"JSOC appears to be running out of "high value targets," in the places where they have been used so successfully. They can continue in places like Yemen and Somalia but they should be given something really useful to do. I suggest that they should be unleashed on the Mexican drug cartels. Kill or capture. Kill or capture. Those should be the instructions.
The legal niceties could be "cleaned up" through arrest or execution warrants issued by a special federal court.
Alternatively, a declaration that they constitute a terrorist threat would authorize action under the AUMF on terrorism.
This is not irony. These druggies deserve that we should send them "the very best.""
————
I wrote this in 2009. If the Mexican government does not clean up their act … For once I agree with Senator Tom Cotton. The raid in Syria suggests a mission assignment. pl
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/12/jsoc-and-the-mexican-drug-lords.html
How much do we currently “spend” on Mexico in terms of aid and logistics when it comes to combating the cartels and corruption? Throughout the election I remarked that no ones talks about helping Mexico deal with their problems even though they are our top trading partner, our neihgbor and a home and vacation destination for many americans. Maybe I’m just naive.
How about their Fifth Column in the United States; the drug users and their suppliers?
It will be interesting to read the comments on this idea. First to come to mind would be that maybe the Chinese and Russian navies having home ports in Mexico?
This is where Trump’s effort to establish an American Sakoku has real merit. Seal the borders, including our air and sea borders. Then we can ruthlessly eradicate the drug cartels and their financial enablers within our borders and when they attempt to cross our borders. JSOC has a lot of assets besides the door kickers. They can assist mightily in the reconnaissance and surveillance aspects of this fight especially at and beyond our borders. Our DOD should be a real defense department rather than an expeditionary adventure department.
If you really want to shut down the Mexican drug cartels rather than create a military-recreational drug complex, just legalize all recreational drug consumption for anybody over 18.
Combat Applications Group.
Ghostship
So you think the JSOC commandos are going to become druggies? That is quite a fantasy. pl
Dilbert Dogbert
Oh, BS. Do you really think all countries are created equal? pl
I am hoping you meant this humorously and it just didn’t translate well. This reads a lot like the US will be the judge, jury and executioner of the world, national sovereignty be damned.
I have read enough of what you have written over the last year to not believe that is your intent, but I sure would appreciate some clarity.
Arei
And what would you have us do to solve Mexico’s basic social problems? Do you know anything about Mexico? pl
BraveNewWorld
Is it not obvious that Mexico cannot cope with its drug cartel and export problems? National sovereignty? You have to earn it. You mistake me for someone rational in your sense of the word. Adios. pl
Bismarck says that politics is the art of the possible. Given the huge demand, stamping out drug running is impossible. For an adequate price, there will always be people willing to meet the demand. At best, you drive up the price and make successful runners incredibly rich.
Oh wait..
We can’t manage our own excessive / out-of-control dependency on Big Pharma’s pain & mood control prescription drugs within our own borders… and we’re going to straighten out a neighboring country’s “problem” of capitalizing on our insatiable appetite for non-prescription drugs? Exceptional indeed!
AEL
Bismarck also said that genius lies in knowing when to stop. A near certainty of death would cause a lot of cartel leaders to think about it. pl
ked
Ah, yet another who thinks that international relations are about justice rather than interest. pl
Just running it up the flagpole. Mexico can’t do anything if we put our military on the ground in Mexico. The Mexicans do have some interesting responses if we do.
dilber Dogbert
Like what? Sending an army of illegals? Declaring war? Nuclear attack? Smuggling drugs into the US? pl
TTG,
my grandfather’s property in West Berlin was maybe 700 yards from the wall. With binoculars, I could get a good view from my second floor bedroom. Of course the Berlin Wall was a much more modest border than the inner German one.
Arguably, after upgrades were started in the late 60’s, the inner German border became a very effective barrier. One thing that made it effective (and mind you, it was a border keeping people in more than a border keeping people out) was the exclusion zone extending 5km from the border. Only people with special permits could live and work there.
In order to make the border more practical, entire villages were razed and parts of th physical border were located back from the actual border to avoid difficult terrain. Throw in the land mines, booby traps and 50,000 or so troops guarding about 870 miles of the inner German border, and it came to an effective barrier.
So I don’t want to say we can’t “seal” the Mexican border. But I think the expense in land seizures, manpower, and land mines is likely a lot higher for the 2000 miles of our southern border than the 15-20 billion estimated for its construction.
Re: The certainty of death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War
Seems to be many Mexican casualties with no reduction in drug cartel leaders.
Dilbert dobbert
The little people have died en masse. In my proposal the big people would die. pl
Dean Baker bruited this idea: http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/a-trade-war-everyone-can-win
“The alternative is simple: Mexico could announce that it would no longer enforce U.S. patents and copyrights on its soil. This would be a yuuge deal, as Trump would say.”
feudenschade
Do you live on the border? is anyone in your family addicted to opiods smuggled across the border? Do you really think the Mexican border is about money any more than the inter-German border was? pl
Our need for drugs certainly is the cause for Mexico’s Pain.
I understand your point.
I also remember reading of Black Jack Pershing running round Northern Mexico trying to bring Pancho Villa to justice.
Poor Mexico. So far from God and too near the USA.
Dilbert Dogbert
Do you have relatives in the drug trade? come now, what do you think US retaliation for that would be? I am wearying of this discussion. How about Anschluss with Mexico with enforcement of US law all over Mexico? ah, we have tried that a couple of times. My father enjoyed Sonora and Chihuahua in 1916-17. You are probably just a kid troll. pl
Col.,
I think Ghostship was making the economic argument that if you legalize recreational drugs, it will reduce the price and eliminate the cartel’s primary source of income. Much has been written about this idea, including the fact that there’s a big difference between a drug like marijuana and one like heroine.
For your amusement, an article on the effect of marijuana legalization and imports from Mexico.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/03/legal-marijuana-is-finally-doing-what-the-drug-war-couldnt/?utm_term=.f914d5062fa4
Dilbert Dogbert
We killed 600 of his men and destroyed him as a political force in the Mexican Revolution. pl
Freudenschade
Yes. Yes. Legalization would kill illegal drug importation but if you have been in this country for a long time you know we are not going to do that. Cotton Mather’s spirit and the “city on the hill” nonsense will never allow that. pl
This proposal could help prevent wwiii, by giving those budgets in exile a replacement raisson d’etre preferable to ignorami ME & Iran war.
P.S. Re exile, see great detail in new Vijay Prashad piece w AQ name change tracking:
http://www.alternet.org/world/isis-syrian-war-and-al-qaeda
Re: Addition to smuggled drugs from Mexico.
Been reading of the Oxycontin epidemic in America and the clampdown on prescriptions. The story went on to say the drug manufacturer in response was focusing marketing on 2nd and 3rd world countries.
I am lucky as I am allergic to Opiates. The doc had me on morphine without telling me of its side effects. I spent more time recovering from those than the original surgery.
Arguably, many of Mexico’s social problems are related to the massive influence (direct and indirect) of the cartels. And the massive influence of the cartels is a function of their wealth and power, which is in turn a function of the market value of the commodity they trade in, which is a function of the US War on Drugs.
Kill all the cartel leaders with US commandos today, and next week you’ll have to do it all again.
Legalize only marijuana across all fifty states, and you deprive the cartels of 80-90% of their income.
Col.,
1. No, I don’t live on the border.
2. Yes, I have some family members who are addicted, and I have some family members who served time for dealing/trafficking opioids (whether they were smuggled across the Mexican border, I have no idea).
3. The inner German border was “about” money in that it’s upkeep cost a not insignificant fraction of the GDR GDP. But it was obviously “about” other things that were important enough to justify the expense.
4. I don’t subscribe to the “legalize all recreational drugs” theory, I was simply trying to clarify Ghostship’s argument.
My point, really, was that it might be possible to “seal” the border, as TTG suggested, but that the scale and expense of that will likely be a lot higher than what is now being contemplated. Frankly, the current vision will make it only incrementally harder to cross the border. It certainly won’t seal anything. Maybe technological advances can reduce the manpower requirements, but outside of the inner German border, as anyone tried this on a large scale?
freudenschade
I am not interested in sealing the border. I want to make a career in drug smuggling into the US unprofitable because you are probably going to die in that trade. This is not about money for me. pl
WJ
“Kill all the cartel leaders with US commandos today, and next week you’ll have to do it all again” Interesting. Ask McChrystal and Flynn if it worked that way in Iraq. They killed off AQ’s leadership there and AQ moved to Syria as al-Nusra. IS appeared in Syria but it was different movement with a vision of salvation and they were a different jihadi movement. cartel leaders just want to make money. How much money would you think would justify having JSOC hunt you with Flynn’s targeting methods in play? you don’t think cartel leaders deserve to die? pl
Col.,
with due respect, I was addressing TTG’s post about “sealing” the border. I realize you have a different position.
When it comes to making drug smuggling unprofitable, I think this “wall” does very little. When researching this topic last year, I was surprised to find out that 95% of cocaine comes in via ship, while the rest comes in via innovative methods like tunnels and drones (or even ballistas in a few cases involving marijuana).
If we get better at interdicting cocaine on the seas, maybe the shipments will make their way back onto land.
Sir
Many states are legalizing and taxing marijuana (mostly by ballot measure) although it is still classified by the Feds as an illicit narcotic.
IMO, a combination of going after the cartels with force, combined with the federal government getting out of regulating marijuana and allowing states to tax and regulate it, would provide both reducing their cash flow and increasing fear for their lives. Those states the allow it can use the tax intake for treatment and education. Colorado is at the forefront of this with their voters legalization of marijuana. Justin Trudeau I believe is planning to legalize it in Canada. The far left socialist candidate in France has legalization of marijuana in his platform. I speculate that within a decade marijuana will be legal in most states and the pressure on Congress to remove marijuana from the prohibited list will gtow.
turcopolier – Last I checked, the opiod epidemic is the US is attributable to US doctors and pharmaceutical companies pushing their wares at every opportunity. There are counties in Appalachia where the number of opioids sold is twice the number of people in the county.
As Pogo said, “the problem is us.”
That was not my intention at all.
I did think of putting military-recreational-drug-enforcement-complex to suggest similarities to the military-industrial-complex but the cartels are part of the same complex in that without enforcement, the cartels would be out of business as would be the DEA and all the other enforcement agencies.
Freudenschade,
I agree sealing the border would be exorbitantly expensive. This would include not just a big,beautiful wall and the manpower to watch over that wall, but a massive surveillance and security presence along the Gulf, Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The expense would be similar to the cost imposed on the home front during WWII. It will require widespread sacrifice, probably a progressive tax structure similar to what we had during WWII. Maybe even rationing. Would that make America great and please the great deplorable mass?
Colonel Lang’s idea of killing all the drug cartel leadership wherever we find them for an extended period of time would definitely be a cheaper proposition. I would call it the Rodrigo Duterte plan. I think making sure a lot of bankers end up sitting in their big leather chairs with bullet holes in their heads would do much to hasten the success of this plan.
“seal the borders” – they’ve got drones, UAVs and tunnels. Their ladder will always be taller.
Mexican cartels themselves have evolved, they’re not that hierarchical anymore. Push there enough, someone else in Peru, Honduras, Panama or Asia will just win back the market from Sinaloa cinnamon. The consumer always wins.
All that JSOC activity in Colombia just took out the taxman (FARC), not the actual business. They’ll be back.
But packaged right, it might be a Kumbaya moment for neoliberals, Flynn and Jeff Sessions. If Elliot Abrams gets Dep. SoS, it would be right up his alley too. The WP said last week he’d be a great filler for Rex’s lack of “human rights” experience.
Really.
That is definitely the worst idea I have ever heard in these forums.
In Sri Lanka targeting the medium and higher cadres of LTTE paid off well. Alas there were other steps taken to tame the tiger figuratively speaking.
Yep. I had this (frustrating) discussion very often in the past with my father who was police officer for 39 years. It is a tough sell.
I did not understand, and still do not, why drugs are “evil” while alcohol and tabacco, which kill orders of magnitude more people, are accepted.
