Mexico: Not ‘with us’ in the war on terrorism

It’s way too early to do any favors for the Mexican government and its president, Vicente Fox. Though most Americans haven’t noticed, Mexico has been going out of its way to snipe at the US and undermine US national security interests since September 2001.

Fox’s government views migrant workers as a “tool" against the US, as a means of transferring billions of dollars a year in federal Social Security payments into Mexico, and as a way of exercising political influence against American politicians.

His administration has taken what for Mexico is an unusually aggressive foreign-policy line. Fox has been working to undermine the 57 year-old hemispheric mutual security system, announcing days before 9/11 that Mexico would pull out of the 1947 Rio Treaty and encouraging others to do the same.

Mexico was one of the last nations on Earth to express solidarity with the United States after the 9/11 attacks. Even Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez at least showed symbolic sympathy. Fox dismissed 9/11 as an internal American problem.

Fox’s lieutenants have been talking of limiting the American "hyperpower," working with second-echelon Cuban Communist Party officials to help perpetuate the Party’s rule after Castro leaves the scene, praising Marxists from Chile to Nicaragua, and unsuccessfully trying to save the FARC narcoterrorists in Colombia.

Fox used Mexico’s new seat on the UN Security Council to try to save Saddam Hussein’s regime. Mexico sided with France, Russia and the Iraqi Ba’athists. Now it wants favors from Washington, and in an election year, is using the migrant issue to force concessions from both parties. Instead of lifting a finger for Fox, the US should apply President Bush’s "if you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists" standard south of the border.