Really The Worst Mexico Can Do?

I understand some folks are still steamed at Calderon about the '06 election, under some delusion that the PRD's pedos no huelen. I was even there in California when the crowd gasped at Cuauhtemoc Cardenas when he suggested AMLO had lost the election and that folks needed to just get over it. At the time I was mildly amused by Cardenas... but now I find I probably agree with him. Why? La Barbie.

With the arrest of the fairly washed up former drug princepin known as "La Barbie," the blogosphere and the news folks are up in a fluster again about how "Calderon's" drug war / US proxy war in Mexico is destroying the country. Is it so long ago that the indie media (of which I am generally a fan), and the correspondents of the mainstream were all over one of Mexico's truly "bad guy" presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari for NOT doing enough to go after the cartel butchers? At the end of the day I am no big fan of the PAN or Calderon... not beyond their presence starting a little competition in the Mexican political market. However, Eddie Valdez (La Barbie) did some truly rotten things to both Mexican and US citizens for which he needs to do some serious (life) jail time. Until Mexico and the US either A) invent a time machine that goes back to 1930 and changes narcotics policy; B) they work out an economic system that legitimizes all narcotics and black market items while simultaneously creating a total global free market where everything is legal and offer amnesty for crimes committed in the past by "alternative economy" types; C) they go back to the 1970s model of ignoring narcotics trafficking THEN we have to deal with a reality where a president serious about law enforcement regarding a truly brutal sector of society needs to be engaged.

On both the right and the left the conversation about the rule of law in Latin America has been heated... and in one direction: that it is a cure for Latin American ills. But the slaughter we see in Mexico is a direct result of that transition to the rule of law. So I have to ask, do you really want it or not? And if your answer is to simply change the laws to fit the criminals (make narcotics legal), then is that really the rule of law? And if not narcotics, what is next? At the end of the day this war in Mexico is and will continue to be brutal and Calderon will continue to be mediocre president at best. And while we know he is not the best Mexico can do, is he really the worst?