More Cognitive Distortion

Jane Bussey of McClatchy Newspapers generously demonstrates her own cognitive disfunction (and perhaps that of portions of the Mexican population) in Mexico’s Calderon takes popular and dangerous stand against cartels
With all the violence and death that has occurred since Calderon’s crack-down, the question is how people can possibly support it. Here’s how:

Mexicans have lost faith in many of their institutions, recent polls show, but not in President Felipe Calderon, who boosted his shaky presidency by launching a military offensive against drug traffickers.
The results have been mixed Ö violence is on the rise with the nearly 2,700 killings in eight months, equal to all of the violent deaths in 2007. News of 10 people or more slaughtered in single incident is not unusual.

Results have been mixed? Nowhere in the article does Bussey indicate any actual positive result (other than some seizures and extraditions, which are not shown to have had any effect). The only result seems to be slaughtering. Apparently launching a military offensive within your own country is a good thing, in and of itself, regardless of the results.

“Finally one government Ö the Felipe Calderon government Ö is doing something about it (the violence),” said Victor Lachica , chief executive of Cushman & Wakefield Mexico, a commercial real-estate firm.

And what is that something? Anything beyond simply escalating the violence? Wait, maybe this is it:

Beyond mobilizing some 40,000 troops, who have confiscated drugs, weapons and destroyed illegal marijuana and poppy plants, Calderon has kept a high profile in the war; attending funerals of fallen law-enforcement agents, visiting troops and warning that the war to regain peace will be long, costly and probably mean a considerable loss of life.

Ah yes. He has also attended funerals and told people that there will be lots of death. That’ll certainly put violence in its place.

Calderon has tied his name to a war with no end is in sight. “We are determined to leave the country much more secure,” he said in a Sept. 2 radio interview.

My brain hurts just reading that paragraph.

Washington has embraced Calderon’s anti-drug offensive, …

Of course it does.