The whole war on drugs is a very stupid idea IMHO, legalization would solve 90% of the problem.
I think if we started sending the bankers who launder the cartel’s funds to death row, we’d finally start seeing some effective progress on the drug war.
It would be interesting to know what President Duterte’s killing of drug runners and their bosses has yielded in terms of lowering of supply on the street. The manner in which the Borgistas are opposing it, it seems to me that his tactics have paid off.
More people die in the U.S. from abuse of prescription Oxycotin and alike than from Heroin
https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/legislative-activities/testimony-to-congress/2016/americas-addiction-to-opioids-heroin-prescription-drug-abuse
Your drug problem is not in Mexico but in board rooms of big pharma and in Congress.
And also the banks.
When HSBC was caught with shuffling billions of illegal drug money around it was fined with some paltry sum that was equal to five weeks of its profits. No criminal prosecution followed, no one went to jail.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213
So you thing seriously about exporting the “solution”, against international law, when the problem is right at home? Also – if the U.S. starts whacking the cartel it will whack back. You would be in a long fight that is not necessarily one sided.
Flynn’s methods killed a lot of people but it won nothing in Iraq. Bribing the al-Qaeda foot soldiers (i.e. the Anbar awakening) proved to be way more successful. When the whacking and bribing stopped the situation returned to the previous state. How long do you suggest would whacking cartel leaders take? And how long after the whacking stops would it take for some to grow back? 3 month?
Arei,
How many Mexican citizens are in the US who would otherwise be back in Mexico?
Pat, will allow me to follow your off-topic link.
Interesting author, trinlae. Great points.
Random pick from the only comment by Pave Way IV. But triggering something on my mind.
CENTCOM strategy seems to be protect ISIS and help them kill Syrian soldiers, while coalition jets destroy as much Syrian civilian and commercial infrastructure as humanly possible around Deir EzZor.
I wouldn’t mind someone to take a closer look at one specific ‘point’ versus its ‘counterpoint’, or aligned diverse narration variants plus the respectively supporting evidence. Maybe the author wouldn’t be a bad choice. 😉
In a nutshell:
a) (point) Assad more or less deliberately created Isis by releasing a series of Islamists from prison in 2011.
b) (counterpoint) the US supports both AQ and Isis indirectly somewhat following earlier US strategies at ME regime change.
“a” seems to be the dominating narrative on our media over here too. No surprise there. It also surfaced in an article by Omar Kassem on CounterPunch linked here a couple of days ago, if I recall correctly.
Am I to believe that releasing a couple of Islamist from prison,–how many anyway–had a bigger impact on the genesis of Isis than the mishandling of the Iraqi transition and Occupation. After a war that should never have happened to start with?
Comment variation of ‘counterpoint’:
http://www.alternet.org/comments/world/isis-syrian-war-and-al-qaeda#disqus_thread
Article contains variation of ‘point’, Assad created Isis:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/01/grinding-towards-peace-in-the-middle-east-as-america-looks-inward/
I think part of the problem is the assumption that our government actually wants to stop drug trafficking. There is no evidence that this is what has been being done. The US banks are busy laundering all the billions of dollars and paying paltry “cost of doing business” fines when actually investigated. The poppy fields in Afghanistan have been provided security by US forces. The Heroin problem which was nearly absent has returned in a huge way since our invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban actually would kill any farmers caught growing hence why we provide security.
On the US border what is caught is again a const of doing business and makes a great show to make small arrests. A real wall will help but there are plenty of other ways to get drugs and some are legal such as the prescription opioids which are now an enormous problem. This would be my next priority reigning in prescription drug abuse right after sealing the borders and arresting bank officers laundering the money.
I do agree that legalizing what are now illegal drugs is one possible answer. At least then they can be produced under GMP requirements and must meet FDA safety standards. Americans are going to drugs no matter what we do. It is engrained into our culture and I believe that those same people protesting Trump are also the majority who abuse illegal drugs. I think Trump supporters are more prone to abuse legal drugs. Nonetheless, Americans are going to abuse drugs no matter what we do. It blends with the socioeconomic problems and the joblessness, single parent families, etc. contribute to this problem and it does affect minorities more than whites.
Taking the manufacturing and sales away from the drug cartels would destroy their business (and they would lobby hard to prevent anything like that ever happening). I am also suspicious about Congressmen who get rich while serving and how much of that is actually from drug money. Anyway, a special tax on these drugs, could provide the necessary dollars needed to research drug dependence and addiction which are woefully underfunded. A glimpse into the Marijuana industry shows just how much money government can make off something that people are going to do anyway whether it is lawful or not. The best answer to the problem is to solve it from a medical perspective.
Mexico has been fighting a losing battle against the drug cartels for decades with a huge amount of lives lost near the borders. But, as we all know it isn’t enough and the problem is growing. Trumps ironic humor was one of those 2 way jokes in that he could have been serious as well and was in effect offering assistance to Mexico. So, perhaps attacking this problem from multiple directions is a short term solution followed by effective medical treatment further on down the road.
b
Thanks. Your anti-American comments are always among the best and most eloquent. I am not looking for an echo chamber so we welcome your thoughts. pl
Gertie
You’re right. We are helpless. why did I not see that? pl
laura
The opioid epidemic STARTED with over-prescription followed by a pull back in prescriptions followed by an increase in importation of cheap opioids. Do all opioids come across the southern border? No, but enough to make it worthwhile to impede the flow. pl
freudenschade
There are no conversations here in which I am not a potential participant. pl
Have you a definition of “recreational drug consumption” you might care to share with the Committee?
Most of the ‘war on drugs’ was a way to find new things for the agents to do who had been going after liquor during Prohibition. People used to regularly use opium and cannabis tinctures and society never struck the iceberg back then. Watch the ridiculous propaganda film “Reefer Madness” to see how the new party line was pushed from the advent of the Roosevelt Administration.
Even chocolate can be classified as a drug. In the 17th century, European governments went on a war against coffee. The harsh treatments meted out by ‘authorities’ ruin real people’s lives every bit as effectively as a depressed person can be brought low by heroin and it’s only a couple hundred years later that people roll their eyes about what a crazy world those people lived in.
Mexico suffers in large measure from the same problem the US suffers. “Free Trade” agreements brought many Mexicans north to work for peanuts making American appliances and auto parts. Then it all went to China nearly overnight. There’s nothing wrong with the people. They just have the same parasitical and sociopathic synarchs running their government that we have running ours.
My only thought on the matter is that current borders are not fungible. You really need to come up with a better means of infiltration and attack which takes that into account. How about hiring some Mexican police away from the cartels, for example.
Dear Colonel,
If the problem is drugs, then the US should solve it domestically (the drugs will arrive from somewhere if the demand exists), if the problem is instability in Mexico and the migration waves and other overflow into the US, then the Colonel’s proposed policy merits consideration.
Pro: decapitating the head of the cartels could disperse their wealth so that they can no longer buy the government.
Con:decapitating the head of the cartels will replace a organized criminal violence with disorganized criminal violence, which is much worse and potentially destabilizing. That has not worked well in Detroit or Chicago. I am not a fan of Cosa Nostra, but they do keep order (in exchange for a special tax).
Would be nice that the US would combine the military solution with significant “institutional building” and properly targetted economic development (rather than building roads in Afghanistan), but that is not the US way.
Is the Phillipines a model for Mexico? I feel not as Mexico has a long history of instability for similar and different reasons. Colombia might be a model, but I do not know if it has the regional differences to the same extent as Mexico.
Sure, go ahead, legalize it and watch the carnage of destroyed lives and destroyed families.
Here is a modest proposal; legalize it but anyone who wants to purchase them will have his or her name and residence be added to database that is publicly available.
Then they can be subject to legal discrimination in employment and in choices of residence.
No, no no.
US drug problem is inside the American People – or a large number of them.
The cannabis sold in the United States has 20 times the concentration of the active ingredient that the US Federal Government put on the list of controlled substances.
Yes, the list obsolete, but not in the manner that you are suggesting.
Domestic cannabis production – both legal and illegal – has greatly reduced the amount coming up through Mexico as well as the profits. National legalization or not, cannabis is not a factor for the Cartels.
Only a fool would consider legalizing heroin and cocaine and that is where the cartels are making their money these days. Colonel Lang is exactly correct when he says the narcotics problem the country is facing is largely the result of a cut back in legal over-prescriptions and then addicts then seeking illegal sources, which ends up being heroin. Heroin is everywhere now. Even in my sleeping rural community far from the border there are weekly – almost daily, really – arrests for possession and sale. There are overdoses weekly. There are people on the junk crashing cars. There is an increase in burglaries by addicts to support their habit. It is out of control.
The Mexican government is totally corrupt and full of officials who cooperate with the cartels to the extent that they are de facto members. The Mexican govt isn’t going to stop this.
Some cross border incursions into some of the towns on the Mexican side that have been taken over by cartels would be helpful. Kill them all and keep the towns clean by instituting periodic sweeps.
And then, yes, take out cartel leadership whenever and wherever possible. Take out some of the bankers heavily involved as well. “Take out” means summarily kill sans judicial process. The judicial process in the US, especially in certain key jurisdictions, has also been corrupted by drug money – as has been law enforcement. And when corruption fails them, the cartel members have enough money to get the best lawyers to tie up the process. They aren’t that afraid of arrest and conviction. The program Col. Lang is considering is the one and only approach that hasn’t been tried and that would have a positive impact.
Actually, I am more interested in a non-kinetic approach to a transcendent human problem. Also, not blowing more American lives & treasure on a fool’s errand. But since I don’t set policy, nor will me or my loved-ones be dragged directly into such a mission, I am content to observe how it pans out. Best of luck to the JSOC guys & gals doing the job, hope for minimal collateral damage, & hope too that some good might come of it.
they already know they are going to die… & usually do. it’s about living large while to living is good.
” Americans are in more pain than any other population around the world. Approximately 80 percent of the global opioid supply is consumed in the United States. The majority of … these misused prescription opioids are coming from legally written prescriptions,” Surgeon General Murthy has said. ”
from:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/27/americans-consume-almost-all-of-the-global-opioid-supply.html
Col.,
as I mentioned above, most cocaine and narcotics generally come in via ship, specifically container ships. Much of that comes from Mexico and the Caribbean (as a transshipment points). Very little of that actually moves across the land border.
How about rejecting knuckle-dragger solutions and re-legalize. You seem like a smart guy and I have always considered your replies well considered.
Not this time.
Research a thing called prohibition and see how that worked out.
Please explain why? Stick to fact, and leave ideology out of it. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Why do you think doing the same stupid thing over and over is going to bear results?
I look forward to your well thought out and reasoned argument.
If you don’t have one then I suggest that if you cant be bothered to do the research then quit being part of the problem by spreading the propaganda.
That is the obvious most solution, Ghostship.
Exactly.
HRC said herself, “The drug war will never end. Too many people are making too much money off of it.”
The Deep State (Finance Capitol, Intelligence, MIC) is the number one profiteer. It’s just a replay of a the “China Trade” that made so much of the Establishment in the first place.
freudenschade
You are associating me with the wallniks. I want to kill the cartel leaders and make the survivors fear for their lives. I don’t care how the smuggling is attempted. pl
Colonel,
If North America is to avoid civil war and ethnic conflict; the solution must include Mexico and Central America. My basic premise is that since the development of the hydrogen bomb and ICBMs, mass armies became obsolete. As a result the ruling Elite threw the common people under the bus and embraced the free movement of people, money and goods. Anything that extracts money from the little people to the rich is okay no matter the costs. The immigration and drug problem would be greatly solved if employers were jailed for hiring illegal aliens, bankers indicted for money laundering and wars for profit ended. Instead, the USA recognizes the Burmese government. Buddhists start ethnic cleansing Muslim Karen. Those who escape the violence are moved to South Dakota to work in poultry packing plants.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/south-dakota-town-embraces-new-immigrants-vital-to-meat-industry/
The wall is simply a vote getting diversion that will make money for the connected. America’s wealth would be better spent on infrastructure which would help the economy in the long run. All the wall does is increase ethnic conflict in the Southwest. In the coming Rapture, using Oceans as barriers from the rest of the World would be more efficacious for North Americans.
