Mexican Federal Police leave the scene of the raid. Yahoo/AFP.
Mexican Federal Police killed 42 cartel members and arrested several others during a 3 hour gun battle. Yahoo/AFP. One federal police officer was killed in the raid in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Though the name of the cartel targeted in the raid, it is likely that it was the New Generation cartel, which is headquartered in the state. The Cartel was recently in the news for shooting down a military helicopter with an RPG, killing 7 troops and a police officer. The raid began when the Federal Police found a car full of gunmen and engaged them. The gunmen then fled to the ranch, where they were killed in the compound and the surrounding fields. The new raid is the latest in the Mexican Drug war which has killed 80,000 people since it began in 2007, with 22,000 more declared missing.
My Comment:
Everyone forgets about the Mexican Drug War. This is the first time in a long time the war has made the news, not counting the destruction of that army helicopter. You would think that a war that has killed at least 80,000 people, and I think that is a very low estimate of deaths, would rate more discussion, but it never comes up. I know that there are bigger wars right now, but you would think one on the border of the United States at this intensity would be talked about all the time.
And if you think about it, it really has a huge impact in the United States. The whole war is about drugs and that effects our entire criminal justice system. Not only does organized crime on this scale bring a whole host of secondary crimes, including murder, corruption, blackmail and general violence, it also fuels the black market drug trade. Crime gets talked about all the time, but the war that ensures that the crime rate is higher then it should be? Nothing.
Right now drugs are not on anyone's mind, other then marijuana legalization. People in favor of legalization tend to overestimate the impact that ending the laws against marijuana would have. Sure, the cartels make money from it, but they also have dozens of other drugs to run, along with kidnapping, smuggling, human trafficking, corruption, gun running and prostitution to gain money. Just like getting rid of prohibition didn't destroy the Italian Mafia, legalizing pot won't end the cartels. They are just too entrenched at this point.
Another aspect that is effected by the Drug War is immigration. Neither side of the immigration debate ever mentions that Mexico is a war zone. Pro immigration people never try to paint the immigrants as refugees, they only talk about economic hardship. Anti immigration people never talk about the huge security risk that the cartels are causing. You would think that would come up in one of the most vicious and passionate debate in the United States today right?
Though ISIS gets the headlines today, it was the cartels that invented their style of terrorism, at least in the modern age. Killing people isn't anything new but the way they used the internet and social media to spread their message was. There are so many beheading and other acts of terror that are pasted all over the internet from the Mexican Drug War that it is easy enough to confuse the pictures for Iraq or Syria. But other then a few scant mentions, nobody talks about how bad the cartels are.
The only aspect of the war that does get covered is the issue of firearms. Gun control advocates like to talk about how many guns come from America, without ever mentioning that most of those guns were sold to the Mexican Government from the American Government. Gun rights people like to talk about Fast and Furious and the fact that guns are pretty much banned in Mexico and that civilians have no protection against the cartels. But I get the feeling that neither side cares all that much about the actual violence.
So why is it so ignored? For one thing, the war isn't quite as intense as it used to be. There were less casualties in the past couple of years. It is very hard to get accurate casualty figures but the total number of murders, most of them cartel related, dropped in 2014, and there haven't been as many in 2015 either.
But I think the fact of the matter is that nobody wants to admit that it is an actual legitimate war. People don't like to think that criminal organizations having so much power that they have actual military arms. And if the government actually did admit what was going on in Mexico was a war they would have to answer some very uncomfortable questions...
As for the battle itself, I find it very suspicious that the casualties were so one sided. You would expect at least a somewhat more even death toll in such a long and drawn out gunfight. Sure the police are better trained then the cartel members, but you would have thought that there would be a few injuries on the police side.
My guess is that this was a "no prisoners" kind of raid. Sure they took a couple of people alive, but the vast majority of them were killed. If true that would be a crime, but I doubt anyone will face justice for it. After all, it's hard to feel sorry for cartel members...
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