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2011-10-14 Home Front: WoT

Lawmakers suggest treating drug cartels as terrorist organizations

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Posted by Besoeker 2011-10-14 07:13|| || Front Page|| [11128 views ] Top

#1 I've seen this movie before.

...but drug gangs as well "are providing material support and assistance" to terrorist groups and sponsoring states

So we can treat Americans also as agents 'providing material support and assistance to terrorist groups' too? Does it cease being a 'police' action and become a 'war' action? The latter question crosses the authorization line for Posse Comitatus [that little post-Reconstruction act, intended to remove federal troops from polling places so that black could have their 15th Amendment rights abridged by the states, today construed as 'protecting' civil rights].

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-10-14 08:22|| 2011-10-14 08:22|| Front Page Top

#2 Agreed. What the cartels are doing is essentially an outgrowth of free market forces, which is far more potent than idealistic philosophy. Even Stalinist regimes have been unable to stop it, though they are willing to kill everyone involved with it.

Instead, what should be done is to send a message to the cartels of a "disconnected agreement", that though what they are doing is criminal, it is "just" criminal, so will be treated as such. Crime and punishment.

But if they fool around with terrorists, they will have left the realm of "criminal", and will be exterminated, not arrested. A death penalty for mere membership in their organization, with no one spared, and no appeal.

The logic being that *nothing* terrorists can offer them is worth this. And tacitly, if they inform on terrorists on their turf, it will earn them "brownie points" with the US government.

Posted by Anonymoose 2011-10-14 09:41|| 2011-10-14 09:41|| Front Page Top

#3 Does it mean a huge effort by the "intellectual" elites to argue that drugs are actually beneficent ("Religion of Peace" style)?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2011-10-14 10:05|| 2011-10-14 10:05|| Front Page Top

#4 Or we could, you know, treat them as what they are - criminal organizations willing to do anything for a price.

Let's hire them to whack the Mullahs.

Posted by mojo 2011-10-14 10:26|| 2011-10-14 10:26|| Front Page Top

#5 Perhaps an approach should be used such as that used against Escobar in Columbia. The war against Escobar ended on December 2, 1993, amid another attempt to elude the Search Bloc. Using radio triangulation technology provided as part of the United States efforts, a Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by Brigadier Hugo Martinez, found him hiding in a middle-class barrio in Medellín. With authorities closing in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Alvaro de Jesús Agudelo AKA "El Limón", ensued. The two fugitives attempted to escape by running across the roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but both were shot and killed by Colombian National Police. Some of Escobar's more memorable quotes:

* "I prefer to be in the grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the United States."
* "I'm a decent man who exports flowers.
"All empires are created of blood and fire.
* "Everyone has a price, the important thing is to find out what it is.
* "There can only be one king."
"Sometimes I am God, if I say a man dies, he dies that same day."
*"There are two hundred million idiots, manipulated by a million intelligent men."

Supply of drugs is going to have to be stopped. Also the demand characteristics for drugs in the U.S. will have to be altered. Our borders are going to have to be controlled. I read today that more than $300 million worth of pot was discovered in West Tennessee. It was a very elaborate set-up that suggested Mexican cartels.

Posted by JohnQC 2011-10-14 10:47|| 2011-10-14 10:47|| Front Page Top

#6 Supply & demand, JQC. Supply & demand.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2011-10-14 10:54|| 2011-10-14 10:54|| Front Page Top

#7 Maybe lawmakers are starting to see the threat. It's been brewing awhile.

Posted by newc 2011-10-14 12:14|| 2011-10-14 12:14|| Front Page Top

#8 I have no problem with treating drug cartels like terrorists. I remember the giant car bombs in Columbia being set off by the cartels.

Execute the growers
Execute the smugglers
execute the cartel members
execute the dealers

It will be bloody but it won't last long really. These guys are alot easier to find than other terrorists and when Cartels start being whacked by special operations teams, they will fold rather quickly.

Incarceration is NOT punishment.

Posted by Silentbrick - Halliburton Lost Drill Bit Division 2011-10-14 12:36|| 2011-10-14 12:36|| Front Page Top

#9 and then everyone who sells, uses or otherwise supports those who do is a terrorist too?

Posted by 21984 2011-10-14 14:54|| 2011-10-14 14:54|| Front Page Top

#10 Yes, pretty much. They make their own choices, and when they choose to support the cartels by buying their poisons, they are supporting them materially. To me that's no different than the ones that give the terrorist groups money and weapons.

Like it or not, drugs are illegal. That is the law of the land. We still haven't fought the war on drugs, we've simply been slapping it's wrist and whining about it. So the choice is either to actually fight it or just keep whining about it or surrender to it. And just like with government regulation of cigarettes, legalizing it will not make the cartels go away. The government will slap all kinds of sin taxes on it, driving the market back underground.

Posted by Silentbrick - Halliburton Lost Drill Bit Division 2011-10-14 15:44|| 2011-10-14 15:44|| Front Page Top

#11 Execute the growers
Execute the smugglers
execute the cartel members
execute their dealers

Many Indian tribes, some of them direct descendants of the ancient Aztecs, and their communities in the Mexican Sierras in Durango, Chihuahua, Sonora and Sinaloa states are forced to grow and process drugs under the threat of murder and rape. Many have already been murdered and raped, and their homes have been burned to the ground.

