Thread: Mexican Narcoterrorism - an memo by Gen McCaffrey

Alright. Where are the world's largest arms dealers? Where are the world's richest wahabbists. Where is all of the world's heavy-duty dope. Helmand and Kandahar opium are a piss-ant's toss from Karachi, Gwadar, and Chabahar ports after passing through some pick-up truck lab times fifty or so. Money and guys flow from the emirates to Karachi ALL DAY LONG on planes and boats.

Holbrooke's comments about wahabbist money was a welcome start but go carry it through logically and connect the dots. About time we looked at the REAL JUNGLE of global narco guns and roses merchants of death terrorism-the Emirates, Kuwait, and the KSA-



S-2 op-ed for April.)

The most effective operations against the Medellin cartels took place when the Columbian anti-drug units "took the gloves off." It wasn't pretty, it wasn't legal, but it was incredibly effective after so many years of impotence against the cartels...and it led to the death of Pablo Escobar.

The Mexican cartels are no different. They have so much money they could burn half of it and still have too much. The only thing they fear is death. It's a war. Mexico needs to take the gloves off and out-and-out start killing Cartel leadership. Kill em, shoot em down, snipe em, blow em up, whatever. That is the only way you can win against the traffickers.

RS,

The most effective operations against the Medellin cartels took place when the Columbian anti-drug units "took the gloves off." It wasn't pretty, it wasn't legal, but it was incredibly effective after so many years of impotence against the cartels...and it led to the death of Pablo Escobar.

actually, escobar was hunted down mainly because a rival cartel, the Cali cartel, began to provide information on his whereabouts. upon the death of escobar, the Cali cartel took over many of escobar's old haunts. when the Cali cartel was destroyed in turn, the Norte Del Valle cartel took over. see the connection?

in fact, the colombian government's heavy use of vigilante groups and illegal methods led to another breakdown of social order ten years later as FARC and the various (some government sponsored, some not) paramilitaries began heavy fighting.

and as of today, columbia is still the number one exporter of cocaine. i don't think this is the model you want to follow.

Originally Posted by astralis

RS,



actually, escobar was hunted down mainly because a rival cartel, the Cali cartel, began to provide information on his whereabouts.

No, actually, it was airborne triangulation of cell phone calls in Medellin from Centra Spike to the Bloc de Busqueda that led to Escobar's death.

I was there.

So what would you suggest for the Mexican cartels? Legalize cocaine? Make them all corporate CEOs? Arrest them? Throw them in prison? Look what happened in Zacatecas last week. 53 cartel hitmen escaped. The warden and 40 guards implicated. How do you fight that depth of corruption?

I'm telling you, the cartels fear nothing except death. It is the only thing that stops them. They buy the police, the army, the judges, the politicians, the jailers...they buy them or they kill them. Plata o plomo.

It's terrorism. The good guys don't stand a sinner's chance in hell unless they address the problem tactically, as you would an anti-terror campaign.

RS,

It's terrorism. The good guys don't stand a sinner's chance in hell unless they address the problem tactically, as you would an anti-terror campaign.

addressing the problem tactically means you win tactical victories, not strategic ones. has the price of cocaine or marijuana increased dramatically since the deaths of escobar and countless other drug lords- even after "taking the gloves off"?

much more effective are long-term solutions, but no one seems to have interest in putting these into play. in fact, as the price of illicit drugs go up, so does the impetus to join in an ever more lucrative market.

That's true, but what are the "long term solutions"? Education? We've been educating our kids against drugs since Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" initiative 25 years ago...I don't know any school in the US that does not have an anti-drug education program. And still the terminus of cocaine transhipment remains the US market, and to a lesser extent, Europe.

Yes, it's insanely lucrative. As long as cocaine is addictive there will be a market for it and the cocaleros in Bolivia and Peru will continue cultivating it. I don't think it will ever be eradicated.

Lethal targeting of leadership and gunmen, however, is an effective way of spreading fear and insecurity, disrupting operations, making it a less attractive career choice. Dead men can't spend money.

RS,

That's true, but what are the "long term solutions"? Education? We've been educating our kids against drugs since Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" initiative 25 years ago...I don't know any school in the US that does not have an anti-drug education program. And still the terminus of cocaine transhipment remains the US market, and to a lesser extent, Europe.

i see only two real methods of slowing demand- either legalize drugs or enforce the death penalty for users. i don't think either is politically possible (or for the latter, legal).

the other method is to aggressively engage those countries in trade and development. for the most part, drug harvesting occurs when the central government is weak. help those countries centralize power. advocate free trade and trade growth- most people don't LIKE being in the industry, they just want its profits. this is more realistic but certainly not easy, either.

Lethal targeting of leadership and gunmen, however, is an effective way of spreading fear and insecurity, disrupting operations, making it a less attractive career choice. Dead men can't spend money.

i agree that lethal targeting would complement the second strategy. however, by itself it's a bandaid on a sucking chest wound. hell, in mexico even the deaths of drug lords have been turned into something glamorous and romantic- they've got narcocorridos for 'em now.

Originally Posted by astralis

RS,



i see only two real methods of slowing demand- either legalize drugs or enforce the death penalty for users. i don't think either is politically possible (or for the latter, legal).

I don't think these are politically possible either. The death penalty for users will never happen. Milton Friedman called for legalization years ago...Nobody who had actually spent years seriously studying possible ramifications, costs, etc., took him seriously. The consensus was it would be a public policy disaster.

Your other suggestion makes more sense. But even so, the degree of propping up you'd have to do to counter the influence of cocaine money and corruption might be prohibitive. In much of C and S America, governments are either too soft or too hard, from corrupt socialist regimes to brutal dictatorships. The pedulum swings. Neither one is ideal and middle ground is almost never found. The dictatorships have more success against drug traffickers, as you would expect, but they tend to use the same kind of brutality against their political opponants. The socialists, like Chavez, for instance, spend more time looking the other way if not actually in collusion with the traffickers. (Drug flights between Venezuela and Haiti are up 167% from a few years ago.)

Considering the enormous difficulty, Mexico's actually been doing a pretty fair job fighting the cartels. I don't think it will succeed without our help. By "help" I mean more trigger-pullers who know their stuff and who can't be bought and UAVs with strike capability. Nothing like a few RQ-1s with Hellfire payloads on station to keep these murdering bastards looking up.