America should take a page from Israel’s book on Mexico cartels

| November 8, 2019

Poetrooper sends us this American Thinker article showcasing how Israel halts existential threats on its borders, and how the US can take advantage of its lessons learned. While not an apples-to apples comparison- Israel faces religious fanatics who wish to annihilate the country while the US borders on a failed state run by narco-terrorists, there are enough similarities to take note of and try. Here’s Poe:

Poetrooper

The United States of America has long recognized the right of Israel to defend its borders against terrorist incursions by deploying the Israeli Defense Force, one of the most lethal military forces in the world. Even more significant is that our country has also either green-lighted or turned a blind eye to Israel’s counter-terror operations outside its borders to include commando raids and aerial operations, both missile strikes and bombing raids. We have supported Israel in its forceful counter-terror efforts along its borders and within surrounding nations for good reason: Israel has real enemies who pose a real threat to the lives of innocent Israeli citizens.

Well, guess what: so do we, as was made amply evident by the horrendous assassination of American women and children in northern Mexico this week by members of one of many out-of-control terrorist drug cartels operating with impunity in our socialist neighbor to the south. These drug cartels have been killing Americans by the tens of thousands with lethal drugs, for decades, and doing so with virtual immunity from American retribution because the chickenhawks in Congress would rather defend Kurds in Syria than Mormons in Mexico. Our federal government spends tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to protect murky, questionable national interests throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and who knows where else in the world, but for some unfathomable reason, it steadfastly refuses to protect our very real, very vital, crystal-clear national interests on our own southern border.

The cartels rampage and pillage throughout Mexico because they rightly have no fear of the government there, which just recently released a captured cartel leader when cartel terrorists threatened the government with dire retribution if they refused. The spineless government in Mexico City caved, proclaiming their intent to win this internal war with the cartels with hugs — I kid you not. When our president offered to deploy American forces to assist Mexico’s war against the cartels, the socialist head of government rebuffed that offer while deploring the term “war” to describe the status quo. One has to wonder just what you call it when armed cartel troops are taking over cities within your nation if it is not war. But then, one also must remember that this is a Kumbaya lefty who intends to win with hugs.

Like millions of Americans, I’m sick of this craven negligence by both governments, Mexico and ours, and am solidly supportive of our president deploying American military assets to engage these cartel terrorists, just as we would if we had the survival instincts of our courageous Jewish allies. Hit their known headquarters and their vehicle caravans with guided smart bombs fired from totally deniable stealth drones lurking offshore in the Pacific Ocean or Gulf of Mexico. Mexico’s air defenses mirror their government, laughably ineffective, so what can they do about it? If they appeal to the United Nations, we invoke our sovereign right to protect our citizens in the absence of Mexico’s refusal to do so. And we go right on smart-bombing those ruthless killers until they become like terrorists in the Middle East, afraid to move, to even raise their heads.

Most importantly, we must emulate Israel in its determination to defend its borders by deploying highly mobile units of the Special Operations Command into a presidentially designated “national emergency operations area” for the purpose of intercepting cartel incursions across our southern border, with a standing mission assignment of inflicting maximum lethal casualties in every engagement.

I wonder how Gen. George Patton, who served as an aide to General “Blackjack” Pershing on the Pancho Villa Expedition, would deal with these lawless, terrorist cartels that now have Mexico’s government and our Congress cowering in fear. Somehow, I think he might enthusiastically employ the Israeli option.

Read more: American Thinker

Category: Border, Guest Post, Israel

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The Stranger

I’m just going to sit right here and munch on this here popcorn 🍿. I already know who’s going to feel the need to weigh in on this….
*Munch Munch*
*Munch Munch*
*Sip*
Aaaah!

5th/77th FA

Pass me one of them thar Yuenglings Pappy. I got another pack of that Movie Theater Butter in the microwave.

The War on Drugs is a much of an abject failure as the War on Terrorism has become. Much as what we hate what “Cump Sherman did, you gotta respect the man for his doings on total warfare.

