Mexico drug war, rebooted

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — President Enrique Peña Nieto says he wants to soften Mexico's bloody, military-led offensive against its criminal lords with a brainier, more preventive strategy.

Well, wish him luck with that.

Peña Nieto this week had to dispatch troops to the so-called hot country of western Michoacan to quell confrontations between marauding gangsters and village self-defense militias.

An army general with special forces experience has been placed in charge of the state police.

Michoacan is also where the last president, Felipe Calderon, launched a militarized drug war offensive in late 2006 that's left tens of thousands dead or disappeared.

“Our fundamental goal is simple: to come to Michoacan and not leave until peace and security have been provided for every Michoacan resident,” Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio said Tuesday in announcing the new deployments at a meeting of the federal security cabinet in the state's capital, Morelia.

“This time there will be different results than on other occasions,” Osorio insisted.

The new Mexican president campaigned last year on the promise of calming the violence and more effectively prosecuting the kidnappings, extortion and common banditry that dominates swathes of the country.