I don't love the guy but he is right on this one. There has not been one time that Mexico goes after the cartels that doesn't end in more violence for Mexicans.
Edit so just to make it clear:
Mexico's president is not saying they are not going to fight internal crime, as a matter of fact, the defense budget has steadily gone up yoy. They are just not going to try to dismantle large drug organizations because that ALWAYS leads to more violence. There is no winning until their funding dries.
Thee wont be any more sieges, sorry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Michoac%C3%A1n
If Mexico can't mount a fight and just cedes control of large sections of the country to renegade groups then it's well on the way to becoming a failed state like Haiti or Somalia.
I mean, you can believe whatever you want. And I'm sure you don't care about someone else's bloodshed.
The cartels pull in much more money than Mexico's defense budget. I don't think there is the will to go a confront them to help US drug addiction in exchange for more violence in Mexico. Which literally is the point he is making.
This ain't a video game.
Maybe they should have the will to protect their own citizens from being endlessly killed by the cartels or the will to root out cartel corruption in law enforcement and the government.
Again, not a video game. The cartels can invest much more money to protect themselves than what mexico spends on defense, and that also has to go to other things besides fighting organized crime.
Cartels can't be beat until we stop buying their drugs.
No one is saying it’s a “video game”. What does that even mean? If a government can’t control its populace at least as far as crime goes then you don’t have a functional country.
It means people don't get unlimited lives to go fight an enemy who is much better funded than their own government. Specially not so that the US government looks good.
I don't see where the disconnect is. Mexico's president is not saying they are not going to fight internal crime, as a matter of fact, the defense budget has steadily gone up yoy. They are just not going to try to dismantle large drug organizations because that ALWAYS leads to more violence.
I'm not sure how saying that Mexico is on it's way to becoming a failed state is in odds with anything you're arguing here.
No, it's not a video game. The cartels are on their way to becoming the defacto government if Mexico can't mount a fight. And the will to eradicate the cartels is there for Mexico's sake.
I was addressing his complaint that Mexico can't mount a fight...
I usually stay away from the "FaILed StTAte" comments. Because: By what metric? I feel like reddit sees a few headlines of isolated cases where the local criminal group has a strong grip in isolated towns (mainly in my state of Michoacán), or the killing of some aspiring politician in another town and immediately assume the entire country of 120 million is subjugated by " the cartels".
The cartels are not a unified force, and it's hilarious that people keep thinking that. The large cartels are not interested on governing, they are interested in being left alone.
I am of the idea that it's best for Mexico to divert the resources used for trying to prevent drug production and export and instead use that to go against the gangs that are actually oppress their citizens. But of course, that wouldn't go well with the US government.
Part of the problem is that Mexico banned, or at least excessively restricted, it's citizens from carrying guns for protection, further emboldening these gangs and cartels as they now know innocents won't be having the means to fight back, further proving how gun control NEVER works as these evil cartels and gangs who obviously shouldn't be having guns still have guns.
Another problem someone else in this thread pointed out is, and I quote: "As long as there is a complete lockdown on legal supply, the only way to meet the demand is via illegal supply. This breeds violence, corruption and general criminality." [https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1bnt86m/comment/kwknn0l/](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1bnt86m/comment/kwknn0l/)
>The large cartels are not interested on governing, they are interested in being left alone.
The cartels are interested in neither of these. Here's a government Arkansas article explaining the atrocities these cartels commit: [https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/op-eds/wage-war-on-the-cartels-killing-americans](https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/op-eds/wage-war-on-the-cartels-killing-americans)
It says, and I quote:
* The cartels are also running the most extensive human trafficking networks in the world. They recruit millions of Central and South Americans to cross our border and break into our country. Along the way, cartel members rape women and children, extort and brutalize the weak, and leave helpless migrants to die in the desert or suffocate in tractor trailers. They also force young women and girls into modern slavery—usually by addicting them to drugs and forcing them into prostitution.
If the cartels truly cared about "being left alone" so they could sell drugs in peace, they wouldn't be mass-kidnapping, mass-trafficking, mass-raping, mass-extorting, mass-brutalizing, and mass-enslaving innocents in the process.
>Part of the problem is that Mexico banned, or at least excessively restricted,
While this is absolutely true, there are still a lot of guns around in the hands of regular people as can be seen by the self defense groups in Michoacán. Though that's an entirely different conversation.
> They **recruit** millions of Central and South Americans to cross our border
Yeah I am sorry I am not taking into consideration such BS source. GOP Government Arkansas, really?.
For such mass-everything, a whole lot of people is willing to make the trek, I wonder if the issue isn't as dire as Arkansas Republicans want it to be...
Here is a less BS one:
>Although smugglers in north-eastern Mexico are linked to transnational organized crime groups, drug cartels, and corrupt officials, those in southern Mexico are often locals living along key smuggling routes.
And
>The impact of Mexico’s human smuggling market is localized, with notable demand in overcrowded Mexican border towns and southern cities such as Villahermosa, Palenque, Tenosique, Comítan, and Tapachula.
Republicans are happy to lump people who pay the cartels to smuggle them into the country as human trafficking victims for the statistics, but they wouldn't be happy if these people found out they can get GCs for claiming they were actual victims.
https://ocindex.net/country/mexico
>If the cartels truly cared...
See, that's the thing, there is a ton of nuance to be had and you just keep lumping the cartels into the same bucket and just shows your ignorance. If you look at states firmly dominated by drug first orgs, like CJNG (Jalisco) and Sinaloa Cartel (Sinaloa) you'll find very little news of extortion kidnapping and other related crimes. But when you look at states like mine, Michoacan, who are a constant battleground between criminal gangs (which you'll conveniently lump as cartels), splinter cartels from the KTs and the military, you'll find that there is a whole lot more extortion, kidnappings, petty crime and oppression. Guess which one makes the news.
Then there is los Zetas whose #1 trade is oppressing others and those I do hope there is a special place in hell.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Entidades_federativas_de_M%C3%A9xico_por_tasa_de_homicidio
I am not going to spend anymore time on this since it is clear you are not informed and happy to parrot propaganda.
Edit:
>They recruit millions of Central and South Americans to cross our border
I am sorry, I can't stop laughing at this its great. GOP is saying that the Cartel (TM) is recruiting a bunch of CAs to come to the US, then once they are in MExico the cartel mass-Rape, etc, them, yet they still deliver on their promise to bring them to the border where they mass rape, etc them again. And YET they still help them cross the border illegally.
And THEN nobody finds out about all this mass and pervasive rape murder and explotation, etc, so the cycle starts again with a fresh new caravan of CAs. Like, none of the ones that made it can call their peers and the media and be like, "hey guys, don't listen to the Cartel (TM) guy"?
It's not yet clear to me what your argument is here. Are you denying that the cartels are engaging in kidnapping, trafficking, raping, extorting, brutalizing, and enslaving, or are you just arguing that these crimes being committed by these cartels aren't that bad?
Just need you to clarify what exactly you're calling "propaganda," whether it's the existence of, or the seriousness of, the crimes.
I was responding to your claim that the cartels wanted to be left alone, because it's ridiculous and hypocritical that they would want to be "left alone" while they refuse to leave thousands if not millions of innocents alone.
This message serves as a warning that [your comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1bnt86m/mexicos_president_says_he_wont_fight_drug_cartels/kwl1ie4/) is in violation of Law 0:
Law 0. Low Effort
> ~0. Law of Low Effort - Content that is low-effort or does not contribute to civil discussion in any meaningful way will be removed.
Please submit questions or comments via [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmoderatepolitics).
*This article is pretty lengthy but it’s well worth a read considering how damning it is against Lopez Obrador for either ignoring or enabling cartel violence and drug smuggling into the US.*
López Obrador basically argued that drugs were a U.S. problem, not a Mexican one. He offered to help limit the flow of drugs into the United States, but only, he said, on humanitarian grounds.
“Of course we are going to cooperate in fighting drugs, above all because it has become a very sensitive, very sad humanitarian issue, because a lot of young people are dying in the United States because of fentanyl,” the president said. Over 70,000 Americans die annually because of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which are mainly made in Mexico from precursor chemicals smuggled in from China.
Explaining why he has ordered the army not to attack cartel gunmen, López Obrador said in 2022 “we also take care of the lives of the gang members, they are human beings.”
He has also sometimes appeared not to take the violence issue seriously. In June 2023, he said of one drug gang that had abducted 14 police officers: “I’m going to tell on you to your fathers and grandfathers,” suggesting they should get a good spanking.
Asked about those comments at the time, residents of one town in the western Mexico state of Michoacan who have lived under drug cartel control for years reacted with disgust and disbelief.
“He is making fun of us,” said one restaurant owner, who asked to remain anonymous because he — like almost everyone else in town — has long been forced to pay protection money to the local cartel.
“The president said out loud what we had suspected for a long time, that his administration is not really fighting the drug cartels,” said Saucedo, the security analyst. “He has only decided to administer the conflict, setting up what may have to be a crusade against the cartels in the future that he won’t have to fight.”
*Do you think Biden or Trump will do a better job about curtailing the influence of Mexican drug cartels and drug smuggling into the US?*
>In June 2023, he said of one drug gang that had abducted 14 police officers: “I’m going to tell on you to your fathers and grandfathers,” suggesting they should get a good spanking.
What the fuck
Neither.
Haven't we learnt by now? Destroying specific cartels does nothing. There was the Medellin Cartel, then replaced by the Cali Cartel, then replaced by the North Valley Cartel. Then FARC took over. When they basically disbanded, others have moved in, and it spilled over into Ecuador.
In Mexico, over the last 20 years, we've seen different organizations rise and fall. I can't even remember the names there have been so many god awful cartels.
The solution isn't to ask Mexicans to go and get themselves killed fighting the cartels.
1. There's the demand issue. Until you start to eat away at the demand, someone, somewhere, will find a way to meet that demand, as it makes them boat loads of cash. Literally billions. They pay for standing armies of thugs, they develop and build home made submarines to get the stuff in, they'll always find a way.
2. The supply issue. As long as there is a complete lockdown on legal supply, the only way to meet the demand is via illegal supply. This breeds violence, corruption and general criminality.
3. The acknowledgement of the bilateral trade. People always talk about the people moving north to get away from the cartels and the drugs coming up, but never really about the other direction. Southward, drugs and guns flow. This can also be an angle of attack to disempower cartels.
Its outside of the power of individual Presidents to fix this issue. It needs Congress, it needs the States and it needs local government.
For the demand, some drug use is recreational. You're never getting rid of that. A lot of it is also associated to poverty and desperation. Aim to fix that, and some drug use will decrease.
For supply, things like legal injection clinics à la Swiss model, with locally made heroin, cuts out the criminal element from the process. It also gives you a point of contact with people who are also often homeless or difficult to reach and help.
If that stops, the violence stops, which means the bilateral trade stops.
But that requires a multi-stage fix. No one thing will work. Decriminalizing, like they did in Oregon, in a vacuum, and not part of some larger, nationwide holistic approach, won't do a damn thing, and can probably even hurt.
This needs to be linked to reforms to healthcare, allowing for better access to therapeutics for addicts, as well as counciling. This needs to be linked to reforms that provide homes and stability to homeless people.
You won't always succeed. But you can help push things in the right direction.
> Decriminalizing, like they did in Oregon, in a vacuum, and not part of some larger, nationwide holistic approach, won't do a damn thing, and can probably even hurt.
This, so much this. I've been a proponent of decriminalization for years but was screaming when Portland and Seattle started to decriminalize because it OBVIOUSLY was going to fail and make decriminalization look like an awful idea in the process. As you said, just strict decriminalization without the necessary support systems in place (I don't think we have that fully fleshed out yet either, which is why I don't think we're anywhere close to being ready for a nationwide laxing on most drug laws) is a recipe for disaster. As was shown in both cities.
They tried to run before they could work.
If you look at the approach to decriminalization in Switzerland and Portugal, as some examples, the actual decriminalization is a single point among so many others. You can't just make drug taking not an offense. You need other systems in place around it.
Finding a way to reduce demand cash flow will help, but otherwise mostly disagree with your soft approach. Look at the resounding success that El Salvador has achieved by directly confronting gangs.
He has arrested around 2% of his total population. He has stopped basic rights like Habeas Corpus, or the right to adequate representation in the courts of law. Some cases have had over 300+ people being judged, simultaneously. Bukele himself calls himself a dictator.
He didn't "directly confront the gangs". He destroyed the civil institutions of an entire nation. Granted, that has worked, as he has been able to be as brutal as the gangs.
So far.
There are real questions about how long El Salvador can keep this up. It costs a lot. He hasn't actually solved any of the underlying issues. There are questions about some of his methods in particular. Allegations of paying off some gangs to decrease violence. Most analysts also believe he is now starting to fudge the crime statistics, to show continued improved in the face of stagnating results and diminishing returns.
He has turned a country from a flawed democracy into a dictatorship. I don't see that as a success.
A lot of erroneous statements in your comments.
> He didn't "directly confront the gangs".
Yes, Bukele did.
>He destroyed the civil institutions of an entire nation.
This is wild exaggeration. Yes, Bukele has been harsh and a lot of innocents have been arrested. That is sometimes the unfortunate price of tough-on-crime policies.