VV
How did I become associated with Trump’s Wall? There should a sufficient barrier system but the campaign slogan envisioning something like Hadrian’s Wall should not be taken literally. “since the development of the hydrogen bomb and ICBMs, mass armies became obsolete” what do you mean by
mass armies?” There have been a lot of conventional wars since then. pl
ked
“they already know they are going to die.” Ah, I missed that … So, these are men who cannot be made to fear, something like Japanese Samurai. pl
I think any comparison between alcohol and drugs is specious.
Men cannot handle their drugs – across vast number of countries and cultures.
You guys in North America are so rich that you can – for a while – handle its consequences.
But that is it, you just have more money, a larger of margin of error.
In Iran, in China, in the Philippines, without that level of wealth, the carnage is visible and enduring.
Mexico inherited the same shortcomings and the same strengths that Spain had; caused by the centuries in which Spain was divided between Muslims powers and Christian Powers. She was cut-off from the great currents of change that swept the rest of Diocletian West.
Furthermore, in Mexico, there exists, in my opinion, a very strong pre-Spanish culture and world view which the Catholic Church has tried to assimilate but has not yet completed that task.
Mexico reminds me of Iran: a country whose history can be also be divided between a pre-Conquest and a post-Conquest period – with a distinct and ancient civilization and religion.
In both countries, the presence of Death is acknowledged and accepted in their lives. In both countries, the ancient culture is still enduring in vestigial forms – at the very least. And in both countries, belief in Magic and other such superstitions persists.
Not so in North America where neither Magic nor Death exist and the largely Protestant culture believes in the ability of an individual to have a personal relationship with the deity.
Mexico is not, in my opinion, a colonial version of Spain (Chile or Argentina could be so considered, in my opinion) – it is a creole civilization and culture the likes of which does not exist anywhere – although, in my opinion, her closest analogue remains Iran.
These considerations leads me to believe that Mexico can never become Diocletian in anything short of a few more centuries (if at all) and cannot be readily join US & Canada – the highest exponents of the Rationalistic Diocletian Culture.
And as Mexico goes, so does Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua.
I believe there are a dozen states where cannabis has been legalized and regulated in some fashion. California in the last election legalized it for recreational purposes. This is a trend. More and more states in the US and other countries are going to legalize cannabis in some fashion.
A critical mass of states will arrive at some point and the pressure on Congress will get immense. See how many more states legalize marijuana in the next election cycle.
Narcotics both synthetic and natural is a huge multi-billion dollar business. Banning it and growing the DEA headcount has done nothing to reduce demand dollars. It’s bigger now than in the 80s. Reduction in consumption will require strategies to reduce both demand and supply. The policy approach of the last few decades is a failure.
Colonel,
True; but, NATO’s wars are fought with volunteers, contractors and proxy forces against non-nuclear states and never end. There will never be another 4 million man invasion of Russia. We do not know if the Great Game restarted by the Obama Administration is on or off since Donald Trump’s election but the shelling continues in Ukraine.
The situation in Mexico has disintegrated from established corruption in the form of bribes and agreements between the government and criminal organizations, to a “seamless web”, as phrased by Charles Bowden, of the government and the army, and drug traffickers, operating that trade.
Bowden did detailed work on the illegal drug business in Mexico through several good books, but of course did not appear on the usual television networks or talk radio. The two books of his on how the system changed in recent years that are most worth reading are: “Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields” (2010), and, “El Sicario: the Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin” (2011).
While working on the book about Juarez, Bowden heard of an enforcer for the Juarez cartel who had left the organization through Christianity, and became a target himself of the cartel. A chapter in Murder City concerns him, and Bowden did an article for Harper’s magazine in 2009 about him as well. The article can be read on the website or downloaded here–
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/05/the-sicario/
After the Murder City book was published, Bowden, along with Molly Malloy of New Mexico State University, expanded on the enforcer’s story through the 2011 autobiographical book. While he was attending the police academy in Mexico, the man was also being paid by the drug cartel. When he became a state policeman and then commander, he spent most of his time kidnapping, torturing, and murdering people for the drug organization. Gianfranco Rosi, an Italian filmmaker, agreed to do a documentary of the man’s story as well. There was not much publicity about it, either. A couple of trailers for the documentary are here–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN0ImVgS-UY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=888qHoAO-O4
http://www.icarusfilms.com/new2011/sic.html
It seems as if the drug cartels have adopted a structure of compartmentalization, a version of a type done by governments and intelligence agencies. The cruelty, depravity, and mass murder by drug organizations have increased in Mexico to the point where those directing the activity have crossed the line, as is said, and an extrajudicial method of dealing with the problem can, in a society, be considered. The Laws of Nature do not require that people helplessly let themselves be abused.
You guys who are for legalization have no idea what you’re talking about. Cannabis? Sure. No problem.
But heroin? It’s an addictive life force destroying substance with fatal consequences. People all over the country are dying of overdoses. LE and other first responders have to all have Narcan in their kit these days to try to save lives in this national tragedy. There really isn’t such a thing as safe heroin use. Cocaine, especially in “crack” form is equally destructive. I have seen lives ruined, lives ended, from both. IMO, it would be extremely irresponsible to legal either.
Another point to consider is that the heroin epidemic is relatively new. Yes, it was always in the inner cities, but not in the high schools in Norman Rockwell land like it is now. So this argument that there is some pervasive demand that won’t go away is specious. People lived without this stuff and they can do it again.
The purveyors of this poison are enemies every bit a dangerous as any terrorist group and they should be treated as such.
Lemmings to their destruction…
Really? I live in Portugal, where drug possession and use by individuals is legal. The problems related to drug abuse are quite low, relative to countries in which drugs are illegal.
If JSOC is going to eradicate the cartels and their ‘financial enablers within our borders’, then maybe they could start by kicking in the doors of the next board of directors meeting at Citibank and HSBC. Or throw a few concussion grenades into the executive sales meeting at corporate headquarters of Purdue Pharma.
marc b
I didn’t say “within our borders.” pl
Robert willman
I did not propose an extrajudicial process. IMO US federal courts should be empowered by the US Congress with the power to try drug purveyors and condemn them to death in absentia for crimes against the US. pl
A very interesting discussion. Thank you.
I rather subscribe to the point of view eloquently expressed by Old Microbiologist. Lurking in the recesses of memory is an interview in the late 1970s on the leading BBC chat show featuring a celebrity US actor who bridled at the suggestion by the programme host that he had a drugs problem.
“No, Michael, I don’t have a problem with drugs; I have a problem with reality.”
Whether said in jest or otherwise, people do consume mood altering substances and in all likelihood will continue to do so. Far better that governments control the trade than leaving it to the criminal sector.
Speaking of whom, part, at least, of the leadership of the Mexican cartels seems to have evolved out of a special forces background. See for example the Spanish Wikipedia article on Los Zetas:
https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Zetas
If accurate, a campaign of eradication may be very bloody, even by Mexican standards.
Please tell me why it is specious? I see plenty of carnage here from alcohol. I come in contact with homeless from a shelter daily and its ALL alcohol. But having seen what prohibition wrought and now its current iteration I refrain from calling for a new round. I do not drink BTW.
Moral crusades are expensive and our stupidly locking up more of our own citizens than any other guarantee we will be economically like the Philippines etc soon enough.
Is it a Muslim thing? Indonesia and the like seem obsessed with with the issue. Yet hanging everybody doesn’t seem to be working due to the fact they continue hanging everybody. Try something new?
Cortes
I did not say “eradication.” What I proposed is the selective killing of drug cartel leaders. The Zetas are renegade Mexican Marines who went bad from association with the cartels. I would bar USSF from any contact with the cartels other than the kill. We have the DEA for target package operations. pl
I say if it grows on Gods green earth it is for man. If you make it in a bathtub or beaker with chemicals than it belongs to the FDA.
As pointing out before merely legalizing pot will put the Cartels out of business. Not to mention generating tax revenue Colorado style.
Win Win, so no wonder the control freaks hate it. They are all zero sum game.
Try Freedonia for all those who wish to indulge their drug habit.
You can put Heroin dealers against the wall for all I care. But Cannabis is classified the same and likewise punished the same. So I totally agree with you but as long as you are pushing to keep “drugs” illegal, it has the unfortunate effect of continued persecution of Cannabis.
And that is by design.
(not by you of course just to make sure there is no misunderstanding)
Re-classify Cannabis? Never seems to happen despite all the sense it makes.
Humans have been indulging intoxicants for millennia. We’ve thrived to this point. I don’t know, but I think cannabis is less destructive than alcohol. Opiates are another matter. Irrespective of how destructive they are intoxicants will be around for another millennium. I believe reducing the influence of criminal elements is beneficial and regulated access is a useful tool.
BM
As a displaced West Coaster who has lived on cultural fault lines, I think civilizations do clash. Anglos and Europeans have an existential problem of being forced to live next to foreign cultures by their Elites. Yet, at the same time, I believe public education and science training can overlay cultural beliefs. People who are educated and speak English are different than native only language speakers. But, under stress, people revert to their cultural roots. Since the economy is now a less than a zero sum game; instead of middle class integration, wealth extraction is accelerating disintegration. If there were jobs that supported families and the laws were enforced equally, all sorts of societal dysfunction would disappear. If the West continues on the current path, it will splinter apart.
I really don’t know. But recently George Friedman quoted the figure of 5 Million Mexican illegal immigrants.
Supposedly nicotine is the most addictive substance known to mankind. Far harder to quit serious nicotine addiction than a heroin addiction.
Nicotine greatly increases one’s ability to concentrate. That’s why so many people in professions requiring great concentration such as writers and pool players either can’t quit or must go on a hiatus from their professional activities because otherwise sitting in front of a typewriter will nearly guarantee relapse. Only thing that worked for me was “the patch.”
former 11B
I would prefer a 1,000 yard shot with something exquisite. pl
The comparison to alcohol is a tired old cliche and does not belong in any elevated discussion on the topic. Speaking of knuckle draggers..
Yes, i was stretching the reach of the relevance but wanted the Colonel to see it even if he would filter it out of the pipeline, since the salient name changing issue had come up recently on the Idlib correspondence the other day.
I think you identified a very important and potentially illuminating interpretive strategy re the media narrative dialectics that permeates and transcends what is always “presented as” partisan dualism. It could even warrant a new blog forum as an analytical process-based vs content-based commentary discourse, to yield more light vs heat analyses of any given issue.
In some sense, even if naively, this is a common theme imo among the independents be they bernie bros, alt-rights, or libertarians from right and left: nearly all intuitively refuse to fall into the media-driven dog-whistle reactionary polarities because of suspicions of polarizing propaganda narratives, in direct contrast to the reactions of “m-is-for-mainstream” consumers of msm.
Although messy (unprecedented and unpredictable) as heck, imo it is a very healthy development even if it isn’t quite clear yet where the new dynamics of this growing public skepticism of media narratives could lead the nation. Kudos to you for picking up on the dynamic, and to the respected Colonel Pat for leading one of the few forums characterized by this kind of non-partisan, read-between-the-lines, intelligent commentary that illuminates any given topic under discussion. It is a proof for why a committee of correspondence is such a valuable and informative discourse method. I believe there is a growing, insatiable thirst among the public for more of it, and a good use of social media technology to facilitate such discourse. Given that nefarious elements and purposes thrive in the shadows of befuddling confusion, there is a superior noble ethic underlying such peaceful modes of eliciting public discourse intelligence. I think it gets very near to the essence of what the founding fathers were after and why it seems they embraced committees of correspondence as fundamental mechanisms of true democratic process. May their inheritance live on!
If you tell an American that in the UK if you get seriously ill, you are entitled to home care no matter who you are, they simply cannot believe it because such a thing is simply so distant from their experience that it “does not compute.” Similarly, if you tell them that in the UK very serious medical procedures require an additional several thousand dollars rather than several hundred thousand dollars above and beyond basic insurance it is too “far out” to be credible or easily accepted. And if you reverse the process, telling a UK citizen about the US situation, there is similar disbelief. Of course I’m not talking about people as well informed as the SST community is here.
