Why designating cartels as terrorist organizations or using the military to go after them in Mexico will fail

[mspart]

Because abdicating the war on drugs has been such a panacea for us right?

mspart

[Offthemat]

13 hours ago, Tripnsweep said:

Most drugs come through legal ports of entry, so ultimately even if you were able to prevent illegal crossing (you can't) it wouldn't really do much. 

Also which organizations domestically have the US military or special forces stopped from participating in illegal activities? You probably are aware that we have something called posse comitatus that prevents the government from using the military in a law enforcement capacity right? 

Also most of the people arrested for smuggling in the US are US citizens, so there is a very low instance of Mexican cartel operatives getting arrested for smuggling here. 

So even if you were able to kill the leadership of several cartels, it wouldn't really stop them. In the case of Los Zetas, they are comprised of former Mexican special forces who were trained here by the SEALS or other military special forces. So it wouldn't go as smoothly as you think with them. Ultimately they'd lose but it wouldn't be as one sided as you think. 

The Special Forces have been training foreign troops since Vietnam, and it continues today.  None have ever stood up to their own opponents, much less our forces. 

[Offthemat]

I truly believe Trump will solve the issue without ever resorting to engaging the military. 

[Tripnsweep]

58 minutes ago, mspart said:

Because abdicating the war on drugs has been such a panacea for us right?

mspart

I think we should shift the focus. We've been at this for 40 years and it's been a failure. We had cocaine, then crack, etc. It just keeps evolving or changing to something else. We took our Pablo Escobar, Noriega, Ochoa, etc. Did that do anything? We bribed their competition who turned out to be even more cutthroat. 

So instead of of trying to play whack a mole with drug cartels, why not go after them in a different way? Put money into declaring drug addiction a public health crisis, cut down on arresting and incarceration for personal use possession, increase funding for counseling, addiction and actual rehabilitation, and taking away barriers that drug addicts have from being productive members of society. Which means not arresting individual addicts who have a couple grams of something on them. 

This would do two things. It would actually cost less than what we do now, and it would decrease the revenue of the cartels. If we treated this as a medical issue, it would go a lot further than the current model. 

We've done it for 40 years and all we've done is make a different group of people very wealthy once we eliminate the current crop of them. We went from Escobar, Falcon, Magluta and Roberts, to El Chapo and his generation. Once these guys hit their expiration date, somebody else will take their place. 

[mspart]

35 minutes ago, Tripnsweep said:

So instead of of trying to play whack a mole with drug cartels, why not go after them in a different way? Put money into declaring drug addiction a public health crisis, cut down on arresting and incarceration for personal use possession, increase funding for counseling, addiction and actual rehabilitation, and taking away barriers that drug addicts have from being productive members of society. Which means not arresting individual addicts who have a couple grams of something on them.

This was famously tried in Oregon where the people voted in a law to in effect decriminalize hard drugs.  This same law set up centers where people could get clean.   The net result was more homeless fentynyl addicts and the fentanyl were wasted property , no one went.   They just recently got rid of that law because it was not working.  

I remember a story of a chinese emperor who had to fight drug use among his people because it was making them unproductive.   Back then he could use draconian measures and eradicate it and the people.   Can't do that these days.   But the end effect is the same.   Drugs are to be shunned because it makes people unproductive and addicts them to the drug.   It is almost impossible to get rid of that addiction.     

The same is true in Seattle where drugs are not prosecuted.  We have a burgeoning homeless population that grows every year and most are addicts.  And they are a big problem.   They are very much like the illegals have been where the laws that apply to most all of us do not apply to them.  Allowing drug use is not the answer.  

But one thing is true that I think we can all agree on, the appetite of the american consumer for drugs keeps on growing, hence the cartels keep growing and the amount of drugs entering the country grows.   That is our fault for sure.   The cartels are just exploiting the situation. 

mspart

[666]

2 hours ago, mspart said:

Because abdicating the war on drugs has been such a panacea for us right?

mspart

The War on Drugs never ended, and we can thank it for the cartels today. 

[Offthemat]

Think Singapore. 

[Tripnsweep]

2 hours ago, Offthemat said:

Think Singapore. 

Singapore isn't a country of 350 million with 5,000+ miles of border to watch. 

[Husker_Du]

the bottom line is, something has to be done to protect our borders from

1) illegals with a criminal past

2) drug smuggling

3) human trafficking

i honestly don't care how it's done. whether that's attacking the cartels themselves or not. putting pressure on the MEX govt or not. 

we cannot just throw up our hands and say there's no solution. people in the US have suffered from it under the Biden admin. 

saying 'there's not much we can do about it' is demonstrably untrue and a loser's mentality. 

