I heard a couple of numbers that astounded me the other day. One was 3000. That is the number of 2010 drug fatalities in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso.
The other numbers were $40 billion and $150 billion. Those are the wholesale and retail numbers of the drugs passing from Mexico into the United States. $40 billion represents almost 5% of Mexico’s gross domestic product, greater than the impact of Wal-Mart on the US GDP.
Government statistics in Mexico also show over 22,000 drug related slayings over the past three years.
According to The Huffington Post, we’re spending $3.6 billion per month in Afghanistan for war that seems to be getting muddier and muddier as we go along. I’m not sure what the end game is, but we’re there spending and spending in lives and money.
While that is going on, we’re hell bent on building a fence to keep out the Mexican bad guys, the runners who look to escape poverty in their homeland. Otherwise, it seems like we’re hands off.
It seems odd to me that we are embroiled in conflicts around the globe when the greatest risk to our society lies south of our border.
Sometimes, our foreign policy confuses me. Shouldn’t we be fighting the enemies who immediately impact us? How are the drug cartels different than the Taliban?
No comments:
Post a Comment