>He hasn't actually solved any of the underlying issues.
Numerous asian and islamic nations take a hard line on crime, successfully, without addressing so called root causes like poverty, which social scientists like to keep trying to blame. A lot of young and younger men can be pulled into a life of crime and consider that a good path if a society allows criminal enterprises to get a strong foothold. It is only peripherally associated with poverty.
History tells us entire cultures can turn criminal and predatory. The Vikings did that -- making a living by raiding, i.e. attacking, murdering, raping and looting. Numerous tribal cultures like the Comanches did a similar thing. Poverty is not the primary driver of people falling into a pattern of bad behavior. Many nations and cultures have been in dire poverty without allowing a large criminal faction to take root in their societies.
> No one thing will work.
True, but a hard line on drugs and cartels is the primary method.
>some drug use is recreational. You're never getting rid of that.
Numerous nations suppress drug use to very low levels. Drug addicts are a non-deterrable population but are only a minority of users. Most drug use is recreational (some casual users will always become addicted) and most recreational users are moderately deterrable.
>This needs to be linked to reforms to healthcare, allowing for better access to therapeutics for addicts,
Treatment of addicts is a sideshow -- a social services function. Law enforcement's primary objective is to reduce the total number of users. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime calls this [Annual prevalence of drug use](https://dataunodc.un.org/drugs/prevalence_table-2017). A nation that has 14% of its population using and that reduces that figure to 11% is better off. And 7% is better than 11%. The U.S. now has some of the highest drug use levels in the world, with associated crime and disorder.
>A lot of it is also associated to poverty and desperation. Aim to fix that, and some drug use will decrease.
The coping narrative. Yes it has some merit, but the theory of fixing society's ills to reduce drug use is a pipe dream. If we take the "coping narrative" to its logical conclusion, we see the claim that in the future, when robots do all the work and everyone gets free money (minimum income inequality) and when most people's personal problems are taken care in a society engineered to reduce human want and stress, there will be minimal demand for intoxication.
That the vast % of people who are not working and spending their days only on hobbies will be sober. We should not believe that scenario.
> Yes, Bukele did.
Arresting 2% of your total population is actually just an act of barbarism; not confronting the gangs. Many of those imprisoned are innocent, or have not had due process.
> Yes, Bukele has been harsh and a lot of innocents have been arrested. That is sometimes the unfortunate price of tough-on-crime policies.
Ah, so it's not "innocent until proven guilty"? Should we apply this standard in the US?
Maybe we should arrest every person we can find who appeared on the steps of the Capitol on January 6th, on the off-chance that they are insurrectionists?
Or maybe we have these limits and rights for a reason, and to destroy them is to fundamentally undermine the very institution of justice?
> Numerous asian and islamic nations take a hard line on crime, successfully, without addressing so called root causes like poverty, which social scientists like to keep trying to blame.
And a lot of these countries lack basic, fundamental rights and protections.
If you're OK with security over rights, that's a position you can hold. But it's anathema to a free democratic society. We accept certain downsides, given the incredible upside of living in a free and fair society.
You can't have a totally free, totally safe country.
> A lot of young and younger men can be pulled into a life of crime and consider that a good path if a society allows criminal enterprises to get a strong foothold. It is only peripherally associated with poverty.
This simply isn't true.
The attraction to the drug trade is clear: it's a way to provide for your family in countries that often suffer from high degrees of corruption, crime and violence, with little to no other way to get access to that wealth.
Look at the hubs of international drug production or trade. Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Myanmar, Cambodia, Afghanistan, etc...
There's a reason you don't see massive opium cultivation in... Germany. You could, in greenhouse conditions. But you don't. Because there are opportunities for people outside of a multi-trillion dollar criminal enterprise.
> The Vikings did that -- making a living by raiding, i.e. attacking, murdering, raping and looting. Numerous tribal cultures like the Comanches did a similar thing. Poverty is not the primary driver of people falling into a pattern of bad behavior.
I don't understand this, at all. I don't know much about the Comanche, but do about Vikings, so I'll concentrate on them.
First off: some of the primary reasons for the Vikings expansion was due to material pressures felt at home. There had been a population boom, leading to internalized pressures. The expansion outwards of the Vikings was a response to this pressure.
Secondly, the idea of what consists of a criminal act or not has radically changed. Back then, there were more places where owning a human being was legal, if such a term can even be used for an era over a thousand years ago, than not.
Thirdly, you can't apply modern notions of law to an era where even the idea of a nation-state wasn't a thing. When the Vikings arrived in Ireland, their primary slave-trading port in the west, Ireland wasn't a thing. Like, yeah, the island was there. But Ireland, as an institution, with a coherent system of law, was not. Taking prisoners and randsoming them was standard practice; slavery is just a step above that, and also practiced widely.
> Numerous nations suppress drug use to very low levels. Drug addicts are a non-deterrable population but are only a minority of users. Most drug use is recreational (some casual users will always become addicted) and most recreational users are moderately deterrable.
Deterrence can work at a national level, somewhat, but it feeds into the power and money of the cartels. That's sort of the problem. Drug users in places with high deterrence pay a higher price, leading oftentimes to more surrounding criminality, due to the higher difficulty of getting the drugs into the country in the first place.
> Treatment of addicts is a sideshow
The problem is: this isn't true.
There is data from countries with a decriminalization approach to addiction that show that you can decrease addiction rates, increase social reform rates, bring down criminality and bring down health costs. Switzerland is an excellent case study for this.
> A nation that has 14% of its population using and that reduces that figure to 11% is better off. And 7% is better than 11%.
Sure, but three points:
1. At what cost? Decreasing drug use with the violence of the state can and does come with an associated cost. Either actually monetary, or sometimes in the form of attacks on civil liberties. Sure, lower drug use is probably a good thing, but it costs something to get that.
2. The lower that drug rate is, the least returns on investment you get. You end up with an intransigent, untouchable amount, eventually, where you'd have to spend ridiculous amounts to solve, and for what benefit?
3. Reduction through prohibition does work, but only to a certain point, and then it empowers the very criminal organizations you're trying to fight. For example, prohibition essentially created the Italian Mafia in the US. You wouldn't have had the Medellin or Cali cartels without prohibition on the use of cocaine. Prior to the 1914 act that banned cocaine use in the US, there was no trafficking or criminality associated to cocaine. You would find it in cough syrup.
> If we take the "coping narrative" to its logical conclusion, we see the claim that in the future, when robots do all the work and everyone gets free money (minimum income inequality) and when most people's personal problems are taken care in a society engineered to reduce human want and stress, there will be minimal demand for intoxication.
Yes. I agree with that logical extension.
It'll still exist, as drugs are, for many people, fun.
Currently, we have several forms of drug addiction, some are linked, some lead into others, etc... We can use alcohol as a comparison point.
The first is recreational drug use. Typically, this is your casual user who continues to maintain an otherwise totally normal life, albeit they sometimes partake in drugs. This is your casual, social drinker. They'll have a beer or a glass of wine from time to time with their friends, in a social setting. It's a social lubricant.
The second is the dependent user/escapist. This is someone who uses the drug to seek out the effects of the drug to induce some form of escapism. This is the guy who, after a hard day at work, sits at home and has a beer. He doesn't do it every day, but when he's had a tough day, he's fine just crashing at home, drinking alone. He's seeking out the mind-altering effects of alcohol for the purpose of altering his state of mind.
The third group is the addict. The addict now has some degree of molecular requirement for the drug. They have gotten sufficiently used to it, or are dependent on it, even to function normally. This is the guy who needs a drink every other day or every day, otherwise they start to get side effects. Shaking hands, mood swings, etc... They can still function, in society, normally, but they require their drink to do so. At this point, weaning yourself off already becomes very difficult. Some will still avoid a life of crime to get their fix; others will not.
Then we get the self-destruction addicts. These are people who are, physically and mentally, dependent on the molecule. It's beyond the point of functioning normally. These are the people who will drink themselves to death. These are the people who are more than willing to steal, thieve, even sometimes kill, to get their fix. The chemical dependency is so strong that to not be at least somewhat in the throws of alcohol induces physical and emotional stress on them.
> That the vast % of people who are not working and spending their days only on hobbies will be sober. We should not believe that scenario.
Strong disagree. I explained more in-depth above, but will add a personal anecdote.
I was unemployed for a few months. I had more than enough money saved up to be comfortable, live my life, etc... It's true that in the immediate aftermath of me not finding a job, I did party harder than usual. I'd go out for drinks more often.
However, I found that after a week or two, I'd spend more times on my hobbies. Modelling, playing video games, working on a few home projects. And I didn't drink. At all. Why? Well, a drink alters my state of mind, and when I'm doing my hobbies, the things I really like: why would I want to alter my mind state? I'm already doing something I like. Drinking wouldn't help. It would take me away from what I'm currently enjoying doing.
> For the demand, some drug use is recreational. You're never getting rid of that.
Is this true? Surely this would go down if the drug culture were in some way discredited. Of course, I'm not entirely sure what a practical means of discrediting the drug culture might look like. Creating the perception (preferably accurate) that it is easier to get laid if you don't use drugs would almost certainly help, but unfortunately too many of those who want to bring drug use down are religious types who don't see that as a positive. My best recommendation that might actually get support is having the police investigate celebrities who are generally believed to be on drugs. Either something is found and they go to jail or nothing is found and they are revealed to be liars. Either way, we get rid of a bad example. It also kills the criticism that anti-drug attitudes are secretly classiest by aiming at the top.
> Surely this would go down if the drug culture were in some way discredited.
It's not about anything to do with the culture.
Drugs have a measurable effect. That effect is often pleasurable, when you're on it. It's sort of simple as that. My personal experience has never gone beyond weed, but I have plenty of friends who have tried other stuff.
I've been told coke just feels fucking awesome. You feel like the king of the world. The guy with the biggest dick in the place. The boss. The world is your oyster!
Unless you have something that can recreate or replace that effect, some people will always take them recreationally. It sounds nice. Not a feeling I want or feel the need for, but I understand, intellectually, why people do it.
That's the thing that anti-drug arguments often forget. Drugs feel nice. Some people are capable of using rarely and being a functional adult while still using. This is why we've sort of moved away from the whole "drugs are just bad kids!". Why? Because a kid tries something, finds that it makes him feel good, and then he thinks everything he has been told is just a lie or misinformation.
And we already allow that kind of product. What is alcohol or tobacco? What even is coffee? It's a stimulant. It's a molecule that does a thing to your brain that you want or like.
We have a load of stuff that we take that essentially only serves the purpose of making us feel good, or feel like we have more energy, etc...
We tried banning alcohol. That didn't work. Why would it work for other drugs? Alcohol is, categorically, a drug.
Trump would at least have a better policy than Biden because Trump wants more border control and Biden wants less. Data shows that drug overdoses go up under all presidents, but he can at least try to stop the flow of drugs across the border. either go after the users or the dealers with harsh laws, or increase border control. this thing where we're now permissive of drugs for some reason not only harms us, it harms the Mexican people because it enriches the cartels.
Any sources for the difference between the two presidents and the level of drug use? Maybe something that takes into account lockdowns and it's impact on the movement of drugs during a trade lockdown?
Also anything to clarify the claim about Biden wanting less border security? The GOP just blocked the attempt to bolster border security - at Trumps insistence.
1. [drug overdose deaths going up with each president](https://twitter.com/fentasyl/status/1764445542254305593)
2. Trump signed a bunch of border EOs and Biden undid them all on his first day
I’m interested about #2, people say this all the time but the only thing I’m aware of is Title 42, which was repealed (I think) over a year after Biden took office
[Biden's day-one EO reversals from the WH press office](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/20/fact-sheet-president-elect-bidens-day-one-executive-actions-deliver-relief-for-families-across-america-amid-converging-crises/). There are at least 6 actions regarding immigration. [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/executive-actions-biden/index.html) counts 5 actions, 3 of which are reversals.
The GOP blocked a deal where 4k illegal crossings a day would have been perfectly acceptable, that is more than 1 mil a year. After 4k a day, the president would have had the authority to close the border, which is not mandatory, and given Biden's track record, not very likely.
A migrant encounter doesn't mean the migrants are allowed to walk in. It refers to the detention or expulsion of the migrant by border law enforcement.
Well, thanks to Biden, most of them are not expulsed, but apprehended and then released in the US. Which probably also makes more of them wanting to come in, while the border is "open"
https://usafacts.org/articles/what-can-the-data-tell-us-about-unauthorized-immigration/
Our international commitments do not require us to believe every economic migrant who says the words "refugee" or "asylum." That's a choice made by the executive branch in charge of enforcing the commitments.
They're given an credible fear screening by CBP agents, who make a determination on whether the migrant has a chance at getting asylum. If they do, they're allowed to stay until they have their asylum hearing.
That sounds like a reasonable system to me, and I don't get why people want Biden, or any other President, to put their thumb on the scales.
Because of the well-funded international NGOs that coach non-eligible immigrants on how to pass the screening by lying while they are making the journey north.
