A recent USA Today headline reporting that “drug cartels threaten Mexican stability” should have said “drug cartels threaten Mexican and U.S. stability.” But it’s not just the marked increase in violent crimes – including grisly murders, kidnappings, and heightened gang warfare – that threaten our security. Besides peddling their drugs, the cartels are happy to help international terrorists smuggle weapons, money, and suicide bombers into this country. “The danger here is clear and present,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs during a hearing on this issue last year. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a former federal prosecutor and Arizona governor, told Lieberman’s panel that “the cartels have fingertips that reach throughout the United States.” The growing boldness of the cartels is one of the main reasons murders and kidnappings have been steadily increasing in places like Phoenix, one of 230 U.S. cities infiltrated by the drug gangs.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has been criticized in recent years by some in the U.S. for not battling the cartels with sufficient toughness, but more recently he has gone on the offensive and is beginning to show some concrete results. There have been thousands of new arrests and a marked increase in targeted offensive operations by the country’s federal army against cartel strongholds, especially in border areas shared with the U.S.