Obama: Mexico should reject "peace" with drug cartels

In a meeting yesterday (September 12) with Spanish-speaking journalists, including Mexico's Notimex news agency, the president said "making a deal with persons who are without morality, who have utterly no respect for human life, would be a very bad idea." Obama was conspicuously referring to those who urge amnesty for or peace talks with the drug cartels. Perhaps the most prominent of such advocates is former Mexican president Vicente Fox, whose remarks have been controversial.

"President Calderon understands well, and quite correctly so, that when organized crime controls a large segment of a country's economy and manages to establish and integrate itself as part of the country's social fabric, it's going to have a corrupting, corrosive effect -- and that's true in any country," added Obama. "I don't believe that most Mexicans want to live in a country where drug dealers are among the most powerful members of society."

President Obama also responded briefly to questions about the now defunct "Fast and Furious" arms program, in which the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration permitted the controlled sale of military-style assault weapons to Mexican drug dealers or their purchasing agents in the U.S. The strategic plan was to track the weapons by serial numbers, so that their ultimate purchasers or end users could be identified. The program raised a furor in both Washington and Mexico City when it was exposed in 2010, ultimately resulting in the resignations of several high level U.S. officials, including the then American ambassador to Mexico. Yesterday Obama repeated that neither he nor U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had authorized or even been aware of the program.

For more details on the resultant fallout from Fast and Furious, search this Blog for numerous articles.