Posted on 12/02/2019 3:14:36 PM PST by Kaslin
Donald Trump is talking about labeling the Mexican drug cartels that own our failed state neighbor as “terrorist groups,” and this is yet another step toward what is increasingly looking to be an inevitable confrontation. They just butchered several American citizens, including kids, which cannot go unanswered. They murder thousands of Americans a year here with their poison, which cannot go unanswered. But are we Americans even able to answer a bunch of pipsqueak thugs anymore? Let’s put aside the question of if we should use our military against Mexico (I discussed it here in 2018, to the consternation of liberals and Fredocon sissies) and look at what might happen if we did escalate.
None of it is good.
It’s not a matter of the prowess of our warriors. Our warriors, unleashed, would lay waste to anything we point them at. But the question is, “Would we ever unleash them? Would we let them do what it takes to achieve the goal of eliminating the cartels?"
Of course not. We haven’t decisively won a real war since World War II (except the Gulf War, unless you accept the arguable premise that it was an early campaign in a still-continuing Iraq conflict). And there’s a reason we don’t win. We don’t truly want to, as demonstrated by our unwillingness to do the hard things required to win. Could you imagine the Democrats siding with America in a war on Mexican drug cartels? If you can, you’re higher than Hoover Biden at a strip club on a Saturday night.
Again, this is not to say whether a war on the Mexican drug cartels is a good or bad idea. Nor is it to say we do not have the combat power to do it – we do. It’s just to say that America is culturally and politically unwilling to do what it takes to win, or to accept the losses that would come with a military campaign against the drug cartels.
You always start with an objective: what is the end state if we opt for armed conflict? The bureaucratic tendency is to fuzz this part up, to provide some gooey, metric-resistant pablum like “a Mexico where people are free to be the very best Mexicans they can be” instead of something clear and measurable, like “Destroy Los Tacos Malos Cartel by capturing or killing its leadership, eliminating its capacity to grow, process and transport illegal drugs, and ending its ability to influence and intimidate the Mexican government, media and populace.” Why be unclear? Because, of course, if the objective is clear and measurable then the bureaucrats can be held accountable when they fail to meet the objective.
After you figure out the objective, you consider the enemy. Who is it? These are extremely wealthy, sophisticated, and utterly ruthless criminal gangs that have, through “plata o plomo” (“silver or lead,” meaning you take a bribe or a bullet), infiltrated and controlled all levels of Mexican society. Moreover, they have also done so in the United States to a degree we cannot be sure of right now but one that is certain to increase if we go to war. Moreover, they are technically sophisticated, with all the tech money can buy. And they have combat power sufficient to defeat government forces. When some Mexican authorities grabbed El Chapo’s son, the cartel fought back and defeated the outgunned government units.
In addition, and this is key, inside Mexico they can rely on Mexican patriotism to help resist U.S. forces – most Mexicans have no use for the criminals, but less for foreigners. The Mexican president is already decrying an American “invasion,” and many Mexican patriots would side with their evil countrymen over benevolent Americans. Finally, the drug cartels are ruthless. They murder everyone, and everyone’s families, in graphic and spectacular fashion designed to maximize fear.
A massive U.S. invasion is unlikely for many reasons, but there would be a temptation to use special ops types to target key cartel personnel and locations. This can be effective in a counterinsurgency, where you are trying to stamp out rebels trying to overthrow the government. But here, the cartels are infiltrated into the government. You can’t kill a few leaders and go home. Mexican society is infected with the gangrene of corruption. A few SEALs smoking some sicarios is a boon to humanity but it doesn’t win the war. More just take over. To cure corruption, you would have to tear down and rebuild Mexican society a la Japan and Germany after World War II. Anybody up for that quagmire? Anyone? Hello?
America has a whole bunch of peerless killers and death machines – including Conan the jihadi-neutering hero dog – but it’s not clear any of that matters here. Our political class has its own interests in ethnic politics and cheap foreign labor that prevents the most obvious of anti-cartel actions: cut off their drug money by seriously enforcing the border. But no matter how many Mexican students end up beheaded with chainsaws on video, and no matter how many Americans are murdered, there is no way the Democrats and the corporate GOP would ever stand for a real border. Combine that with the currently fashionable baloney about the “War on Drugs” and you know that even as Americas troops fought it out with bullets, their country would be utterly unwilling and unable to do the one thing that might actually crush the cartels.
So, what do we do? Order some Delta Force hits in Sinaloa? Some drone strikes? That’s drug dealer Whack-a-Mole. Another one will just pop up for every one we kill as long as that border is open and the money is flowing.
And here’s another thing: do we imagine that the cartels would just sit back and take it? Do we think they would just shrug and let our attacks go unanswered? The mere fact that we would be unwilling to take the one step that actually might hurt the cartels for real demonstrates our weakness and our own vulnerability. Our war on them would mean their war on us.
The enemy always gets a vote, and they would obviously vote to attack us here in the United States. Yes, on our territory (it has happened before), including the same kind of massacres and horrific murders going on all the time in Mexico that we read about buried in the newspaper behind the 20 pages of the latest on how awful Trump is. The cartels understand the power of terror, and we are weak. We have no stomach for the kind of fight this would be. A few slaughters of ordinary Americans by cartel gunmen in Houston or Tucson and any semblance of unity behind taking out the cartels vanishes. Far too much of our establishment would forgo the righteous vengeance that would be the appropriate response and blame America first.
As the great Jeanne Kirkpatrick observed, they always blame America first.
