Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon at a funeral for an assassinated official
Source: Notimex, via Yahoo! Mexico

Felipe Calderon is determined to take back his country. His war parallels that which the U.S. is fighting for Iraq’s freedom but he doesn’t have the luxury of fighting it in another country.

He’s fighting the same caliber of thugs the U.S. troops are fighting in Iraq. They are gangsters, they are thugs, they traffic in contraband and they behead their victims. They are as vile as anything Mexico has ever known and world class in the beastliness, every bit a match for Sadr’s bloodsoaked gang thugs in Iraq.

But unlike Bush, who’s made mistakes over the past few years, Calderon seems to thus far be making no mistakes. Maybe he’s learned from Bush’s past, who knows? He’s struck at Mexico’s drug traffickers and leftist rebels with sharp force, used surprise, denied safe haven, vowing to dig in his heels for the long run, and not been deterred by strikebacks from the barbarians. He’s also presented Mexico’s leftist rebels with a graffiti bill for messing up Oaxaca and making it look like a leftist hellhole. He’s been sly, grabbing thugs by the group and spiriting them off to jail where they belong instead of confronting them all head on on the street. He’s taken fire, as in the assassination of officials, which, we worry, may be retaliatory.

But it hasn’t stopped him. He’s sent thousands of troops to invade and take back Tijuana, Oaxaca, Michoacan and Acapulco. He’s getting ready for the long haul. And in doing so, he is safeguarding democracy so that Mexicans will have a liveable place instead of be in a constant struggle for survival that discourages citizens and corrodes democratic progress

We wish him well.

Mark in Mexico has a whole ton of fascinating blogging about this struggle at this site here.