The check will soon be in the mail. That was the message from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa during a meeting last week in Puerto Vallarta.

The Mexican government is awaiting delivery of a $400 million U.S. aid package to help Mexican officials fight the drug cartels. Already, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dispatched more than 20,000 soldiers and federal police officers to various parts of Mexico to battle drug gangs. The cartels have fought back by targeting law enforcement officials.

The aid package is called the Merida Initiative, and it was approved by Congress in June. But the check has not been cut, and it won't be until the Bush administration verifies to Congress that Mexico is complying with human rights requirements. Rice told Espinosa that the verification process should be completed soon, and that help was on the way.

We certainly hope so. But it can't come soon enough for our long-suffering neighbors in Tijuana, including the grief-stricken family of the toddler who was shot and killed last Thursday. The boy and his father were driving near the site of another shooting earlier in the week, and they were caught in a crossfire between police and members of a drug gang. Rival gangs in Tijuana have killed nearly 150 people in just the last month.

It merits repeating that this is not Mexico's problem alone. The United States is impacted in every way imaginable. Americans consume the drugs, and the cartels use the profits from those sales to buy the guns that kill not just one another but also innocent little boys who are in the wrong place.

Now, we're going to spend more money as a country to help the Mexican government buy more guns to combat the cartels we've armed. And we're doing all this because we don't have a choice. If we do nothing and the cartels win, there will be more drugs, more violence, and more turmoil at our back door. American tourists will stay out of Tijuana, and the residents of Tijuana will stay out of San Diego. Businesses on both sides of the border will take a hit. And, one of the most vibrant and dynamic border regions in the world will continue to suffer.

Like it or not, Americans are already in this battle. Now we have to do everything we can to win.

REPRINTED FROM THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.

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