Jeff LPH 3, 63-66

Pancho Villa. My Uncle and his Brooklyn NY Horse Cav outfit were called in to relieve Blackjack down Mexico way and I remember Uncle Harry telling me about diseased horses that were led away to be destroyed, then the next thing you knew, some Mexican came into the camp complaining that the horse he bought most likely for a payment of a bottle of booze had died. He shows Uncle Harry a receipt signed by George Washington. Uncle later on went over to France with his Cav outfit and just missed the great Halifax explosion either coming or going into Halifax before continuing to France. He lived in Flatbush Brooklyn and was mugged 12 times when the neighborhood changed in the 1970’s and refused to move. Some time later, he accidently shot himself in the femur artery and bled out while trying to open up his apartment door. I wonder what ever happened to his Officers service handguns he kept in the bank’s safety deposit box.

Mason

That Halifax explosion was unbelievable. The pictures of the after are what it looks like after a major hurricane hits.

Perry Gaskill

Poe, I left a comment on this over at AT.

Poetrooper

Perry, some good points–why don’t you re-post them here and get some discussion going? I’m frankly amazed at the lack of comments as I was expecting this to be quite controversial, with some folks telling me it’s a bat shit crazy proposition and others dragging out that old posse comitatus fallacy.

There were plenty of naysayers at AT and I was expecting some blowback here, as well.

Perry Gaskill

Poe, I ran across an interesting story recently which relates to how organized Hispanic gangs have started to infiltrate mainstream non-profits. It’s from an alt-weekly source which does the expected pearl clutching, but also manages to eliminate accusations of conservative bias. Basically, the phenomenon is that if social programs want to “cure,” or whatever, gang activity, a natural source to “mentor” young gang bangers are those who have direct knowledge of that métier. There’s a lot of public money at stake, and it’s become apparently fairly easy to allow the fox to guard the hen house:

https://www.montereycountyweekly.com/news/cover/northern-california-s-most-notorious-prison-and-street-gang-has/article_a56cd318-f5d5-11e9-a296-67439cff45b9.html

Poetrooper

A phenomenon that I’ve noted across the rural South in the last few years is the mushroom spread of large, very nice, professionally designed, decorated and furnished Mexican restaurants/clubs in small towns where prior to the cantinas, being built, a Hardees, a Sonic or a mom and pop BBQ/catfish joint usually represented the pinnacle of culinary options.

These cantinas tend to be by far the grandest eating establishments for miles around and in towns lacking sufficient populations to support their viability. They are also stand-alone independents, not chain operations.

The obvious question is who has enough capital to build such grand facilities but so little business sense as to do so, hmm?
How about cartels? They can use them for laundering drug money and as waypoints in their human trafficking endeavors. The managers tend to be middle-aged, English-speaking males and the waitstaff always much younger Spanish-speakers, mostly male.

I’ve lived enough years on or near the border to be able to distinguish Mexican nationals from native Latinos and almost all of these young people are MN’s or Latin American Indios. Furthermore, they don’t stay long, probably being moved north to the urban areas where they can disappear.

I have witnessed this from Oklahoma to North Carolina, enough so that it’s become a standing joke between Miz Poe and me. I’ve tried to get Thomas Lifson at American Thinker to let me write something on the topic, but he’s afraid of legal blowback, fearful that some of these operations could be legitimate and he might libel them. Fat chance.

Nucsnipe

If I recall correctly, Patton shot a few during the expedition, claiming the first instance of mechanized warfare.

26Limabeans

Ok. I did not want to say it for fear of being
called out on misuse of our military but….

I see all these “expeditionary” medals from our
past and think it is high time for a new one.
The war on drugs is one thing, but a war on
Cartels (physical) would be a game changer in
many ways, illegal immigration just for starts.

Willie Nelson can sing about it afterwards.

Poetrooper

“Ok. I did not want to say it for fear of being
called out on misuse of our military but….”

Is that what the problem here is–that this is considered a misuse of our military?

