Why aren't the Border Cartels treated as terrorists?

Given how touchy and marginally effective extrajudicial killings are in the name of fighting people who want to openly murder American citizens, do you really want to ramp that up to include criminal gangs who are in essence just exploiting a free market imperfection-i.e the absurd notion that making drugs illegal will somehow help the majority of American citizens?

 

LOL...yes these 2 goals are what we are stuck with after Pakistan 1) built a giant nuclear arsenal in the first place despite US attempts to get them not to do so; 2) Exported nuclear parts and expertise to North Korea, Iran, and others with impunity and 3) managed to be (and continues to be) the number 1 sanctuary & protector for the biggest national security threat the US faces- all the while, accepting billions of dollars from us on the premise that this money would keep them from doing 1) 2) and 3).

Basically you're moving the goalposts to the "Mrs. Lincoln enjoyed the play" level. Just stop. Please. US-Pakistan relations are not a useful model for anything, other than how to spend billions of dollars in order to arrive at the worst possible solution.

No it just makes surviving drug traffickers richer and more powerful. This dynamic does not exist with Terrorism. This analogy is ridiculous because nobody ever really made a billion or even a million dollars exporting terrorism - it's not a very profitable industry. The incentive structure is light years different in economic terms but you are intentionally being blind to it..god knows why.

Mediocre? According to what measure? Conjecture and laziness? It's actually the exact opposite of what you say regarding this, especially when compared to the so-called war on terror. Hell, If the US had that level of success against Al Qaeda - we'd be dragging 72 oz big gulps onto airplanes with metal boots and matches by now.


The Colombian Gov't declared war on the Medellin Cartel & Escobar in 1992 - they sent in the Delta Force.

Result: He was dead by 1993. They no longer exist.

They then declared war on the Cali cartel and the Barranquila cartel.

Result: they no longer exist.

They then declared war on the Norte del Valle Cartel,

Result: they still exist, but most of its leaders in the last decade are now in jail or dead (and the ones in jail are in US prisons)

They then declared war on FARC and the various guerilla groups who went into that vaccuum

Result: They still exist, but Colombian government has had unprecedented success and pushed them back to a few small areas.


Now - can you tell if the successful elimination of drug producers in Colombia has had any effect further up the chain of distribution?

Do you also know that I can pretty much tell the same story in Mexico? The most dangerous cartels of the last generation have had all of their leaders either killed or eliminated - Tijuana, Guadlajara, Beltran Leyva - all smashed, which simply begets more.

It's really not that hard (even with Zetas and such) for the Mexican army to crush/apprehend/arrest druglords....they have regularly broken up cartel after cartel for years and arrested leader after leader.

The effect this has is of course to set off violent wars among the survivors,
involved.

You could not be mroe wrong in both theory and practice. A reduction of supply doesn't reduce demand, it merely makes the equilibrium price and quantity demanded higher...the demand curve stays in the same place, and even more profits flow to the remainig vendors, which makes them even harder to eliminate. And that is what has happened in the drug world many times over.

 

LOL it's a good thing - if your concern is having a less competitive market in drug distribution and to concentrate market power in certain firms..

Have no fear though, by making it even more lucrative, you'll encourage new entrants to drive the price back down, at least according to classical models.

IS your ignorance of the whole last 40 years or so of the war on drugs intentional or just happenstance? Because pretty much everything you proposes has been done, done, and done again - again, this is all public record.

 

Touchy and ethically questionable, yes. Marginally effective? We have no evidence one way or another there. Without knowing what the world would be like without those killings, the reality is that we have no idea if it's been effective agent of change or not. The criminal gangs also kill lots and lots of people - including Americans - and disrupt the safety and quality of life in the countries they thrive in, so they aren't just "free marketeers" doing their thing. They are, in many cases, mass murderers and arguably reponsible for as many or more deaths than many of the individual terrorists we routinely target.

All that said, my answer to your question is "I don't know." There are certainly negatives to any change in strategy - if there were a perfect strategy out there with no downside, there would be nothing to debate. The questions that have to be asked are whether the downsides are outweighed by the upsides of a potential new strategy, and similarly, whether removing the downsides of the current strategy is a net positive over the loss of the upsides of the current strategy. You can't just point to a negative and say "well, this makes it a bad strategy" without looking at the positives, along with the positives and negatives of what we do now.

