By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

Afghanistan is a cake walk compared to the war being waged by the United States and the government of Mexico against the drug cartels. Consider a surge here at home. Start some serious war councils to develop a strategy, and begin work to support our ally; Mexico.

What will it take to get the attention of the White House?

This war affects one of my recommended three objectives for President Obama – Jobs. See this article.

If our southern neighbor continues to suffer, if the drug businesses continue to thrive here and south, if violence continues to spread as a means of the cartels’ business model, and if our porous borders continue to be so, there cannot be a recovery. This crisis should awaken us residing near I-35, shouldn’t it? Or is this the problem of the state governments of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California?

Is the government of Mexico worth our alliance? Should we solve this unilaterally?

Someone may wish to write an article comparing and contrasting the insurgencies in Afghanistan/Pakistan with the crisis on our southern border and beyond. Plenty to read on this subject…see this collection. In the meantime, we will have to wait a few more years after the troops come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. In the meantime, we’ll continue to buy time.

Hopefully the services will have some lessons that have been learned, lessons to apply to their next big challenge…one far more sophisticated and sensitive than the past eight years, one with higher stakes, one where civilian casualties will mean failure, one where the constitution may be our worst enemy. Tell the people in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to hang on for a few more years. Hopefully, Mexico will have a democratic government in a few years, after their oncoming civil war.

This conflict, while it deserves more of our attention and resources than Afghanistan will have to wait for the time being. In the meantime, the Commander-in-Chief should allow General McChrystal to get on with it, and assign a sharp commander to this emerging theater of war. It’s not looking good at all.