Our southern border, and as a consequence, our entire nation, is under attack by highly lethal narco-terrorist organizations that control more of Mexico than the Mexican federal government, a reality that government has quietly conceded:

https://www.conservativereview.com/news/mexican-government-admits-80-populated-territory-run-cartels-including-key-border-areas/

These cartels are arming and equipping as military forces but we should leave it up entirely to our law enforcement organizations to repel them? Even the Mexican government long ago realized the futility of that and turned the job over to their own hapless military and in spite of that, are still steadily losing territory.

Yet in this country we should just ignore that reality? Will someone kindly spell out why? If I were arguing for all-out war and sending divisions inside Mexico’s sovereign boundaries I could understand resistance but all I’ve called for here is stealth air strikes inside that country and small counter-terror team operations ONLY within our own border, not on Mexican soil.

With these cartels growing in power and the results of that growth leading to ballooning opioid deaths in this country, our past and current measures have clearly failed. Doesn’t that stark reality tell us we must change the nature of our response to a growing threat?

GDContractor

Barco Cartels o ly have money, and thus power, because of the market that exists here, in the USA, for their product.

My plan:
1. Build a wall and secure our border.
2. Anyone in the US caught with drugs gets sent to “rehab” at taxpayer expense ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL.

Your welcome.

GDContractor

Jesus….
“Narco cartels only have….”

David

One adder: you get ONE cycle of rehab. Repeat offenders and dealers get an expeditios death penalty.

GDContractor

That’s just mean.

Mason

I’d rather we spend our money, time, and blood on fighting the cartels in Mexico than some tribal war in Syria.

Not ten years ago most of Mexico except some of the shadier border towns were the perfect vacation spots. Fantastic weather, great beaches, wonderful people, and affordable. Now, I won’t go near Mexico.

I was really surprised they turned down our offer of military help. It’s obvious from all the beheadings and massive shootouts that the authorities there have lost control. At what point are we forced to go in and take care of it? This is very similar to Pancho Villa, and we unilaterally invaded Mexico to hunt him down. Now this was well before the UN (or even the League of Nations).

Perry Gaskill

My take on Obrador’s decline of help is that it wasn’t a harsh rejection. At a press conference last week he said:

“I haven’t seen the message from President Trump, but I am sure that it comes from a desire to help, to cooperate, that it has not been disrespectful nor interfering. Every time we speak, it is with that desire to help, and the government respects that greatly.

“We are very grateful to President Trump – to any foreign government which wants to help – but in these cases we have to act independently and according to our constitution, and in line with our tradition of independence and sovereignty.”

The story also said Trump and Obrador are going to have further talks. Meaning that last week’s press conference might have been for public consumption, and not revealing of the scope of what’s going on behind the scenes.

Consider it from Obrador’s perspective. He’s between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, he’s up to his ass in drug cartel alligators; on the other, the last thing he’s going to want to do politically is sign off on having, say, the 173rd Airborne parachute into Mexico City.

It also seems to me there are other resources that could be provided other than immediate military intervention. Enhanced intelligence gathering might be one, as well as additional materiel support. Another way to hurt the cartels is to disrupt their money supply. Still, a possible flaw with that approach is that the current impeachment frenzy has shown a U.S. intelligence community which might be reluctant to put in the needed effort because of our own politics.

A key difference between now and the time of Pancho Villa is that Villa’s banditry included cross-border raids on American soil. It might also be useful to consider the more recent precedent set by the El Chapo Guzman case. Guzman was head of the Sinaloa Cartel who had escaped from Mexican prison twice. He was eventually re-captured, extradited to the U.S. and given life plus 30 years.

aGrimm

Poe:
Perry has some good points but no solution. Perry’s point of cutting off the head of one cartel forgets that it is not impossible to cut off the heads of all the cartels. Admittedly, the situation is a lot like ISIS where they just find another head. However, cut off enough heads and eventually who the heck would want to be the head? Additionally, whenever the head of a cartel goes down, it starts a war between cartels which disrupts the flow of drugs for at least a little while.

