Why Mexico's cartels must be labeled as the terrorists they are

Dallas Morning News

by Tod Robberson

More than 150 Mexican news outlets have reported over the past week about the controversy surrounding Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan's unusual defense of his nation's most murderous drug cartels as being like businessmen who engage in "mergers" and "hostile takeovers." His remarks were prompted by a Dallas Morning News editorial supporting a bill by Rep. Michael McCaul, of Austin, to put the six biggest drug cartels on the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

I want to clarify that I never set out to embarrass the ambassador, who is a very smart man and stellar representative of his country's interests. His job is to ensure that Mexico's reputation is preserved and that his government is portrayed in the best possible light. If Mexican drug cartels went onto the State Department's terrorist list, it would make Mexico look like a host nation for terrorism. That would, to say the least, look really bad. Bye bye tourism.

I also don't use the word "terrorist" lightly. I'm extremely sensitive to the issue of terrorism creep. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, early news reports tended to label anyone who shot at an American soldier as a terrorist. When Israel invaded Lebanon, it used the word "terrorist" with reckless abandon. If you applied the State Department's own definition of terrorist to American actions abroad, we also could be labeled a nation that supports terrorism. We have bombed indiscriminately for political purposes. We have tortured. We have killed lots of innocents. We have lots of blood on our hands.

That said, Mexico's drug cartels deserve to be on this list. When someone goes to the trouble -- repeatedly -- to kill people and saw off their arms and legs, then dump the corpses on the street, that person is trying very deliberately to terrorize a population. When corpses are hung from overpasses to send a message to everyone who sees it, that's terrorism. When 35,000 people are killed in six years, and entire cities show no activity on the streets after dusk because of the fear of being murdered or kidnapped, that's terrorism. When the same groups go after journalists, police officers, soldiers and public officials -- killing and/or torturing anyone who gets in their way, that's terrorism.

It's deliberate, it's systematic, it's political, and the cartels are the ones making all this happen. Lots of nations have groups that are on the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, but that doesn't mean those nations are supporters of terrorism. Labeling Mexico's cartels as terrorists would send a strong message about Mexico's need to fight them more vigorously, but it would also send a strong message to U.S. officials about how dire and urgent this situation is.

I don't blame Ambassador Sarukhan for defending his country's reputation. I do think he should clarify where he stands, rather than sit silently, hoping that this will all blow over.