Our troops would get to come home from war awaiting the inevitable betrayal by the Democrats seeking to prosecute them for “war crimes” for doing what we asked them to do in the dirtiest kind of war imaginable. And the billions we let flow south unimpeded in exchange for the drugs we let flow north unimpeded would come back to bribe many of the officials and politicians sitting in judgment of our fighters. America would be humiliated and corrupted. The Democrats would side with the enemy, calling a war designed to save Mexican lives “racist,” causing further political chaos here.
The sad fact is that our establishment does not really want to take on the cartels. The failed state next door is a distraction from their real priorities: Ukrainian/Russia tiffs and getting sideways with NATO allies over communist Kurds. Nor do they want to gin up public pressure to take the only action that would devastate the cartels: seriously defending our own border. They want the new voters, they want the cheap labor, and they don’t care how many Mexicans and Americans die to keep them both flowing.
A few canisters of nape tumbling out of a Warthog into their fields would open some eyes.
So, what do we do? Order some Delta Force hits in Sinaloa?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Why not? nothing else has worked.
The cartels are terrorists . They have enslaved millions of Americans to drugs and created unacceptable suffering in America.
Whenever the cartels move to cross a border that has been fortified according to Trump’s plan, we interdict them militarily, no arrests, no criminal trials. We just destroy them, we destroy their ability to move money and goods in our country.
And if the engagement starts on our soil we must be prepared to pursue them and wipe them out in Mexico if necessary within 200 miles South of our Southern border as a declared zone of interdiction. We should share intel with the Mexican military and work with them to mop them up.
A-10 Warthogs? By all means.Use all of our special operations capability as well to engage them on the ground with air support.No need of conventional military in Mexico. Perhaps this is the proposal that AG Barr will present to the government of Mexico soon.
As to the Dems? They need to end their addiction to cartel money , likely laundered and paid to Dem community organizers close to La Raza.
All of those things are acts of war.
I appreciate what you are writing...and I have been saying that drone strikes on these guys are warranted.
But the actions you suggest are too “open.” And the cartel would surround their activities with children. You thinking putting kids in detention was bad...splay a few across the South Texas desert.
Clandestine is the only way to go.
And they will try to kill Trump. They probably are looking at that now.
I live in a Trump loving deplorable area that is rust belt Appalachia through and through. There is even a famous book about it. Before fent it was meth, it was coke, it was weed, and it was and still is alcohol. Jobs and respect have come and gone and come again.
Bull crap to drug use will be cured through jobs and respect. We haul drug users out of our manufacturing plants handcuffed on gurnies. What a joke, good jobs go begging because of drug use.
Criminal drug usage is a US problem that drives demand. The US has exported it it criminal drug problem. Want to get rid of cartels get rid of users of illegal drugs.
Alcohol is still the number one abused drug and the social and economic impact are enormous. We aren’t fighting that war anymore so why are fighting this one? Except to empower the nanny state and an intrusive rights abusing federal and local government.
The US has done the worst possible thing, it has essentially decriminalized drug usage of illegal drugs and tried to crack down on distribution instead. A modern day Prohibitio. It will never work unless we go all Saudi or Singapore which we will not. Even worse the US protects users from the consequences of usage. Cops even carry Narcan. Free food, free cellphones, emergency room visits, free shelter,
If drugs are outlawed, then only outlaws will have drugs. And sell drugs and make drugs.
Surely we are not thinking of crossing the border.
We should set up a shoot to kill border against the cartels.
we should rout out and kill the terrorist cartel pepole in this country.
We should not cross the border.
You don’t realize...the CIA is a large part of the problem.
dry up supply and the demand will drop.
Watch.
I disagree
dry up the supply and the demand will end. There may be more alcoholics in the end, but the cartels will disappear.
My SIL is a Mass State cop. He stopped someone the other day driving 50 pounds of pot through the state. People do not want to stand in line like criminals and pay $40 a gram for pot. It’s a weed. They would rather buy it cheaper off the street. Legalization is not a panacea. It has a long way to go.
Yet I can buy alcohol on just about every corner in Springfield.
Maybe a bulletproof border?
Maybe cartel memebers shot on sight?
our leftist leaders want sharia law.
I have listened to Moslims talke to non moslims about how clear and good sharia law is.
Screw it. I care not what happens to Mexico on the other side of the border.
Only care about this side and eliminating all illegals and cartel people
re: “Screw it. I care not what happens to Mexico on the other side of the border.
Only care about this side and eliminating all illegals and cartel people”
Nice christian attitude, and myopic to boot. Are you near-sighted?
There is a warning concerning ‘caring for the poor’ in the Bible too. Maybe you’ve read it at some point?
Screw it. I care not what happens to Mexico on the other side of the border.
The question is how do we best help them deal with the cartels? I confess I do not have an answer.
I do understand your perspective.
I no longer share it.
I want the cartel people dead.
I want our borders policed.
Perhaps Mexicans and central americans can figure out how to take over their countries from their horrific leadership and thrive.
but that is their problem.
Mexico is alredy failed. by forcing them to stay in their country and deal with the problems, it will change.
We cannot even dry up supply of domestic grown weed. We gave up.
Spot on observattion, snoeing Bear. You ain’t been hibernating.
We’d have to be as ruthless and thorough as the Chinese Communists were ehen they took over their own country which was living in a cloud of foreighn imported opium dmoke.
The Commies simply killed all—and I mean ALL opium smokers and other drug users.
T his was done openly because the country was changed by a revolution. Only a revolution and consevative victory will change us. And we’ll certainly need massive change to stop drug use and abuse here.
If you’re going to fight a war on Drugs, you have to go “Full Singapore.”
The first step is to rid Washington of those who are already in the cartels pockets. I think part of Trump’s draining the swamp is doing this. The retirements by many congressmen when they don’t have to...the left’s opposition to anything close to resembling opposing pot, etc etc
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