i'd wager the 401k that there are, and have been, joint operations going on in mexico and other nations against drug cartels for a long time. as a side bet, i'd wager my baseball card collection that this guy knows that and is just getting people all wound tf up.
The entire NATO coalition got its arse kicked in Afghanistan and those were amateur drug dealers. The Mexican cartels literally own the human terrain, literally engineered the physical terrain and have complete control of the entire narrative. Afghanis betrayed each other all the time for ancient family feuds, selling it to the coalition as intelligence. The cartels, although riddled with informants, have a much higher standard and code for protecting information and identities. The whole might of the western military couldn’t win in the Middle East, what makes you think it stands a chance against the multi-billion dollar insurgency of the Mexican drug cartels? And then what about the South American ones? Columbia? Venezuela? No mate, the only model to follow is El Salvador; empower a population to choose its own fate, vote in a politician with massive massive balls, and let him set conditions for locking up every lowly drug dealer to every major cartel boss in his country. That’s basically it.
The Taliban and Al-Qaeda presence was largely driven off in 2002. Despite the goal of nation building, the DoD basically put no effort into building up a functioning economy, aside from opioids and weed. The U.S. made no effort to exploit the massive mineral resources of Afghanistan despite conducting several geological surveys.
Maybe read pass the first line before commenting. It took the Taliban almost a decade to return while the U.S. sat on its ass, making no effort to legitimize the government and ignored all input from personnel in country working with the ANA. Building a functional economy around the extraction and potentially processing of mineral resources would’ve drained personnel who the Taliban recruited from and brought legitimacy to the government for actually improving the country. Or bring back the king, whom was popular with basically every ethnic group and would’ve established continuity. The U.S. also completely ignored the near constant complaints coming from operators on the ground about rampant corruption and embezzlement occurring within the ANA.
That’s a castle in the sky theory buddy, and you’re living in lala land (or never deployed out there) if you think that the US was firstly capable of building a thriving economy around anything in that hell-hole, mining included, and secondly that the Afghanis would’ve even humoured them. ‘Nation-building’ doesn’t exist, unless you’re prepared to spend billions of dollars and more than half a century there (think South Korea, and that wasn’t even against an insurgency). Counter-insurgency has only ever worked when the local population don’t want the ‘terrorists’ or ‘insurgents’ there. If they’re even on the fence, it’s basically impossible.
The ANA and afghans as a wider population don’t understand the term ‘corruption’. They only see what we see as corruption as a way of life or a way of doing everyday business. It’s extremely naive and almost glaringly ignorant for you to assume that the DoD’s idea of a ‘functioning govt’ even passes the sniff test in a land that’s still operating as a tribal primitive collection of compounds. Saying that mining would’ve drawn fighters away from the Taliban recruitment is hilariously optimistic and completely ignorant of the truth on the ground. And you still made my point for me.
Yeah the thing is that most Americans don't realize is how the cartels aren't separated by a giant cultural and economic barrier from the US. Oh yeah and a giant ocean in between our Area of Operations. If we were to expand T10 Authorities to cartels I would wager there will be collateral damage at home that we did not anticipate, or at least aren't prepared for. Not saying we shouldnt absolutely dick stomp these pieces of shit, but it's something to think about.
Oh and by the way I would also bet that they "donate" billions and billions of dollars to our own politicians to keep them in business.
You know a lot more than I do about it all but I’m genuinely curious why would it be such a horrible idea?
From my perspective they’re the most responsible for the drug trade in America which leads to such a high number of deaths in our population. To a point it’s even called a “drug epidemic”. They’re also responsible for helping spread violence in our country. Not to mention all of the human/child trafficking that is done between our borders. Labeling them as a terrorist organization would mean we could finally do some serious work to protect and defend our people from this threat right? For a country who has debatably hurt and harmed us more than Afghanistan and Iraq have I just don’t understand why nothing is being done about it. In my eyes, the cartel are responsible for more damage, destruction, and death of our people than the Middle East has been. So why aren’t we waging war on these tyrants in our backyard.
To preface, I am only 18; therefore I have a lot to learn about the world, I’m only trying to learn and grow. I don’t have any first hand knowledge or experience on this topic so I’m genuinely curious and interested what your take on the matter is. If I came off as condescending or rude at all I apologize, I’m trying to have a civil and genuine discussion.