The US has always been fragmented and tribal, perhaps more so recently than yesteryear, I’m not sure. In Sweden or Denmark or Germany, no one can understand why his neighbor shouldn’t have health care those societies are (or have been) essentially homogeneous. The guy or gal getting health care looks like you and your family, so why not? An outrage otherwise.
Not in the US, where people throughout its history have been played off one another, group by group in descending order of dignity. “How can you give health care to them ******’s (fill in the blank; Irish, Indians, Blacks, Half-Breeds, etcetera and so on) ?? !!
There has never been the sort of unity a post enlightenment age European has come to expect, though it is painfully obvious that Europeans have had and have their servant classes. I am dramatically oversimplifying to give you a sense of the “not belonging” which is and has been endemic to American culture for several centuries.
Wide differences in educational achievement between American students and the rest of the developed world are also lamented, and have been for some time. In the US, a highly developed country in science, engineering etc, there are states in which the textbooks are not allowed to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution. Yes, now in the 21st century. Battles over such things go on and on. The exact status today I couldn’t tell you.
It’s also off the charts as compared with Europe (and elsewhere) concerning religion. Over 50 % of Americans say they believe in God in polls. Europeans and other developed countries find that preposterous, very hard to understand. It’s in many ways a fundamentalist society mixed with a staunchly secular elite.
Mention was made above to the Cotton Mather streak – an individual I would characterize as quite authoritarian and a very strict religious fundamentalist leader of the “Plymouth Rock” venture. Puritanical in the truest sense of the word. Literally someone who mercilessly burned people alive for perceived social indiscretions which required a savagely irrational and superstitious world view, to put it mildly. And that was called “Christianity” in its day up in the North Eastern colonies. It’s not my idea of Christianity, that’s for sure.
But that outrageously punitive and authoritarian mindset took hold and really, it still permeates the predominant culture of America more profoundly than someone not native to these shores might easily understand. Sound ridiculous? Not really. Not if you imagine that people in their earliest years were made to grasp that disobedience to authority might entail such merciless abuse. Evil ? People ask “does evil exist ?” Yes, evil does exist, and I’ll tell you what it is. Evil is a cycle of abuse. We understand how abuse is passed down through the generations in families. I’d guess nearly everyone does. But cycles of abuse can be passed down through the generations. That is harder to understand. But if the founding, bedrock, initial imprinting image of one’s culture is that wicked Puritan Cotton Mather burning young women and men alive at the stake because someone told him they were dancing and singing one afternoon — and if everyone else is similarly imprinted ? Good luck with that place. Good luck with yourself.
It’s inexcusable. But it’s some sort of psychic legacy I think. A foundational bedrock. People far more articulate than I frequent SST, and can probably do a better job at explaining what I’m trying to get across.
So, IMO you are more correct than you might imagine, but the malady you sense afflicting the American people is not some flaw inherent to them by any means. There has been a strange, uncanny cycle of abuse operating on them. Divide people by class, tribe, ethnic origin. And browbeat them with the understanding and horror that they are sinners in the hands of an angry God deserving hellfire and damnation, eternally.
If you asked me why so many Americans answer the poll question “Do you believe in God?” in the affirmative ? I’d speculate that many who do answer in the affirmative may not be so much truthful as responding to an unconscious coercion which terrifies them into giving what they have perceived to be the “right answer” — and have perceived it since their earliest days.
They are dying of overdoses because they are buying an inconsistent product cut with God knows what. Legalizing heroin would allow for a consistent product with a known and tested formulation so overdoses should be far less frequent.
The major health risk with heroin use is the sharing and re-use of needles. Distributing heroin in one-shot injectors would drastically reduce this problem.
With any potential customer, dealers have an incentive to supply free samples to get that person addicted knowing that they’ll recoup the costs later. A state monopoly would not give free samples and should have no incentive to increase the number of consumers.
Using illegal recreational drugs, gives you street cred; if it was a state monopoly with plain packaging, how much credibility would you gain by starting to use recreational drugs. Not a lot.
A major problem with heroin use is funding the habit which results in increased criminality. Legalizing it and selling it through a state monopoly would substantially reduce the cost and should reduce criminality.
De-criminalizing all drugs seems to have worked for Portugal.
https://news.vice.com/article/ungass-portugal-what-happened-after-decriminalization-drugs-weed-to-heroin
TTG,
Have you read this? I am interested in your comments.
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/05/americas_assassination_industrial_complex_how_the_drug_wars_of_the_90s_became_the_drone_wars_of_today/
Thanks
Darn it. Posted that musing on psychic roots of American pain without making my point.
Which was, that due to the cultural cycle of abuse induced by Cotton Mather and the Puritans, many Americans are alienated and in psychic pain. And psychic pain induces physical pain just as surely as does physical trauma and/or disease. “Psychosomatic” is the term I think.
And people in pain seek remedy. Remedy are analgesics, of which opioids are the gold standard.
Thus the endemic or epidemic use and abuse. QED.
And in no way whatsoever is this nor do I think it to be unique to Americans. Drug addiction and substance abuse has been with humanity since day one. As have been witch hunts.
Thanks for the excellent education that continues here. I wonder if you had heard about a recent incident in where Mexicans abducted a drug lord’s mother? Aikido reversal, no lawyers, no international over-reach, and the money stays locally. Aim past the bling and head chopping to the Old Man of the Mountain and listen behind you. Where does the money end? I have seen it corrupt to my absolute disgust. Erlichmann admitted the War On Drugs effected felony dis-enfranchisement of radicalized populations (3/5ths citizen), and the Barristers agreed it could clog courts and bloat budgets. Anslinger and Hoover had many conflicts of unenlightened self-interest with pharma, petro, labour,black-markets and finance incentives. Flood the swamp with their own money. Any-one floating on diplomatic-pouch air-mattresses save for questioning. Warring on Policy may cause ditzyness, er, dizziness. It comes on “Fast and Furious”. Best of health all. JK
It is elementary economics that attacking the supply and thereby reducing it merely makes more valuable the supply that remains.
To end the Mexican drug lords you have to curb the American appetite for their products.
I understand that Portugal has plentiful treatment programs available.
Babak Makkinejad,
How about their real Fifth Column in the United States, the people who keep these drugs illegal in order to keep the price up and keep would-be legal producers withIN the United States from producing independently of the Mexican cartels in order to protect a government-created monopoly market for these drug cartels?
Well . . . as long as we are being consistent and restricting the use of ALL harmful fun-drugs to Freedonia . . . such as tobacco and alcohol and so forth.
Former 11B,
If God had not meant for man to toke, He would not have given us cerebrocortical endocannabinoid receptors.
Eric Newhill,
I have read that a lot of the current heroin epidemic outside the inner cities was set into motion by the rollout of modern opioids in the last few years. They were much more addictive than the makers perhaps knew, and certainly than the doctors knew, that huge numbers of people became addicted to legal prescription opioids. And if for one reason or another, the doses either were stopped or became unaffordable, the people addicted to prescription opioids turned to recently less expensive heroin and thereby switched addictions.
Am I remembering correctly what I read? Was it correct in whole or in part to begin with?
About legalizing various illegal drugs in order to defund the cartels . . . they have spent the last few years diversifying into non-drug activities, such as illegal mining on an industrial scale.
http://nypost.com/2014/03/17/mexican-drug-cartel-moves-from-meth-to-iron-ore-mining/
I have also read about this illegal mining in other places than just the nypost. And who buys this illegally mined coal, ore and etc.? I have read that one big buyer is China, which doesn’t bother itself with questions about the source of the coal and the ore.
So the cartels are so nasty and so multi-bussiness-involved that wiping them out might be called for on general principles, quite apart from the drugs issue. But beginning such a program would cause them to activate all their shooters and bombers waiting in ready-reserve within the United States. We would find out just how many such people the cartels have pre-positioned here within our borders. Could it be a long hard war? I don’t know enough to know.
Thank you for not disappointing me.
I indeed didn’t expected a response to the factual points I made. They are hard to refute.
Good luck then escalating the “war on drugs”.
But doesn’t the shear existence of your post provides that it has failed since its very beginning? More of the same will do better?
Possible reaction by these cartels might be to hit back at families of the military in the US using the easy access across the border from Mexico. Through their contacts in the financial world they might gain access to a lot of personal information. Protecting the dependents of the military (not only of those involved in the program, I think they’ll attack any military target) from possible attack might come at the price of seclusion and further effects on American society. This is of course not meant to be an argument not to do it, only a question how you’d mitigate against the inevitable response.
Consumption of chemicals, natural or synthetic, for non-medical use when there is no under-lying medical condition requiring its use.
Addiction to a chemical can be regarded as a medical condition, so I would include subsequent use of that chemical once the medical condition has gone away as recreation use. So, someone who takes oxycodone for severe back pain is not a recreational user but once the cause of the back pain is treated, further use of oxycodone beyond that to allow for gentle withdrawal is recreational use.
However, any definition is irrelevant because if people over 18 want to ingest any chemicals, including alcohol, that is their business and nothing to do with the state. And yes, I’m aware that can include poisons.
“As pointing out before merely legalizing pot will put the Cartels out of business. ”
It didn’t, they just switched to heroin and kept on making money and with the USG deciding to further restrict access to OxyCONTIN, the cartels had a
substantial market of people already addicted to opiods that they could no longer obtain so they switched to the closest readily available alternative, street heroin.
opium grows on “god’s green earth’, though one could argue it takes a bit processing to extract the stuff. You for legalizing that?
Wunduk
You are arguing that the US military could be intimidated by the cartels. What a joke! pl
b
I am not impressed with your points and do not want to waste what little time I have arguing against your opinions. Actually we have not done anything like my modest proposal during the war on drugs. pl
Cannabis is less destructive than alcohol…
another unsubstantiated claim against the wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary.
Reducing the influence of criminal element – yes I get that:
How about vending machines in Junior and High Schools in the United States that would dispense cannabis and condoms etc.?
All regulated and taxed by the Federal, State, and local governments?
With all the monies to go into education.
specious argument – there are analogous chemicals in the brain in minute quantities.
That is fine Former 11B, we understand that you want to indulge your appetites and you use a Christian position “Gods green earth it is for man” to justify that.
Well, No Man is Justified and that reference that you invoke is for Man that is not in State of Fall.
But let me set that aside.
The fact of the matter is, as I explained toy your brother-in-drugs “different clue”, that you want to indulge in your appetites while the rest of us live sober, proper lives on the straight and narrow.
You and different clue and others such as yourselves would be frightened and scared if you lived in communities that everyone was a habitual drug user, and I mean everyone: the farmers, the surgeons, the dentists, the judges, the policemen, the truck drivers, the butchers, the green grocers, the cabbies, the nurses, the pharmacists, the teachers.
You need us to be there, in all of our neediness and competence to sustain your indulgence.
Well, I do not like that one bit and that is why I always suggested Freedonia; the place that dope-heads go to live their natural lives in indulgence of their appetites.
Farooq
Yes, governments kill their foreign enemies. It is seldom possible to eliminate a threat by killing off the leaders, but the process has a profound effect. The strategy of eliminating the cartel leaders has never been seriously attempted. The CIA and DEA are inept in military matters and their previous efforts in Latin America were limited by restrictions internally applied within the US government. In my modest proposal, a system of law, courts and execution by JSOC, a most effective killing machine would IMO be much more effective that anything attempted previously. If you think that such a campaign against leaders is not effective you should think of my previous citation of JSOCs sustained effort against AQ in Iraq. It drove AQ in Iraq out of the country to Syria where they are now headed for elimination by what I call R+6. If you want a further example there is the case of Muqtada al-Sadr and his Army of the Mahdi or whatever he called it. At one point early in the Iraq War, he had revved up his Shia followers to believe that the Mahdi would come soon to lead them in driving the infidel into the sea. they became a serious nuisance and yet another anti-occupation armed force in the collection of such groups present on the field. As a countermeasure the US Army and USMC assembled their snipers into a task force to deal with Muqqie. They killed about 600 of his hard core activists and it was clear that there was a bullet out there somewhere with Muqqie’s name on it. At that point he decided to become a politician and to take a break at Qom to work on his skills in the religious sciences. He has been fairly well behaved since his return to Irq. pl
DC,
As far as I know, that theory has a lot of truth in it. It is no doubt not the single cause of the current epidemic, but certainly a major contributor. Some Dr.s may have been ignorant of the down side of the prescriptions. However, other Dr.s were simply greedy de facto drug dealers running “script mills” (as we call them in the insurance industry).
