The observations don't jive? Christ.

Why doesn't the Rand Corporation just get its CEO Danny Rand, aka Iron Fist, to go clean up the situation?

LOL .. "it's impossible to know", yeah, tell that to the family of the mexican police commander who's decapitated head was thrown in a suitcase in front of the mexican army headquaters, courtesy of the Drug Cartel. Utopia.

We have drones that can kill people from five thousand feet up in the air. We have the most powerful military force in the history of man. We have enough ordinance to turn the rest of the world into a smoking crater.

And yet we can't help the Mexicans with this heinous war?

Any readers in Mexico now? I wonder what it is like. The US press and readers fix on this horror, but what is it life like day-to-day in Monterrey or Morelia (Michoacan's big city, a state that's among the most statistically violent)? Our friends in Morelia travel everywhere by cheap bus, with their pre-teen kids, and have had no change in day-to-day life over the last three years living in Mexico. Except a gazillion more Army roadblocks and the awful news in the papers. I don't know why, but that relatively tranquil normality jibes with my own experience in Mexico two years ago. It reminded me of my life in NY in the 1980s, when all of the US was feeding on similar horror stories about NY; yet life in NY, day-to-day was like everywhere, not perfect, but not a living hell. Is Mexico a living Hell, as these stories tell us? And if not, what explains the enormous hunger we have for the story of Mexico, the living Hell? Not denying the stats, just wondering what's going on with the intense desire for the story...

The problem with this kind of reporting is that it plays right into the hands of the anti-Mexican lobby here in the States. If you don't sell or buy drugs, and avoid the most obvious danger spots, like Juarez in the nighttime, Mexico is less dangerous than San Francisco.

This is a terrible thing going on there, and the exposure of the systemic corruption of all levels of the army and police is very interesting, but I hate seeing it used to bash Mexico or Mexicans. I even saw a little bit of it last night at the Sounders-Chivas Guadalajara match, which the ECS boycotted and which brought a lot of racist trolls to the surface. That makes me very unhappy.

@5: Well granted, us libs will look for any excuse to critique the War on Drugs, but if it bleeds it leads, and it's fucking bleeding. You're not denying the stats you say, but you're denying they could explain the coverage? The story is hugely important and the U.S. coverage is still minimal, c'mon.

@ 5. I'll tell you: the US, its drug war policy, and drug war money (and drug consumers) are largely responsible for those deaths.

I'm not out to make Mexico look like a bad place—but until we change our legal-political engagement with drugs, the killings will continue. As well as the political destabilization of certain cities and states, which will have a much bigger impact on much bigger segments of the population.

I realize I sound like a broken record with these stories—but they're important and they have everything to do with us and who we elect and how we write policy in the US.

@5 I've got a lot of family in Morelia, and they seem to be doing fine. No Facebook pictures of dead bodies or anything like that. But like Fnarf says, they aren't involved in the drug trade and aren't putting themselves in harm's way. I think it should be obvious that playing up the violence serves multiple agendas, whether you're anti-drug war, pro-drug war, or just anti-Mexican.

The RAND Corporation predicted we'd be out of both Iraq and Afghanistan 5 years ago.

Sucks to be them.

@5, I've got family in Tepic, Nayarit, which is mostly out of the news, but they are having occasional pitched battles in the streets between (usually) competing cartels, not cartels and soldiers. It's a bit scary knowing that it can happen at any time, but daily life is not significantly different.

@4, there are excellent historical reasons why Mexico is, shall we say, hesistant to invite US troops onto their soil. And it is unlikely that drones guiding bombs on civilians is going to solve anything. What they need isn't smoking craters but a functional, non-corrupt, non-thieving non-cartelized military, police force and government that the people trust.

@8, you don't sound like a broken record, just like a political advocate. I understand your urgency, and I share it. But when urgency paints the world in such reductive, singular hues, it makes me curious about why. Why are we so hungry for that story? I look to journalists, as opposed to political advocates, for their curiosity and insight into those bigger questions. My post was just to say I want to hear from more people who live in Mexico (thank you @9 and @11).

El Blog del Narco continues to be the most fascinating news site I visit every day. Thanks for bringing attention to it here, Brendan.

@3: Okay, Loveschild. Explain how it IS possible to know definitively whether the marijuana trade is fueling this violence or not.
C'mon, answer me, you chickenshit.