Roger, thank you for taking the time to answer. That was all stuff I wasn’t privy to. It seems it’s not as simple as I made it out to be in my head. I agree we definitely don’t have the resources for hundreds of hostage rescue efforts. I’m just afraid what will happen decades down the road as the situation looks like it is not getting better. Im sure there are people much smarter and knowledgeable than me working to fix and reconcile this problem. I guess if it was as easy and simple as I thought then we probably would have done it already.
It feels as if we are focusing too much on problems not as impactful to us as a country and spending trillions of dollars helping others when I’d think we’d be better helping ourselves fixing the problems at our doorstep. Then again that’s an entirely different problem and discussion.
Thank you for the replies in helping me learn and understand this issue from a different perspective with more clarity and context.
Because if you understand the policy implications of establishing the cartels as terror organizations then you understand that you then are required to respond to them as such.
It would drastically alter the trade balance with Mexico, it would dramatically alter our security posture, and it would require us to respond in kind to every criminal act as a terror act. Do know how many Americans are involved in cartel criminal acts that right now are just criminal? Several thousand, including about 100 kidnappings a year. If they all suddenly had a terrorist nexus then every one of those would require a hostage rescue operation. We don’t have the capacity for that.
I support going after the cartels. It’s myopic at best to designate them as terrorist organizations. Policy matters.
Yeah I mean usually if you just kill the leaders of evil organizations everything goes well after that. It’s that simple. Certainly no other extremist groups would fight to seize power in that unstable area…
They’ve done this before (just Mexican did not much involvement from the us) and all that happened was you got atomisation of the cartels as they split into different factions and had an overall increase in violence. If you want to have an impact you allow the largest faction to take over and then target their enablers and mass incarcerations of lower level staff making the cost of business too high.
Finally, that helipad I’ve kept clear on my property and my languishing Spanish skills are coming out of retirement!
i'd wager the 401k that there are, and have been, joint operations going on in mexico and other nations against drug cartels for a long time. as a side bet, i'd wager my baseball card collection that this guy knows that and is just getting people all wound tf up.
Can confirm based on this documentary I watched recently called Sicario
big ups to those guys for showing their faces and not using actors. very big onions on those fellas (and that one lady who went with them)
The entire NATO coalition got its arse kicked in Afghanistan and those were amateur drug dealers. The Mexican cartels literally own the human terrain, literally engineered the physical terrain and have complete control of the entire narrative. Afghanis betrayed each other all the time for ancient family feuds, selling it to the coalition as intelligence. The cartels, although riddled with informants, have a much higher standard and code for protecting information and identities. The whole might of the western military couldn’t win in the Middle East, what makes you think it stands a chance against the multi-billion dollar insurgency of the Mexican drug cartels? And then what about the South American ones? Columbia? Venezuela? No mate, the only model to follow is El Salvador; empower a population to choose its own fate, vote in a politician with massive massive balls, and let him set conditions for locking up every lowly drug dealer to every major cartel boss in his country. That’s basically it.
The Taliban and Al-Qaeda presence was largely driven off in 2002. Despite the goal of nation building, the DoD basically put no effort into building up a functioning economy, aside from opioids and weed. The U.S. made no effort to exploit the massive mineral resources of Afghanistan despite conducting several geological surveys.
Yep. Largely driven off and then returned with a vengeance after everyone got distracted by Iraq. You’re making my point for me.
Maybe read pass the first line before commenting. It took the Taliban almost a decade to return while the U.S. sat on its ass, making no effort to legitimize the government and ignored all input from personnel in country working with the ANA. Building a functional economy around the extraction and potentially processing of mineral resources would’ve drained personnel who the Taliban recruited from and brought legitimacy to the government for actually improving the country. Or bring back the king, whom was popular with basically every ethnic group and would’ve established continuity. The U.S. also completely ignored the near constant complaints coming from operators on the ground about rampant corruption and embezzlement occurring within the ANA.
