Hitman membership drive

Be all you can be---in the drug cartel?

Such was the audacious advertisement hung prominently across a thoroughfare earlier this month by Mexican drug traffickers belonging to The Zetas. The banner and similar signs in Nuevo Laredo, which borders with El Paso, Texas, declared: "Operative group 'The Zetas' wants you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer good salary, food, and benefits for your family. Don't suffer anymore mistreatment and don't go hungry. We won't give you instant noodle soup."

Talk about ¡cajones! Not only is Mexico known the world over as a corrupt, taco-eating Third World country whose many citizens live in Los Angeles but it is so Third World the bad guys advertise for workers on par with Hewitt-Packard and McDonald's. Join our team! We offer great worker benefits! I especially like the above photograph, taken on April 13, 2008, showing the truckload of soldiers passing by the banner in broad daylight.

Left unsaid is their penchant of putting you on the cover of Alarma should you miss a shipment or refuse to sing a ranchero song or lose/win a cockfight.

Mexico is an unfunny joke on more fronts than eight. Its war on drug traffickers is as ludicrous as ours on "terror" and homeland security. Twelve million plus illegal immigrants living and working in the U.S. Hello! As regards Mexico, every Mexican knows that narcotraficantes (drug traffickers) operate in border cities Tijuana, Mexicali, Nuevo Laredo and live in big mansions and ranches throughout the country. Imagine sixteen year olds driving Bentleys around the 'hood and you get an idea of the farcical opposition to drug smuggling.

Mexico is not doing more to combat its problems because its problems soon become our problems and that suits them just fine. Apparently the logic is Why deal with it when someone else will? Hasn't failed them yet. President Calderon has addressed the drug problem more aggressively than any of his predecessors and with effect. One notion behind the recruitment banner is that, while authentic, it was hung as a grand flip-off to the government for meddling more so than to seriously attract new blood desperate to eat more than Manchuran noodles.

Whether or not many disillusioned soldiers or dead-end innocents gravitate to the Zetas it remains for certain that the drug cartel is behind the recruitment postings. If the bad guys are this bold in broad daylight---always a bad sign---when are the "good guys" going to step up and fight, not compromise, negotiate, or dialogue, but fight fire with fire?!