Mexico to Support United States

A news item at a local newspaper has invoked this short note. The news says that President George W. Bush on Monday sought Mexico’s support on disarming Iraq (Ref: http://www.thenews.com.mx/). France and Russia have said they will oppose; Britain is going to support, whereas China has refused to specify what action it supported beyond the return of UN weapons inspectors withdrawn in 1998. Now Mr. Bush wants support from his friend, Mexican President Mr. Vicente Fox. Since I am sitting in Mexico, I sought to explore the views of Mexican laymen on the subject.

First I would like to point out a poling done by the Mexican daily, The News. It shows that more than 90% of its readers think that Mexico should support USA. On the other hand, whenever I discuss things with them, in small private meetings, it appears that the general public is not in favor of US policies and that they think that the incident of 9/11 is an outcome of bad US foreign policies in the last few decades. If turns out that most of them, except those in big business cities, don’t even know the difference between Afghanistan and Pakistan, or Pakistan and India. Still, they happen to know of Usama Bin Laden (UBL) and his Muslim roots. Now that seems like a result of planned propaganda policy that makes it very clear to them that UBL is a Muslim terrorist but at the same time doesn’t tell them where he is located, or at least which country is suffering his illegal presence within its borders. News items on television start with something like “the [Afghan based] Taliban spokesman said in Islamabad that …” giving the impression that Islamabad is somewhere in Afghanistan. Well in the view of Bush administration perhaps it is, at least strategically and they would love to get rid of both in one go.

It seems that the statistics collected by thenewsmexico.com are not very indicative. The reason for this might be a selective readership. Most the people reading an English Newspaper in Mexico are either Americans or at least foreigners. Hence their views do not reflect the true Mexican thinking. However, it does indeed show a trend and the future policy of Mexico will probably be in this direction. Once again, like all other developing nations, the democratons (people who make up and support democracy) have little control over the workings of democrats.