Mexicans dying in our drug war

College students have officially been warned now that it would be dangerous to celebrate (if that's the right word) Spring Break south of the border in Mexico, because the level of violence is so alarming. The reason is that thr Mexican government, largely at the behest of the U.S. government (and with partial funding from U.S. taxpayers), has decided to get really serious about the Holy War on Drugs and really go after those producers, traffickers and dealers. While this has disrupted a few of the cartels, leading to struggles for power -- which are settled by gun battle rather than quiet negotiations among honchos and lawyers, as would be the case with legal substances -- it has also led many traffickers to shoot back and target police, mayors and other officials. Of course innocents and children are getting caught in the crossfire.

The best way to quell the violence, of course, would be to end the drug war by respecting the right of adults to decide what substances to put in their own bodies. As far as I know, only my colleague Steven Greenhut at the Register, Ted Carpenter at Cato, and I, in my most recent column for Antiwar.com, have put forward this eminently sensible and just approach. I look forward to somebody challenging us on the merits, but I don't expect it; the merits are simply too obvious. But I also don't expect common sense to prevail. On this issue, differently from medical marijuana raids in states with medical marijuana laws (about which Obama made a verifiable campaign promise several times) I expect Eric Holder's inner drug warrior to prevail.

Obama worse than Bush -- on foreign affairs?

Here's an arresting piece by the Cato Institute's Ted Carpenter suggesting that when it comes to foreign policy, Obama might just well turn out to be worse than Bush. Of course he is far from having fleshed out his foreign policy views and the mainstream media have hardly pressed him on the subject. But Ted notes that he shows no signs of challenging the establishment consensus that the U.S. should intervene widely in conflicts around the world, whether any core (or even peripheral) interest of the U.S. is at stake or not. In fact, during the Clinton administration a number of liberal scholars came close to developing the position that it was somehow more noble or desirable for the U.S. to put blood and treasure at risk precisely in places where no U.S. interest was at stake or even implicated. More humanitarian that way, doncha know.

As Ted puts it, "It will not be an improvement if an Obama administration withdraws troops from Iraq only to launch new interventions in such strategically and economically irrelevant snakepits as Darfur or Burma."

Taiwan less dangerous now

Here is the Register's editorial on last weekend's elections in Taiwan. The short version is that with the victory by the Kuomintang (KMT), which used the be the one available party but has been out of power for eight years, tension between Taiwan and the mainland should ratchet down. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had been edging ever closer to a formal declaration of independence from mainland China, thus upsetting the delicate balance of make-believe that has undergirded stability. The mainland claims Taiwan is a renegade province, of course, and Taipei still pretends it's the real government of all of China. Taiwan has de facto independence, but formal indendence could trigger military action by the mainland that could involve the U.S.

I talked to Ted Carpenter, who wrote a recent book on Taiwan, and he told me a few other things we couldn't fit into the editorial. For example, KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou had to promise not to propose reunification. The crackdown in Tibet probably reduced the KMT margin of victory by six percent of so, but at 58% it was still decisive. Ted also offered a bit of an explanation for China's insistence on having every bit of territory it traditionally held, which still strikes me as an example of statist irrationality (why keep constantly troublesome Tibet?). In addition to constant propaganda from state-controlled media, of course, during the 19th century China was ruled by decentralized warlords, and the European colonial powers took advantage of that to establish local footholds. So there's at least a semi-understandable reason for China being so insistent on being unified. But I still think it's irrational.