US Offers 'Help' to Mexico, Forgetting Its Own Drug War
The Independent reports Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum again rejected Donald Trump's 'offer' of military strikes against cartels. (One might wonder if Mexico needs another American 'solution' after decades of U.S. demand fueling the drug trade.) This isn't altruism; it's a familiar script where US interventionism is framed as help, rather than addressing the elephant in the room: America's
insatiable appetite for drugs, and its own devastating history of military-industrial complex 'aid' in other nations. Perhaps Trump, who, according to OpenSecrets.org, received over $450,000 from defense contractors in his 2020 campaign alone, imagines another profitable conflict. While the US frets about cartels, it remains the world's largest consumer of illicit drugs, and its arms flow south.
Instead of 'military strikes,' maybe we should address domestic consumption and the legal weapons trade from the US feeding these organizations. But that would require actual policy, not just a photo op and some drone strikes.