You gonna punish them again?

Many migrants from Central and South America are forced to mule drugs in under threat of murder and rape, and extortion against their families at home.

Does your solution apply to them as well?

Many Mexican cartels get their recruits from transnational/youth criminal gangs such as MS-13.

You gonna execute a 14 year old Mexican thug-to-be because of his poor life decision to join a criminal gang?

Posted by badanov 2011-10-14 16:34|| http://www.freefirezone.org 2011-10-14 16:34|| Front Page Top

#12 Whether it makes sense or not, drugs are illegal. That is the law of the land, enacted by misguided people who could not and did not foresee the consequences. We are still fighting the war on drugs after decades. And we've simply been pissing up a rope. So the choice is either to actually modify our approach or just keep losing and whining about it. And just like with government regulation of cigarettes, legalizing it will not make the cartels go away. The government MAY slap all kinds of sin taxes on it, driving the market back underground. But hopefully, even if they make this error, the trade will involve less violence and not be destabilizing to neighboring countries.

Posted by Hupailing Ebbuns 2011-10-14 16:46|| 2011-10-14 16:46|| Front Page Top

#13 And just like with government regulation of cigarettes, legalizing it will not make the cartels go away. The government MAY slap all kinds of sin taxes on it, driving the market back underground. But hopefully, even if they make this error, the trade will involve less violence and not be destabilizing to neighboring countries.

Horse pucky. The gangsters aren't going to go away and they aren't going to cede control of their cash crops. They will continue to butcher people to protect their revenues, and they will find more evil ways to make up any lost revenue.

Posted by mom 2011-10-14 17:28|| 2011-10-14 17:28|| Front Page Top

#14 You gonna execute a 14 year old Mexican thug-to-be because of his poor life decision to join a criminal gang?

If he chose to join a cartel and become a thug, bringing pain and misery to others.....HELL YES.

We are responsible for the choices we make, be they good or bad. We bombed the hell out of German civilians who worked or lived near munitions factories during WWII. Were they any less undeserving of their fate? No, but in the interest of stemming their nation's aggression, they suffered. This is not a perfect world and never will be as long as there are human beings involved in the decision making.

And honestly, I see no reason to appease the cartels and their 'victims' instead of making the hard and better choice to bring their evil to an end.

Posted by Silentbrick - Halliburton Lost Drill Bit Division 2011-10-14 18:34|| 2011-10-14 18:34|| Front Page Top

#15 The government MAY slap all kinds of sin taxes on it, driving the market back underground.

This. If you think the war on drugs is bad now, just wait till it's over.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2011-10-14 18:36|| 2011-10-14 18:36|| Front Page Top

#16 just plain stupid. Just like the rest of the war on drugs.

Posted by Ominous1 2011-10-14 21:07|| 2011-10-14 21:07|| Front Page Top

#17 John Dillinger was guilty of many murders, but it took a tax evasion charge to put him away.

The acts cited as justification for treating narco cartels as terrorists include bombings, abductions and political assasinations in Mexico. That's the tax evasion equivalent.

Look instead to reports from some time back that MS-13 mules are alleged to have brought at least one and probably more Hezb'allah sleeper cells across the Mexican border a while back. As the story was related in the press, the suspected cell disappeared into the hills north of Los Alamos.

Perhaps that story is apocryphal. Perhaps not. In any case the links between Islamicist terror groups and terror sponsors OTOH and the drug trade OTOH have been obvious for several years now.

The narcos now deploy .50 cal automatic weapons, effective body armor, military-grade night vision equipment and the equivalent of HUMVEES. They've begun using military-quality attack helicopers in their war with the authorities in Mexico. They've overflown our border with them, too. They've crossed into our territory, kidnapped or killed people here including US citizens, with impunity.

I don't think the issue here is really drug trade per se. Rather, it's the tight and effective alliance between the increasingly militarized narcos and the jihadis, stirred into a failing state to our south.

Posted by lotp 2011-10-14 21:08|| 2011-10-14 21:08|| Front Page Top

#18 Along these lines, from time to time I post the link to this study:

Street Gangs as Urban Insurgencies by Max Manwaring of the Army War College.

It predates the more recent surge in narco capabilities and violence, but it was prescient in challenging the idea that gangs just want to be left alone to deal drugs / have respect etc. As Manwaring points out, gangs inevitably move to create wider and wider zones which the civil authorities cannot control or protect.

So whether the narcos are "just businessmen" or something more, Manwaring suggests the effect becomes the same thing once they get sufficiently established - insurgency and the breakdown of civil order.

Posted by lotp 2011-10-14 21:19|| 2011-10-14 21:19|| Front Page Top

#19 John Dillinger was guilty of many murders

You mean Al Capone. John Dillinger was killed in Chicago in 1934.

Posted by Pappy 2011-10-14 21:41|| 2011-10-14 21:41|| Front Page Top

#20 Yup. Capone it was - thanks, Pappy.

Posted by lotp 2011-10-14 22:58|| 2011-10-14 22:58|| Front Page Top

#21 Execute...
execute...
execute...

Sounds rather like that scorched earth, destroy-the-village philosophy that caused such a stir in another thread.

Posted by SteveS 2011-10-14 23:43|| 2011-10-14 23:43|| Front Page Top

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