One of the reasons for the narcotics prescription cut back is that insurance companies began including script mill identification in “red flag” algorithms run on data by fraud and abuse units within the company. Once identified, the information was passed along to law enforcement. Many physicians have lost their medical licenses and many have faced criminal prosecution. Now even well meaning Dr.s are hesitant to prescribe and, if they do, they are extremely cautious and conservative. Overall, a good thing. I blame the script mills more than the ignorant physicians for the current problem.
We have so much data available to us. Millions upon millions of medical and membership records containing provider and member identifiers, demographics, diagnoses, procedures + some “big data” that we purchase from external vendors that includes information such as magazine subscriptions, credit card purchases. And we have very powerful data mining tools with statistical applications that identify patterns and strength of associations and very competent people to maximize the application of these tools. And more that I can’t tell you about. Once we focus on an issue, we will develop very accurate profiles of the providers involved, the members involved, the medical conditions, etc…..
That strikes me as a simplistic answer. “Addiction to a chemical can regarded as a medical condition”. And that’s that! We pass it off to an already overburdened sector. Which, by the way, has NO ‘answer”, of any measured efficacy, in the treatment of addiction. Furious press releases and spin efforts to the contrary. We still don’t know what works, or why it works, best, in efforts to get people off drug use that clearly has become self destructive to the individuals in question.
None of this addresses employment issues. Adoption issues. Visitation rights. Custody battles. And on and on. We are suffering from a rather stark and surprising declining life expectancy rate as is. Hep C issues abound. Recreational drug use is often done is a social setting. Lots of people injecting the drugs in a less than sterile environment. Disease easily passed around. Cutting of drugs with who knows what, widespread, because of the profit motive. None of this necessarily stops simply because something is being produced legally.
Recreational substance abuse is most certainly a matter for the State. And even more so for the community. Ask an police officer who goes to investigate a domestic abuse issue. Ask the military if it is a non-State issue. See the late stages of the vietnam war for the impact widespread drug use can have on unit dependability.
None of this is to argue for a ‘war on drugs’, maybe a war on Cartels, but not drug users. But taking imprisonment out of the tool kit, as ONE response is foolish in my opinion. And reckless.
And finally, what makes anyone think that the Cartels won’t bring their experience, and rather unique business models, to dominate legal drugs? See the gaming industry in Nevada and other places.
trinlae
You will have noticed that I am neither a philosopher, nor a theologian. IMO a blog on what would essentially be epistemology would be useful but I think participation would be thin. Do you think I should establish such a blog? My own primitive taste in philosophy runs to Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.” pl
masterSlacker
I doubt that you know enough about the current capabilities of the US SOF to make a judgment about frangibility of borders in this context. pl
Thank you for your comments; I will think about them and mull them.
Could it be that the denial of Death in US culture also comes from the same Puritanism?
Look, you can go live in Mexico and get all the cheap drugs that you wish. You have that choice.
But once an area is run by the drug cartel, where does one go?
Here is another question:
Suppose US government creates a program of legal drug usage, conditioned on the participants’ names and addresses being publicly available to any and all in the United States.
And that, further, the new Federal Laws will permit discrimination in housing and employment on basis of legal drug use – would you participate?
I doubt that many would – they need to remain anonymous in order to pass the cost of the indulgence of their appetites to the rest of us.
Colonel:
I have no problem about using the military, preferably covertly, to eliminate the drug cartels. Drugs have killed far more Americans than AQ or ISIS. We have used the military in the past & may be using military capabilities now.
In the late 1980s I was the USMC rep on a Pentagon study group looking at possible DoD roles in the war on drugs. During a break after briefing the group on USMC concerns, I was approached by the DEA rep. who said the we were correct to be concerned. He said that there was so much money floating around in the drug business that everyone involved in fighting it eventually got dirty.
While I have no problem with drug lords dying of lead poisoning, we must also do something to reduce our citizens demand for these drugs. Strong demand with lots of cash will always create a source.
“…wealth of scientific evidence..” Ah! The last refuge. .. Yeah, like the “evidence ” for global warming.
“…vending machines in Junior and High Schools…” Silly argument. None of the cannabis regulations allow for that. Age restrictions are similar to alcohol.
Farooq,
The point of the article is that a strategy of leadership decapitation of an organization, whether it be a drug cartel or a jihadist group, does not lead to the destruction of the organization. The original decapitation strategy was based on the premise that the targeted organization was strictly hierarchical and could not function without an intact hierarchy. In fact, most of these target organizations evolved into more distributed organizations. We weren’t quick to see this because we are also wedded to the need for a robust hierarchy in our organization. This is where the article ends, but the story continued.
Our strategy also evolved in Iraq and Afghanistan. JSOC strike missions became more than checking faces off a static organizational chart as a hit list. Each strike became an information gathering mission. That information was quickly analyzed into “actionable intelligence” resulting in ensuing JSOC strikes and more information gathering. This evolved into a rapid cycle with often several strikes in a night. This strategy struct at the enemy’s growing resiliency and distributed organization. This is the present state of the art in JSOC operations.
Those same people will use it regardless, and taking the illegality of it out actually lessens demand due to a lack of thrill. You have been to Amsterdam? Are there a horrendous number of down and outers from the legal drugs available there? The problem is societal and not limited to the US. But, we have a larger problem, perhaps as our society is sicker than most. We have become an amoral country where pretty much anything goes. The parallels to the Roman Empire are interesting.
PS – the above is something to keep in mind when I say things like “Liberals tend to be crazy/on psychiatric medication”
GHostship,
Not buying what you say. There is no “street” where I live for people to work up a cred on. People take these illegal drugs (cocaine, opioids, meth amphetamine) that come from outside our borders because it makes them feel good. People abuse the prescription forms of the same for the same reason. They think they can handle it. Give themselves a little tune up here and little tune up there and, before they know it, they are using the stuff all the time and can’t stop. Overdoses – if 5 makes me feel that good, just think what 10 will do. That or they’ve been forced for one reason or another into a period of abstinence (starting a new job that tests, court orders, etc). As soon as they can, they go back to the dope and take the same amount they were taking prior to the dry period. Their bodies had adjusted back to baseline and can’t handle the old addict level does. They die.
Yes, nicotine can take a few years off people’s live. That’s a personal choice. Smokers aren’t stealing to support the habit. They aren’t overdosing. They aren’t prostituting, crashing cars and heavy machinery. There isn’t a destruction of morals and ability to think. False comparison.
It depends on the drug in question.
https://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Safer-Driving-People-Drink/dp/1603585109/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475250141&sr=1-1&keywords=marijuana+is+safer+so+why+are+we+driving+people+to+drink
I am not a user, but I find the arguments in this short book quite convincing. It’s exhaustively sourced, many of which were reports on studies funded by and in some cases conducted by US government agencies. Plus I know several people who have used pot for decades and function just as well as most other people I know.
Booby, TTG et al
I did not claim that killing off the drug lords would solve the problem of American demand or eliminate the drug trade. That is beyond the reach of such as we, but the question remains as to whether or not it would be a deterrent to the lemming like drive to have beautiful whores, mansions, etc. that now IMO has not enough deterrent. IMO the kind of dynamic targeting effort described as the state of the art in JSOC would contribute to a lack of ambition among the cartelistas. pl
MacGupta
Spare me the condescension professor. What I propose would raise the costs to drug lords. It would be a high cost. pl
Yes, and they also have whores on display there. And they also rounded up the Dutch Jews and gave them to the Gestapo. And after the German invasion, there was a huge rally there in support of the NAZIs.
Holland cannot be accepted as an example.
She is a rich country and can throw money at dope heads; Iran and the Philippines are examples of poor countries that cannot.
Already, there are counties in US that cannot pay for the upkeep of the druggies.
Well said, Sir. Makes perfect sense.
Any of the forms of Belief in a later Salvation of the physical body is a denial of Death. That’s the bedrock of Salvationist theology. Of course it comes from the same Puritanism.
Without the database, they are already discriminated against in employment (none) and choice of residence.
You asked me for my definition of “recreational drug consumption”, so that’s what my reply covered.
As for addiction, the best “cure” is to never let it happen in the first place, and the easiest way to do that is to take the profit motive away from the suppliers. As I say elsewhere, many dealers will give out free samples to encourage their customers onto more profitable drugs and pharmaceutical companies will give bonuses to doctors to encourage them to prescribe their drugs, e.g. OxyCONTIN. An efficient state monopoly that supplies at cost would stop such “marketing” from happening. To pay for any treatment programs it might be necessary to add a tax to that.
Legalizing recreational drugs would also, to large extent, take away their attractiveness as symbolic of a rebellious attitude. For example, why are tobacco companies so against plain packaging?
Lots of people injecting the drugs in a less than sterile environment. Disease easily passed around. Cutting of drugs with who knows what, widespread, because of the profit motive. None of this necessarily stops simply because something is being produced legally.
If intravenous recreational drugs are supplied in one-shot injectors with antiseptic wipe included there would be no need to to share or re-use needles and the infection problems mostly go away as has been demonstrated when needle exchange programs have been established.
Since any recreational drug user could walk into a pharmacy and cheaply buy his drug of choice in standardized doses, why would anyone want to go to the trouble and risk of buying cut drugs from a dealer?
Most of the other problems that you mention result from the criminalization of recreational drugs. Legalize them and to a very large extent they will go away and a lot of users of recreational drugs could then lead normal productive lives.
For example:
Employment issues – do employers ban users of tobacco or alcohol? So why should they ban users of other recreational drugs providing that use does not affect their performance of their job.
Adoption issues/custody battles – provided their behaviour does not affect their children, why should parents who are also users of recreational drugs be required to give their children up for adoption.
Visitation rights – after you’ve legalized recreational drug use, why would anybody remain in prison unless they’ve also committed non-drug related offences and why would anyone need to go to prison? The only offence that would likely remain is DUI as no-one should need to steal to support their habit and most recreational drugs other than alcohol do not increase violence. There might be a need for police to deploy a breath-based drug testing machine for roadside use, but a Swedish company has already developed one that detects 14 drugs including coccaine, herroin, etc.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/04/25/new-breathalyzer-can-detect-marijuana-cocaine-heroin
Q. Ask an police officer who goes to investigate a domestic abuse issue.
A. They’ll tell you that most of the domestic abuse is related to alcohol, a legal recreational drug.
Q. Ask the military if it is a non-State issue. See the late stages of the vietnam war for the impact widespread drug use can have on unit dependability.
A. Why should it have anything to do with the military? The Vietnam War was a civil war that was nothing to do with the United States and that it should have stayed out of. Additionally, to fund various dubious operations in that war, there is evidence that various USG agencies involved themselves in the recreational drug business. Similarly, the USG should have stayed out of South America where the drug trade was used to fund pro-US organizations and Afghanistan where the Taliban government had almost completely suppressed the opium business. The USG should also not even think of using the drug trade to destabilize other countries.
But taking imprisonment out of the tool kit, as ONE response is foolish in my opinion.
Has the “toolkit” worked up till now? No.
And finally, what makes anyone think that the Cartels won’t bring their experience, and rather unique business models, to dominate legal drugs?
How could they if it was a state monopoly/ Where would they make their profit? Without large profits downstream, the raw materials would be not much more valuable than broccoli.
The gaming industry in Nevada and the rest of the U.S. is a completely different case, in my opinion.
Always love a good discussion of the drug war.
If decapitation of the the Generalissimos worked (and I think it was tried), it would mean that there are no ambitious young lieutenants, majors or colonels.
