The War in Mexico...

It continues to amaze me how little impact the violence in Mexico seems to have on people (citizens or not) in America.  Even the awareness of the violence is low – I've spoken with any number of people here who had no idea how bad things are just a few miles south of here.  From Strategy Page today:

Mexico’s most violent city, Ciudad Juarez, suffered over 3,100 murders last year. That's 238 per 100,000 population. That's far higher than Baghdad during the height of the terrorism violence a few years ago. In New York City, the rate is 6.5. The most violent American city, Camden, New Jersey, has a rate of 40. Meanwhile, Ciudad Juarez has a new police chief, who cleaned up the violence in Tijuana, a city with the same population (1.3 million), and the same problem (out-of-control drug gang violence.)

Ciudad Juarez' new mayor is famous for “cleaning up” Tijuana.  But that is a very, er, flexible term: last year Tijuana had almost 1,000 murders (including dozens of Americans).  More Americans were murdered last year in Tijuana than in all of San Diego County, by a large margin.

And yet very few people seem to even know about this, much less be concerned about it.  Partly this must be the relative inattention paid by the lamestream media.  Thousands of news clips play every year about American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan; very few on American casualties in Mexico.  But the lamestream media is driven by what they believe people are interested in.  Are they correct on this one?  Are Americans completely disinterested in the chaos and lawlessness just south of the border?  Sadly, my own experience supports that notion...