[billyhoyle]

30 minutes ago, Husker_Du said:

the bottom line is, something has to be done to protect our borders from

1) illegals with a criminal past

2) drug smuggling

3) human trafficking

i honestly don't care how it's done. whether that's attacking the cartels themselves or not. putting pressure on the MEX govt or not. 

we cannot just throw up our hands and say there's no solution. people in the US have suffered from it under the Biden admin. 

saying 'there's not much we can do about it' is demonstrably untrue and a loser's mentality. 

I'm all for stopping 1 and 3, but stopping #2 is impossible.  As long as there is demand for drugs, there will be supply. Even if the border with Mexico was completely secure from foreign smugglers and every cartel in Mexcio was eliminated, U.S. citizens would smuggle in drugs through airports or through the Canadian border.  Drugs would also be smuggled in through the ports just as part of regular shipping (and U.S. citizens working the ports would be paid to help). 

Neither party actually cares about stopping drugs-probably in part because they know it's impossible. Trump just pardoned a guy who was running one of the largest underground drug markets (Silk Road).  And obviously the democrats want legalization or decriminalization of pretty much all drugs.

I do think #1 and #3 can be addressed though and hopefully there will be improvements in them. 

Edited Tuesday at 05:03 AM by billyhoyle

[Tripnsweep]

1 hour ago, Husker_Du said:

the bottom line is, something has to be done to protect our borders from

1) illegals with a criminal past

2) drug smuggling

3) human trafficking

i honestly don't care how it's done. whether that's attacking the cartels themselves or not. putting pressure on the MEX govt or not. 

we cannot just throw up our hands and say there's no solution. people in the US have suffered from it under the Biden admin. 

saying 'there's not much we can do about it' is demonstrably untrue and a loser's mentality. 

You'll never solve all 3. Especially drugs. Most drugs come through ports of entry, usually by Americans, so unless you plan to completely close the border, which is something that will never happen, then you might as well be trying to build a perpetual motion machine. 

[RockLobster]

2 hours ago, Husker_Du said:

the bottom line is, something has to be done to protect our borders from

1) illegals with a criminal past

2) drug smuggling

3) human trafficking

i honestly don't care how it's done. whether that's attacking the cartels themselves or not. putting pressure on the MEX govt or not. 

we cannot just throw up our hands and say there's no solution. people in the US have suffered from it under the Biden admin. 

saying 'there's not much we can do about it' is demonstrably untrue and a loser's mentality. 

1, 2, and 3 have all been going on for many decades.

We could point fingers at Reagan, Bush, Clinton, GW, Obama, Trump, Biden, etc. Which would all be useless.

Let's maybe grow a pair and stop trying to blame an ex-president or a particular party. That solves nothing.

A lot of money has recently been thrown at #1 - we'll have to wait to see any evidence of that working. It'll take time. Note that this effort has been non-partisan. It's a problem so we might as well get all hands on deck rather than point fingers. Nothing I'd like more than to see more progress here.

#2 - Results from controlled entry to the country as well as uncontrolled entry through the southern border, the northern border, the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the air. To borrow a hockey term, the US is simply a sieve to drug smuggling. Any notion that it is somehow all from Mexico is BS being pushed by politicians with their own agenda.

#3 - Contrary to what politicians have been saying, this is primarily a problem within the US. People will always be able to cross the border legally with assistance from traffickers. The problem really explodes once they are here and are being exploited. This is where we really need to rely on traditional law enforcement. ICE agents running around like cowboys in the wild west doesn't help anyone here. Allowing them to enter churches and schools is just more BS that helps nothing.

It can be all about politics or it can be all about getting the job done. Can't be both.

[Husker_Du]

i can't for the life of me understand any of you on this topic.

a more secure border would undoubtedly suppress the amount of drugs smuggled and even the attempts to do so.

why is this disputed? we've had four + years of a nonexistent border and the foreknowledge that it was going to be. 

y'all are sitting there and really saying that a more robust border agency/infrastructure/prosecution wouldn't help?

 

[Husker_Du]

play around with these statistics. more than half of all drugs come across southern border. 

 

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics

[Tripnsweep]

2 hours ago, Husker_Du said:

play around with these statistics. more than half of all drugs come across southern border. 

 

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics

And over 95% come through legal ports of entry. So even if you somehow managed to stop people from crossing illegally, you would barely put a dent in drugs trafficking. Whether that's by air or land. Also most people involved in smuggling are American. 

So if you managed to entirely close off the border, the economic harm from doing that would dwarf solving this problem. 

[billyhoyle]

3 hours ago, Husker_Du said:

play around with these statistics. more than half of all drugs come across southern border. 

 

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics

That is because the southern border is the most porous point of entry, so its easy to use. Once it is blocked, the smugglers will get the drugs in through airports and shipping. There's a strong argument to be made for securing the border, but stopping drugs isn't one of them. You don't pardon a guy who facilitated hundreds of millions in narcotics sales if that is your goal (but having him in jail was doing nothing to stop drug sales anyway because for every person you lock up, others come and take their place).   

The only way to stop the drugs is to stop the demand. People will always find a way to import drugs into the U.S. if the demand is there because of how lucrative it is, and additional enforcement on traffickers only makes smuggling more lucrative for those who succeed.  

47 minutes ago, Tripnsweep said:

And over 95% come through legal ports of entry. So even if you somehow managed to stop people from crossing illegally, you would barely put a dent in drugs trafficking. Whether that's by air or land. Also most people involved in smuggling are American. 

So if you managed to entirely close off the border, the economic harm from doing that would dwarf solving this problem. 

And it can be pretty much guaranteed that the smuggling is done by U.S. citizens because they get the least scrutiny at the border.  Drug smuggling has nothing to do with immigration. It has to do with economics. 

Edited Tuesday at 10:54 AM by billyhoyle

[Husker_Du]

5 hours ago, Tripnsweep said:

And over 95% come through legal ports of entry. So even if you somehow managed to stop people from crossing illegally, you would barely put a dent in drugs trafficking. Whether that's by air or land. Also most people involved in smuggling are American. 

So if you managed to entirely close off the border, the economic harm from doing that would dwarf solving this problem. 

do you have a reference for that (95%) statistic? 

[Offthemat]

How much of it is the CIA responsible for?

[PortaJohn]

10 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

As long as there is demand for drugs, there will be supply. Even if the border with Mexico was completely secure from foreign smugglers and every cartel in Mexcio was eliminated, U.S. citizens would smuggle in drugs through airports or through the Canadian border.  Drugs would also be smuggled in through the ports just as part of regular shipping (and U.S. citizens working the ports would be paid to help). 

Just wanted to add to your list; Pharmaceutical companies if given the opportunity will make highly addictive drugs and payoff whomever they have to, to make that drug readily accessible to the mass population under the the guise of a miracle drug.  

[Le duke]

do you have a reference for that (95%) statistic? 

The CATO link I posted above.

I’ll post it again.

https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers


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[jross]

I'm anti war and resistant against meddling in other countries affairs.

But the cartel wants to shoot at US citizens and border patrol?

You harbor the cartel, then I have no care for jurisdiction.

Torch the cartel wherever they are and wherever they go.

[uncle bernard]

It would be interesting to see how the US public experiences war at home vs. abroad. It's easy to stomach war when it's thousands of miles away. If the US military strikes the cartels, they will respond.

[PortaJohn]

Just now, uncle bernard said:

It would be interesting to see how the US public experiences war at home vs. abroad. It's easy to stomach war when it's thousands of miles away. If the US military strikes the cartels, they will respond.

Let's not get dramatic.  The US could wipe out the Cartel fairly quickly and effectively.  The issue is the aftermath.  The devil you know is less scarier than the one you do not.   

 

 

 

[Tripnsweep]

3 hours ago, Husker_Du said:

do you have a reference for that (95%) statistic? 

See below.

Also think, I know that's a tough one for you, but relying on a bunch of poor people to carry drugs across an inhospitable desert where there is a decent chance they may die, and with only 50-60 lbs of whatever on them? That sounds like a really inefficient system. If you can move drugs by the ton in commercial traffic, and you lose maybe 1 in 10 or 1 in 20, that's an acceptable loss. 

[uncle bernard]

1 hour ago, PortaJohn said:

Let's not get dramatic.  The US could wipe out the Cartel fairly quickly and effectively.  The issue is the aftermath.  The devil you know is less scarier than the one you do not.   

 

 

 

Famous last words lol

Our history of successfully "wiping out" militant groups mixed with civilian populations has not been stellar, but maybe it will work this time! Maybe we could ask Israel how they quickly and efficiently wiped out Hamas in Gaza? Oh wait....