If you start with the idea that drugs shouldn't be illegal, then of course any sort of war on drugs doesn't make sense. But not everyone actually believes that is the starting point. I think it's pretty clear that anyone that feels that way would be opposed to both the current strategy as well as any new military strategy.

 

This article seems like it would fit here.

http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/08/6814606-time-to-say-adios-to-mexico-travel-

Time to say adios to Mexico travel?

Mexico's drug war has claimed more than 34,000 lives in the past four years. Despite the increasingly bleak headlines that often mention shootouts, beheading and mass graves, Americans have continued to visit the troubled country -- until now.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that several tour operators and hotel chains have seen a decline in the number of Americans visiting Mexico. Travel Impressions, tour operator for American Express, told the paper that it sent 100,000 passengers to Mexico in 2010, but has seen its bookings for non-group travelers drop by 15 percent. Smith Travel Research, a firm that monitors hotel occupancy rates, says that stays in Mexico's mid-range chains are either flat or decreasing. Even the cruise industry has been affected: Disney Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean Cruises all canceled their service to Acapulco after two recent violent incidents involving foreigners.

In March, Texas state officials warned college students about traveling to the increasingly violent hotspots of Cancun and Acapulco, a move that frustrated tourism officials in Mexico. Rodolfo Lopez Negrete, the chief operating officer of Mexico's Board of Tourism, told Reuters on Wednesday that the warnings were "ludicrous" and "misinformed." Lopez Negrete was in Austin to meet with Texas state officials in an effort to convince them that it's safe to travel to many parts of Mexico.

The Texas warning read, "Our safety message is simple: avoid traveling to Mexico during Spring Break and stay alive."

In 2010, 107 Americans were murdered in Mexico, according to the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. State Department doesn't specify how many of those victims were tourists, but the number is double what it was before the drug war began.

In an interview with msnbc.com, Pablo Weisz, a security manager for the Americas for International SOS, said Mexico's worsening security situation has led the crisis and risk management company to deem parts of the country more dangerous. Mexico has long been rated by the company as a medium security risk -- by comparison, Norway's rating is insignificant and Iraq's is extreme. Recently, International SOS announced that the northern border states of Baja, Sonora, Chihuahua, and Guerrero are now high risk due to cartel violence.

In these states, Weisz might advise corporate clients and individual travelers to use secure transportation, travel only during daylight, never stop on the road and move in convoys. "If we’re to talk about Mexico in general," Weisz said, "the risks to travelers have not changed that much." Of the 107 American deaths, Weisz said he believes many of them were Mexican-Americans involved in the drug trade.

Even the safer parts of Mexico, however, can be dangerous for tourists. Mexico City, for example, is known for "express kidnappings," in which a thief poses as a legitimate taxi driver and proceeds to force the passenger to withdraw money from several ATMs, often at gunpoint. Petty and street crime can also be common.

Weisz recommends that tourists report their trip to the U.S. embassy in case of an emergency. He also says those traveling in the less dangerous areas of Mexico should try to schedule their flights so they arrive and depart during the day; take taxis only at official hotel or airport stands; go out in groups, avoid drinking excessively and drink only from beverages that must be opened in front of you; and never share too much information with strangers lest you tip off a potential thief to your whereabouts during your stay. If these guidelines seem disconcerting, Weisz said they're the same ones he suggests for traveling in more secure cities like Paris and Rome.

That may be, but Mexico ranks second only to India in the number of annual inquiries that International SOS clients and members make about security risks abroad.

"There's interest for a number of reasons," Weisz said. "If you're going to Afghanistan, you know it’s going to be a bad place. Whereas if you’re going to Mexico, there’s the importance of nuance and going past what the headlines are saying. It’s a huge country with very different security environments."

 

well, yes, thus why I don't understand why people want to ramp up the war on drugs. Yes, the cartels cause a lot of damage, but last I checked, they weren't intentionally trying to mass murder Americans.

