Beyond the ‘war on drugs’ catch-phrase, anyway…

It’s a law-enforcement problem, not a military one.

The existence of the Mexican cartels is a matter of geography – wherever the border is, there will be smuggling cartels just south of it. It’s geography combined with economics.

The problem with calling it a ‘war’ is that this implies there’s a military solution – there isn’t. Do we invade an allied country because of the operations of criminal gangs? Is the Army really the right tool to use against what essentially adds up to plain old organized crime?

The answer to the above, IMHO, is NO, and NO.

Mexico isn’t at war with the US. The drug cartels aren’t even ‘at war’ with us – although it could be argued that they are with the Mexican government.

This is a law-enforcement/crime problem, not a military one. It’s not a war.

AQ is actually engaged in a conflict with us, that has discrete military goals on both sides. AQ wants to force us out of the middle east, we want to destroy AQ.

Further, there are actual military operations that can and have worked to dismantle the AQ organization and defeat their forces in the field.

To contrast, the cartels aren’t in this for political, ideological or military goals – they’re in it for profit – just like any other crime syndicate.

And just like any other crime syndicate, the tools available to law enforcement are quite adequate to deal with the situation.

For those of you calling it ‘war’, what would you have us do? Invade Mexico and blitz Mexico City like it’s Baghdad in 03? ‘Clear’ border towns like Afghan Qualat complexes?

Here’s the problem with a ‘military solution’ – the cartels don’t have any allegiance to ideology or territory, beyond what is profitable for their illicit business enterprises. Wherever the US border is, the cartels will set up just below it, in whatever is the strongest position from which to engage in smuggling & related crime.

It’s a police problem. Save the military for problems that lend themselves to a military (clear-and-hold/invasion) solution.

After seeing how well it doesn’t work in Afghanistan.

Also, the US doesn’t use ‘dumb’ mines except in Korea and Cuba – and that’s just because we planted the damn things long before we realized what a pain in the ass they are. Claymores are command-detonated – they need a man watching the mines, holding a wired detonator.

That also ignores the serious LOAC and police use-of-force issues involved with using mines in areas with heavy unarmed-civilian traffic.

The US military is not a defensive force at the tactical level… By doctrine, defensive operations are to be used only as a transition back to offense, not as a means in and of themselves.

Placing military forces on ‘defense’ – particularly border-guard duty – results in steadily deteriorating morale, degraded combat skills, and opens the door for corruption & graft.

If you want to see everyone worth retaining leave the service as soon as their contract is up, make their primary mission border-guard duty. You’ll keep the folks with too many years invested (the ‘PT Sock Inspector’ corps), and some of the new recruits… But most of your fighting troops will be gone faster than you can say ‘ETS’.

Nothing at all.

It’s a crime syndicate. Yes, they commit crimes in the US (the overwhelming majority against other cartel affiliates & criminals), but that doesn’t justify giving 20% of the defense budget to the border patrol.

If you want to deal with illegal immigration, use the existing law, improved IDs, and allow the IRS to audit/enforce employment law as well as the income tax (they already deal heavily with the required financial issues as part of tax enforcement).

Don’t spend another dime on the border.

As an added benefit, a demand-side/internal-security ‘attack’ on illegal immigration will reduce the traffic over the border to almost-exclusively drug-smuggling related actions – making it easier for the existing USBP agents to deal with the drug problem by removing the camouflage afforded by non-drug-related illegal crossings.

The military has no business getting involved in the border situation, unless there IS a civil war & we have to do another ‘Punitive Expedition’, Pershing/Patton style.

Demand-side is the way to go on immigration…

Unfortunately, we can’t quite get our self-control-deficient population to lay off the drugs, so we’re stuck tackling that on the supply-side.

It would probably cost as much – if not more – than operations in Afganhistan. The manpower and support infastructure required would be huge.

And we’d still fail.

Border-focused thinking is the one reason we haven’t made any progress on the issue of illegal immigration – it sets up an impossible-impasse between ‘amnesty now’ and ‘seal the border’ – neither of which are workable. Change ‘seal the border’ to ‘enforce the law inside the US’, and you’ll have a winning proposal.

Once you accept that the border will always be porous – as it has for our entire history due to the amount of border and the terrain involved, we can actually get to work on reducing illegal immigration and drug crime through interior enforcement.

Where the MX government puts on a show of trying to ‘enforce the law’, but generally fails gives up, and where the cartels don’t push back beyond their ‘zone’ simply because it provides them no advantage to do so.

Motivations are critical, and due to the fact that the cartels are purely profit-motivated, they won’t do anything that harms their collective profits. Provoking a civil war with the MX govt, or allowing terrorist groups that actively threaten the US (anti-Israel ones that haven’t bothered us since the 80s don’t count) to base/operate in their ‘AO’ would both be very bad for drug-smuggling profits (And would allow competing south and central-American cartels to steal their business).

So it won’t happen.

Because it’s all about the money.

There’s no enemy army, no hostile intent, no attempt to seize territory…

The thing is, I would personally be fine with every single immigrant presently here being here, IF ONLY they had all complied with the law & gotten the proper papers.

The problem to me, is entirely the ILLEGAL part and in no way the immigrant part.

The US needs the population that immigration provides & the economic activity it generates, we just need them to respect us enough to come here with papers.

So, the solution is not to call it an invasion & complain about immigrants, it’s to focus on the ILLEGAL part – to create a ‘secure society’ where only those who are here legally can participate in commerce, while simultaneously increasing legal immigration immensely, we’ll end the market for illegal immigrant labor (the ‘stick’ – use audits, smartcard-ID, and heavy fines/penalties – IRS style – to close off the economy to illegals), and our illegal population will self-deport, then come back legally (the ‘carrot’ – thanks to innocent-until-proven-guilty, if you leave & stop being here illegally, you can still come back with papers later)….

It’s a perfect solution for the problem – one that all but the most polarized partisans can agree on – one that doesn’t involve amnesty, and doesn’t waste trillions building a ‘maginot line’ on the border….