The prognosis for the violence in Mexico is eerily similar to the forecasts about the economy in the United States: It will get worse before it gets better.
That is bad news for both countries. ...
"Anything you can think of that's happened in Mexico, we have to think could happen here," Steve McCraw, the director of homeland security for the state of Texas, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "We know what they're capable of."
In a recent interview with PBS, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano expressed the same sentiment.
"But let's be very, very clear," she said. "This is a very serious battle. It could spill over into the United States. If it does, we do have contingency plans to deal with it."
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Napolitano did not reveal those contingency plans, but the best plan is to help our neighbor before the Mexican violence becomes the U.S. violence.
This was the motive that led to the Merida Initiative, a $1.6 billion package to help Mexico combat the drug cartels.
U.S. officials, however, must not be content to stop with the initiative.
If the program is helping, officials must increase the aid to achieve even greater success, and if it is not working, they must come up with an initiative that does.