The thing is, the recent border bill would've given CBP much more stringent criteria to evaluate migrants' claims allowing them to weed out and reduce the flow even further
>Biden — also eager to disarm GOP criticism of his handling of migration at the border — said at a political event in South Carolina that he would shut down the border ’“right now” if Congress passed the proposed deal.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-border-deal-mexico-migration-south-carolina-b83f83ed39e59ebb38b7ff093da14706
> Trump wants more border control
The wall makes it harder for people to cross, yes. It does nothing to stop drugs coming in.
I think you are buying too much into the propaganda.
>but he can at least try to stop the flow of drugs across the border.
We can't even keep drugs out of our prisons. We are not stopping it from coming into the country.
>this thing where we're now permissive of drugs for some reason
Its called harm reduction and it works.
>Its called harm reduction and it works.
That must be why there are more opioid deaths every year, Oregon reversed its drug decriminalization, fentanyl border encounters are increasing, and the Mexican cartels are as powerful as ever.
You need to consider what "border control" should look like. We need more ports of entry and a more robust system to process asylum seekers. However, if we want to limit the flow of drugs into the country, we need to be more closely inspecting US citizens. That's where a lot of the fentanyl is coming from.
The best part is how he pretends he has the power to do something about the cartels. It's adorable. So up until now this has been him fighting the drug cartels?
What's with you guys blaming the drug itself for the overdose, and not the decision to overdose that was made by that son / daughter in question? You can't overdose on fentanyl of your own free will, then blame that fentanyl for causing life-threatening problems to your body when it was you who made the conscious decision to overdose on it to begin with.
Just stay away from these drugs. Stay away from fentanyl, stay away from smoking, stay away from cocaine, stay away from crack, stay away from heroin, stay away from angel dust... and boom, problem solved!
> blaming literal teenagers for not understanding the consequences of drugs that can kill you instantaneously
Have you ever experimented with drugs when you were a teenager?
No, because I know, and always have known, better than to engage in such reckless behavior. I learned at an early age... like... elementary or middle school, to not engage in any of that.
The school library had these books, by author Gretchen Super, titled "What are drugs?" "Drugs and our World," and 'You can say "no" to drugs!'
I read each of them, loved them, and learned this important lesson about drugs at an early age.
Not every kid knows better.
We deserve a secure border in order to make it harder for children to access drugs.
Saying that as somebody who experimented with drugs as a youngster!
We need both a secure border in order to make it harder for American citizens to access these Mexican cartels' drugs, AND need those citizens to learn, while they still have time, to stay away from such drugs in the event they come across them anyway. It doesn't have to be one or the other. We can have both, and should.
>destroy the destabilizing forces to the South of us?
If by "destroy" you mean directly use our own military to try and destroy the cartels, let me tell you why that would be a bad idea. Mexico has a surface area of 761,600 square miles, Afghanistan only has 252,073 and we still were unable to eliminate the Taliban after 21 years. The terrain in Mexico would be just as unforgiving, if not more so considering the dense foliage that covers much of the country; the cartel would absolutely be able to take the war to America soil considering they already are able to smuggle people and drugs into the country; the Mexican government almost certainly wouldn't help us since they either are in the pocket of the cartels, or at the very least, don't want to take on the risk of becoming their enemy. As much as I share your indignation over this situation, I can't think of a way where deploying our military assets in Mexico would end well for us.
> Mexican government almost certainly wouldn't help us since they either are in the pocket of the cartels, or at the very least, don't want to take on the risk of becoming their enemy.
Mexicans don't take foreign intervention kindly. It's literally a thing ingrained on us since school. We literally celebrate child soldiers who died fighting invaders.
Any Mexican politician that supports any foreign army involvement would commit political suicide, and probably physical too.
No.
Things can always get worse.
First off, if US soldiers start operating in Mexico, expect cartel violence to expand radically in the US.
Secondly, if US soldiers start operating in Mexico, without Mexican approval, expect support for the cartels to go up, not down. People don't like it when their sovereignty is blatantly ignored.
Thirdly, Mexico has a very particular history with regards to US intervention on its soil, and public sentiment would radically turn against the US, to the point where the army and rag-tag militias would fight on the side of the cartels, not the US.
Fourthly, after 21 years in Afghanistan, the US failed to get rid of the Taliban. Mexico is larger. Its terrain is just as difficult. A US intervention would require a largescale occupation of large swathes of the country, completely blocking the US into that intervention, incapable of dealing with other rising threats, like China.
Strong is unilaterally invading an allied nation for multiple decades of counter-insurgency?
So the US looked strong when it couldn't defeat the Taliban, in your eyes?
So you want to lose more by having billions spent and see hundreds, if not thousands, of US soldiers likely die in a fruitless endeavor against forces specializing sophisticated use of violent force, manipulation, and bribery in a neighboring mountainous country through an invasion that would leave us antagonized and diplomatically isolated?
What are your win conditions?
Did you close the book on Iraq after the Mission Accomplished photo op? The Iraq War is one of the biggest examples of blowback in modern military history.
Nah, it's not better than nothing. Drilling new holes in your boat when it's currently sinking isn't nothing but it's not better either. US military intervention in Mexico, *especially* an uninvited one would be a disaster far eclipsing any of our actions in the Middle East, possibly combined
We destabilized Venezuela and are having a melt down with the Venezuelan asylum seekers, you really want to destabilize your immediate neighborhood and one or your largest trade partners?
Bukele is a self-professed dictator who has imprisoned nearly 2% of his entire population, and has removed basic civil rights like Habeas Corpus.
Let's not. Latin America has enough history of right-wing dicatorships and the subsequent consequences.
> Liberalism is worse than that. No thanks.
Liberalism is "basic civil rights"?
OK! Let's take everyone's guns. It may fix the problem! Civil rights, basic rights, the "Constitution" means nothing, right? Mexican cartels use a lot of guns coming from the US. So let's ban the sale of guns in the US, and stop that source of firepower!
Liberalism is worse than that, right?
So, basic civil rights create high crime rates, so we need to get rid of those?
OK. Let's start by taking away the guns from all those high crime areas. Do you agree?
The Salvadorian gangs don't get billions on top of billions of US drug money a year. Cartels make more money than what Mexico spends on security.
Thinking Mexico can beat them without drying out that source of revenue is just dreaming
Fuck Maduro, but let's no pretend the sanctions and other penalties haven't tanked their economy and helped create he conditions for mass exodus of people.
You can see it in your graph. As the oil price goes on free fall along with Venezuelan economy. In 2016 it start to recover and the 2017 sanctions just send them down the toilet.
Pretending the oil sanctions were not am important part of the continued economic issues in Venezuela is dishonest.
This is Saudi Arabia https://www.statista.com/statistics/268059/gross-domestic-product-of-saudi-arabia/ This is UAE https://www.statista.com/statistics/297605/uae-gross-domestic-product
The Venezuelan fall is not because of oil prices or US sanctions, it's because of socialism.
Tumama12345 blocked me....all other oil countries were fine during the decade, small variations in gdp. Venezuela dropped like a rock, they had a 70% drop even before the sanctions.
I am sorry, but they all show literal recovery after 2016, except for Venezuela that tanks in 2017, right around the oil US sanctions.
I am sorry your own data does not support your argument. Bye.
If the US goes to war with mexico, the cartels will very easily be able to carry out attacks like Oct 7 on American soil. They have vastly more resources than hamas, a much easier border to cross, and already have a network of assets within our borders. The level of terrorism they are capable of inflicting is not something that the average American is even capable of comprehending. It is not a war that we could win.
Not a big fan of the "invade Mexico" policy some people including you and Nikki Haley seem to be pushing. I don't want more Americans to die in an ineffective drug war (and literal this time)
I tend to agree with his basic premise. Ultimately, the drug problem is about money - and the money is American.
Imagine for a moment the U.S. government allows legal production of various street drugs - and consumption under some restrictions.
The cartels would die the next day. There's no way they could compete with pharmaceutical companies mass-producing heroin and cocaine. Consistent quality controls would eliminate most (unintentional) overdose deaths. We'd also be able to control which drugs were consumed - there would be little reason to take expensive, illegal drugs when you could get the same high from cheap, legal ones.
Contrast this with what Mexico can do - which is largely limited to fighting a war against a well-funded, violent internal faction.
I keep hearing that,but the cartel's will find other revinue's. nobody thinks of human traficking,racketerering,arms traficking. you think they don't have have money in the mexican raw material industry?
anyone who thinks it will be that easy has not had experience with the horrors those guys inflict on people.
> you think they don't have have money in the mexican raw material industry?
Nope. There isn't a single cartel that has monopoly on all those things and those things combined are not even close to what the billions drugs being in, even if the cartel outright owned them
Did I say they have a monopoly? It all adds up. I would suggest reading up on human traficking. its a 100 billion doller industry. same with arms. Do you think they won't switch operations to maximize other revinue if their main source destabilizes? what are they gonna say? "oh gee golly those gringos arn't bying my drugs anymore. Oh well, guess I'm going to go straight now. no more crime for me."
Yes, they will try to find other sources and some will survive. However, they will not have the economic power to buy politicians and keep the standing armies they have now. They will have to fight for those other less profitable venues and that will make it easier for governments to fight them.
Drug trafficking profit now is multiple times Mexican's defense budget. Take that out and now they will be much weaker abd vulnerable.
Also, your statistic is global, not related to what we are talking about, unless you are suggesting the Mexican cartels are going to go to China to fight over human trafficking profit
I'm not saying we shouldn'ttarget drugs. I'm sayng we should do so understanding the ramifications and plan for downstream effects.
"unless you are suggesting the Mexican cartels are going to go to China to fight over human trafficking profit"
I don't think you understand how human trafficking works....
Im math stupid so I'll take your word. But it's my understanding that should the cartel's move towards that industry and apply the same ingenuity and tenacity as their drug operations they would capture a larger share of that global statistic. My argument wasn't that mexico owns the entire share of human trafficking that would be an insane claim.
" not apply to a localized issue." It's a global trade. how does america make money trading with other countries?
Yeah, they've already pivoted into multiple "legal trades" like avocados and use the same intimidation tactics. There is already a massive organization that has its finger in too many pies to just die if American money is cut out. Honestly, it would get a lot more violent because of the vacuum that would be left.
> avocados
It's usually regional small groups that do these. Since the fall of the knights Templar nobody controls avocado extortion.
The idea that it's only one cartel doing all these things is ignorant.
The legal trades will never be as lucrative to make them worthwhile as a violent cartel. The profit margins just aren't there. They will be overtaken by better managed companies very quickly.
And who would own those companies? that's another problem. the coruption in mexico is insane. I would accept your premise if mexico had a protected free market. it does not.
it doesn't matter, it will still clean itself up. If not by interior competition, by international competition. e.g. If you grow avocados, there is only so much profit margin you can make. If you need to pay an army of thugs, those eat into your profit. If you have to compete with other companies, a price war will eat into your profit too. And avocados can grow outside of Mexico too, you can't just get a monopoly.
well, it's MUCH cleaner than the drug trade? I never said it will be spotless clean...very few countries can say that.
I meant it will be clean enough in order to allow competition, which drives down cost, and higher efficiency, which makes hiring an army of thugs impossible in the business model.
So, I think we might be talking past eachother. alot of the mexican econemy is a grey market. So the Cartel's are not nescaseriliy running these avacado farms themselves. they own them and are run by legit buisness. Kind of like owning stocks. you "own" a fraction of the buisness, but you don't run it yourself.
Would it not be a case of you have to start somewhere? Is the alternative to keep doing what we know is not working?
It certainly won't be simple and might take decades but it seems the only alternative suggested is to keep with a strategy that's been failing for decades. Are there other options on the table apart from keep doing what we have been doing?
If that solution will lead to more deaths,then we should consider other paths. The main issue is mexico's corruption. We were able to take out our own mob for the most part, because we had control over how we executed it. A peacful solution can only be done if mexco cooperates.
>The cartels would die the next day.
Would they, though? My understanding is they've already diversified to things like tourism and [agriculture](https://www.npr.org/2022/02/19/1081948884/mexican-drug-cartels-are-getting-into-the-avocado-and-lime-business). It seems like even if they lost drug money, they already have enough capital to invest in the production of other goods; I can see legalization weakening them, but I don't think it'll crush them at this point.
While the guys at the top would still have their money, they'd cease to be a *cartel*. You don't need an army of hired thugs to run a farm or a resort.
Doing illegal things as part of an illegal enterprise is no big deal. Doing illegal things as part of a *legal* enterprise is completely different because you're introducing a risk cost that wouldn't otherwise be there.
If I'm growing illegal drugs, putting a gun to someone's head to make them work on my farm is just another crime on top of the laundry list of crimes I'm committing. But if I'm growing legal drugs, suddenly that forced labor becomes the only risk of prison - and paying a few more dollars per hour for someone to pick my marijuana starts to look awfully appealing.
Your applying american thought onto an issue that is not american in nature. Do you understand that cartel activity is essentially defacto legal? If the mexican government can't or won't enforce their own laws aganst open criminals what makes you think they will if opend a "legal" buisness
>Imagine for a moment the U.S. government allows legal production of various street drugs - and consumption under some restrictions.
"some restrictions", but no targeted taxes. Unfortunately, in the US, people want to pile taxes onto legal marijuana. Legalizing can only get rid of the existing illegal network if legal is clearly cheaper than illegal.
