On Mexico, Obama shows little interest in stopping military's torture

In his remarks in Mexico on Monday, Obama only mustered this on human rights:

"As I've said on many occasions, I heartily commend President Calderón and his government for their determination and courage in taking on these cartels. And the President reaffirmed his government's commitment to transparency, accountability and human rights as they wage this difficult but necessary fight."

But a Mexican reporter asked a question on the subject, and Obama came back with:

"Now, with respect to the conduct of this battle against the cartels, I have great confidence in President Calderón's administration applying the law enforcement techniques that are necessary to curb the power of the cartels, but doing so in a way that's consistent with human rights. And we discussed this in our bilateral meeting and I am confident that as the national police are trained, as the coordination between the military and local police officials is improved, there is going to be increased transparency and accountability and that human rights will be observed.

The biggest, by far, violators of human rights right now are the cartels themselves that are kidnapping people and extorting people and encouraging corruption in these regions. That's what needs to be stopped. That's what President Calderón is committed to doing, and that's what I'm committed to helping President Calderón accomplish as long as he is President of Mexico."

There you have it. Party A is worse, so let's not worry about Party B. (Note: certainly the cartels are indeed worse; they are murdering people at the rate of several hundred per month; the Mexican military is doing no such thing. That's presumably little comfort to those individuals who have been tortured by the Mexican military, with no one brought to justice).

Now, Obama probably wasn't supposed to quite officially endorse that logic, as he did. In fact, I bet his use of the sentence "That's what needs to be stopped" was really an attempt at a segue -- from Messaging 101.

But regardless, the message to the Mexican government and all of the country is clear: carry on.

Remember, the Obama administration is seven months in. They could have said to Calderon back in February: "Look, your military guys are still torturing people, and that's not acceptable to us. We're going to give you a few months to do something serious about it -- including initiating prosecutions in civilian courts -- and in that time, we won't publicly criticize you. But if you don't shape up, then we will." There could have been, you know, carrots and sticks, or whatever the cliche is.

This is, you know, a U.S. ally and aid recipient we are talking about. Not a Myanmar or a Belarus. The U.S.'s power over Mexico is pretty significant. The Obama/Clinton team won't be able to credibly throw their hands up down the line and say "hey, look, we tried back-channel negotiations to pressure Calderon to fix this torture thing, but it didn't work."

The Administration is signalling that it will sign-off on a report that says that Mexico has met the conditions in the Merida Initiative, and that therefore the last 15% of the funds can be released (this is what Senator Leahy rightly opposed). Our ambassador to Mexico says that they are making "progress" on human rights, and that could very well be true. But the strings attached to the Merida Initiative rightly weren't just about "progress" -- there were specific targets to be met, such as having civilian-court prosecutions of military torturers. That hasn't happened.