As a general rule, baby pacifiers are an excellent resource when you want to get a whining baby to stop his/her tantrum. Too bad they don’t work on former presidents.

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I’ve gotten a couple of emails and private messages asking me about today’s As a general rule… I guess it is safe to say that not everyone is up to speed with Mr. Fox’s latest dumb comments so I find myself needing to explain the picture I’ve posted.

A couple of days ago, Fox stated that the solution for the violence problem in Mexico should include a call fro a truce and a possible amnesty law for the drug dealers. He made reference to other countries who have used these types of Reconociliation Commission and Amnesty resources in order to bring conflicts to a closure.  

Evidently, Vicente Fox knows very little about conflict resolution, regional history or differences between wars and domestic crime. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions have arguably been effective in conflicts between combatants in a conflict driven by political and ideological issues. These resources are useful when a peaceful resolution is to be put forth between acknowledged actors with a real claim or stake. Amnesty CAN be granted to combatants on the basis of having acknowledged the cause for which they were fighting and due to understanding that an armed conflict of this nature, would involve a number of trespasses. HOWEVER, amnesty law is not put in place in order to quite simply justify a penal crime, as are drug trafficking, coercion, extortion, rape, murder and torture. Legally there can be no negotiated “truce” here. Organized crime does not have a foot to stand on in terms of legitimacy… and one would think that a former president would know that.