“The Long War of GenaroGarcía Luna” follows the secretary of public safety, Mexico’s top cop, as he tries to redirect police efforts, reducing corruption and increasing professionalism, and really take on the cartels. The fight is on, and both sides seem to believe it’s a fight to the death, with either the cartels or government surviving. That’s the way it seems, but perhaps it isn’t so. Despite the inevitable upbeat note of The Times, promoting both the story’s lead character and all well-meant acts by foreign governments, two discordant notes emerge:

First: Colombia has received billions of dollars in U.S. anti-drug aid under Plan Colombia, and violence has fallen significantly in the past several years. “Do you know how much the amount of drugs leaving Colombia has gone down?” García Luna asked me.“Check,” he said with a smile. And indeed, by all evidence, there has been no significant decrease in drug flows out of Colombia or in the availability of cocaine or heroin in the United States — and yet, Colombia is considered asuccess story.

Second: … in recent polls, Mexicans have expressed growing doubt that the authorities are up to the fight: 56 percent say they believe that the cartels are more powerful than the government, while just 23 percent say they believe the government is more powerful than the cartels.

The first excerpt hits at the core of things. Create an illegal market that consumers will support, no matter the cost or risk, and it will be sustained, no matter the cost or risk. As long as Americans want drugs, they will get them, and throwing money and men at the problem will not stop it. One thing will definitely alter the playingfield: taxation. Something to consider.

The second note, revealing the lack of faith in the Mexican state by Mexicans, is both revealing and distressing. Bottom line, it’s especially difficult for a government to fight an unpopular war, one without clear end, fought at home, against its own citizens, as criminal and as evil as they may be. What denotes victory in such a battle? An acceptable level of criminality? The illusion that victory has been achieved and the people mollified? There is no enemy capital to conquer, no dictator or general to capture? The enemy is a product, and that product will live on, always finding a new master.

The choice for America: How deeply do we get involved in the fight? Are we content to supply training and weapons, or do we end up sending police and soldiers? Or do we try to isolate the problem, sealing the border, once and for all?

Or do we dare do perhaps the most difficult thing of all, at least politically: Do we cut off the flow of weapons to the cartels, easily and without question purchased at gun shows in the U.S., and smuggled into Mexico?