n April of 2003, I was in Mexico City with my family when we witnessed a protest against the United States of America. The U.S. invasion of Iraq had just begun a few weeks earlier and it was sparking lots of anti-American sentiment in Mexico’s capital city.

Furious protestors blocked an otherwise busy traffic corridor carrying signs denouncing President Bush and the United States. By the slogans on their signs, I could see many believed the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to get cheap oil and expand “American imperialism.”

Now, five years later, world oil prices are at record highs, the U.S.-backed regime is struggling to survive and desertions by the U.S. equipped military is almost routine.

Just read these descriptions:

• Over 6,000 people were killed in the past two and a half years as troop surges have failed to defeat the enemy. Corrupt officials continue to undermine critical anti-insurgency operations thus limiting the effectiveness of those operations.
• The country’s top police official was gunned down in front of his home in the capital just last week.
• The attorney general tried to put a positive spin on the increasing number of decapitations by stating; “The decapitations are a sign of the violence that these groups are showing because we have them cornered.”
• Some cities in the north have become nearly ungovernable. In one case back in 2005, a new Police Chief promising to stop the violence was assassinated only seven hours after being sworn into office. He was shot over 40 times. His successor, worried about his own safety, resigned after only a few months in office.

Last October, President Bush added another $1.4 billion to his $43 billion dollar “war on terrorism” funding request. The $1.4 billion provides money to buy helicopters, improve surveillance systems and give local forces training they require to be more effective protecting judges, elected officials and themselves.

The aid package is known as the Mexican Plan. The country described above is not Iraq but Mexico.

It was Mexico’s federal Police Chief, Edgar Millán Gómez, who was shot ten times by gunmen as he entered his apartment building in the Guerrero neighborhood of Mexico City. The town where the police chief was shot 40 times and his successor resigned months later is Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

Now, as Mexico’s president attempts to defeat the entrenched drug cartels, Mexican police and judges find themselves the first targets for assassination by the illicitly funded and better armed paramilitary organizations they are fighting.

I haven’t noticed any public protests in Mexico’s capital yet over President Bush’s request that Congress provide more military aid to Mexico. Maybe when it comes to threats to their own national sovereignty and civil order, Mexico finds U.S. military assistance too important to be dismissed as self-interested “American imperialism.”