Years have passed since I was Commissioner of Customs under Presidents Reagan and Bush. Many pieces of the anti-smuggling apparatus have changed. The government has assembled the Department of Homeland Security, the classic bureaucratic answer to a problem. For a small annoying problem one appoints a czar; for a big annoying problem, a new department.
The sad tale is that the security situation at the border, whether for inanimate or animate matters, is worse. The new department was not just an exercise in the metaphoric rearrangement of the deck chairs on the RMS TITANIC but a whole new USS TITANIC II.
The heart of the problem lies in the massive corruption of Mexican government and security forces from top to bottom. Sure, there are rotten apples as well in the American forces, but they are actively sought out and removed. In the Mexican forces it is not a matter of removing rotten apples but rather trying to find healthy ones. This was the case years ago, and, unless the entire Mexican government and security forces recently fell in behind Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, they are still hopelessly corrupt. The cartels have completely and effectively penetrated and gained control of high and low level officials.
This problem has been nourished by the weak-minded attitude of U S authorities in looking through their fingers at this corruption. This is a kind of international political correctness. It arises from an instinct to make the world safe for cocktail parties not mankind. Our authorities too often continue to act as if their counterparts are hard working crime fighters when they are more indentured servants of the cartels. The situation respecting Mexican police and agents is much worse. The admission of Mexican officials to the U S intelligence center in El Paso (EPIC) and the operational aspects of plans and intelligence is at best naïve and at worst mad.
It is important to keep in mind the fact that the trade in illicit commerce of many kinds is the fuel for the cartels and the confections for corrupt Mexican officials. Suggestions to legalize such corrupt commerce will merely give the cartels a corrupt and murderous role in an ugly but licit trade. They control the drug industry. They would no longer have to worry about being killed by civil authorities, just each other.
The question remains as to how the most effective pressure can be brought to bear on our officials to get tough with the Mexican authorities and how to begin to break the bonds among the Mexican authorities and the cartels. It is sad that so many young and otherwise capable Mexican forces are being sacrificed today while higher level officials concert with the cartels.
Drugs is still a bad word in Twenty-first century society; but apparently not bad enough. Friends that take drugs are still tolerated and Mexican officials that facilitate drug trafficking are never punished. The cartels, however, are multi-dimensional enterprises. They have what we call in today's lingo, diversity. They deal not only in drugs, guns, pornography and what ever else ails you. They are also the engine and infrastructure to an even greater evil -- Child Trafficking. Perhaps if a real war were undertaken against child trafficking, those Mexican officials who assist the cartels and the American officials who turn a blind eye would be so shamed that they would finally lower the boom and fight. It, I suppose, is one thing to tolerate a little snorting of cocaine on Fifth Avenue by a Wall Street banker but what civilized man, even a diplomat, could stand by while an old Hollywood mogul ravaged a twelve year old girl in South Beach. Even depravity must have its limits. Shame!