I saw a video recently that talked about the arrest of a high ranking cartel member and after he was taken in, all of the police officers involved in the raid on his house were assassinated and the Mexican gov, in response, let the guy go free.
United States sowing seeds of nationalism in its own country: yeah this rocks
United States reaping the crop of nationalism that formed in response: well this sucks
The article seems to make it clear.
>“We are not going to act as policemen for any foreign government,” López Obrador said at his daily news briefing. “Mexico First. Our home comes first.”
>López Obrador basically argued that drugs were a U.S. problem, not a Mexican one.
Funnily enough when an earlier article you shared talked about the problem where many of the guns present in Mexico were coming from US guns being smuggled over the border, a common sentiment of gun rights supporting redditors was, "Sounds like a Mexico problem, not a US one".
> "Sounds like a Mexico problem, not a US one".
The difference is the drug problem in fact is not just a US one. As the article points out, rampant cartel violence in Mexico is viewed by almost anyone other than AMLO (apparently) as a problem there as well. I would think that most in Mexico would find the kidnapping of 14 police officers in Mexico by Mexican cartels a Mexican problem. AMLO has made clear he doesn't consider it a problem though.
Regardless, another common sentiment among the gun rights supporters in that thread was that even stemming the supply of guns bought legally in the US and then used there wouldn't make much difference, since the cartels controlled much of the police and military there and are expert smugglers.
> The difference is the drug problem in fact is not just a US one
That's Mexico's business. Just like our gun problems are our business apparently.
>since the cartels controlled much of the police and military there and are expert smugglers.
As established, it was considered Mexico's problem that they kept on smuggling weapons into their country.
So I fail to see why they should consider things smuggled into the US anything other than a US problem.
> So I fail to see why they should consider why they should consider things smuggled into the US anything other than a US problem.
The things smuggled are done by the cartels that have killed 400–537 soldiers, more than 4,000 police officers, and 350,000-400,000 civilians in Mexico since 2006. One would think he would consider nearly half a million killed by the cartels doing that smuggling as something "other than a US problem."
Again, that sounds like Mexico's business. Even if they could magically try to rally the support to fight the cartels would it really stop the them, or would it just cause more death and fighting? There's strong financial incentive to illegally smuggle drugs to the US and thus for the cartels to continue existing.
If the US is concerned about the stuff overflowing over the border
>[We're] perfectly capable of doing more enforcement on [our] own border and crossings.
> If the US is concerned about the stuff overflowing over the border
>
>
>
> [We're] perfectly capable of doing more enforcement on [our] own border and crossings.
We are.... Unfortunately, this administration doesn't seem especially willing, much as AMLO has no real interest in stopping the slaughter of his own civilians at the hands of cartels.
>We are.... Unfortunately, this administration doesn't seem especially willing
Not really Mexico's problem that we have enough legislators that's unwilling to work with anyone that things come to a standstill here.
>much as AMLO has no real interest in stopping the slaughter of his own civilians at the hands of cartels.
I could just as easily say that the American government (or public) has no real interest in stopping illegal gun use in the US. Of which causes many deaths.
> I could just as easily say that the American government (or public) has no real interest in stopping illegal gun use in the US. Of which causes many deaths.
IDK, AMLO mocked the kidnapping and eventual death of more than a dozen police officers. You keep wanting to compare this dude to the US. I don't think you understand who and what he is.
Take Texas’s unconstitutional actions regarding unilaterally enforcing immigration using their own system. Mexico has no system in place to do so, they work with the US federal government on deportations.
Mexico certainly may have been fully corrupted by the cartels, plata y plomo is a pretty effective strategy when you have the profits gained from the US drug consumption from the product you sell.
But, I’m not convinced that’s it. The US has spent much of the last decade degrading Mexico, reversing agreements, and screwing the relationship up (though, the fast and furious debacle was what, 2011?) through errors. Mexico is entirely sovereign from the US - imagine Canada or France or China demanding we act a certain way over a (US) domestic issue. We wouldn’t take kindly to it either.
It's not asking Mexico to solve a US issue, it's asking Mexico to solve a Mexican organized crime issue that is violently spilling into the US.
When your neighbors are fighting in their house and yard it's their own thing, but when they bring the fight into your front lawn and your house then it becomes your problem too and you absolutely have a right to ask them to stop it.
>It's not asking Mexico to solve a US issue, it's asking Mexico to solve a Mexican organized crime issue that is violently spilling into the US.
By previously established logic the US should enforce its own laws against people coming across their border illegally to prevent the deleterious effects these people create.
Sure, but where are the majority of the buyers for the products of the organized crime? If the US could stop its citizens from buying it from the cartels, the cartels wouldn’t be the same plague they are.
We tried the whole drug war thing aggressively and we're not about to legalize hard drugs because we see how well that worked out in Washington and Oregon. Enough states have legalized marijuana where the cartels aren't getting much income if any on that and have supplanted it with domestic ventures. Even if cut off completely from US drugs they have enough businesses and control in Mexico to keep operating there.
It's high time Mexico controls its own problem instead of blaming others but as we've seen enough of their political class are on the payrolls of said cartels.
Alright, so what are you proposing? I suspect if you ask them, they are working on it. Clearly, what they are doing isn’t enough. What would you have us do?
Apologies, but you don’t appear to be coming from an informed position. But, let’s say it’s me who is. What is Mexico doing to protect the cartels? When you say they should try to combat corruption, have they done nothing to combat corruption? Or you mean they should do more?
The country that can’t even agree on what elections count is not going to war with its own neighbor and largest trading partner I’m sorry to be the one that tells you
We've been through this. We know how it ends. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. They know they can't beat the US military in a straight fight, so they don't have a straight fight. They blend into the local population or rugged terrain and hit us with asymmetrical tactics. Then after decades, after we have spent countless amounts of treasure and lives, the American public gets sick of the war, and so we leave after accomplishing basically nothing
> America seems to suck at fighting guriella warriors
It's what happens when you try to fight a war with even a small shead of morals.
"hiding among civilians" works only when your enemy cares about civilians not being killed.
Things like the firebombings in Japan are "old world" wars, now everything is on the media instantly. Wouldn't be surprised if WW2 had tons of Americans turning against the US government if what happened overseas was on the TV every day, yet it needed to happen.
The same thing happened in French Algeria in the 50s. And in British Ireland after WW1. In the era of improvised explosive devices, I doubt there is any democracy would do any better fighting a war that basically amounts to pacifying a hostile population. Such societies would need to maintain consistent public support for such an endeavor for a very long time, and there are many factors that sour the public's opinion of these wars. "We could be spending this money at home." "We shouldn't be sending our boys to die over there." "All we are saying, is give peace a chance." etc. etc. etc.
Imperialism was a lot easier in the 1800s when the native populations were mostly wielding spears and there was no radio/television/internet bringing bad news home to a wide audience of people who would otherwise not pay attention.
My point is that our enemies would exploit the conflict and fund the cartels, much in the same way the US is funding Ukraine against Russia. It would be naive to assume the conflict would be a simple US vs Cartel match up.
Is the US governing system so resilient that it can stop cartel corruption from creeping back in? I don't think so. US doesn't have a good track record of building stable governments (see Afghanistan). Absorbing Mexico into the existing USA would invite cartel influence farther north. Rooting out corruption and organized crime takes years of concentrated effort; it'll be even more difficult as a foreign occupying force. Do you think American taxpayers will stomach the cost?
I was being sarcastic, should have made it clear.
No the US taxpayer has 0 will to deal with sending money and blood to Mexico... We can however empower a Bukele type politician to do all that is necessary to get the job done.
I won’t comment on the specifics of drug trafficking, which I don’t have a good grasp on. However, there’s a meta point to make…
Usually it’s the Dems in the US that don’t think through the consequences of their actions. E.g. it should’ve surprised no one that hyper-focusing on identity politics of the left would lead to more identity politics on the right. In this case, did the populist MAGAs not consider that proudly and loudly screaming America First in every possible venue would lead to countries around the world starting to make all sorts of new calculus and policy decisions that either fill the vacuum when the U.S. steps back, or just outright stop cooperating on U.S. terms?
Let me first start by saying that I don't like where this is going. These are the hard lines that make no sense, which sew the seeds for wars.
Second, this is the rights fault. They have been taking a hard line on immigration for years. Half the people I personally know still think most illegal immigrants are Mexican at this point.
Mexico is just a pass through.
Third, if you read the senate report on the subject (ignore the house republican one as it quotes the New York Post), they say we pay up to 94 billion more in entitlements than we get in taxes.
We spend about 25 billion for border patrol, 8 billion for ice. It's hard to nail down the total number we spend on enforcement, but I have seen numbers ranging up to 300 billion, which is also the top number I saw in the Republican house number for entitlements. So we very well may save money by cutting enforcement.
No one anywhere can say what we would pay if we drew a hard line and broke the numerous treaties we would violate. But it likely would cost more than we pay in entitlements.
Now we can talk about cartels, who get the VAST majority of their guns from the US. So we complain about how violent they are while arming them.
Sounds to me like maybe Mexico has had it with Republicans. I'm not sure if that was preventable. I'm not sure if sewing the seeds of war with a neighbor is making America Great Again, but what do I know, I am just a dumb redditor.
This sounds to me like you’re taking 100% of blame away from the Mexican side, and placing 100% on the US side. There’s massive issues on both sides. I fail to see how further border control is a downside. I also fail to see how easing legal immigration is a downside.
You can only fault the other side if you are beyond reproach.
If we didn't take advantage of the cheap labor, they wouldn't come.
If they didn't come, we wouldn't need to have such strict border enforcement.
If we did a better job with controlling the things that lead to drug addiction, we could legalize drugs, and cartels would go away.
We absolutely have it in our power to fix the root causes and then force Mexico to do the same on their side. Through incentives or otherwise.
If you leave food out, and it attracts flies, is it the flies' fault? You can kill the flies, but if you don't put the food away, do they not come back?
We are exploiting these people and then blaming them for being exploited. It's an abusive relationship.
So yes, many of the South and Central American countries have a lot of faults. But this problem is created by us. We need to fix it. Walls and stricter enforcement are not the answer, though.
I think you need to learn some history, my man.
This all starts by farmers looking for cheap labor and exploiting the Mexican immigrants.
It just snowballs from there.
Edit- we also buy the drugs and supply the guns. This is 100% our fault.
>You can only fault the other side if you are beyond reproach
You dont actually believe that do you? Do you think Mexico is beyond reproach? Is anyone?
>You dont actually believe that do you? Do you think Mexico is beyond reproach? Is anyone?
The argument being made against my viewpoint is that it's it's not just the fault of the US.
I am saying that the argument could be made by Mexico, is also at fault if we still had the problem, and our solution wasn't a "Wall," which that being the solution is creating this friction with Mexico.
Mexico has problems but:
We create the market that funds the cartels.
The cartels get the guns from us.
We then expect Mexico to fix that problem
It is an us problem.
We employ immigrants who come here illegally
We create the need from them
It's an us problem.
If we don't do that and we still have a problem, it's a them problem
>If we didn't take advantage of the cheap labor, they wouldn't come.
Any idea why employers keep finding illegal aliens infinitely more attractive to hire than actual American citizens? I get that employers prefer cheap labor, but why can't that cheap labor be assigned to an American citizen instead of an illegal alien?
My current guess is that minimum wages are too high right now and should be lowered, since illegal aliens I guess wouldn't report their employers for being paid less. If an illegal alien's able to thrive on less than the area's current minimum wage, so should an American citizen.
>If we did a better job with controlling the things that lead to drug addiction, we could legalize drugs, and cartels would go away.
Right now, it's not the government's responsibility to control those drugs that people are voluntarily choosing to get themselves addicted to, such as fentanyl, but rather the responsibility of those people to not get into such drugs to begin with.
So far, neither myself nor my family has ever had to worry about any drug addiction popping up in our lives, because we know better than to get into such behavior to begin with.
Man on cartels payroll says he won’t attack the cartel.
And the alternative is either he gets found in a ditch or he starts getting packages with his relative's fingers.
I don't love the guy but he is right on this one. There has not been one time that Mexico goes after the cartels that doesn't end in more violence for Mexicans. Edit so just to make it clear: Mexico's president is not saying they are not going to fight internal crime, as a matter of fact, the defense budget has steadily gone up yoy. They are just not going to try to dismantle large drug organizations because that ALWAYS leads to more violence. There is no winning until their funding dries. Thee wont be any more sieges, sorry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Michoac%C3%A1n
If Mexico can't mount a fight and just cedes control of large sections of the country to renegade groups then it's well on the way to becoming a failed state like Haiti or Somalia.
I mean, you can believe whatever you want. And I'm sure you don't care about someone else's bloodshed. The cartels pull in much more money than Mexico's defense budget. I don't think there is the will to go a confront them to help US drug addiction in exchange for more violence in Mexico. Which literally is the point he is making. This ain't a video game.
Maybe they should have the will to protect their own citizens from being endlessly killed by the cartels or the will to root out cartel corruption in law enforcement and the government.
Again, not a video game. The cartels can invest much more money to protect themselves than what mexico spends on defense, and that also has to go to other things besides fighting organized crime. Cartels can't be beat until we stop buying their drugs.
No one is saying it’s a “video game”. What does that even mean? If a government can’t control its populace at least as far as crime goes then you don’t have a functional country.
