Many Americans support military strikes in Mexico, but only with Mexico’s approval
A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that 52% support sending the US military to fight drug cartels. The strongest support for this action came from the Republicans. However, 59% of the respondents opposed unilateral action. Mexico’s approval is needed. The United States is seeing an increase of deaths related to overdose. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control showed that in 2022 alone, almost 80,000 Americans died from opioid-related overdoses.
From Reuters:
With the United States experiencing a dramatic rise in overdose deaths related to the synthetic opioid fentanyl, tamping down the flow of narcotics from Mexico has become a major theme among Republicans. Almost 80,000 Americans died from opioid-related overdoses in 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, with fentanyl being the primary culprit.
According to the seven-day Reuters/Ipsos poll, which closed on Thursday, 52% of respondents said they supported “sending U.S. military personnel to Mexico to fight against drug cartels,” while 26% were opposed and the remainder were unsure. Republicans were supportive by a 64% to 28% margin; Democrats were narrowly opposed, 47% to 44%.
When asked if the United States should do so without the permission of the Mexican government, however, the numbers changed dramatically. Some 59% of poll respondents opposed unilateral action, while 29% were supportive. Fifty-one percent of Republicans opposed unilateral action, compared to 40% who supported it.
Terry Sullivan, who managed Republican Senator Marco Rubio’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2016, said Americans were likely open to sending the military to Mexico because the fentanyl overdose epidemic is affecting many communities across the country. Topics such as the Ukraine war do not have the same impact on Americans’ daily lives, he said.
In a policy video released earlier this year, former President Donald Trump said he would direct the Department of Defense “to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damager on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations.”
Reuters has additional information.
Category: Military issues
A well placed MOAB would be a good start
Maybe dueling drones.
From Borderland Beat:
La Ruana, Michoacán is a Hotspot of Drone Bombing Activity
https://www.borderlandbeat.com/2023/09/la-ruana-michoacan-is-hotspot-of-drone.html
At a time like this, you just gotta ask yourself…
What would Tom Clancy do?
Let’s start at the border and work our way south.
That was facetious. The only thing and I mean the only thing is keeping the cartels from going completely ape s*** crazy in the United States is the threat of military intervention. Remove that threat and it’s going to be game on.
That’s what they tried in the air campaign in Vietnam. Started low ball and down by DMZ and ramped up slowly. Even called it Rolling Thunder. Didn’t work. The better example was Linebacker II when they went straight to hammering Hanoi and they caved in weeks in ‘72. Likewise, if we strike cartels, let’s strike the king first.
Make that sh*t free and let Darwin take over. As the junkies die off, execute the dealers. If it’s a War on drugs, make it a War.
The Swiss made it free in the 90s for a few years and nature did take over. Within a few years there were no more drug addicts.
There wasn’t this kind of stuff going on when the
Rocketones waxed Mexico on the Melba record label in 1957.
Pretty sure Mexico’s President Obrador is on one or two Cartel payrolls. This is the same guy that said he wants to combat cartel violence with “ “Hugs, not bullets.”
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/23/893561899/as-mexicos-dominant-cartel-gains-power-the-president-vows-hugs-not-bullets
They won’t care one way or the other what kind of devastation the drugs and illegal alien invasion is doing to the US, as long as they’re not getting to badly hurt in their finances. So good luck getting any collaboration with that ass backwards government.
The cartels tell Officials “Silver or death” meaning “Take the bribes and look the other way or we’ll wax you and your Family.”
Actually it’s “Plata o plomo”, which translates to “Silver or lead”, obviously the death threat is there by implication.
If they are offering Linotype lead, I’ll take that!
THE best bullet casting lead IMH0
Mexico’s approval SHIT, the Cartels own and operate the Mexican officials, that would be like consulting the Taliban for approval of Air Strikes when we were fighting over there.
IIRC, Joe and the Chiefs let the Taliban handle security in Kabul during the “withdrawal”. What could go wrong?
MmmmmmYEP!!!
If there’s real evidence of that and Mexico’s sovereign government is in-league with the Cartels, then I’m all in-favor of going to war with Mexico as a whole (I’d hope some savvy diplomats could convince our NATO allies that cartel actions, with the tacit approval of Mexican government, constitute attacks by a third party).
Short of any such damning evidence, I’d prefer a Mexican face on any actions we take in Mexico.
I’ll be rude…
http://m.quickmeme.com/img/76/76ac45c7a8736149cac6666891b29854436f6a185a40eda70a3747e79e6f2d94.jpg
Fuck that’s one quagmire we need to stay out of. It’s so corrupt it makes shit-got-o look good.
Let the police do their job and don’t condition the military to attack civilians. We can use some military assets such as drones for reconnaissance but we will deeply regret the civil rights violations that come from militarizing police functions.
Attacks on cartels will probably require designating cartel as terrorist organizations which creates a slippery slope that can justify military force against many criminals .
