Pubdate: Sun, 11 May 2008
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2008 Miami Herald Media Co.
Contact:  http://www.miamiherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262
Author: Andres Oppenheimer

DEMOCRATS WRONG ON CUTTING MEXICAN ANTI-DRUG AID

The murder of the acting chief of Mexico's federal  police amid an 
unprecedented wave of drug gang attacks  on security officials will 
soon become a major issue in  the U.S. presidential candidates' 
escalating war for  Hispanic votes.

Until now, Republicans and Democrats had tried to make  as little 
noise as possible about the Bush  administration's Merida Initiative, 
a request for $500  million to help Mexico fight its drug cartels. 
They  hoped to pass it quietly, fearing that a high-profile  debate 
would stir up political passions on both sides  of the border and 
kill the proposal.

But with drug war violence in Mexico escalating to  record levels in 
recent memory, that's changing fast.

Likely Republican candidate Sen. John McCain will  probably try to 
cut into the Democrats' growing lead  among Hispanics by saying that 
their proposal to reduce  the Merida Initiative by up to $190 million 
amounts to  "abandoning" Mexico at a time when President Felipe 
Calderon's government is facing a bigger than ever  attack from the 
drug cartels.

It may be much like when McCain blamed Democrats for  "abandoning" 
Colombia by resisting ratification of  the U.S.-Colombia free-trade 
agreement. Only that, in  Mexico's case, the political stakes at home 
are higher  because more than 65 percent of the more than 10  million 
Hispanic voters are of Mexican origin.

When I asked the McCain campaign Friday evening for a  reaction to 
the Democrat majority-proposed cuts to the  Merida Initiative, I got 
a statement from McCain's top  foreign policy advisor Randy 
Scheunemann that sounded  like the opening salvo of the coming 
Republican  offensive.

'UNDERMINING ALLIES'

"At a time when we have a Mexican president willing to  take the 
fight to vicious narco-traffickers, it is  appalling and 
irresponsible that congressional  Democrats would cut funding," 
Shuenemann said. "This  is just the latest example of Democrats 
undermining our  allies."

Carl Meacham, a senior Republican staffer at the Senate  Foreign 
Relations, said that last week's killing of  acting federal police 
chief Edgar Millan Gomez is "a  huge thing." He added, "An escalating 
war is raging  along the U.S. border, and many in Congress 
are  refusing to assist a neighbor who has come for our  help."

The slain police chief was the highest-ranking of about  200 officers 
killed by drug trafficking gangs over the  past year and a half in 
apparent retaliation against  Calderon's military offensive against 
the drug cartels.

According to a U.S. Senate report authored by Meacham,  2,600 
Mexicans have lost their lives in police actions  against drug 
traffickers over the past year, and the  Mexican government has 
invested $3 billion and deployed  30,000 troops in an effort to 
combat the drug cartels.

The Merida aid package is aimed at helping Mexico buy  eight 
transport helicopters, improve intelligence  sharing, and reduce the 
massive smuggling of .50 mm  rifles, grenades and other high power 
U.S. weapons to  Mexico. The plan does not contemplate the presence 
of U.S. troops in Mexico.

Most Democrats in Congress say they want to vote for  aid to Mexico, 
but they object to what they say is an  excessive focus on military 
aid at the expense of  institution-building assistance, and they note 
that  some anti-immigration Republican legislators are  opposing the 
Merida initiative.

Senate Western Hemisphere subcommittee chairman Chris  Dodd of 
Connecticut told me in an e-mail that "we are  planning to provide 
the Mexican government with  critical financial assistance, while at 
the same time  ensuring that we can also address various humanitarian 
emergencies around the world."

On Friday, the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers,  which are baking 
the Democrats in the November  elections, called for blocking the aid 
plan, citing  concerns over human rights abuses.

My opinion: In this column a week ago, I ripped McCain  for moving 
increasingly closer to anti-immigration  hawks in his party, and for 
leaving behind the  comprehensive immigration plan he once supported 
to  embrace a new stand that I described as economically  stupid, 
politically unwise and dangerous from a  national security point of view.

DEMOCRATS CAVED IN

Today, it's the Democrats' turn to be singled out for  caving in to 
the populist-isolationist wing of their  party, and irresponsibly 
turning their back to an  escalating war against the bad guys on the 
U.S. border.

Unless Democrats and their candidates give their full  support to the 
initiative, they should face a backlash  among some of the growing 
numbers of Hispanic voters  who have flocked to the Democratic Party 
in recent  months.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom