Cartels are in real trouble
- Thread starter BadWakeboarder
- Start date
why? the deadliest concoction and the majority of fen we get comes from mexico. it's dirt cheap and what the kids buy
At a certain point the status quo must be challenged. It’s time. Kill them all.
It’s irrelevant that their activities are absolutely central to the flow of dangerous drugs into our country?
LOL, it’s not only not irrelevant. It’s central to the reason we have to confront and obliterate them.
It's irrelevant to the point that I was making, and you know that
You guys are all unbelievably naive to think we are going to obliterate drug cartels with the US military. Just wow. 24 years into the GWOT and still think we can solve problems like this with military intervention. That's like 1980s Reagan era drug policy thinking.
Tough stuff. I see both sides but tend to agree with you. It’s an opposition that’s so splintered, amorphous, yet seemingly everywhere. The mex gov, corrupted or not, has fought for over a decade. Concerted. I don’t know. And that Colombian coke cokes from mex too. Fen, coke, heroin
An Idea Whose Time Should Never Come: Using Special Forces Against the Cartels Would Be a Colossal Mistake
If that piece persuades me of anything, it’s that we’ve been derelict in allowing the cartels to muscle up.
Other than that, it doesn’t really make many coherent arguments. It just says that confronting them would be bad and posits the question of who fills the power vacuum.
I don’t know the answer to that question. But could it be anybody worse? If so, maybe they’ll understand that doing so would be bad for their health. These people aren’t religious fanatics. They’re interested primarily in money,
I don’t know. Start Fing with them maybe they behave more like fanatics. They have representation in 50 plus countries. To twenty’s point they aren’t Fing with Americans, tourists etc otherwise. They just want to make money. Maybe doubling down on treatment and abatement of opioid addiction is the better approach. Suspected kids get their thermos and narcan every morning
There was a time when I would’ve agreed with you on this. And our policy has clearly moved in that direction over the last couple decades.
Can anybody honestly say that it’s worked?
There was a time when I would’ve agreed with you on this. And our policy has clearly moved in that direction over the last couple decades.
Can anybody honestly say that it’s worked?
Fentanyl makes too much money, it can be produced basically anywhere, in small clandestine operations....
We failed to ever once make a reduction in Columbian cocaine production, even after decades and billions spent in military support to Bogota. And fentanyl makes cocaine look like Mexican ditch weed, in it's profit margin, ease of production and transportation.
So probably 80k of that is fentanyl. Back out 15k as prescription overdoses. You’re not going to fully eradicate the trade. Is that worth kicking the hornets’ nest. You can put more money into treatment and abatement. Narcan at every locker. Whatever. I don’t knowThere was a time when I would’ve agreed with you on this. And our policy has clearly moved in that direction over the last couple decades.
Can anybody honestly say that it’s worked?
$800 of precursor chemicals can make $640k in street value product. Good luck ever shutting something like that down from the supply side
If you’re trying to convince me to get in the Fent game, it’s working.
I don’t think we’ll eradicate the trade.
I do think we can and should do more to disrupt it.
Sure, and leading the charge should be Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Followed by sons and daughters of senators and representatives.
I agree. The cartels don’t care how many people die, anywhere. The only reason they don’t target Americans is because it’s bad for business. If you eliminate that reason by attacking them with the military, they’re just going to start butchering Americans and hanging them from overpasses like they do with Mexicans.
And the money will always be there to be made. Every cartel we eliminate will be replaced with another in about 20 seconds.
If we’d only get more Walters and Jessies with some ambition on this side of the border, the kids wouldn’t need to buy all this Mexican stuff
Yes, killing 60k+ Americans a year (and growing ) is worth it. The main objective of the military should be to protect U.S. citizens. Not fighting useless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Ukraine. If the military can’t do it, cut the budget in half.
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Need to lop the head off the American drug cartels first. They are the ones driving demand for opioids.
I am very skeptical that we can militarily defeat drug cartels. They can move between countries. We don't like military losses, and there will be military losses. Their operational security tends to be good, someone captured knows that the cartels can easily kill their families. They can embed in with civilians making collateral damage unacceptably high.
At the same point, we have never figured out how to address this from the demand end. Our efforts to get people to stay off drugs have been laughable, at best.
Mexico is half a rung up from being a failed state. Would involvement boost them, or knock them down?
The US has a long history of military interventions in Central America. The law of unintended consequences has never been in our favor in those interventions.
Yet, we have to attack fentanyl somehow. We can't attack China, we can rule that out. So unless someone has an idea on how to attack the demand end, I don't see solutions.
Which means we are in The Princess Bride. I clearly cannot choose the "do nothing" plan in front of me, and I clearly cannot choose the "attack Mexico" plan in front of you. So we are stuck with choosing the plan of least damage. I'm not sure which that is. I suspect engaging in Mexico will only have minor impacts on the trade, some of it will move to other nations and we won't end production in Mexico. So we get the drawbacks with no real gain. But doing nothing and thinking the problem will improve is throwing in the towel and I never like that solution.
At the same point, we have never figured out how to address this from the demand end. Our efforts to get people to stay off drugs have been laughable, at best.
Mexico is half a rung up from being a failed state. Would involvement boost them, or knock them down?
The US has a long history of military interventions in Central America. The law of unintended consequences has never been in our favor in those interventions.
Yet, we have to attack fentanyl somehow. We can't attack China, we can rule that out. So unless someone has an idea on how to attack the demand end, I don't see solutions.
Which means we are in The Princess Bride. I clearly cannot choose the "do nothing" plan in front of me, and I clearly cannot choose the "attack Mexico" plan in front of you. So we are stuck with choosing the plan of least damage. I'm not sure which that is. I suspect engaging in Mexico will only have minor impacts on the trade, some of it will move to other nations and we won't end production in Mexico. So we get the drawbacks with no real gain. But doing nothing and thinking the problem will improve is throwing in the towel and I never like that solution.
The objective is to change the directory of the amount of deaths in the U.S. from it. And yes it would do that.
See this is where the intense focus on the Sackler’s and Big Pharma perverts peoples view of reality.
No Fentanyl deaths are not a result of a pharma industry that overprescribes opioids. The vast, vast majority Fentanyl deaths will have never been prescribed an opioid in their life.
It’s convenient to tell ourselves these are all innocent people who took something from a doctor for a short amount of time to combat physical pain and then got hooked.
The reality, that the country is facing a massive spiritual crisis and we have millions in despair trying to disassociate, is tougher to stomach.
Disrupting the supply would be a positive step, even if it doesn’t end it (which I agree that it wouldn’t).
And, so far as the prospect of casualties go, we have much better unmanned capabilities today than we had in years past.
I agree. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition.
Disrupting the supply chain more than we presently are seems like it would be a good thing. I don’t think we’ve made operating as difficult for them as we could or should.
Well at least we somewhat agree Mr. Lilly. It's supply and demand. Not sure we can tackle the supply until we somehow figure out the demand. Going after Mexican cartels sounds nice and they deserve to big taken out. But ultimately it won't solve anything. Some other area will just pick up the demand slack. New cartels will emerge. Cycle repeats.
I don't get this logic.
Disrupting the current primary source of supply isn't worth doing because secondary sources of supply will seek to fill their place? Given this reasoning, why devote any resources towards going after a major dealer...given that some other dealer will emerge behind him?
Wouldn't you just...also then go after the new dealer too? Or are we to just take the Hamsterdam approach?
Your argument seems to be that, unless a strategy promises to fully and permanently eradicate the problem, then it's not worth pursuing at all. And that's nonsense.
We've never had any success in decreasing the supply in over 40 years of running international drug wars in Latin America. Ever.
But yeah, this time will be different.
We couldn't even reduce Afghan poppy production in a country we occupied for 20 years!
Columbia just hit record high cocaine production, and we have people pointing to that as the success story. Good grief.
I more meant that you need an equal if not larger plan to tackle demand. Otherwise the cycle repeats.
Again, we don't share a border with Colombia. And that's also been something done primarily by the DEA and CIA. So it's apples and oranges.
What we've doing hasn't been working. In fact, we're going backwards...badly. So I'm all for trying a new strategy.
@twenty02 @crazed_hoosier2
ColOmbia not Columbia. God damn. Have you already forgotten El Pibe!! Jesus
ColOmbia not Columbia. God damn. Have you already forgotten El Pibe!! Jesus
What does sharing a border have anything to do with it? It makes little difference from an operational perspective.
I am 1000% opposed to this idea.... If that idea is the US military operating in Mexico.
Seriously? Proximity makes a world of difference from an operational perspective.
What would you have us do differently than we're doing? Should we just basically accept that we're going to have 100K annual deaths from drug overdoses?
To operate what, exactly?
It doesn't change the reality on the ground that cartels are deeply embedded in communities all across many Mexican states, in some cases responsible for the majority of the economy of some regions.
US intervention against Mexican cartels carries major risks. Here’s how to mitigate them.
Cartels have a significant capability to retaliate, but there are ways that the United States can prepare for such risks.
www.atlanticcouncil.org
How much for air assets? When I mentioned casualties you suggested that our air is so much better. We have air superiority pretty much everywhere. We have air bases pretty much across South/Central America. If we are talking troops, mass numbers of troops, it matters. But for small teams it seems like it would matter less. Supplying 20 Abrams with fuel and parts is much harder than 12 men in ammo.
But I am not sure if trying it to see if has any success is terrible. I just don't see many ways of dealing with this problem.