This is exactly why we should never have had the Patriot Act. Besides, they can’t recruit anybody to be in the military now can you imagine if we had a drug war rolling nobody would join.
I’m all in favor of military action against the cartels. They have actively attacked US LEOs and citizens, and they pose a genuine and violent threat to national interests.
However, were I Obrador and the US was identified executing military action within my borders without my approval – I’d perceive it as a threat to my nation and retaliate, even if the target was clearly a cartel.
It’s a strange feeling, agreeing with the majority.
A military strike inside another country without that country’s approval is usually an act of war regardless of the intended target. Mexico would lose a war with us, but they could do retaliatory strikes at San Diego and El Paso.
America, today, doesn’t have the will to see a long war through. We are militarily stronger than Mexico, but that doesn’t mean Mexico would lose.
Holy hell, in the heierarchy of “bad ideas” this has to be at the very top.
What, we got tired of no-win wars in Afghanistan and Iraq so now we want to start one on our Southern border?
What could POSSIBLY go wrong? 🙄
The sad fact is, as long as Americans want to put poison into their bodies and will pay big wads of $$ to do so, SOMEONE will figure out a way to get that poison to them.
Killing the cartel boss gets you nothing because all you’ve done is eliminated his rival’s competition and set somebody else up to be the next boss.
The most lethal substance in the world moves South across the border, not north: It’s all that sweet, sweet American cash that is the gasoline on this dumpster fire.
So to our elected officials I’d say: Put down the Tom Clancy book and just walk away.
If it were just junkies OD’ing, I might agree with you.
Even if you dismiss the deaths of others as statistically insignificant, the issue extends far beyond drugs.
My thoughts? If the cartels are actively invading our country, siphoning drugs and “undocumented aliens” in by the thousands of kilograms and tens of thousands of persons, we need to take action. Mexico has always been a “little sister” of sorts, proven by the beat-down we gave between 1846-1848, which was preceded by the events of 1836 and followed up upon by the expedition of 1916.
We could easily overwhelm both corrupt Mexican government forces and cartels alike with military force. The question is, what is the staying power of using force against our southern neighbor? Given the state of American politics these days, I’d venture to say that any attacks, direct or indirect, against Mexico would be a distraction from what’s going on in our own government.
Treat any criminals crossing our border illegally (beyond the illegal act of crossing, itself) as non-uniformed combatants and summarily execute them as spies.
As Martinjumper said,
Exactly who are you planning to kill in Mexico?
El Chapo, his wife and kids are an obvious target.
The head of the rival Sinaloa and Zeta cartels as well.
A lot of the mayors of a lot of Mexican towns are cartel members.
Do we plan to kill them also?
How about the police chiefs?
No matter how many people you kill down there in Mexico, the phenomenal amount of money to be made will always have people jumping in and taking over the drug smuggling.
Do we really want another 20 year forever war on our own border,?
Have we learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam?
Not to mention the corrosive effect the abundant bribe money will have on our own soldiers.
And what about our citizens down there in Mexico involved in the drug trade?
Is our military going to execute our own citizens without any due process at all?
What about the illegals coerced into carrying drugs across the border?
It will not look good when we are drone striking women and children for having fentanyl in their pockets.
Instead of killing Mexicans how about we do like Israel did and build a nice tall wall?
With a sand road behind it that is groomed every day to see the foot prints.
And then the 30 foot tall chain-link and Barbwire fence with the sensors that call the roving patrols when anyone tries to climb over or dig under.
The Israelis have stopped terrorism with the wall, sand, and chain link and Barbwire Barrier.
The fence you describe in detail is exactly what is in place on a good chunk of the border and was under construction in others. We all know how that turned out. That guy in the Oval Office stopped it, and is now selling the steel already purchased with your tax dollars. It’ll never be as effective as Israel’s wall. If you cross their wall, you’re essentially stepping into a free-fire zone. We’re a little more restrained.
Israel hasn’t stopped terrorism through those means, they’ve just made it much more difficult. It’s not a solution, it’s buying time.
The billions of $s being spent to defend other countries’ borders would be better spent to defend ours. Make a deal with Mexico AND Canada. Come in legally or suffer the consequences. You stay on your side and we’ll stay on our side. A free fire zone exists on our side, bored troops from Military Facilities thru out the country will be rotated along the border for “training purposes”. Instead of catch and release or scattering thru out the US, send them back. ALL OF THE ILLEGALS. DO NOT send them to “Sanctuary Cities” at taxpayer expense. And if breaking other laws, punish them with the maximum sentence.
We are being invaded, daily. It.is.that.simple! Defend our borders but don’t invade another country. God forbid that we look bad in the eyes of the world. /s/
Playing catch up on the threads and the news feeds today. Anybody else see the articles on the train load of fresh invaders heading toward us?