The root of the problem is really the end user who buys the drugs. Cutting off the supply of drugs for a while may help reduce deaths and drug related crime to some degree. It is the underlying moral rot of society that leads to drug use and it is an issue that will be a much tougher nut to crack. It is a circular problem: moral rot supports drug use and drug use supports moral rot. Can the chain be broken by breaking the cartels? It would be a start. Therefore, I have no problem seeing drug dealers get whacked. They are truly evil people.

GDContractor

As long as there’s a demand for it, market forces will conspire to meet it.

Poetrooper

“The root of the problem is really the end user who buys the drugs.”

Agreed, but with the supply constantly expanding, the number of end users continues to grow. Reduce this supply with lethal interdiction methods and structural destabilization through organizational decapitation, and you reduce growth potential by making product more difficult to obtain and much more expensive.

Just driving up the cost puts a lot of product out of reach for many of the youngest would-be end users, kids who will otherwise grow up to be the hard core, truly profitable market for the trade. Dealers sell to teens at deep discounts to create that market. Make product scarce, and thus more expensive, and that becomes a much less viable option for the dealers.

We are never going to eliminate drug usage, just like we couldn’t take the nation dry, but we can reduce the scope of the problem by making these cartels pay a very high blood price to do business here. As it stands right now, they are paying a very small price to conduct virtually unlimited business.

It’s time to make ’em pay to play–with their sorry-ass lives.

The Other Whitey

I think a Second Punitive Expedition should be a perfectly viable option, but the federal government’s ability to fuck up boiling water presents a serious problem.

Done right, it would be all good, with clear-cut objectives, support of the local population, and clear benefits for Mexico as well as us. Done wrong, it’s an ill-conceived invasion of Mexico that turns the local population against us and gets our troops caught up in impossibly-contradictory ROEs that will inevitably get good men killed and put others in prison for defending themselves.

Between deep-staters and partisan leftists who would sabotage the mission to get at Trump, and ass-covering IGMers seeking to cover all of their bases for future presidential administrations, I fear the whole enterprise will be doomed from the getgo.

Poetrooper

Good points all and all the more reason to use the centrally-controlled military to accomplish what all these bureaucrats have been unwilling and unable to do.

I believe that if Trump conducted a series of coordinated decapitation drone strikes against the multiple cartel leaders, it would be as politically popular with the American people as taking out ISIS leaders.

David

Nah, the MSM would howl at all the ‘civilian casualties’, even if they have to fabricate them.

Fyrfighter

Good points Poe, and I agree, our govt needs to find the stones to do what needs to be done. In the past when we recognized that there was an existential threat to our nation coming from Mexico, we did what had to be done, and took care of business (or at least made an attempt). The time is long past for us to do so again. We should seize a “buffer zone” along the border while we’re at it, to simplify the process of defending the border.
As to your question about General Patton, I believe that his approach would make the Israeli one look like Kumbaya…

GDContractor

Mexico used the Kestral system mounted on an aircraft on a trial basis with excellent results in Juarez. A female cop was assassinated at a red light. With the databased images they were able to determine where the assassin’s vehicle originated from and where it went after the shooting. Then they started watching the activity that had happened at that location. They bagged a bunch of jefes.

Cameron Kingsley

I honestly don’t see a problem with deploying the military along the border to secure it as it does more or less fall under national defense (arresting powers can lay with the Border Patrol but the military can provide some much needed extra muscle). As for actually going in too Mexico, well, I’m not so sure about that as I would rather it not turn into a yet another quagmire like what happened in Vietnam or the Middle East (this is more because I don’t trust the doofuses in Washington and the government as a whole). I would prefer to deal with them if they actually try crossing the border and put more focus on rehab rather than criminalization of drug users (as far as I’m concerned, this is the user’s problem and their responsibility). Now if they drive under the influence of any drug than charge them the same way drunk drivers are charged especially if they end up killing someone (in that case, throw the book at them because they should know better). Just my opinion, YMMV.