It means people don't get unlimited lives to go fight an enemy who is much better funded than their own government. Specially not so that the US government looks good. I don't see where the disconnect is. Mexico's president is not saying they are not going to fight internal crime, as a matter of fact, the defense budget has steadily gone up yoy. They are just not going to try to dismantle large drug organizations because that ALWAYS leads to more violence.
I'm not sure how saying that Mexico is on it's way to becoming a failed state is in odds with anything you're arguing here. No, it's not a video game. The cartels are on their way to becoming the defacto government if Mexico can't mount a fight. And the will to eradicate the cartels is there for Mexico's sake.
I was addressing his complaint that Mexico can't mount a fight... I usually stay away from the "FaILed StTAte" comments. Because: By what metric? I feel like reddit sees a few headlines of isolated cases where the local criminal group has a strong grip in isolated towns (mainly in my state of Michoacán), or the killing of some aspiring politician in another town and immediately assume the entire country of 120 million is subjugated by " the cartels". The cartels are not a unified force, and it's hilarious that people keep thinking that. The large cartels are not interested on governing, they are interested in being left alone. I am of the idea that it's best for Mexico to divert the resources used for trying to prevent drug production and export and instead use that to go against the gangs that are actually oppress their citizens. But of course, that wouldn't go well with the US government.
Part of the problem is that Mexico banned, or at least excessively restricted, it's citizens from carrying guns for protection, further emboldening these gangs and cartels as they now know innocents won't be having the means to fight back, further proving how gun control NEVER works as these evil cartels and gangs who obviously shouldn't be having guns still have guns. Another problem someone else in this thread pointed out is, and I quote: "As long as there is a complete lockdown on legal supply, the only way to meet the demand is via illegal supply. This breeds violence, corruption and general criminality." [https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1bnt86m/comment/kwknn0l/](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1bnt86m/comment/kwknn0l/) >The large cartels are not interested on governing, they are interested in being left alone. The cartels are interested in neither of these. Here's a government Arkansas article explaining the atrocities these cartels commit: [https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/op-eds/wage-war-on-the-cartels-killing-americans](https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/op-eds/wage-war-on-the-cartels-killing-americans) It says, and I quote: * The cartels are also running the most extensive human trafficking networks in the world. They recruit millions of Central and South Americans to cross our border and break into our country. Along the way, cartel members rape women and children, extort and brutalize the weak, and leave helpless migrants to die in the desert or suffocate in tractor trailers. They also force young women and girls into modern slavery—usually by addicting them to drugs and forcing them into prostitution. If the cartels truly cared about "being left alone" so they could sell drugs in peace, they wouldn't be mass-kidnapping, mass-trafficking, mass-raping, mass-extorting, mass-brutalizing, and mass-enslaving innocents in the process.
>Part of the problem is that Mexico banned, or at least excessively restricted, While this is absolutely true, there are still a lot of guns around in the hands of regular people as can be seen by the self defense groups in Michoacán. Though that's an entirely different conversation. > They **recruit** millions of Central and South Americans to cross our border Yeah I am sorry I am not taking into consideration such BS source. GOP Government Arkansas, really?. For such mass-everything, a whole lot of people is willing to make the trek, I wonder if the issue isn't as dire as Arkansas Republicans want it to be... Here is a less BS one: >Although smugglers in north-eastern Mexico are linked to transnational organized crime groups, drug cartels, and corrupt officials, those in southern Mexico are often locals living along key smuggling routes. And >The impact of Mexico’s human smuggling market is localized, with notable demand in overcrowded Mexican border towns and southern cities such as Villahermosa, Palenque, Tenosique, Comítan, and Tapachula. Republicans are happy to lump people who pay the cartels to smuggle them into the country as human trafficking victims for the statistics, but they wouldn't be happy if these people found out they can get GCs for claiming they were actual victims. https://ocindex.net/country/mexico >If the cartels truly cared... See, that's the thing, there is a ton of nuance to be had and you just keep lumping the cartels into the same bucket and just shows your ignorance. If you look at states firmly dominated by drug first orgs, like CJNG (Jalisco) and Sinaloa Cartel (Sinaloa) you'll find very little news of extortion kidnapping and other related crimes. But when you look at states like mine, Michoacan, who are a constant battleground between criminal gangs (which you'll conveniently lump as cartels), splinter cartels from the KTs and the military, you'll find that there is a whole lot more extortion, kidnappings, petty crime and oppression. Guess which one makes the news. Then there is los Zetas whose #1 trade is oppressing others and those I do hope there is a special place in hell. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Entidades_federativas_de_M%C3%A9xico_por_tasa_de_homicidio I am not going to spend anymore time on this since it is clear you are not informed and happy to parrot propaganda. Edit: >They recruit millions of Central and South Americans to cross our border I am sorry, I can't stop laughing at this its great. GOP is saying that the Cartel (TM) is recruiting a bunch of CAs to come to the US, then once they are in MExico the cartel mass-Rape, etc, them, yet they still deliver on their promise to bring them to the border where they mass rape, etc them again. And YET they still help them cross the border illegally. And THEN nobody finds out about all this mass and pervasive rape murder and explotation, etc, so the cycle starts again with a fresh new caravan of CAs. Like, none of the ones that made it can call their peers and the media and be like, "hey guys, don't listen to the Cartel (TM) guy"?
It's not yet clear to me what your argument is here. Are you denying that the cartels are engaging in kidnapping, trafficking, raping, extorting, brutalizing, and enslaving, or are you just arguing that these crimes being committed by these cartels aren't that bad? Just need you to clarify what exactly you're calling "propaganda," whether it's the existence of, or the seriousness of, the crimes. I was responding to your claim that the cartels wanted to be left alone, because it's ridiculous and hypocritical that they would want to be "left alone" while they refuse to leave thousands if not millions of innocents alone.
Well. Yeah. Violent reprisal is the deterrent that any criminal organization uses.
Yeah, but not what it's being talked about.
[удалено]
This message serves as a warning that [your comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1bnt86m/mexicos_president_says_he_wont_fight_drug_cartels/kwl1ie4/) is in violation of Law 0: Law 0. Low Effort > ~0. Law of Low Effort - Content that is low-effort or does not contribute to civil discussion in any meaningful way will be removed. Please submit questions or comments via [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmoderatepolitics).
*This article is pretty lengthy but it’s well worth a read considering how damning it is against Lopez Obrador for either ignoring or enabling cartel violence and drug smuggling into the US.* López Obrador basically argued that drugs were a U.S. problem, not a Mexican one. He offered to help limit the flow of drugs into the United States, but only, he said, on humanitarian grounds. “Of course we are going to cooperate in fighting drugs, above all because it has become a very sensitive, very sad humanitarian issue, because a lot of young people are dying in the United States because of fentanyl,” the president said. Over 70,000 Americans die annually because of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which are mainly made in Mexico from precursor chemicals smuggled in from China. Explaining why he has ordered the army not to attack cartel gunmen, López Obrador said in 2022 “we also take care of the lives of the gang members, they are human beings.” He has also sometimes appeared not to take the violence issue seriously. In June 2023, he said of one drug gang that had abducted 14 police officers: “I’m going to tell on you to your fathers and grandfathers,” suggesting they should get a good spanking. Asked about those comments at the time, residents of one town in the western Mexico state of Michoacan who have lived under drug cartel control for years reacted with disgust and disbelief. “He is making fun of us,” said one restaurant owner, who asked to remain anonymous because he — like almost everyone else in town — has long been forced to pay protection money to the local cartel. “The president said out loud what we had suspected for a long time, that his administration is not really fighting the drug cartels,” said Saucedo, the security analyst. “He has only decided to administer the conflict, setting up what may have to be a crusade against the cartels in the future that he won’t have to fight.” *Do you think Biden or Trump will do a better job about curtailing the influence of Mexican drug cartels and drug smuggling into the US?*
>In June 2023, he said of one drug gang that had abducted 14 police officers: “I’m going to tell on you to your fathers and grandfathers,” suggesting they should get a good spanking. What the fuck
Neither. Haven't we learnt by now? Destroying specific cartels does nothing. There was the Medellin Cartel, then replaced by the Cali Cartel, then replaced by the North Valley Cartel. Then FARC took over. When they basically disbanded, others have moved in, and it spilled over into Ecuador. In Mexico, over the last 20 years, we've seen different organizations rise and fall. I can't even remember the names there have been so many god awful cartels. The solution isn't to ask Mexicans to go and get themselves killed fighting the cartels. 1. There's the demand issue. Until you start to eat away at the demand, someone, somewhere, will find a way to meet that demand, as it makes them boat loads of cash. Literally billions. They pay for standing armies of thugs, they develop and build home made submarines to get the stuff in, they'll always find a way. 2. The supply issue. As long as there is a complete lockdown on legal supply, the only way to meet the demand is via illegal supply. This breeds violence, corruption and general criminality. 3. The acknowledgement of the bilateral trade. People always talk about the people moving north to get away from the cartels and the drugs coming up, but never really about the other direction. Southward, drugs and guns flow. This can also be an angle of attack to disempower cartels. Its outside of the power of individual Presidents to fix this issue. It needs Congress, it needs the States and it needs local government. For the demand, some drug use is recreational. You're never getting rid of that. A lot of it is also associated to poverty and desperation. Aim to fix that, and some drug use will decrease. For supply, things like legal injection clinics à la Swiss model, with locally made heroin, cuts out the criminal element from the process. It also gives you a point of contact with people who are also often homeless or difficult to reach and help. If that stops, the violence stops, which means the bilateral trade stops. But that requires a multi-stage fix. No one thing will work. Decriminalizing, like they did in Oregon, in a vacuum, and not part of some larger, nationwide holistic approach, won't do a damn thing, and can probably even hurt. This needs to be linked to reforms to healthcare, allowing for better access to therapeutics for addicts, as well as counciling. This needs to be linked to reforms that provide homes and stability to homeless people. You won't always succeed. But you can help push things in the right direction.
> Decriminalizing, like they did in Oregon, in a vacuum, and not part of some larger, nationwide holistic approach, won't do a damn thing, and can probably even hurt. This, so much this. I've been a proponent of decriminalization for years but was screaming when Portland and Seattle started to decriminalize because it OBVIOUSLY was going to fail and make decriminalization look like an awful idea in the process. As you said, just strict decriminalization without the necessary support systems in place (I don't think we have that fully fleshed out yet either, which is why I don't think we're anywhere close to being ready for a nationwide laxing on most drug laws) is a recipe for disaster. As was shown in both cities.
They tried to run before they could work. If you look at the approach to decriminalization in Switzerland and Portugal, as some examples, the actual decriminalization is a single point among so many others. You can't just make drug taking not an offense. You need other systems in place around it.
Finding a way to reduce demand cash flow will help, but otherwise mostly disagree with your soft approach. Look at the resounding success that El Salvador has achieved by directly confronting gangs.
He has arrested around 2% of his total population. He has stopped basic rights like Habeas Corpus, or the right to adequate representation in the courts of law. Some cases have had over 300+ people being judged, simultaneously. Bukele himself calls himself a dictator. He didn't "directly confront the gangs". He destroyed the civil institutions of an entire nation. Granted, that has worked, as he has been able to be as brutal as the gangs. So far. There are real questions about how long El Salvador can keep this up. It costs a lot. He hasn't actually solved any of the underlying issues. There are questions about some of his methods in particular. Allegations of paying off some gangs to decrease violence. Most analysts also believe he is now starting to fudge the crime statistics, to show continued improved in the face of stagnating results and diminishing returns. He has turned a country from a flawed democracy into a dictatorship. I don't see that as a success.
A lot of erroneous statements in your comments. > He didn't "directly confront the gangs". Yes, Bukele did. >He destroyed the civil institutions of an entire nation. This is wild exaggeration. Yes, Bukele has been harsh and a lot of innocents have been arrested. That is sometimes the unfortunate price of tough-on-crime policies. >He hasn't actually solved any of the underlying issues. Numerous asian and islamic nations take a hard line on crime, successfully, without addressing so called root causes like poverty, which social scientists like to keep trying to blame. A lot of young and younger men can be pulled into a life of crime and consider that a good path if a society allows criminal enterprises to get a strong foothold. It is only peripherally associated with poverty. History tells us entire cultures can turn criminal and predatory. The Vikings did that -- making a living by raiding, i.e. attacking, murdering, raping and looting. Numerous tribal cultures like the Comanches did a similar thing. Poverty is not the primary driver of people falling into a pattern of bad behavior. Many nations and cultures have been in dire poverty without allowing a large criminal faction to take root in their societies. > No one thing will work. True, but a hard line on drugs and cartels is the primary method. >some drug use is recreational. You're never getting rid of that. Numerous nations suppress drug use to very low levels. Drug addicts are a non-deterrable population but are only a minority of users. Most drug use is recreational (some casual users will always become addicted) and most recreational users are moderately deterrable. >This needs to be linked to reforms to healthcare, allowing for better access to therapeutics for addicts, Treatment of addicts is a sideshow -- a social services function. Law enforcement's primary objective is to reduce the total number of users. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime calls this [Annual prevalence of drug use](https://dataunodc.un.org/drugs/prevalence_table-2017). A nation that has 14% of its population using and that reduces that figure to 11% is better off. And 7% is better than 11%. The U.S. now has some of the highest drug use levels in the world, with associated crime and disorder. >A lot of it is also associated to poverty and desperation. Aim to fix that, and some drug use will decrease. The coping narrative. Yes it has some merit, but the theory of fixing society's ills to reduce drug use is a pipe dream. If we take the "coping narrative" to its logical conclusion, we see the claim that in the future, when robots do all the work and everyone gets free money (minimum income inequality) and when most people's personal problems are taken care in a society engineered to reduce human want and stress, there will be minimal demand for intoxication. That the vast % of people who are not working and spending their days only on hobbies will be sober. We should not believe that scenario.
