Time to stand down? Mexican soldiers, at attention as pot is burned last week, could be freed for other duty if the drug war were declared over. (Reuters)
Remember Operation Fast and Furious? Mexicans sure do. And now some are planning to sue their government, and ours, for one of the dumbest maneuvers in the history of warfare — part of a 6-year drug war that has exacted more casualties than any other involving the United States in that period.
Mexican legal sources tell me that lawyers there are putting the final touches on a massive lawsuit by relatives of Fast and Furious victims against the American and Mexican governments that launched the botched operation.
Washington careers, perhaps even that of Attorney General Eric Holder, may be destroyed. But the moment also presents an opportunity.
President Obama’s election victory last week, the partial legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington state and the new Mexican government about to be sworn in may together provide an opening for an end to the drug war that’s killed more than 60,000 Mexicans in six years.
Let’s recap: Fast and Furious was hatched in 2009 by Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms bureaucrats. It ended in a December 2010 desert shootout in Arizona between Mexican drug smugglers and US Border Patrol officials. An American agent, Brian Terry, was killed.
As Congress began investigating, details emerged: US officials had planned to allow arms, including high-powered rifles, to “walk” south of the border as they tracked them to the drug kingpins who used them.
Oops: Once in Mexico, the agents lost sight of most of the 2,000 weapons. Vicious killers were now free to use AK-47s and other shiny new weapons.
Terry was not the only victim. Fast and Furious guns also killed between 200 and 300 Mexican citizens, mostly innocent bystanders. And their loved ones are now demanding justice.
In the end, their lawsuit may not go through. The decision as to whether to proceed, according to Mexican sources, will be made by politicos, rather than the courts. That’s the way things go down south.
Enrico Pena Nieto, who’ll be sworn in as Mexico’s new president on Dec. 1, has little incentive to reopen a scandal that could potentially harm relations with Obama.
And when the two presidents meet Nov. 27, Obama may want to help Pena bury the lawsuit that could harm Holder — and perhaps Obama himself.
But here’s an idea: Why not work quietly with Mexico to end the increasingly grotesque US-funded drug war?
While the casualties in that war, which Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched with US aid and at its urging six years ago, are mostly non-American, this war has been fought on America’s behalf, and the US finances and encourages it.
And as the “Fast and Furious” scandal aptly demonstrates, it’s an aimless and unwinnable war.
Washington politics is ripe for such a move, with Republicans rethinking their approach to Hispanics. Immigration reform, for example, might become a rare point of agreement in hopelessly divided DC.
Besides that, though, nothing can be more helpful to relations with our southern neighbor than ending the drug war, which turns so many Mexicans against America.
But how?
The victorious pot initiatives in Colorado and Washington show that legalizing drugs may be the wave of the future. If so, that will reduce the profit margins that feed the drug trade.
Remember prohibition? Its repeal curbed much of the violence that sullied the gilded age.
Of course, drug legalization is likely to take a while.
Which leaves the option that the new Mexican administration apparently favors: Declare victory, however implausible, and simply end the war. Obama has experience with that kind of thing: He did it in Iraq and is about to do it in Afghanistan, for better or worse.
Ending Mexico’s carnage is a net gain. It will help unify North America, creating a powerful bloc on the global stage.
It will also, at least partially, vindicate Obama’s boast in his victory speech last Tuesday: “A decade of war is ending.”
It’s not, but in the case of Mexico it should be.
Twitter: @bennyavni