I’d say if some one is in the life and under 35…they figure to live fast and leave a beautiful corpse.
If you know anything about gangs, when big daddy dies unexpectedly, the kids start fighting amongst themselves to take his place.
There is a certain Trumpian logic to this.
Maybe the JSOC boys do it without killing the wives and children? The whole fucking wedding party? Oh, maybe our drone experience means that doesn’t matter.
So why not use drones. Tactical nukes? Take out the packers and mules.
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
Christian ethics, Christian rules.
We don’t need no stinkin’ rules!
Tom Cafferty
You people keep trying to put words n my mouth. I never said anything about not needing rules. IMO quite opposite is true. I never said anything about killing families. As Heinlein said in “Starship Troopers,” the great advantage of the infantry, and snipers are a kind of infantry, is that you can kill just the left handed redheads. Nothing else is that precise. When was it tried seriously? when? Put up or … pl
In Shia Islam there is a belief in the bodily resurrection but it did not lead and has not lead to the denial of Death. There must some other ideas involved in this.
Babak Makkinejad,
Since the chemical/physiological effects of tobacco and alcohol cost society more than the chemical/ physiological effects of cannabis, the cost to society of indulging tobacco and alcohol users in their tobacco and alcohol use is much higher than the mythical cost you pretend to claim is imposed by the use of cannabis.
The legal costs and violence costs artificially engineered around cannabis are entirely imposed by the laws against cannabis and that is a cost we have to bear to support your indulgence in you inconsistent and inconsistently applied disapproval of “drugs”.
By the way, did you know that cannabis and opiates and meth and cocaine are each separate drugs and different from eachother? Its true!
They really are! Its just as true as the fact that Carbon Dioxide mixes with the other gases in the atmosphere, without having to dissolve at all.
I’d like to correct myself. What I said was harsh, inaccurate and unfair. I should have said that psychiatric prescription and diagnosis tends to be associated with liberal leaning demographics. I did not mean to imply that all liberals have these issues.
The drugs that are doing the most damage on the street are fentanyl & carfentanil. They are killing at astounding rates. Both make heroin look like coffee. Both mostly come from China, but can be routed through any where because the dosage is so small. China has cut a deal with Canada to go after the producers in China.
The US is on it’s way to eliminating it’s weed import problem, as long as Trump doesn’t crack the whip and undo the momentum. If your goal is a biblical interpretation of prohibition that has been tried and tried and failed every time.
The solution to drug addiction is treatment which the war on drugs made illegal in most countries.
The doctors get people hooked on prescription opioids and then when people can’t afford the price of that addiction they switch to the far cheaper opiods like heroin, fentanyl & carfentanil.
Eric Newhill,
One wonders whether that is because liberals are more prone to need psychiatric services . . . . or whether it is because psychiatric service providers tend to cluster up in the bigger-money towns and cities where the liberals also tend to cluster up.
If you want to shoot the head of the problem, then shoot a few banksters. Scaring the rest of the banksters silly will seriously help out on so many other problems at the same time. That’s the head of the ‘cartel” in which big money cannot function without.
The police have always been corrupt in Mex., and this country looks more and more like that every day. I’ve been pulled over for speeding in rural Arkansas by State Troupers, asked to sit in the back of the car while they run my license… when the officer opened the car door – powder in plastic on the floorboard. Without doubt a complete set-up. And I’m a clean cut white guy with no record of any kind. I got out of that pickle by the grace of God, quick thinking, talking and making them guilty nervous. And by damn, you better believe I went to traffic court and told the judge what happened while the cop who gave me ticket was on the stand. And I had a car full of friends escort me several counties back home afterwards. That’s what the government side of drug war does to millions upon millions in both U.S. and Mex… innocent millions and much worse.
We have no business looking beyond our borders for serious problems.
As for the rest, I am definitely on the legalize all of it side. Sweden, Portugal etc., these are remarkable success story’s. Their statistics say society will have the same number of addicts either way and it’s much less messy with legalized. So it’s really about whether or not the rest of society wants to treat each other with threat of seal/swat teams, massive prisoner rates… or as an public health issue.
I’ve got an older family member with a long pain/substance abuse history… the last 15 or so years under legal pain management. I don’t like either, but clearly legal pain management is they way for all of us to live with this type of human failing.
Also, Anyone remember Queludes? For a short time after they were banned completely there were bootlegs. Ultimately, that drug really did disappear. Seems to me if the PTB’s really want, they can put an end to most substances. I wonder what the true story behind that total elimination might have been?
Try Freedonia.
Col and TTG,
Thank you for your comments and for educating me.
Colonel, I am totally against illegal of drugs, i have never used it, but i can see this problem is killing and eliminating many young and family lives all over the world. IMO any and every avenue that can be taken to eliminate illegal drugs, production or distribution of it should be taken including your suggestions. Anything short of doing everything is not serious. I agree with you our military can and should kill every drug cartel SOB.
And how many times are you going to treat the same person over and over again?
How much resource is that person going to consume that could be used to address the needs of the orphans?
You talk as though there are infinite resources available to throw at these wretched people, ignoring those with even more urgent and more legitimate claims on such state expenditures.
Babak Makkinejad,
If such a database list of people using certain newly-relegalized drugs were to be kept so prospective employers could see it, then that database should also list all the people using the formerly outlawed and then re-legalized drug alcohol for the sake of consistency. And if the issue is one of knowing who is using all damaging drugs even if they were never illegalized, then tobacco/ nicotine should be covered by that list as well.
Then one could discuss the goodness or badness of such a list.
” No smokers need apply. No tokers, either”.
I would reject the idea of government maintaining such a list of who uses what drug. If private employers want to find out who uses what drug so as to decide whom to employ or not, that is their private right. Let them find out privately, by imposing a pre-hiring-decision drug test if that’s what they decide.
Babak Makkinejad,
I’ll accept “try Freedonia” for my drug of choice if everyone is required to accept “try Freedonia” for their drugs of choice. Otherwise, not.
DC, I don’t know which came first but, one finds a lot more eggs where there is a lot more chickens, and vice versa.
I’d be curious to understand what the opioid/cocaine/meth abuse rate is among urban liberals versus deplorables. Maybe the junk is just the deplorable way of self-treating psychiatric issues and general angst, whereas the liberals, being enlightened and accepting and having better access to mental health providers, ignore the stigma of seeking psychiatric help and go a “legitimate” route. In which case, the elites would be less likely to try to implement anything to stop the epidemic.
Eric Newhill,
The chicken-egg roundabout is always an interesting conundrum. One does find more chickens and eggs where there are more chicken coops and chicken feed. I do think it is a hypothesis worth exploring that if indeed there are more liberals than conservatives under psychiatric care, that it is due to more liberals clumping up in the money-breeder-reactor towns and cities where more psychiatric care is available.
I read somewhere that alcohol can relieve the symptoms of certain kinds of schizophrenia, and that relief was advanced as a possible reason why some undiagnosed schizophrenics self-medicate with alcohol.
A litmus-test for separating the humane elites from the inhumane elites would be whether the elite(s) in question want to appropriate and tax-for the money to spend on reversing the opioid epidemic. I suspect the meth epidemic might be solvable by some of the methods that could solve the opioid epidemic.
Since I am sometimes a root-cause liberal and certainly so in this case, I would like to see the root cause of small-town and countryside social/economic despair addressed. And the root cause of that despair is Free Trade as well as 60 years of anti-farmeritic policy designed to destroy small-farming’s ability to provide a living to small-farmers and its attendant 60 years of carefully engineered Market Stalinism designed to force several ten million small farmers and their families off of their land and into the growing cities.
(NAFTA is an example of such carefully engineered Market Stalinism applied against Mexico. NAFTA was designed to very carefully and completely and comprehensively destroy small farming’s viability throughout Mexico in order to force the small ex-farmers off of their land and into the big cities and especially North. A San Diego-to-Brownsville belt of maquiladoras was supposed to be built to intercept and employ them all. That was the Reagan Mulroney Clinton intention.
But Clinton then also engineered and signed MFN status for China, so most of the production-in-exile which would have formed a Beautiful Wall of Maquiadoras . . . went into exile in China instead. So the economic refugees from Mexico kept going North over the border into America. Since Canada is equally responsible for NAFTA, we should send a million or so NAFTAstinian refugees into Canada.)
So in a perfect world we would solve the root cause of rural despair this way: We would bias agricultural policy back towards as many smaller farms as feasible and give priority to land re-homesteading to those ex-farming families who would like to go back. We would also abolish all the Free Trade Agreements and start making again in America those things we use in America. We could certainly do that for simple things not dependent on elaborate supply chains; such as spoons, forks, knives, pickle jars, garden tools, Etch-A-Sketches, Stanley Thermoses, etc. And along with that, opioid de-addiction programs and psychiatric-care-destigmatization and availabelization.
The point of the treatment is to get them off the drugs and make them productive again and it has a fairly good success rate where it has been tried. It is far cheaper and successful than the war on drugs ever was.
Would their response not be to round up some American tourists and kill them? So you then stop allowing tourists to go to Mexico and they kill Americans some where else. Then you …
How long before this becomes more expensive than just building the wall and paying for it yourselves?
BraveNewWorld
(irony alert) Yes, we are helpless, terrified by the cartels and what they might do. What has this to do with the wall? pl
BraveNewWorld
Do you think it might be possible to do more than one thing at a time? pl
I must have seen a different set of data, recidivism reigns.
Making them productive again?
You cannot be serious; that is just pious hope.
It is already too dangerous in Mexico for the un-initiated.
There is no place in Mexico, indeed anywhere South of Rio Grande del Norte until you hit the Costa Riccan border, in which you can take a leisurely stroll with you Missus in the evening – unlike Madrid or Bologna.
It has been my decades-long plan to visit that country but I am afraid that even though I am Beige, I might be mistaken for a White gringo.
Yep. Gotta draw the line somewhere? You tellign me God was wrong? Talk about hubris.
You and Baback and all the others who feel the hoary need to tell everyone else what to do can move to freakin Iran. Saying specious is weak tea and non productive and a sure sign someone has no real argument other than “drugs bad, me know everything”
Achohol will kill, cannabis will not. In my mind anyone who thinks pot is worse than alcohol is willfully ignorant, probably couldn’t get stoned in high school(physiology) and has had their hate on every since.
Some people need to just get over themselves.
You are incapable of coherent thought. Contrary to your high opinion of yourself, you are definitely part of the problem.
I did not get personal, you did. The opinion I just stated was gleamed from your tired propaganda. I come from a place where all you described is true(but I doubt you do). That said, 65-70% is ALCOHOL.
Colonel,
Trump Offers To Help Mexico “Clean Out These Monsters” After American Family Murdered In Gang Crossfire
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/9-americans-including-2-newborns-killed-ambush-mexican-gangsters
Great plan except something similar was tried before in the later part of the 90’s.
So the question is, are you going to pay our special forces enough that they cannot be flipped by the cartels like the Cartel del Gulfo did against GAFE? Yeah, that happened. And it militarized the cartels, giving us the Zetas which in turn led to the other cartels beefing up with their own ex-soldiers.
If you think turning our boys would be harder than buying Mexican and Guatemalan special forces because it would be much more expensive, you really need to rethink that. These guys have more money than God, they think nothing of gold plating their AKs FFS. (money to burn)
So again, how will this time be different? Are we going to pay them enough? (you can’t compete) Surely they won’t turn because we are an exceptional nation, right?
kevin hall
“except something similar was tried before in the later part of the 90’s.” What was that? In the JSOC model of ops, intelligence support operations units define the target. Delta’s role is to kill or capture with no chit-chat.
It sure looks to me like a barrier to taking action against the cartels is that the Democrats, especially the Californian Democrats, are on the take (which also explains some portion of their rabid open borders and sanctuary policies). I’m pretty sure that they aren’t meeting face to face with cartel leaders and accepting bags full of money. Rather it flows to them through various sources and they are aware of where it comes from and what is expected in return; keep the border open, maintain communities that serve as distribution hubs for drugs and protect the distributers themselves. In fairness, I think there might be a few Rs in on it too.