Look, there's two ways you can go about this---

you can escalate, and get the cartels to intentionally target Americans (which they have not been doing up to now), not to mention Mexican citizens up in arms as well. Mexico would likely become a narco-state, since the military and the police are already somewhat corrupt-and now you're committing extrajudicial killings on their territory? Forget it. Calderon is a goner. Whoever comes next would probably be elected due to a strong anti-American position, and will probably be a radical of some kind.

or you can let the chips fall as they may and slowly legalize some of the product the cartels are moving, effectively undercutting them with the power of the free market. Prices will drop, and correspondingly, the incentive to commit murder will too.

I mean, for me, the first option is just looney tunes, especially considering how bad America has it in Afghanistan and Pakistan---does America really want that same scenario playing out in its' own backyard?

 

If anyone is interested, this is a good read....dated 06/2011

REPORT OF THE
GLOBAL COMMISSION
ON DRUG POLICY

http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Report

Initial intro....

 

Having the military begin to treat the War on Drugs as we have the War on Terrorism is "ramping up" the drug war no matter how you slice it.

Great example. When abortions were illegal in this country, women went to people with dubious medical credentials to have back alley abortions that killed, sterilized, and infected thousands. Despite the fact that the women and the abortion providers were risking jail time, abortions were available, though wildly expensive and dangerous. That is a fantastic parallel to the War on Drugs, which has inflated the profits made by criminal organizations while requiring that they dispense their own brand of "justice" to ensure those profits.

Because every single medical procedure done in this country should be performed by licensed personnel in a regulated facility. Similarly, every single drug ingested in this country should be regulated so that people know exactly how much of what substance they are using. Such regulations would minimize overdoses and remove criminal gangs from the distribution chain in favor of regulated distribution outlets.

Regulations do affect the law of supply and demand by shifting the curves and changing the equilibrium price. Prohibition ensures that the profits (which are made exorbitant by the criminalization of distribution) go to criminals rather than legitimate enterprises.

And I am saying definitively - NO. There are places in the world (China, for example) where drug trafficking gets you the death penalty and all you get is a trial in a kangaroo court. In Thailand in 2003-2006, they had death squads roaming the country killing suspected drug traffickers. However, you were still able to get all the drugs you could handle in Bangkok.

"Late on January 31, 2003, Boonchuay Unthong and Yupin Unthong
were shot and killed as they returned home with their son,
Jirasak, eight years old, from a local fair... Witnesses described
seeing a man on the back of a motorcycle, wearing a ski mask,
shoot Yupin, who was riding on the back of the family motorcycle.
Boonchuay exhorted Jirasak to run away. Jirasak hid behind a
fence and watched as the gunmen walked up to Boonchuay and
executed him with a shot to the head. Convicted for a drug
offense, Boonchuay had recently been released after 18 months in
prison. It was subsequently discovered that Yupin and he had been
placed on a government blacklist"
-- Human Rights Watch, "Not Enough Graves: The War on Drugs,
HIV/AIDS, and Violations of Human Rights," released July 8, 2004

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/345/thailand.shtml

 

Except that since Reagan ramped up the War on Drugs in the mid-80s in response to Len Bias' death, purity has increased and prices of drugs have dropped.

http://www.newsbatch.com/drug-pricechange.html

 

Blame Mr Webster.

 

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure:

 

If Reagan's crackdown was "kind of for show," I don't want to experience what it would be like for real. The problem is that we are dealing with humans, who will faithfully see to it that the laws of supply and demand are followed. See my discussion regarding the brutal death squads in Thailand, which didn't reduce drug use in that country at all.

Are you willing to go on record as saying you believe we should create extrajudicial death squads with the authority to execute people accused, but not convicted, of drug trafficking?

 

If they wanted to do drugs then they would have found a drug dealer by now. Its not that hard. If you mix yourself into the right social circles you could find a stable drug dealer within weeks.

It's not a matter of can or cannot. It's a matter of do they want to badly enough?

Like I said before, if somebody wants to do these drugs; then let them. No skin off my bones, is it any different from alcohol?

 

I could get weed from about eight different people, and it's not like I'm actually looking.

seriously, people are deluded if they think making drugs illegal makes it that much harder to get any.

 

Go back further....to when the US gov't paid Mexican farmers to grow opium to use for morphine in WWII. That's where you will find the roots of the modern cartels.