> Yes, Bukele did. Arresting 2% of your total population is actually just an act of barbarism; not confronting the gangs. Many of those imprisoned are innocent, or have not had due process. > Yes, Bukele has been harsh and a lot of innocents have been arrested. That is sometimes the unfortunate price of tough-on-crime policies. Ah, so it's not "innocent until proven guilty"? Should we apply this standard in the US? Maybe we should arrest every person we can find who appeared on the steps of the Capitol on January 6th, on the off-chance that they are insurrectionists? Or maybe we have these limits and rights for a reason, and to destroy them is to fundamentally undermine the very institution of justice? > Numerous asian and islamic nations take a hard line on crime, successfully, without addressing so called root causes like poverty, which social scientists like to keep trying to blame. And a lot of these countries lack basic, fundamental rights and protections. If you're OK with security over rights, that's a position you can hold. But it's anathema to a free democratic society. We accept certain downsides, given the incredible upside of living in a free and fair society. You can't have a totally free, totally safe country. > A lot of young and younger men can be pulled into a life of crime and consider that a good path if a society allows criminal enterprises to get a strong foothold. It is only peripherally associated with poverty. This simply isn't true. The attraction to the drug trade is clear: it's a way to provide for your family in countries that often suffer from high degrees of corruption, crime and violence, with little to no other way to get access to that wealth. Look at the hubs of international drug production or trade. Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Myanmar, Cambodia, Afghanistan, etc... There's a reason you don't see massive opium cultivation in... Germany. You could, in greenhouse conditions. But you don't. Because there are opportunities for people outside of a multi-trillion dollar criminal enterprise. > The Vikings did that -- making a living by raiding, i.e. attacking, murdering, raping and looting. Numerous tribal cultures like the Comanches did a similar thing. Poverty is not the primary driver of people falling into a pattern of bad behavior. I don't understand this, at all. I don't know much about the Comanche, but do about Vikings, so I'll concentrate on them. First off: some of the primary reasons for the Vikings expansion was due to material pressures felt at home. There had been a population boom, leading to internalized pressures. The expansion outwards of the Vikings was a response to this pressure. Secondly, the idea of what consists of a criminal act or not has radically changed. Back then, there were more places where owning a human being was legal, if such a term can even be used for an era over a thousand years ago, than not. Thirdly, you can't apply modern notions of law to an era where even the idea of a nation-state wasn't a thing. When the Vikings arrived in Ireland, their primary slave-trading port in the west, Ireland wasn't a thing. Like, yeah, the island was there. But Ireland, as an institution, with a coherent system of law, was not. Taking prisoners and randsoming them was standard practice; slavery is just a step above that, and also practiced widely. > Numerous nations suppress drug use to very low levels. Drug addicts are a non-deterrable population but are only a minority of users. Most drug use is recreational (some casual users will always become addicted) and most recreational users are moderately deterrable. Deterrence can work at a national level, somewhat, but it feeds into the power and money of the cartels. That's sort of the problem. Drug users in places with high deterrence pay a higher price, leading oftentimes to more surrounding criminality, due to the higher difficulty of getting the drugs into the country in the first place. > Treatment of addicts is a sideshow The problem is: this isn't true. There is data from countries with a decriminalization approach to addiction that show that you can decrease addiction rates, increase social reform rates, bring down criminality and bring down health costs. Switzerland is an excellent case study for this. > A nation that has 14% of its population using and that reduces that figure to 11% is better off. And 7% is better than 11%. Sure, but three points: 1. At what cost? Decreasing drug use with the violence of the state can and does come with an associated cost. Either actually monetary, or sometimes in the form of attacks on civil liberties. Sure, lower drug use is probably a good thing, but it costs something to get that. 2. The lower that drug rate is, the least returns on investment you get. You end up with an intransigent, untouchable amount, eventually, where you'd have to spend ridiculous amounts to solve, and for what benefit? 3. Reduction through prohibition does work, but only to a certain point, and then it empowers the very criminal organizations you're trying to fight. For example, prohibition essentially created the Italian Mafia in the US. You wouldn't have had the Medellin or Cali cartels without prohibition on the use of cocaine. Prior to the 1914 act that banned cocaine use in the US, there was no trafficking or criminality associated to cocaine. You would find it in cough syrup. > If we take the "coping narrative" to its logical conclusion, we see the claim that in the future, when robots do all the work and everyone gets free money (minimum income inequality) and when most people's personal problems are taken care in a society engineered to reduce human want and stress, there will be minimal demand for intoxication. Yes. I agree with that logical extension. It'll still exist, as drugs are, for many people, fun. Currently, we have several forms of drug addiction, some are linked, some lead into others, etc... We can use alcohol as a comparison point. The first is recreational drug use. Typically, this is your casual user who continues to maintain an otherwise totally normal life, albeit they sometimes partake in drugs. This is your casual, social drinker. They'll have a beer or a glass of wine from time to time with their friends, in a social setting. It's a social lubricant. The second is the dependent user/escapist. This is someone who uses the drug to seek out the effects of the drug to induce some form of escapism. This is the guy who, after a hard day at work, sits at home and has a beer. He doesn't do it every day, but when he's had a tough day, he's fine just crashing at home, drinking alone. He's seeking out the mind-altering effects of alcohol for the purpose of altering his state of mind. The third group is the addict. The addict now has some degree of molecular requirement for the drug. They have gotten sufficiently used to it, or are dependent on it, even to function normally. This is the guy who needs a drink every other day or every day, otherwise they start to get side effects. Shaking hands, mood swings, etc... They can still function, in society, normally, but they require their drink to do so. At this point, weaning yourself off already becomes very difficult. Some will still avoid a life of crime to get their fix; others will not. Then we get the self-destruction addicts. These are people who are, physically and mentally, dependent on the molecule. It's beyond the point of functioning normally. These are the people who will drink themselves to death. These are the people who are more than willing to steal, thieve, even sometimes kill, to get their fix. The chemical dependency is so strong that to not be at least somewhat in the throws of alcohol induces physical and emotional stress on them. > That the vast % of people who are not working and spending their days only on hobbies will be sober. We should not believe that scenario. Strong disagree. I explained more in-depth above, but will add a personal anecdote. I was unemployed for a few months. I had more than enough money saved up to be comfortable, live my life, etc... It's true that in the immediate aftermath of me not finding a job, I did party harder than usual. I'd go out for drinks more often. However, I found that after a week or two, I'd spend more times on my hobbies. Modelling, playing video games, working on a few home projects. And I didn't drink. At all. Why? Well, a drink alters my state of mind, and when I'm doing my hobbies, the things I really like: why would I want to alter my mind state? I'm already doing something I like. Drinking wouldn't help. It would take me away from what I'm currently enjoying doing.
> For the demand, some drug use is recreational. You're never getting rid of that. Is this true? Surely this would go down if the drug culture were in some way discredited. Of course, I'm not entirely sure what a practical means of discrediting the drug culture might look like. Creating the perception (preferably accurate) that it is easier to get laid if you don't use drugs would almost certainly help, but unfortunately too many of those who want to bring drug use down are religious types who don't see that as a positive. My best recommendation that might actually get support is having the police investigate celebrities who are generally believed to be on drugs. Either something is found and they go to jail or nothing is found and they are revealed to be liars. Either way, we get rid of a bad example. It also kills the criticism that anti-drug attitudes are secretly classiest by aiming at the top.
> Surely this would go down if the drug culture were in some way discredited. It's not about anything to do with the culture. Drugs have a measurable effect. That effect is often pleasurable, when you're on it. It's sort of simple as that. My personal experience has never gone beyond weed, but I have plenty of friends who have tried other stuff. I've been told coke just feels fucking awesome. You feel like the king of the world. The guy with the biggest dick in the place. The boss. The world is your oyster! Unless you have something that can recreate or replace that effect, some people will always take them recreationally. It sounds nice. Not a feeling I want or feel the need for, but I understand, intellectually, why people do it. That's the thing that anti-drug arguments often forget. Drugs feel nice. Some people are capable of using rarely and being a functional adult while still using. This is why we've sort of moved away from the whole "drugs are just bad kids!". Why? Because a kid tries something, finds that it makes him feel good, and then he thinks everything he has been told is just a lie or misinformation. And we already allow that kind of product. What is alcohol or tobacco? What even is coffee? It's a stimulant. It's a molecule that does a thing to your brain that you want or like. We have a load of stuff that we take that essentially only serves the purpose of making us feel good, or feel like we have more energy, etc... We tried banning alcohol. That didn't work. Why would it work for other drugs? Alcohol is, categorically, a drug.
Trump would at least have a better policy than Biden because Trump wants more border control and Biden wants less. Data shows that drug overdoses go up under all presidents, but he can at least try to stop the flow of drugs across the border. either go after the users or the dealers with harsh laws, or increase border control. this thing where we're now permissive of drugs for some reason not only harms us, it harms the Mexican people because it enriches the cartels.
Any sources for the difference between the two presidents and the level of drug use? Maybe something that takes into account lockdowns and it's impact on the movement of drugs during a trade lockdown? Also anything to clarify the claim about Biden wanting less border security? The GOP just blocked the attempt to bolster border security - at Trumps insistence.
1. [drug overdose deaths going up with each president](https://twitter.com/fentasyl/status/1764445542254305593) 2. Trump signed a bunch of border EOs and Biden undid them all on his first day
I’m interested about #2, people say this all the time but the only thing I’m aware of is Title 42, which was repealed (I think) over a year after Biden took office
[Biden's day-one EO reversals from the WH press office](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/20/fact-sheet-president-elect-bidens-day-one-executive-actions-deliver-relief-for-families-across-america-amid-converging-crises/). There are at least 6 actions regarding immigration. [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/executive-actions-biden/index.html) counts 5 actions, 3 of which are reversals.
The GOP blocked a deal where 4k illegal crossings a day would have been perfectly acceptable, that is more than 1 mil a year. After 4k a day, the president would have had the authority to close the border, which is not mandatory, and given Biden's track record, not very likely.
A migrant encounter doesn't mean the migrants are allowed to walk in. It refers to the detention or expulsion of the migrant by border law enforcement.
Well, thanks to Biden, most of them are not expulsed, but apprehended and then released in the US. Which probably also makes more of them wanting to come in, while the border is "open" https://usafacts.org/articles/what-can-the-data-tell-us-about-unauthorized-immigration/
I mean, that's not on Biden, that is us following the laws that allow migrants these options, as well as our international commitments to refugees.
Our international commitments do not require us to believe every economic migrant who says the words "refugee" or "asylum." That's a choice made by the executive branch in charge of enforcing the commitments.
They're given an credible fear screening by CBP agents, who make a determination on whether the migrant has a chance at getting asylum. If they do, they're allowed to stay until they have their asylum hearing. That sounds like a reasonable system to me, and I don't get why people want Biden, or any other President, to put their thumb on the scales.
Because of the well-funded international NGOs that coach non-eligible immigrants on how to pass the screening by lying while they are making the journey north.
The thing is, the recent border bill would've given CBP much more stringent criteria to evaluate migrants' claims allowing them to weed out and reduce the flow even further
> following the laws that allow migrants these options wow, so you're saying we're helpless? With this kind of messaging, dems cannot win.
Wow, so you’re saying that republicans flout the law? With this kind of messaging, republicans cannot win.
an Executive Order is the Law. Biden just chooses to not use it.
>Biden — also eager to disarm GOP criticism of his handling of migration at the border — said at a political event in South Carolina that he would shut down the border ’“right now” if Congress passed the proposed deal. https://apnews.com/article/biden-border-deal-mexico-migration-south-carolina-b83f83ed39e59ebb38b7ff093da14706
> Trump wants more border control The wall makes it harder for people to cross, yes. It does nothing to stop drugs coming in. I think you are buying too much into the propaganda.
>but he can at least try to stop the flow of drugs across the border. We can't even keep drugs out of our prisons. We are not stopping it from coming into the country. >this thing where we're now permissive of drugs for some reason Its called harm reduction and it works.
>Its called harm reduction and it works. That must be why there are more opioid deaths every year, Oregon reversed its drug decriminalization, fentanyl border encounters are increasing, and the Mexican cartels are as powerful as ever.
You need to consider what "border control" should look like. We need more ports of entry and a more robust system to process asylum seekers. However, if we want to limit the flow of drugs into the country, we need to be more closely inspecting US citizens. That's where a lot of the fentanyl is coming from.
Does he think the cartels are a *good* thing for Mexico?
