Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Perry Doctrine

http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2011/10/mexico’s-drug-war

Julie B., Lauren G., Bradley O., Patrick W., Olivia T., Danielle R., Amanda H., Matthew A.

10 comments:

  1. My name is Amanda H. and I’m currently majoring in Psychology. The article “The Perry Doctrine” is about, in my opinion, presidential candidate, Perry, and his want to fight the drug gangs in Mexico. His way of going at it is to take our troops into Mexico for the war on drugs. Honestly I don’t believe that sending our troops to Mexico is really going to help that much. It might help a little but not enough to control to the extent that Perry wants. Personally I say just leave it be and don’t send our troops to a place where we are not needed, we are just beginning to bring them back from the middle east, so why go somewhere else? Going to Mexico is just going to be worse for our country.


    Amanda H.

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  2. My name is Matt A. and I am business management major. I can understand Rick Perry’s concern with eliminating the current drug and gang wars currently going on in Mexico. But this problem could possibly cause more harm than good. The money that it would take to send troops into Mexico would cost the already struggling U.S. and put the economy at more of a risk than it already is. We don’t even know if it would work out in our favor. So is it really worth it? I don’t believe so; there seem to be more risk than reward in this situation. The idea behind the thought isn’t a bad one, and he shows his concern for the human civilization, but in the end it’s not really a realistic goal for the U.S.

    -Matt A.

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  3. My name is Patrick and I'm also a business management. Rick Perry is like any other government official, it's election time and he is just trying to bring up issues just to get back into office. A majority of the drugs are coming in thru his state, he has resources to really crack down on trafficing of illegal weapons and drugs but I believe it's too big of a business for him to make a differnce. There is $500 million going to Mexico to fight the cartels but how much is being spent here in the US to fight against the trafficing?

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  4. Brad Ogden, business major. My thoughts on the whole situation are that the U.S. should be involved but not to the fullest extent. I believe that Rick Perry’s idea of sending troops over to fight in the drug war would be a bad idea for a few reasons. First off if we were to go over there it could potentially lead to frustration on the other side and they could move deeper into our country and start wars within our domain, second if we were to go over the American casualties would be inevitable and we do not want to see that, and third I’m sure us going there would result in greater violence within their country resulting in greater casualties of the innocent and their economy and population would be further crippled. I do not think we should ignore our neighbor’s problems but I do not think they deserve our help to the fullest extent. We do not want to put forth so much effort when we already have our own economic problems and have other problems overseas with al-Qaida and whoever else in a threat to us. I think our help should come from the border control and the navy, putting ships on the ocean to take account of all the drugs being imported from ships and airplanes and also make sure that there is no smuggling over our border because the last thing we need is drug war and higher drug rates in our country.

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  5. Great conversation ya'll are having! I like that Patrick attributes all of Perry's talk to basic politicking, and Matt and Amanda don't think sending troops would do as much as we would like, as the situation in Mexico is too complex. Brad's list of various reasons regarding why the US shouldn't intervene is a good one; the US's military is stretched as tight as our budget, and getting involved in Mexico could be a bad hit to our economy on several levels. The author of this article wisely says: "If Mexico’s drug war keeps raging, though, Americans may have to ask themselves whether they have enough of a buffer with Mexico to ignore its problems."

    What does the author mean by that? What might be interesting for your group to look into is the relationship between the US and Mexico. How much do we trade with them? What is our previous history with them? Has NAFTA (Google it if you're unsure) helped them? How much aid do we give to Mexico annually? Historically, have US Presidents gotten along with Mexican Presidents? What is Mexico's history like in terms of its government - has it had a traditionally democratic government that would work well with the US, or has their government been anti-US at times? Looking into the context of Perry's - and the rest of our lawmakers's - policies with Mexico might help us better solve the problems we have.

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  6. Julie, biology/chemestry major. I'm a bit late to the punch here, but I might as well share my thoughts anyway.

    First off, I've been following Perry for a while and my comment will be biased as a result because I absolutely can't stand the man.

    I actually agree with Matt. I understand that Texas is having issues with drug and gang violence from Mexico, but sending US troops into Mexico is not the answer. There's a question as to how effective they'll be, really. The cartels have been moving south for sometime now and some people are theorizing that they'll continue to move south into Central America.

    We also have to remember that this would not be a war on Mexico, but on a few rich and powerful men in Mexico. I don't quite think the troops would really be able to do much against them and they might even fuel hate towards the United States among Mexican citizens. I really don't see much good coming from this at all.

    Julie B.

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  7. My name is Matt and I am a business management major. My opinion of Rick Perry was somewhat minimal before reading this article, but after reading about him here and online I can see he’s only trying to build a solid campaign for himself. I agree with how Julie puts it as nothing good can really come out of any of this. If anything it’s just going to fuel the fire in the relations between Mexico and the U.S. I also agree with Amanda in saying that we should just let things work themselves out on their own. We shouldn’t go to a place where we aren’t needed the most. The link I am posting is from the New York Times. It tells about how the drug industry has grown and the affects it has had on the people of Mexico and the U.S. this project has helped me to understand in greater detail how the drug cartels work and how efficient they are considering no one has really been able to stop them.

    -Matt A.

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  8. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mexico/drug_trafficking/index.html

    forgot to put my link up Matt A.

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  9. Hello to All, this is Patrick. The biggest issue with America and thte Mexican drug war is the export of US weapons. It seems that alot of the drus come from Mexico & South America but the weapons are from the US.

    From what I can see our governments has a pretty good relationship. The US exports alot of goods to Mexico, that is good for our aconomy. We also have US companies that operate in Mexico which also helps with their acomomy, but recently the relationship betweent the two contries has hit a low point because of a US Military report that said drug related violence was danger of turning Mexico into a failed state.(BBC News/America/Oboma backs Mexico war on drugs)

    SO to me, the best solution of fixing the problem is sending funds to the Mexican Government to help the fight the drug lords. So I agree with Julie and Brad, sending US Military down there is not the answer.

    Patrick

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  10. Off the suject for a second. Why does US media refuse to give President Obama his corret title when the mention him? You alway see & hear the say Obama, what happened to President?

    Patrick

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