Why aren't the Border Cartels treated as terrorists?

This is what I would do...

 

If you believe the reports, little if at all. The law of supply and demand sees to it.

 

No, it should be a lot less, given the results. It's about $44 billion too much, give or take a few billion.

Because as explained on the first page - the drug war has been militarized for decades and it has had no effect, because, as explained on the first page, jailing or killing cartel leaders or stopping supplies only means that others come to take their place, with less competition than before - all the while driving up the price of drugs and making them richer. I'm not sure how many more different ways it can be explained to you. I hate to break this to you, but putting Al Capone in Alcatraz didn't stop liquor consumption in the US.

It obviously isn't helping - this is very problematic for you in that you're the one who is making the analogy that we need to act the same way in Latin America that we do in Afghanistan.

 

They have to an extent. And no one is talking about occupation - you could much more viably following the Pakistan model since these countries are friends and actually are begging for the help. As with Pakistan, the drug lords have resources and connections within government, so just relying on US providing intel and limited combat resources doesn't really do a lot of good. For example, if the US had some free reign in Mexico as they do in Pakistan, you could create a climate of fear for drug lords. Terrorists are willing to give up a lot of luxuries and live in secret because they are convinced of their religious cause. Drug kingpins, not so much - they want money and power, and you can't have any of that if you know that if you ever slip up even once, a cruise missile may arrive your doorstep any second.

I'm not saying this is the right solution or even that it's viable (Mexico and other drug-cartel infested countries may not want this, for example) - but the drug war has not remotely been managed like the terrorism war. We know exactly where crop fields are - and could find a lot more if you used the right resources - and could obliterate a lot of bad guys and a lot of product if we treated the war the same as the war on terror, which is essentially "we're going to do this in your country to protect ours. deal with it." As it is, the drug war is more of a sustained inefficient budgetary expense instead of anything actually trying to eliminate the problem.

 

News Flash:

If they haven't already made the choice, they will. Prohibition guarantees that they will make the choice earlier.

 

Did you just honestly propose the US should attempt to recreate its uber-dysfunctional relationship with Pakistan? Probably the most epic fail it has had in any relationship in the last 50 years? And furthermore, it implies that the US approach to Pakistan, has been successful in stopping militancy - my god, I don't even know where to begin. Mexico and Colombia have been far, far more successful in killing and imprisoning drug barons than Pakistan has been with stopping militants and terrorists- it's not even remotely, remotely, remotely close.

Uh....we've been trying to eliminate the product for years. It's called Plan Colombia. Likewise the Colombian gov't has been openly fighting (and actually even winning) a ground war (this time with FARC, who replaced Cali, who replaced Medellin - get the idea?) for decades and it still hasn't made a dent here (or in MExico).

The problem with eliminating supply is that you only need about a dozen truckloads of coke and you've supplied the US for years. iThe only way you could blow it all up in an efficient fashion would be some form of WMD (really, you'd have to napalm/agent orange/nuclear bomb/etc a few thousand square miles of territory, causing a humanitarian and ecological disaster of epic proportions). And you're mad because I'm rejecting this as silly? Next time I start a "hey, let's solve unemployment by blowing up a neutron bomb in Cleveland" thread you better promise not to laugh.

Listen Major - I get it, the honorable vulcan in you is peeved that I dismissed a silly idea from somebody without going through the skull-numbingly boring task of patiently explaining facts on inevitably deaf ears and went right to pointing and laughing. Objection duly noted. But...come on, you're better than this. We know that 1. Drug cartels and terrorist organizations are fundamentally different (the fact that one is part of a trillion dollar or so industry is the most fundamental) - any college graduate should be able to recognize this - I know that you do. 2. the US and other countries have expended hundreds of billions in attempting to eliminate drug traffickers from the supply side, including the use of military force - with little to no effect (save making the surviving traffickers richer - thanks guys!). Those are the facts.

 

Too much money.

 

I have stated why - several times over. And believe me it s not as if I have access to a special storehouse of knowledge on this that I am deigning to share with you - its all public record (mexicos miltary assault on cartels and the futility thereof, plan colombia, the economics of drug trafficking - etc), hence my exasperation.

You meanwhile are on page 2 of your own thread and the best backing you can summon come from a goofy 20 year old paperback and dittoing some inapt hypotheticals by another poster. ( I still can't believe he mentioned Pakistan....wow)

 

Well, Sam has a point despite his less than polite tonality.