I also think that the situation has metastasized to the point where a few snipers or Delta teams won’t make much of a difference. We’re now talking about entire towns in El Norte that have become well armed cartel bases. I’m thinking battalion sized operations would be necessary in some sectors.
Of course the entire US media complex with few exceptions would go apoplectic if the Trump admin initiated such an operation – same people that think the US should be invading Syria and other places that most Americans can’t find on a map and that don’t pose a threat to actual US citizens in this country. Deplorables would support it though.
I’m with the Colonel on this. We have some of the best snipers in the world, why not use them? Look up Fentanyl 2.0 and just ponder what happens to us if we get flooded with this poison. Now is the time to bring the misery home to the cartel leaders, especially with the 9 murders of the Mormon families fresh in everybody’s minds. Trump should just do it, get it in motion right now.
Absolutely a perfect mission.
I have only one relative–an in-law, the husband of a cousin, who is addicted to alcohol. His many deep0rooted pscychological problems and a wife who like, I think, to feel like a martyr for dealing with him, so I write as a person with little knowledge of what it is like to be drug addicted or to deal with drug addictions.
My religious beliefs kept me from going the way of some in my generation who did the sex, drugs, and rock and roll thing. I kept the words of a Sunday school teacher in my mind: my body is the temple of our souls and we should not desecrate the temple..
But, when I listen to the news and hear of babies in car seats and young children being executed in their cars while driving on highways, I cry.
Is it that the Mexican government is totally inept? Is the government under the control of the cartels? I can’t even think of the drug cartel members as humans. It makes no difference to me that our own people have somehow gotten themselves addicted to drugs and alcohol in this argument.
I just want those murderers eliminated from the face of the Earth. And whatever way the U.S. can help Mexico do that, will be fine with me. I just hope that Mexican authorities DO want to do that and that they do want to create a government in Mexico that is good for their people.
All other things, as I said, don’t matter to me. Doctors may prescribe too many drugs. I personally question any prescription I am given, and I have caused my doctors some confusion by doing that. I have sat many times with friends and some family members who drink a little, but I’ve never thought it was not my personal right to refuse to drink a little.
No matter why the drug cartels exist, they need to be shown some hard justice, and right now I don’t care who does it and what excuse they give to take measures to enforce that justice. I never want to hear of a baby being shot while sitting in a car seat ever again.
A long overdue idea. How many Americans do the cartels kill annually with the drugs, not to mention the 9 just murdered in Mexico?
The old comments in this thread are quite informative and well worth rereading. I’m repeating one of my old comments in response to an article about “America’s assassination industrial complex” as a reminder that JSOC operations are not just an occaissional noteworthy raid and a few snipers.
“The point of the article is that a strategy of leadership decapitation of an organization, whether it be a drug cartel or a jihadist group, does not lead to the destruction of the organization. The original decapitation strategy was based on the premise that the targeted organization was strictly hierarchical and could not function without an intact hierarchy. In fact, most of these target organizations evolved into more distributed organizations. We weren’t quick to see this because we are also wedded to the need for a robust hierarchy in our organization. This is where the article ends, but the story continued.”
“Our strategy also evolved in Iraq and Afghanistan. JSOC strike missions became more than checking faces off a static organizational chart as a hit list. Each strike became an information gathering mission. That information was quickly analyzed into “actionable intelligence” resulting in ensuing JSOC strikes and more information gathering. This evolved into a rapid cycle with often several strikes in a night. This strategy struck at the enemy’s growing resiliency and distributed organization. This is the present state of the art in JSOC operations.”
What would a shooting war waged against the Mexican (and other Central American) drug lords look like? Probably a lot like the war against IS and their associated jihadis in Syria and Iraq… except a lot closer to home. We can expect to see car bombs in American cities and assassination attempts against soldiers’ families on US bases. The drug lords will probably pump a lot more of their money into local communities in order to buy their loyalty and support. This will be a real war and will require widespread sacrifice by the American people closer to what our home front gladly endured during WWII.
On the plus side, breaking the drug lords’ grip on Mexican and Central American societies would eliminate a major impetus for the flow of people moving northward to our border.
With respect to all, as the FNG casual observer to your Blog. It appears that everyone here knows why, the proposal will never be successful. However they must choose their own, Strawman arguments of Religion, or Economics and inevitable comparisons of alcohol and prohibition. To demonstrate their case with Cocaine, heroin and opioids. None of that applies to narcotics trafficking !
Even the greatest Snipers, need targets. Having the greatest JSOC Troops (and their corresponding IC- Intel Bn’s in the world). Does not negate the fact that Narco-Cartels are in fact, shadow governments. If not de facto governments of the major drug producing nations (all of them).
No matter what the deployed JSOC Unit consists of, they must interact with the government of the host nation. There in lies their threat exposure problem, their corruption exposure problem as well as their exposure to US media propaganda.
US Operators, randomly killing any foreign nation in their country over Drugs? Will rapidly become politically radioactive to the JSOC Community and the US Military in general.
Morongobill,
Source of the fentanyl issue is China. Vengeance of the Opium Wars, IMO directed from the top down
TTG
IMO a continuing war against the drug lords as individuals is worth the price.
I do, too.
Elora Danon
And you also admire Colonel Count Klaus von Stauffenberg?
Elora Danon
My suggestion was for only one of a number of approaches that should be used simultaneously. TTG agrees with me that it will be worthwhile to kill the drug barons. It IS NOT a task for airpower which is a blunt instrument that would kill a host of civilians. Men with rifles and dogs who arrive suddenly can kill targeted individuals.
Elora Danon
We have tried to eradicate the crops and it has not worked. They just grow more stuff.
Elora Danon
The men and dog who raided Baghdadi’s compound were all US military.
It’s not just about the drugs. The cartels are ruthless scum,and the misery they cause is worthy of a visit from Uncle Sam’s finest.
Elora Danon
IMO the big banks are not involved in the drug trade, not in the US. You have no idea of the scale of our big banks. They routinely handle funds in the amounts of the GDP of most countries. They would not risk their positions to deal with such scum. I tried once to arrange a capitalization loan for a client from Lazard Freres where I had friends. They hosted a splendid lunch in a private room in their dining room in 30 Rock and then asked my client how much he needed for this new factory. He told them 7 million. They looked polite and finally told him that they did not concern themselves with projects worth less than 100 million dollars, but they said they would introduce him to a few boutique banks that might want to participate. He was crushed. This 3rd Worlder had thought he was a big business man. He owned a dozen factories. The drug lords are not in the same league as our big banks and other financial institutions. Maybe in your country. As for the US intelligence agencies, they are fully funded by the US government and do not need anyone else’s money. If you want to make the case that the IC participates in the drug trade you will need some actual truth, something more than the dreams of left wing writers.
Sir, you know better than I, that any kinetic force must remain in close proximity to the targeted Locations. Close enough, while awaiting confirmation of the Target’s presence. As he Hops from safe house to safe house. These men will be, because they always are, identified by local nationals. Who’ll in turn forward their locations to the target and their side’s QRF.
That the immediate response by the Host nation. Once they read the story in the NYT’s. Additionally once JSOC’s TTP’s are ;eaked by their Host nation IC,intentional ambushes will be next.
Eventually-I’d estimate <6 months-the surgical strike mission of the JSOC. Is dragged down into the very same IED, AK, kinetics of the international asymmetric exercise, we just left in SWA. Where Opium is not only a government supported commodity it's also a currency.
One final point If I may, taking a poll of just your audience here. Roughly half of which support legalization of the very drug operations. Which America's finest are summarily taking out inside, their own national borders.
The number of approaches required, to be effective. Would very soon escalate to rival GWOT.
hindsight observer
No! No! No! “Close enough” is north of the border. If distances exceed that as a possibility, then USAF can target individual buildings in spite of collateral losses. No US troop units on Mexican soil other than for raids! We just did this in Syria. Why are you such a defeatist?
The BLUF Sir, is America no longer has the required political support or fortitude. For any form of kinetic operation, against drugs, here or there. IMO one third of our Country is responsible for 60-70% of the Cartels’ production.
As soon as the shooting started, even at the Sniper and CQB level. The media inspired public outcry, and associated political pressure. Would demand a War Crimes tribunal and Murder-for-Hire Charges filed against JSOC members.
Additionally it’s only a matter of time before UAV footage, along with Helmet Cam footage. Is Subpoenaed by the U.S. Congress, as evidence of war crimes, against, US Forces.ie: Chief Gallagher’s incident.
I thoroughly support, hitting the Cartel where they live. But surgical SFOD operations, independent of the host nation, outside of the AUMF on Terrorism. IMO, would never be authorized.
hindsight observer
You are not helping me with this. Do you not understand that I am advocating this whether or not it might be ordered?
Elora Daanon
Your cover is slipping this is far too sophisticated an argument for “Elora Danon.” You argument is that because their so much money in the drug business, the American banks and intelligence community must have been seduced by it. There is no proof there. That is not a logical argument. You believe that everyone in the world is the property of the drug trade? American money channels are not the only channels.
Hindsight Observer, JSOC seldom if ever interacts with the government in the target country. They operate in what is called non-permissive environments. This is nothing new for US forces. Decades ago, the USG was seriously prepared to place SF teams far behind the Iron Curtain purely to obtain situational awareness of ongoing events. While the USG would undoubtedly continue negotiations and discussions with the Mexican government, JSOC could operate without Mexican cooperation or permission.
Whether or NOT, well certainly The 2 Shop, never provided supportive information Only. I agree your plan should be implemented. But it’s time was 1980, not 2009 certainly not 2019.
Feedback and Devil’s advocate respectfully…I enjoy your group !
hindsight observer
In re depth of raid operations, ever heard of a FARP? There is a lot of empty, remote desert and mountains in Mexico.
I think the figure here is supposed to be 2 trillion USD and not two billion. The size of alcoholic beverage market, in 2017, was 1.43 trillion dollars. I do not think your numbers give support to your argument.
FourthAndLong
I have come across a counter example to your argument: Bam, in which more than half the adults were addicts or habitual users.
I totally agree.
Maybe add the leaders of people-smuggling groups too (also in places such as Turkey, Lybia, Morocco and other places)
Want to stop the drugs.Remove the bankers who launder the cash.Waste of time going after the cartels.Just shoot those bankers who were laundering the cash for the cartel that murdered the mormons.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-usa/hsbc-draws-line-under-mexican-cartel-case-after-five-years-on-probation-idUSKBN1E50YA
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/03/20/291934724/awash-in-cash-drug-cartels-rely-on-big-banks-to-launder-profits
jonst,
as for “recreational drug consumption” – I assume it depends on what people understand under that and try.
There was an LGBT event some weeks ago and a doctor at a local hospital told me that for emergency service that day and night were an utter nightmare.
I asked him why. Was it that happy LGBT folks fell off their seats deeply drunk all the time?
Nope, according to him it was a lot of intense “recreational drug consumption”. He said that their worst case was an early twenty old man who was on …
cocaine
marihuana
drunk
viagra
speed
valium
… quite an odd combination.
In any case, I daresay that the “recreation consumption” part pretty much failed since he was in coma. Obviously more doesn’t always help more.
anon
The link is dead. The article has been removed by Reuters. Which American banks launder money for the cartels and how do they do it? Tell me and I will take it up with the FBI.
IMO, the premise of America’s finest military Operators ever being allowed to hunt Cartel members, inside their country. With the same intensity, TTP’s used against AQI inside a combat zone. Is for me a non-starter. For all of the strategic reasons cited above, and the hundreds I can’t foresee. More importantly, because Americans simply don’t want their chemicals shut-down.
Understanding, that men like you and others have the experience and knowledge to carry-out such a mission. As well as my agreement, to such an Op.
We’re blurring the lines between law enforcement and military operations. IMO in the very same way, Brennan et al. Blurred the lines between Law Enforcement and Domestic Spying.
I can’t argue the nuts and bolts of how such an operation would be conducted. Largely because I understand, it can be done. Only to say, America’s very public political objections to such an Operation. Would be yet another “Issue” for the already over taxed psyche, of those we send in Harm’s Way.
