“On the Edge of the Abyss”

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A month ago, Gen. Barry McCaffrey—President Bill Clinton’s drug czar and a retired, highly decorated Army general—visited Mexico, and came away shocked. In what he called his “After Action Report,” he wrote: “Mexico is on the edge of the abyss—it could become a narco-state in the coming decade.”

General McCaffrey believes that a stable Mexico is central to U.S. security, but what he sees happening across our southern border is anything but stable.

Here are some of his key points:

• “The Mexican state is engaged in an increasingly violent, internal struggle against heavily armed narco-criminal cartels that have intimidated the public, corrupted much of the law enforcement and created an environment of impunity to the law.”
• “Mexico is not confronting dangerous criminality—it is fighting for survival against narco-terrorism. A terrible tragedy is going to take place in the coming decade if we don’t ally ourselves with the courageous Mexican leadership of the Calderon administration.”
• “Mexico is on the edge of the abyss—it could become a narco-state in the coming decade.”
• “The outgunned Mexican law enforcement authorities face armed criminal attacks from platoon sized units…heavily armed drug gangs with high powered military automatic weapons. Perhaps 90% of these weapons are smuggled across the US border.” See FLYP: "Guns Without Borders"

General McCaffery’s report deserves to be widely read; download the PDF here.