Simply killing off the cartels only makes the remaining cartels that much more powerful and lucrative. And, just like terrorist cells, cartels are not exactly well marked so there would be a lot of civilian deaths in any sort of operation. Not that the US really cares about that, but it might be harder to justify to a wider audience than, say, terrorism. In reality, it's all moot, as the US government does not really give two ****s about the drug trade at all, outside of how to make money off of it.

Which brings us back to my previous post in this thread.

 

The depth of your denial is amazing. Every single time we have ramped up the War on Drugs, all we have done is increase violence, increase profits going to criminals, and reduce the civil liberties of Americans. It is a historical fact and I, for one, am not willing to make it worse.

The law of supply and demand is in effect no matter how much we fight against it. In fact, the more we fight against it, the bigger the backlash will be.

 

It's dysfunctional if the goal is good relations with Pakistan - but honestly, the US doesn't care much about that. We have two primary goals: (1) Pakistan's government not being toppled by extremists that take control of the nuclear arsenal and (2) free reign to do whatever the hell we want there. So far, we've managed to pull off both of those reasonably well.

No it doesn't - it implies that the US approach has been successful in affecting and disrupting AQ's operations. The biggest problem with the terrorism war is that killing terrorists can breed more terrorists. Killing drug dealers doesn't breed more drug dealers - someone will come in to replace the dead ones, but you're not multiplying the problem through the act of actually taking them out. And, in general, the ones that replace the powerful will be weaker (at least initially). So the biggest weakness to our approach on terrorism is not even a negative in the war on the drugs.

Yes, but all have been pretty mediocre at best. That's the whole point - our biggest successes have come when we haven't relied on the other countries and inserted ourselves directly into the situation. That's one of many key differences in the two wars - terrorism, we do a lot more of that than we do in the drug war. It's a lot harder to buy off the American military than it is to buy off Pakistani or Mexican officials.

Yes, the whole point is that we've been fighting this war inefficiently. The question didn't suggest that we aren't fighting a war on drugs - it's that the approach we used hasn't worked. Your statement confirms that but doesn't at all make the case that a different approach would or wouldn't work.

Except supply & demand still applies. You don't have to blow it all up - if you blow up a chunk of it, it will raise prices and reduce demand.

Actually, I think you dismissed an idea without actually looking at it. You incorrectly assumed what his argument was and failed to actually realize that we don't treat the drug and terrorism wars similarly. As such, you've made a bunch of arguments, none of which actually really address the topic he suggested.

Certainly true - but that doesn't suggest that you can't take some of the things have worked in one and apply them in effective ways in the other. For all the criticism of the war on terrorism, it's had its share of successes and has constantly changed and adjusted over time. The drug war is a far less creative war, and a lot of the money is spent on annual, repetitive nonsense.

Agreed - which just demonstrates that the way we've pursued those goals has been ineffective. Money is not a useful measure of effectiveness - we've spent far more money in Iraq than Pakistan, but we've been far more effective in the latter. That's exactly the point the original poster was making. The question is whether a different approach - not more money - could work better. Nothing you (or anyone - including me) has said really addressed that issue. I do think it's something worth discussing, because I think everyone would agree that the current strategy is a dismal failure. The idea that "our approach to cut supply has failed, thus all approaches to cut supply are doomed to failure" is silly.

 

But he's not necessarily suggesting ramping it up, but changing the overall strategy.

This is true to a limited extent, but the idea that you can't affect demand by constraining supply is not true. Take abortion as an example. By your standard, no matter how many laws are put in place to restrict abortions, people will still get them. If that's the case, why do we care if pro-lifers put all sorts of restrictions in place? It shouldn't affect demand or supply, right?

But the reality is that by limiting availability, you take away options for some people and you increase cost or reduce the ability of people to get abortions. If you're pro-life, you support this because it cuts abortions. If you're pro-choice, you're against this because you believe everyone should have equal access to abortions. But regardless of where you stand on the policy, everyone agrees that it affects the market for abortions.

Government policy can undoubtably affect - good or bad - the drug market. The question is whether (1) what we're doing right now is helping and (2) whether a different approach could help. In his case, he's asking specifically whether adapting the war on terrorism strategies to the drug war could be effective.

 

Just to be clear Sam, the Tom Clancy book was not "Stupid" come on now...



DD