionary or Rebel to describe Timothy McVeigh, who blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people and injuring 680 more.  We call him a crazy person, or a terrorist, not an "insurgent."  His bomb caused $652 million dollars in damage - much more impressive than the car bombs and molotov cocktails some Mexican drug gangs have tossed around in recent months, no?   In the U.S., people set off bombs with some regularity.  Just a couple of days ago, an 81 year old man in Alabama set off a bomb in the Senior Citizen complex where he lived.  On that same day, a woman in Mobile set off a pipe bomb in a roller rink as an act of revenge because her friend was kicked off the skating team.   In July, federal marshals discovered and prevented an attempt to set off a bomb in the NYC subway.  In March, a bomb did go off in Times Square in NY.  It was linked to two similar bombings in NY in 2005 and 2007.  In May, someone tossed molotov cocktails into a North New Jersey shopping center, and in January, two men set off a bomb in an Ohio mall.  And what about Ted Kaczynski, the "Unibomber," who went on a bombing spree that lasted for 20 years?  We've had a lot of bombs go off in the U.S. in the past few decades, and no one in our country is talking about the responsible parties as "insurgents."

Clinton says Mexico today is like Colombia 20 years ago.  Twenty years ago in Colombia, there was a left-wing insurgency group, the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas), who embraced a political ideology rooted in Marxist-Leninist ideas of liberating the "pueblo" or common people from the oligarchy, or ruling class.  The U.S. classified the FARC as terrorists, but it's worth noting that many other countries around the world didn't see them in that light, or use that label for them.  Colombia has been engaged in an armed conflict since 1964, but the political violence there can be traced back to the 1948 coup (the "Bogotazo") and the following years, known simply as "La Violencia."  The FARC did get mixed up in the drug trade, protecting local coca growers and helping them distribute their products in the US in exchange for cash that could be used to buy weapons and support revolutionary activity.  Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, there were kidnappings, shoot outs, bombings, some of them linked to political issues, and many of them linked to drug-related crime.  It's no coincidence that the U.S. decision to get militarily involved, to help Colombia fight the drug trade coincided with the creation of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which opened up the borders between Mexico and the U.S. for the easy exchange of goods and services, including those linked to drugs.   As the drug business tightened up in Colombia, it shifted to Mexico, where it has grown steadily in the ensuing years.  The Plan Colombia was launched in 1998 to provide U.S. military and economic aid to fight drug production in that country.  Whether it was successful or not is a topic for debate, but it's clear that the U.S. benefits from a military presence in Colombia, if for no other reason than to keep an eye on Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez.   Colombia also supplies oil to the U.S., and its in our best interest to have a hand in what goes on there, whether it's helping the Colombian people or not.

So, Hillary, tell me why Mexico is like Colombia 20 years ago?  There's drug-related violence, yes, and in both cases, the U.S. is the market where those drugs are sold.  But Mexico has a 90 year history of political stability and democracy, which it will be celebrating a week from today.  The narcos in Mexico aren't interested in politics. They care about money and power, not for political change, but for personal enrichment and to feed their egos.  They attack the police and government officials who try to limit their power or otherwise betray them.  Do your homework, Hillary, and think before you speak.  When you compare Mexico and Colombia, take into consideration that political instability and crime are not the same thing.  Your suggestion that "we need a much more vigorous presence" in Central America, similar to the Plan Colombia,  is not well thought out.  I remember all too well the "vigorous presence" of the U.S. military in Central America in the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at overthrowing governments and fighting leftist groups who were not sympathetic to U.S. economic interests.  You should remember it, too, and understand why Mexico is not eager to see this kind of military intervention along its southern border.