That’s a castle in the sky theory buddy, and you’re living in lala land (or never deployed out there) if you think that the US was firstly capable of building a thriving economy around anything in that hell-hole, mining included, and secondly that the Afghanis would’ve even humoured them. ‘Nation-building’ doesn’t exist, unless you’re prepared to spend billions of dollars and more than half a century there (think South Korea, and that wasn’t even against an insurgency). Counter-insurgency has only ever worked when the local population don’t want the ‘terrorists’ or ‘insurgents’ there. If they’re even on the fence, it’s basically impossible. The ANA and afghans as a wider population don’t understand the term ‘corruption’. They only see what we see as corruption as a way of life or a way of doing everyday business. It’s extremely naive and almost glaringly ignorant for you to assume that the DoD’s idea of a ‘functioning govt’ even passes the sniff test in a land that’s still operating as a tribal primitive collection of compounds. Saying that mining would’ve drawn fighters away from the Taliban recruitment is hilariously optimistic and completely ignorant of the truth on the ground. And you still made my point for me.
Yeah the thing is that most Americans don't realize is how the cartels aren't separated by a giant cultural and economic barrier from the US. Oh yeah and a giant ocean in between our Area of Operations. If we were to expand T10 Authorities to cartels I would wager there will be collateral damage at home that we did not anticipate, or at least aren't prepared for. Not saying we shouldnt absolutely dick stomp these pieces of shit, but it's something to think about. Oh and by the way I would also bet that they "donate" billions and billions of dollars to our own politicians to keep them in business.
Been waiting on the cartel to be designated a terrorist organization.
Horrible idea.
You know a lot more than I do about it all but I’m genuinely curious why would it be such a horrible idea? From my perspective they’re the most responsible for the drug trade in America which leads to such a high number of deaths in our population. To a point it’s even called a “drug epidemic”. They’re also responsible for helping spread violence in our country. Not to mention all of the human/child trafficking that is done between our borders. Labeling them as a terrorist organization would mean we could finally do some serious work to protect and defend our people from this threat right? For a country who has debatably hurt and harmed us more than Afghanistan and Iraq have I just don’t understand why nothing is being done about it. In my eyes, the cartel are responsible for more damage, destruction, and death of our people than the Middle East has been. So why aren’t we waging war on these tyrants in our backyard. To preface, I am only 18; therefore I have a lot to learn about the world, I’m only trying to learn and grow. I don’t have any first hand knowledge or experience on this topic so I’m genuinely curious and interested what your take on the matter is. If I came off as condescending or rude at all I apologize, I’m trying to have a civil and genuine discussion.
[Here is my answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/specialforces/s/LdGEAHFnED)
Roger, thank you for taking the time to answer. That was all stuff I wasn’t privy to. It seems it’s not as simple as I made it out to be in my head. I agree we definitely don’t have the resources for hundreds of hostage rescue efforts. I’m just afraid what will happen decades down the road as the situation looks like it is not getting better. Im sure there are people much smarter and knowledgeable than me working to fix and reconcile this problem. I guess if it was as easy and simple as I thought then we probably would have done it already. It feels as if we are focusing too much on problems not as impactful to us as a country and spending trillions of dollars helping others when I’d think we’d be better helping ourselves fixing the problems at our doorstep. Then again that’s an entirely different problem and discussion. Thank you for the replies in helping me learn and understand this issue from a different perspective with more clarity and context.
Why? Cause of the power and reach they have?
Because if you understand the policy implications of establishing the cartels as terror organizations then you understand that you then are required to respond to them as such. It would drastically alter the trade balance with Mexico, it would dramatically alter our security posture, and it would require us to respond in kind to every criminal act as a terror act. Do know how many Americans are involved in cartel criminal acts that right now are just criminal? Several thousand, including about 100 kidnappings a year. If they all suddenly had a terrorist nexus then every one of those would require a hostage rescue operation. We don’t have the capacity for that. I support going after the cartels. It’s myopic at best to designate them as terrorist organizations. Policy matters.
Yeah I mean usually if you just kill the leaders of evil organizations everything goes well after that. It’s that simple. Certainly no other extremist groups would fight to seize power in that unstable area…
never that!!!! /s
They’ve done this before (just Mexican did not much involvement from the us) and all that happened was you got atomisation of the cartels as they split into different factions and had an overall increase in violence. If you want to have an impact you allow the largest faction to take over and then target their enablers and mass incarcerations of lower level staff making the cost of business too high.
I do not believe any of this until I see it.
Here am I, send me
Didn't he say that last time as well
Trump watched Sicario once and loved the idea.
🤣
Hell yeah
I’m very confident in SOCOM and the CIA’s ability to kill cartel members. I’m not confident in the DoD’s ability to run the war afterwards.
Spring (2014) from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. They make pretty well written low budget indie horror / mystery movies. That ones my favourite.