It's time to admit Mexico is at war. US Issues travel warning for five Mexican states.

Mexican police making arrest. USA Today/AFP.

The United States State Department has issued strict "do not travel" warnings for five Mexican states, at the same level as war zones like Somalia, Syria and Yemen. USA Today. The Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Colima, Michoacan and Guerro are all included in the warning. Those states have had large amounts of cartel activity and have many incidents of murder, carjacking, kidnapping and robbery.  11 other states are level three on the warning list with the State Department asking tourists to reconsider travel to those regions. The warning level in popular tourist destiations, like Los Cabos and Cancun remain at level 2 but Acapulco is at level 4. 22,409 people died in Mexico during the first 11 months of 2017. 

My Comment:

These travel warnings are long overdue. There are parts of Mexico that even Mexicans should not go, let alone tourists. It is an extremely dangerous country and, as much as people don't want to admit it, the country is at war. The cartels are fighting each other and fighting the government and there is a massive amount of violence. 

I personally have traveled to Mexico. This was when I was a kid and before the drug war started though. I had fun there and I greatly enjoyed Cancun and the ruins at Tulum. Though Cancun is relatively safe today, I am not sure I would go back, even though I enjoyed the country and its people. 

It just seems like there are so many ways things could go wrong. Though the Cartels tend to try and leave tourists alone, they get some of the money from tourism as well, it would still be pretty easy to get caught up in a rolling street battle or street thugs. And there is always the chance that the Cartels could decide to start kidnapping people and you could get caught up in it. Given that the Cartels devised many of the tactics, including videotaped executions and kidnappings, that ISIS has used, it would be a very dangerous thing to get mixed up with the Cartels. 

The main problem seems to be that the Cartels are fighting for control. There are several and all of them are trying to secure drug smuggling routes. The government crackdown on the cartels isn't helping things. If there was dominate cartel things would be a lot more calm, but since that isn't the case the violence will continue. 

The violence in Mexico doesn't seem to be abating at all. The war had died down a bit but it flared up again last year. The violence seems to be less at the border areas and more on the southern coast. I don't see it getting better anytime soon. 

Of course the fact that there is a massive war that has killed 20,000 people should probably inform our policy there. But it never comes up. Why? Because doing so would help the GOP and hurt the Democrats. 

People have dismissed the border wall as racist but when it could be used as a defense against drug smuggling and violence it makes a lot more sense. Indeed, one of the reasons I came around to supporting Trump is because his wall would serve as a defense against the Cartels. It wouldn't stop everything but it would at least serve as some defense against the war raging across the border. 

It also shapes the debate around immigration. Though I doubt the danger posed by Cartel members would change any minds on the left, after all they don't care about terrorists coming in either, it would at least inform the general public as to what is happening. Sure MS13 gets attention but what about the Cartels? I don't doubt that some of them are here illegally and are contributing to our crime rate. Street crime isn't the only threat from illegal immigration. We have to worry about organized crime as well. 

Finally, I think we really need to keep paying attention to Mexico. The problems that are happening over there can certainly come here. Indeed, the large amount of violence in our inner cities are usually one drug dealer killing another. And where do the drugs come from? The Cartels. Indeed, I consider the high murder rate in our cities to be yet another front in the Mexican Drug War...

We also have to consider the threat that the massive corruption could come this way as well. As much as everyone has talked about possible Russian interference in our election, nobody ever asks about the Cartels. I have little doubt that they own some local, state and even federal politicians. And given that the GOP generally has policies that harm the Cartels, who is to say that they won't try to swing the elections against them? Not that the GOP is immune to corruption. If someone parked a truck-full of cash on your doorstep with the understanding that you take the money or get killed, how many people would refuse? 

I just think that we can't afford to ignore the Mexican Drug War. 20,000 dead in one year is comparable to the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Those wars get a massive amount of attention and you would think that level of violence would be the number one foreign policy story. The corruption in Mexico is total and there is a huge chance of that violence spreading across the border. We need to keep an eye on this war and start doing things to protect our southern border. Not just because of illegal immigration but because of the massive war killing tens of thousands of people...