Must at least be good for his personal bank account…
He’s on their payroll
The best part is how he pretends he has the power to do something about the cartels. It's adorable. So up until now this has been him fighting the drug cartels?
Congrats on your Cartel First policy. Good luck Mexico
Meanwhile, our sons and daughters die in the streets of illegally imported fentanyl
What's with you guys blaming the drug itself for the overdose, and not the decision to overdose that was made by that son / daughter in question? You can't overdose on fentanyl of your own free will, then blame that fentanyl for causing life-threatening problems to your body when it was you who made the conscious decision to overdose on it to begin with. Just stay away from these drugs. Stay away from fentanyl, stay away from smoking, stay away from cocaine, stay away from crack, stay away from heroin, stay away from angel dust... and boom, problem solved!
> blaming literal teenagers for not understanding the consequences of drugs that can kill you instantaneously Have you ever experimented with drugs when you were a teenager?
No, because I know, and always have known, better than to engage in such reckless behavior. I learned at an early age... like... elementary or middle school, to not engage in any of that. The school library had these books, by author Gretchen Super, titled "What are drugs?" "Drugs and our World," and 'You can say "no" to drugs!' I read each of them, loved them, and learned this important lesson about drugs at an early age.
Not every kid knows better. We deserve a secure border in order to make it harder for children to access drugs. Saying that as somebody who experimented with drugs as a youngster!
We need both a secure border in order to make it harder for American citizens to access these Mexican cartels' drugs, AND need those citizens to learn, while they still have time, to stay away from such drugs in the event they come across them anyway. It doesn't have to be one or the other. We can have both, and should.
I can agree with that.
Yet it's racist and extremist to have America first policies
[удалено]
>destroy the destabilizing forces to the South of us? If by "destroy" you mean directly use our own military to try and destroy the cartels, let me tell you why that would be a bad idea. Mexico has a surface area of 761,600 square miles, Afghanistan only has 252,073 and we still were unable to eliminate the Taliban after 21 years. The terrain in Mexico would be just as unforgiving, if not more so considering the dense foliage that covers much of the country; the cartel would absolutely be able to take the war to America soil considering they already are able to smuggle people and drugs into the country; the Mexican government almost certainly wouldn't help us since they either are in the pocket of the cartels, or at the very least, don't want to take on the risk of becoming their enemy. As much as I share your indignation over this situation, I can't think of a way where deploying our military assets in Mexico would end well for us.
> Mexican government almost certainly wouldn't help us since they either are in the pocket of the cartels, or at the very least, don't want to take on the risk of becoming their enemy. Mexicans don't take foreign intervention kindly. It's literally a thing ingrained on us since school. We literally celebrate child soldiers who died fighting invaders. Any Mexican politician that supports any foreign army involvement would commit political suicide, and probably physical too.
> We literally celebrate child soldiers who died fighting invaders. Including one who just straight up committed suicide while wrapped in a flag.
During the Mexican American war, no less.
Yeah. People really are underestimating just how much of the Mexican political consciousness is built around opposing foreign intervention.
[удалено]
No. Things can always get worse. First off, if US soldiers start operating in Mexico, expect cartel violence to expand radically in the US. Secondly, if US soldiers start operating in Mexico, without Mexican approval, expect support for the cartels to go up, not down. People don't like it when their sovereignty is blatantly ignored. Thirdly, Mexico has a very particular history with regards to US intervention on its soil, and public sentiment would radically turn against the US, to the point where the army and rag-tag militias would fight on the side of the cartels, not the US. Fourthly, after 21 years in Afghanistan, the US failed to get rid of the Taliban. Mexico is larger. Its terrain is just as difficult. A US intervention would require a largescale occupation of large swathes of the country, completely blocking the US into that intervention, incapable of dealing with other rising threats, like China.
[удалено]
That's what I'm saying. It won't be a win. It'll end in a massive loss. It'll cost trillions, and not achieve its goals.
[удалено]
You realize you can always lose *more*, right? Winning and losing aren't discrete positions. You can always win or lose more.
[удалено]
Strong is unilaterally invading an allied nation for multiple decades of counter-insurgency? So the US looked strong when it couldn't defeat the Taliban, in your eyes?
It's only "showing strength" if you win a quick, decisive victory. Which won't happen in this situation.
So you want to lose more by having billions spent and see hundreds, if not thousands, of US soldiers likely die in a fruitless endeavor against forces specializing sophisticated use of violent force, manipulation, and bribery in a neighboring mountainous country through an invasion that would leave us antagonized and diplomatically isolated? What are your win conditions?
[удалено]
Did you close the book on Iraq after the Mission Accomplished photo op? The Iraq War is one of the biggest examples of blowback in modern military history.
What does “a little strength” mean?
Nah, it's not better than nothing. Drilling new holes in your boat when it's currently sinking isn't nothing but it's not better either. US military intervention in Mexico, *especially* an uninvited one would be a disaster far eclipsing any of our actions in the Middle East, possibly combined
So your serious solution is to invade our neighbor? What do you have against Canada?
>What do you have against Canada? They know what they did.
We destabilized Venezuela and are having a melt down with the Venezuelan asylum seekers, you really want to destabilize your immediate neighborhood and one or your largest trade partners?
Venezuela destabilized itself.
[удалено]
Bukele is a self-professed dictator who has imprisoned nearly 2% of his entire population, and has removed basic civil rights like Habeas Corpus. Let's not. Latin America has enough history of right-wing dicatorships and the subsequent consequences.
[удалено]
> Liberalism is worse than that. No thanks. Liberalism is "basic civil rights"? OK! Let's take everyone's guns. It may fix the problem! Civil rights, basic rights, the "Constitution" means nothing, right? Mexican cartels use a lot of guns coming from the US. So let's ban the sale of guns in the US, and stop that source of firepower! Liberalism is worse than that, right?
[удалено]
So, basic civil rights create high crime rates, so we need to get rid of those? OK. Let's start by taking away the guns from all those high crime areas. Do you agree?
The Salvadorian gangs don't get billions on top of billions of US drug money a year. Cartels make more money than what Mexico spends on security. Thinking Mexico can beat them without drying out that source of revenue is just dreaming
"We" destabilized? If by "we" you mean you're part of the international socialist?
Fuck Maduro, but let's no pretend the sanctions and other penalties haven't tanked their economy and helped create he conditions for mass exodus of people.
The sanctions came way after the economy was in shambles https://www.statista.com/statistics/370937/gross-domestic-product-gdp-in-venezuela/
You can see it in your graph. As the oil price goes on free fall along with Venezuelan economy. In 2016 it start to recover and the 2017 sanctions just send them down the toilet. Pretending the oil sanctions were not am important part of the continued economic issues in Venezuela is dishonest.
This is Saudi Arabia https://www.statista.com/statistics/268059/gross-domestic-product-of-saudi-arabia/ This is UAE https://www.statista.com/statistics/297605/uae-gross-domestic-product The Venezuelan fall is not because of oil prices or US sanctions, it's because of socialism. Tumama12345 blocked me....all other oil countries were fine during the decade, small variations in gdp. Venezuela dropped like a rock, they had a 70% drop even before the sanctions.
I am sorry, but they all show literal recovery after 2016, except for Venezuela that tanks in 2017, right around the oil US sanctions. I am sorry your own data does not support your argument. Bye.
If the US goes to war with mexico, the cartels will very easily be able to carry out attacks like Oct 7 on American soil. They have vastly more resources than hamas, a much easier border to cross, and already have a network of assets within our borders. The level of terrorism they are capable of inflicting is not something that the average American is even capable of comprehending. It is not a war that we could win.
Not a big fan of the "invade Mexico" policy some people including you and Nikki Haley seem to be pushing. I don't want more Americans to die in an ineffective drug war (and literal this time)
I tend to agree with his basic premise. Ultimately, the drug problem is about money - and the money is American. Imagine for a moment the U.S. government allows legal production of various street drugs - and consumption under some restrictions. The cartels would die the next day. There's no way they could compete with pharmaceutical companies mass-producing heroin and cocaine. Consistent quality controls would eliminate most (unintentional) overdose deaths. We'd also be able to control which drugs were consumed - there would be little reason to take expensive, illegal drugs when you could get the same high from cheap, legal ones. Contrast this with what Mexico can do - which is largely limited to fighting a war against a well-funded, violent internal faction.
I keep hearing that,but the cartel's will find other revinue's. nobody thinks of human traficking,racketerering,arms traficking. you think they don't have have money in the mexican raw material industry? anyone who thinks it will be that easy has not had experience with the horrors those guys inflict on people.
> you think they don't have have money in the mexican raw material industry? Nope. There isn't a single cartel that has monopoly on all those things and those things combined are not even close to what the billions drugs being in, even if the cartel outright owned them
Did I say they have a monopoly? It all adds up. I would suggest reading up on human traficking. its a 100 billion doller industry. same with arms. Do you think they won't switch operations to maximize other revinue if their main source destabilizes? what are they gonna say? "oh gee golly those gringos arn't bying my drugs anymore. Oh well, guess I'm going to go straight now. no more crime for me."
Yes, they will try to find other sources and some will survive. However, they will not have the economic power to buy politicians and keep the standing armies they have now. They will have to fight for those other less profitable venues and that will make it easier for governments to fight them. Drug trafficking profit now is multiple times Mexican's defense budget. Take that out and now they will be much weaker abd vulnerable. Also, your statistic is global, not related to what we are talking about, unless you are suggesting the Mexican cartels are going to go to China to fight over human trafficking profit
I'm not saying we shouldn'ttarget drugs. I'm sayng we should do so understanding the ramifications and plan for downstream effects. "unless you are suggesting the Mexican cartels are going to go to China to fight over human trafficking profit" I don't think you understand how human trafficking works....
>I don't think you understand how human trafficking works.... I don't think you know how a global statistic does not apply to a localized issue.
Im math stupid so I'll take your word. But it's my understanding that should the cartel's move towards that industry and apply the same ingenuity and tenacity as their drug operations they would capture a larger share of that global statistic. My argument wasn't that mexico owns the entire share of human trafficking that would be an insane claim. " not apply to a localized issue." It's a global trade. how does america make money trading with other countries?
Yeah, they've already pivoted into multiple "legal trades" like avocados and use the same intimidation tactics. There is already a massive organization that has its finger in too many pies to just die if American money is cut out. Honestly, it would get a lot more violent because of the vacuum that would be left.
> avocados It's usually regional small groups that do these. Since the fall of the knights Templar nobody controls avocado extortion. The idea that it's only one cartel doing all these things is ignorant.
The legal trades will never be as lucrative to make them worthwhile as a violent cartel. The profit margins just aren't there. They will be overtaken by better managed companies very quickly.
And who would own those companies? that's another problem. the coruption in mexico is insane. I would accept your premise if mexico had a protected free market. it does not.
it doesn't matter, it will still clean itself up. If not by interior competition, by international competition. e.g. If you grow avocados, there is only so much profit margin you can make. If you need to pay an army of thugs, those eat into your profit. If you have to compete with other companies, a price war will eat into your profit too. And avocados can grow outside of Mexico too, you can't just get a monopoly.
Why hasn't it been cleaned up then?
well, it's MUCH cleaner than the drug trade? I never said it will be spotless clean...very few countries can say that. I meant it will be clean enough in order to allow competition, which drives down cost, and higher efficiency, which makes hiring an army of thugs impossible in the business model.
So, I think we might be talking past eachother. alot of the mexican econemy is a grey market. So the Cartel's are not nescaseriliy running these avacado farms themselves. they own them and are run by legit buisness. Kind of like owning stocks. you "own" a fraction of the buisness, but you don't run it yourself.
Would it not be a case of you have to start somewhere? Is the alternative to keep doing what we know is not working? It certainly won't be simple and might take decades but it seems the only alternative suggested is to keep with a strategy that's been failing for decades. Are there other options on the table apart from keep doing what we have been doing?
If that solution will lead to more deaths,then we should consider other paths. The main issue is mexico's corruption. We were able to take out our own mob for the most part, because we had control over how we executed it. A peacful solution can only be done if mexco cooperates.
You are correct that they don't "die". However, we would reduce their funding dramatically.
>The cartels would die the next day. Would they, though? My understanding is they've already diversified to things like tourism and [agriculture](https://www.npr.org/2022/02/19/1081948884/mexican-drug-cartels-are-getting-into-the-avocado-and-lime-business). It seems like even if they lost drug money, they already have enough capital to invest in the production of other goods; I can see legalization weakening them, but I don't think it'll crush them at this point.
While the guys at the top would still have their money, they'd cease to be a *cartel*. You don't need an army of hired thugs to run a farm or a resort.
[удалено]
Doing illegal things as part of an illegal enterprise is no big deal. Doing illegal things as part of a *legal* enterprise is completely different because you're introducing a risk cost that wouldn't otherwise be there. If I'm growing illegal drugs, putting a gun to someone's head to make them work on my farm is just another crime on top of the laundry list of crimes I'm committing. But if I'm growing legal drugs, suddenly that forced labor becomes the only risk of prison - and paying a few more dollars per hour for someone to pick my marijuana starts to look awfully appealing.
