As you know, I am no fan of the “War on Drugs.” I think it’s as big a failure and the left’s War on Poverty.

Both have made things worse and resulted in people being killed.

Now, because our prohibition on drugs has created a criminal underworld of drug dealers, much like Prohibition in the 20s did with alcohol, Mexican drug cartels are competing for dominance in the drug trade. That competition has generated a brutality that is incomprehensible to decent people.

The monsters target children for slaughter in order to terrify adults:

On a sunny afternoon last week, when the streets of this mountain mining city were filled with schoolchildren and parents hurrying home from work, gunmen entered a tiny apartment and started firing methodically.

The assassins killed everyone: the family matriarch and her adult son; her daughter and son-in-law, and finally, her 22-month-old granddaughter.

The child was not killed by mistake. Preliminary forensics indicate that the gunmen, unchallenged, pointed a pistol at Scarlett Ramirez and fired.

In Mexico’s brutal drug war, children are increasingly victims, innocents caught in the crossfire, shot dead alongside their parents — and intentionally targeted.

Twenty-two months old.

Murdered.

And how does the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency react to this new tactic?

She sees it as “a sign of success.”

In a stunning lack of humanity, she said:

U.S. and Mexican officials say the grotesque violence is a symptom the cartels have been wounded by police and soldiers. “It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs,” said Michele Leonhart, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The cartels “are like caged animals, attacking one another,” she added.

Heartless simpleton.

These are children, not statistics.