As to the American Banks and the FBI. They already know which ones are complicit. Twenty or so years ago, Treasury developed FinCen as a means to track these criminals. The problem became, to paraphrase Sean Connery, “Everyone knows that, Mister Ness, what are you going to do about it?” Becomes the question.
Narcotics interdiction always comes down to one simple equation. What are we willing to risk? In an effort against a threat, which most never believe will affect them.
Violence in America in support of Cartel factions, is what brought attention and reaction by enforcement against Drugs in America. They’ve long ago learned to keep the violence between factions down and the product flows like wine..
hindsight observer. Incoherent comment but I will try to answer. So, you think that the mythic army of banker financiers and the CIA drug runners + the hordes of druggies would rise up to oppose “kill or capture” raids by JSOC in Mexico. If that is so, why have these forces not opposed Trump’s efforts to seal the border from drug smuggling? Ah, you would say that they have and are called the Democratic Party? “Operation?” No, many operations. Blurring the line between law enforcement and military operations as Brennan did? As Brennan did? Incomprehensible comparison. Mexico is a foreign country. What is the difference between AUMF authorized operations in Syria and possible operations in Mexico? 5,000 miles?
When I hear about opioids, it’s hard not to imagine a “new business” meeting in a pharma headquarters about 20 years ago, with people saying, “Look at all this money being made on heroin. We need to get our beaks wet.” And then, after 10 years or so of lab work and trails, big breakthrough, high-strength synthetic heroin appears on the market in pill form.
To call synthetic heroin a “blockbuster drug” is apt in the original sense of “blockbuster,” as in 500-pound bombs dropped on civilians.
anon,
There is a vast array of money laundering enterprises throughout the country, but especially in the Southwest and in California. This is everything from high end California real estate and the LA garment district, to Gymnasium franchises to restaurant chains, to heavy equipment sales, you name it. The illicit drug trade – and associated money laundering – is a big part of the CA economy (not to mention to the cheap labor that is also smuggled by the same cartels). This is another reason that I’m pretty sure that money filters up to the open borders Democrats, like Pelosi.
Some cash is simply smuggled back to the Mexican side of the border by normal smuggler means.
Some banks have been implicated and some banks have been fined for participating, but there is a lot more diverse businesses involved.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe-idUSBRE8BA05M20121211
Trying to be brief on a subject far to encompassing…my apologies.
JSOC Raids, unsanctioned by the host nation, inside a neutral nation: Blur the line between law enforcement and military intervention.
Mexico’s current situation presents a threat (some will argue the degree of such). Which is based solely, on the Mexican government’s support for America’s Narcotic habit. My opinion is, Americans simply do not wish to have their source of narcotics, hindered.
U.S. Consumers, are oblivious to the dangers associated with narco-trafficking. Those dangers take place only in the third world and large urban areas of America. Americans have willful disregard, the misery and murder associated with drugs. This has been true for fifty years or more. Currently Americans are suggesting methods of nationwide legalization and the marketing of their drugs, on the scale of Amazon, with associated Free Drone Deliveries. No one would tolerate US Military intervention, as I said the time for that was 1989 or so.
If my understanding of the AUMF is correct? The resolution authorizes use of military force. Only, involving terrorist organizations as they relate to the attacks of 11SEP01. If you’re opposition to US Troops in Iraq is accurate. How could JSOC’s Duck Hunting efforts in Syria, much less in Mexico. Possibly fall under the Patriot Act and the AUMF ? IMO, it can not. That Sir is my reasoning for not having US Troops involved in narcotics interdiction efforts inside foreign nations.
Additionally, I have no fantasies about CIA, or any US Agency willfully being involved in narcotics trafficking. Though history has proven, narcotic’s addiction to corrupt the corruptible.
As to Bankers and Financiers being willing co-conspirators though, that much is established fact in history. Again here I cite the need for FinCen.
Brennan, IMO, believed he could blur the lines of law enforcement, into a domestic spying op, against a political enemy. He and others I believe, have now been caught up in their crimes. The adjudication of such, we all await.
Mexico, I believe poses no transnational threat to America. Certainly nothing that would justify the infiltration of JSOC Operators, into a sovereign nation. To do so, would require blurring the lines between law enforcement and the use of military force.
YES, I’m aware of those who have previously assisted, DEA in their investigations inside foreign nations. As well as DoD’s current Interdiction efforts on our borders. However, this suggestion brings US intervention to an entirely different level. Much more intrusive to Mexico, than assisting or affecting arrests. One that would never be supported by the government of Mexico, for drug money pays their bills as well.
With respect Boss, your timing is either 30 years to late, or five years to early. Depending upon the events of next years election. We could soon all be buying stock in Escobar’s revenge. A subsidiary of CVS-Walmart. Which now delivers, the narcotic of your choice, straight from the mountains of Medellín directly to your front door.
Understood TTG, however sending in a stand alone covert force for gathering SA. Doesn’t quite create the same ambiance in a small town. As when Cartel HVT’s known to everyone in the area. Suddenly start popping up, with their pumpkin seeds on the sidewalk. After the 2nd or 3rd one,telephones start to ring and people start to figure out, Hey it’s not us, so who is it?
The ability of the Cartels to create horrendous acts of violence, in a small town or major city. Much like the campaign against French resistance, would cause every set of eyes in the given area, to rapidly locate the source of the violence.
The risk IMO out-ways the reward. The task dictates a minimum of personnel, while the exposure mandates maximum protection. While as I mentioned to the Colonel. As suddenly as next year, this could all be legal on America. Making the Cartels, the cover page of Fortune 500.
Interesting story re; the LeBaron family, Mormons and Cartels from 2012.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpIyaIHsJbc
Hindsight Observer
Tiresome.
Thank you, I had heard them before. I prefer el Cigala’s voice.
Did you know an Iranian had invented the precursor of the guitar in al Andulus – Zaryab?
In regards to the numbers, I will beaker with you: you had quoted these figures in order to support your contentions – which were not supported even with revised figures that I had furnished.
Empirically, you are wrong: in the United States, it was precisely during the years of post-World War II stability, prosperity, and an economic rocket ride when tens of millions of Americans decided that drugs were cool.
It was during the years of peace and prosperity following the death of Shah Abbas the First that so many in the Safavid Empire – from top to bottom – indulged their appetites in “bang” and “chers”. So much so that when a small Pushtun tribe’s rebellion destroyed the empire.
People get bored quickly and will use all manners of diversions to alleviate it. That is the basic explanation; e.g. the indigenous people in the Americas drank themselves to death after the arrival of the Europeans.
I think the people between the Urals to the Atlantic Ocean, over millennia, have developed physiological and social responses to deal with alcohol. Most other people in the world cannot deal with it. And neither group can hold their drug.
But we are living in a self-indulgent age in which the doctrines of human freedom are hijacked in support of human license.
Can Spain, or the United States, endure as functioning states if 10% of their populations were to be drug addicts?
I think not, but many in US disagree and propose to run a vast experiment to validate the opposite.
Colonel,
Did you see where members of Mitt Romney’s family in Mexico were murdered by the Drug Cartels.
Backgrounder on the Romney clan south of the border:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-10-30/meet-romneys-mexico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Romney#Early_life_and_background
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rey_Pratt
https://documentaryheaven.com/the-mexican-mormon-war/
———————————————————
The murders by the Cartels:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10280224/sonora-cartel-attack-mexico-us-families-dead/
https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/estados/confirman-12-muertos-en-emboscada-familia-lebaron-9-de-ellos-menores
The Governor of Sonora comments on the murders:
https://twitter.com/ClaudiaPavlovic/status/1191591492889935873
You hit the nail on the head. It’s time JSOC’s mission was eradication of the cartels south of our borders, since the Mexican Government can’t handle such a mission, and the Cartels are a ‘direct threat’ to U.S. National Security.
Eric,
Ron Unz addressed this awhile ago: http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-power-of-organized-crime/
Basically, all of California politics / upper class is mired in Mafia money of one sort or another. The California Mafia has made itself respectable, but it is still there. They have enmeshed themselves deeply into the Hollywood (and probably Silicon Valley) money elite. That they may be deeply involved in the Mexico drug trade is highly likely.
The Chinese brought along the Triad angle, too.
NXIVM is funded by one of the Mafia billionaires’ children. Hence, NXIVM is a Mafia-related project. And incidentally deeply enmeshed into Mexico’s elite. Very complex web of associations.
And then, of course, there’s the Qanon and Neon Revolt’s take on the polygamists, which ties into this. If we are thinking about the Deep State.
Back in 2017, many people were arguing for legalization.
Now we know what happens with Legalization. California tacked on so much tax to the legal Marijuana trade, that the illegal Marijuana importation exploded. Turns out that the Mexican cartels are making more money than ever in California.
“Legalization will solve problems.” They definitely have not met California Democrats.
I must disagree with you.
Every string instrument with the post-fix “tar” (string in Persian) was invented in Iran.
Ummayad court in Al Andalus was not cosmopolitan in the sense that you are using; it was against Christians for certain. And Zaryab fled to Andalusia out of fear for his life.
Everything in Spain that is working today is because of Franco and his reforms.
Now to come and accuse the dead man, who cannot defend himself, that he bears responsibility for the individual choices of people in Basque-istan – that is just plain silly.
Armenians were in fact forced by Shah Abbas I to relocate to an area near Isfahan. That settlement was called Julfa after the city of the same name in Armenia.
The forced migration was a standard practice of Near Eastern potentates and kings. In this case, it was not for punishment; Shah Abbas was so impressed by the artisan-ship and work ethic of Armenians that he wanted to use them to impress something of those qualities on the Persians in the interior of Iran.
Later, during the siege of Isfahan by Afghan tribes – that community had to supply a certain number of nubile young girls and boys for the sexual pleasures of the Afghans as war booty – to stay almost certain sacking of Julfa.
Centuries later, Armenians fleeing the massacres by Ottomans fled to Iran as well.
But here is the crucial fact about Armenians in Iran (and in Syria and in Lebanon) – they maintain their language and religion, they are tri-lingual (Armenian, Persian/Arabic, English) but they are not going around like Kurds, or the Basque, or the Catalans whining about the violations of their supposed cultural rights, murdering their fellow citizens, trying to destroy the state.
What does this lack of hope mean? Even people in the concentration camps were not devoid of hope. I think you are trying to excuse weaknesses of people and put it on the shoulder of the governments.
In Bam, 50% of the adult population was addicted or habitual user. Was it the fault of the Islamic Republic?
Where is the individual choice in this?
Where is individual responsibility?
Look at Mexico, the more democratic she has become, the worse the drug problem there.
I was a gifted child too at one time; still I am a nobody.
US has not been able to destroy the “Cartels” in Afghanistan, I doubt that she could do so in Mexico.
Babak
It is not a question of “destroying” them. what we must do is cripple them and make the business unprofitable because of the high likelihood of death by JSOC.
Babak
Strange! The same thing happened to me.
Caucasus? I was taught that Basques were the remnants of the original Europeans from the late paleolithic era. All the rest, including the Indo-Europeans, were what we call “Johhny-come-latelies”. Are you saying there is now DNA or linguistic evidence suggesting a Caucasus link? When would that have happened?
No, you write of things that you know nothing of, that is quite evident. Hope is the essential quality for Life, and unlike wealth, it is distributed quite evenly. That sentence indicates that you know nothing of lufe as is lived. If you are indeed a woman, you almost certainly have never been pregnant or have had a child. Write of things that you know something.
Catalans, like the South Carolinians, have the distinction of having a civil war ignited by their ancestors.
In both cases, did some foreign power csuse them to do so? I think not.
I know you are young and childless. That is quite clear.
I am not raging, I just am too old to suffer fools with equanimity.
It is an Indo-European language. That qas finally established this year.
Irrelevant. Many in Bam decided to use drugs. They owned it.
Nah, they just wanted to get high, knowing full well that the Islamic Republic’s social security policies would not let them and their families starve to death. That other Iranians, would, in effect, subsidize their habit.
You and others on this topic always deny human choice.