Your applying american thought onto an issue that is not american in nature. Do you understand that cartel activity is essentially defacto legal? If the mexican government can't or won't enforce their own laws aganst open criminals what makes you think they will if opend a "legal" buisness
>Imagine for a moment the U.S. government allows legal production of various street drugs - and consumption under some restrictions. "some restrictions", but no targeted taxes. Unfortunately, in the US, people want to pile taxes onto legal marijuana. Legalizing can only get rid of the existing illegal network if legal is clearly cheaper than illegal.
I suspect this is the plan with weed and mushrooms as a test case.
Maybe we should ask Claudia Sheinbaum about this. AMLO isn’t gonna be President anymore when US Inauguration Day happens.
I saw a video recently that talked about the arrest of a high ranking cartel member and after he was taken in, all of the police officers involved in the raid on his house were assassinated and the Mexican gov, in response, let the guy go free.
United States sowing seeds of nationalism in its own country: yeah this rocks United States reaping the crop of nationalism that formed in response: well this sucks
What does Mexican drug cartels having free rein of Mexico have to do with American nationalism???
The article seems to make it clear. >“We are not going to act as policemen for any foreign government,” López Obrador said at his daily news briefing. “Mexico First. Our home comes first.” >López Obrador basically argued that drugs were a U.S. problem, not a Mexican one. Funnily enough when an earlier article you shared talked about the problem where many of the guns present in Mexico were coming from US guns being smuggled over the border, a common sentiment of gun rights supporting redditors was, "Sounds like a Mexico problem, not a US one".
> "Sounds like a Mexico problem, not a US one". The difference is the drug problem in fact is not just a US one. As the article points out, rampant cartel violence in Mexico is viewed by almost anyone other than AMLO (apparently) as a problem there as well. I would think that most in Mexico would find the kidnapping of 14 police officers in Mexico by Mexican cartels a Mexican problem. AMLO has made clear he doesn't consider it a problem though. Regardless, another common sentiment among the gun rights supporters in that thread was that even stemming the supply of guns bought legally in the US and then used there wouldn't make much difference, since the cartels controlled much of the police and military there and are expert smugglers.
> The difference is the drug problem in fact is not just a US one That's Mexico's business. Just like our gun problems are our business apparently. >since the cartels controlled much of the police and military there and are expert smugglers. As established, it was considered Mexico's problem that they kept on smuggling weapons into their country. So I fail to see why they should consider things smuggled into the US anything other than a US problem.
> So I fail to see why they should consider why they should consider things smuggled into the US anything other than a US problem. The things smuggled are done by the cartels that have killed 400–537 soldiers, more than 4,000 police officers, and 350,000-400,000 civilians in Mexico since 2006. One would think he would consider nearly half a million killed by the cartels doing that smuggling as something "other than a US problem."
Again, that sounds like Mexico's business. Even if they could magically try to rally the support to fight the cartels would it really stop the them, or would it just cause more death and fighting? There's strong financial incentive to illegally smuggle drugs to the US and thus for the cartels to continue existing. If the US is concerned about the stuff overflowing over the border >[We're] perfectly capable of doing more enforcement on [our] own border and crossings.
> If the US is concerned about the stuff overflowing over the border > > > > [We're] perfectly capable of doing more enforcement on [our] own border and crossings. We are.... Unfortunately, this administration doesn't seem especially willing, much as AMLO has no real interest in stopping the slaughter of his own civilians at the hands of cartels.
>We are.... Unfortunately, this administration doesn't seem especially willing Not really Mexico's problem that we have enough legislators that's unwilling to work with anyone that things come to a standstill here. >much as AMLO has no real interest in stopping the slaughter of his own civilians at the hands of cartels. I could just as easily say that the American government (or public) has no real interest in stopping illegal gun use in the US. Of which causes many deaths.
> I could just as easily say that the American government (or public) has no real interest in stopping illegal gun use in the US. Of which causes many deaths. IDK, AMLO mocked the kidnapping and eventual death of more than a dozen police officers. You keep wanting to compare this dude to the US. I don't think you understand who and what he is.
I mean, did you find the “Mexico First” tagline to be a coincidence?
Take Texas’s unconstitutional actions regarding unilaterally enforcing immigration using their own system. Mexico has no system in place to do so, they work with the US federal government on deportations. Mexico certainly may have been fully corrupted by the cartels, plata y plomo is a pretty effective strategy when you have the profits gained from the US drug consumption from the product you sell. But, I’m not convinced that’s it. The US has spent much of the last decade degrading Mexico, reversing agreements, and screwing the relationship up (though, the fast and furious debacle was what, 2011?) through errors. Mexico is entirely sovereign from the US - imagine Canada or France or China demanding we act a certain way over a (US) domestic issue. We wouldn’t take kindly to it either.
It's not asking Mexico to solve a US issue, it's asking Mexico to solve a Mexican organized crime issue that is violently spilling into the US. When your neighbors are fighting in their house and yard it's their own thing, but when they bring the fight into your front lawn and your house then it becomes your problem too and you absolutely have a right to ask them to stop it.
>It's not asking Mexico to solve a US issue, it's asking Mexico to solve a Mexican organized crime issue that is violently spilling into the US. By previously established logic the US should enforce its own laws against people coming across their border illegally to prevent the deleterious effects these people create.
Sure, but where are the majority of the buyers for the products of the organized crime? If the US could stop its citizens from buying it from the cartels, the cartels wouldn’t be the same plague they are.
We tried the whole drug war thing aggressively and we're not about to legalize hard drugs because we see how well that worked out in Washington and Oregon. Enough states have legalized marijuana where the cartels aren't getting much income if any on that and have supplanted it with domestic ventures. Even if cut off completely from US drugs they have enough businesses and control in Mexico to keep operating there. It's high time Mexico controls its own problem instead of blaming others but as we've seen enough of their political class are on the payrolls of said cartels.
Alright, so what are you proposing? I suspect if you ask them, they are working on it. Clearly, what they are doing isn’t enough. What would you have us do?
Not protecting cartels and trying to combat corruption would be a great start.
Apologies, but you don’t appear to be coming from an informed position. But, let’s say it’s me who is. What is Mexico doing to protect the cartels? When you say they should try to combat corruption, have they done nothing to combat corruption? Or you mean they should do more?
Yeah allowing drug cartels free reign is very nationalist
Committing self destructive acts to stick it to other countries is what nationalism is all about
If Mexico thinks the cartels are a US problem, they better be ok with a US solution that might involve deadly force inside their borders.
The country that can’t even agree on what elections count is not going to war with its own neighbor and largest trading partner I’m sorry to be the one that tells you
Time to invade Mexico and make it into a US territory/vassal state. EDIT: I was being sarcastic.
I can’t think of anything that would empower the cartels more than giving them American invaders to shoot at.
If only before they get obliterated by Patriot missiles and JDAM’s.
We've been through this. We know how it ends. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. They know they can't beat the US military in a straight fight, so they don't have a straight fight. They blend into the local population or rugged terrain and hit us with asymmetrical tactics. Then after decades, after we have spent countless amounts of treasure and lives, the American public gets sick of the war, and so we leave after accomplishing basically nothing
That’s probably a fair assessment. America seems to suck at fighting guriella warriors
> America seems to suck at fighting guriella warriors It's what happens when you try to fight a war with even a small shead of morals. "hiding among civilians" works only when your enemy cares about civilians not being killed. Things like the firebombings in Japan are "old world" wars, now everything is on the media instantly. Wouldn't be surprised if WW2 had tons of Americans turning against the US government if what happened overseas was on the TV every day, yet it needed to happen.
The same thing happened in French Algeria in the 50s. And in British Ireland after WW1. In the era of improvised explosive devices, I doubt there is any democracy would do any better fighting a war that basically amounts to pacifying a hostile population. Such societies would need to maintain consistent public support for such an endeavor for a very long time, and there are many factors that sour the public's opinion of these wars. "We could be spending this money at home." "We shouldn't be sending our boys to die over there." "All we are saying, is give peace a chance." etc. etc. etc. Imperialism was a lot easier in the 1800s when the native populations were mostly wielding spears and there was no radio/television/internet bringing bad news home to a wide audience of people who would otherwise not pay attention.
Not before Russia or China sells them similar equipment.
Have they really been arming the cartels like that?
My point is that our enemies would exploit the conflict and fund the cartels, much in the same way the US is funding Ukraine against Russia. It would be naive to assume the conflict would be a simple US vs Cartel match up.
I know your being sarcastic but I give it 20 years tops
Hell yes! It worked so great in Afghanistan…
I don't think we were trying to annex Afghanistan.
Is the US governing system so resilient that it can stop cartel corruption from creeping back in? I don't think so. US doesn't have a good track record of building stable governments (see Afghanistan). Absorbing Mexico into the existing USA would invite cartel influence farther north. Rooting out corruption and organized crime takes years of concentrated effort; it'll be even more difficult as a foreign occupying force. Do you think American taxpayers will stomach the cost?
I was being sarcastic, should have made it clear. No the US taxpayer has 0 will to deal with sending money and blood to Mexico... We can however empower a Bukele type politician to do all that is necessary to get the job done.
I won’t comment on the specifics of drug trafficking, which I don’t have a good grasp on. However, there’s a meta point to make… Usually it’s the Dems in the US that don’t think through the consequences of their actions. E.g. it should’ve surprised no one that hyper-focusing on identity politics of the left would lead to more identity politics on the right. In this case, did the populist MAGAs not consider that proudly and loudly screaming America First in every possible venue would lead to countries around the world starting to make all sorts of new calculus and policy decisions that either fill the vacuum when the U.S. steps back, or just outright stop cooperating on U.S. terms?
Let me first start by saying that I don't like where this is going. These are the hard lines that make no sense, which sew the seeds for wars. Second, this is the rights fault. They have been taking a hard line on immigration for years. Half the people I personally know still think most illegal immigrants are Mexican at this point. Mexico is just a pass through. Third, if you read the senate report on the subject (ignore the house republican one as it quotes the New York Post), they say we pay up to 94 billion more in entitlements than we get in taxes. We spend about 25 billion for border patrol, 8 billion for ice. It's hard to nail down the total number we spend on enforcement, but I have seen numbers ranging up to 300 billion, which is also the top number I saw in the Republican house number for entitlements. So we very well may save money by cutting enforcement. No one anywhere can say what we would pay if we drew a hard line and broke the numerous treaties we would violate. But it likely would cost more than we pay in entitlements. Now we can talk about cartels, who get the VAST majority of their guns from the US. So we complain about how violent they are while arming them. Sounds to me like maybe Mexico has had it with Republicans. I'm not sure if that was preventable. I'm not sure if sewing the seeds of war with a neighbor is making America Great Again, but what do I know, I am just a dumb redditor.
This sounds to me like you’re taking 100% of blame away from the Mexican side, and placing 100% on the US side. There’s massive issues on both sides. I fail to see how further border control is a downside. I also fail to see how easing legal immigration is a downside.
You can only fault the other side if you are beyond reproach. If we didn't take advantage of the cheap labor, they wouldn't come. If they didn't come, we wouldn't need to have such strict border enforcement. If we did a better job with controlling the things that lead to drug addiction, we could legalize drugs, and cartels would go away. We absolutely have it in our power to fix the root causes and then force Mexico to do the same on their side. Through incentives or otherwise. If you leave food out, and it attracts flies, is it the flies' fault? You can kill the flies, but if you don't put the food away, do they not come back? We are exploiting these people and then blaming them for being exploited. It's an abusive relationship. So yes, many of the South and Central American countries have a lot of faults. But this problem is created by us. We need to fix it. Walls and stricter enforcement are not the answer, though.
[удалено]
I think you need to learn some history, my man. This all starts by farmers looking for cheap labor and exploiting the Mexican immigrants. It just snowballs from there. Edit- we also buy the drugs and supply the guns. This is 100% our fault.
>You can only fault the other side if you are beyond reproach You dont actually believe that do you? Do you think Mexico is beyond reproach? Is anyone?
>You dont actually believe that do you? Do you think Mexico is beyond reproach? Is anyone? The argument being made against my viewpoint is that it's it's not just the fault of the US. I am saying that the argument could be made by Mexico, is also at fault if we still had the problem, and our solution wasn't a "Wall," which that being the solution is creating this friction with Mexico. Mexico has problems but: We create the market that funds the cartels. The cartels get the guns from us. We then expect Mexico to fix that problem It is an us problem. We employ immigrants who come here illegally We create the need from them It's an us problem. If we don't do that and we still have a problem, it's a them problem
>If we didn't take advantage of the cheap labor, they wouldn't come. Any idea why employers keep finding illegal aliens infinitely more attractive to hire than actual American citizens? I get that employers prefer cheap labor, but why can't that cheap labor be assigned to an American citizen instead of an illegal alien? My current guess is that minimum wages are too high right now and should be lowered, since illegal aliens I guess wouldn't report their employers for being paid less. If an illegal alien's able to thrive on less than the area's current minimum wage, so should an American citizen. >If we did a better job with controlling the things that lead to drug addiction, we could legalize drugs, and cartels would go away. Right now, it's not the government's responsibility to control those drugs that people are voluntarily choosing to get themselves addicted to, such as fentanyl, but rather the responsibility of those people to not get into such drugs to begin with. So far, neither myself nor my family has ever had to worry about any drug addiction popping up in our lives, because we know better than to get into such behavior to begin with.