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tejohnso 6 hours ago [-]
So you're forced to join a gang and fight their rival gangs, or you form your own gang equipped with rifles and grenades ready to commit violence, so that you can fight against joining that gang, or any other gang. Either way you're in a violent gang.
I guess I'd rather have the state maintain a monopoly on violence.
inigyou 6 hours ago [-]
These gangs are states. We can tell this because they have monopolies on violence.
arjie 6 hours ago [-]
The entire reason there is any conflict there is a lack of a monopoly on violence… The monopoly part is significant. It’s not just “doing a lot of”.
threatofrain 6 hours ago [-]
I don't think you need total control, just enough so that you're the go-to party for diplomatic and military negotiations in the geopolitical region.
gibbitz 6 hours ago [-]
In this case it's like cable TV. Only not a monopoly if you look at the whole country...
psionides 5 hours ago [-]
Personally I would prefer no violence from either side…
ahartmetz 5 hours ago [-]
The state monopoly on violence (+ a judicial system) tends to result in a low amount of violence... at least intra-state. Wars are another matter. Notably, there is no monopoly on violence between states. States are allowed and somewhat expected to be violent psychopaths externally.
scarecrowbob 4 hours ago [-]
Internally as well, given what happens to any push back against law enforcement where I live- in the US, at least, if you try to defend yourself against state violence you'll be summarily executed in the street.
moralestapia 5 hours ago [-]
Personally, I would prefer 10B USD liquid and tax-free
cucumber3732842 6 hours ago [-]
The conflict isn't because of the lack of monopoly. The conflict and lack of monopoly are because whoever as the closest thing to a monopoly is doing such a bad job.
inigyou 5 hours ago [-]
So Russia isn't a state?
ifwinterco 5 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of when ISIS was at its peak a few years ago and the BBC and all other news in the UK would always prefix it with “the so-called Islamic State”.
Like… no, it was a state. It had borders, it had a monopoly on violence within those borders, it collected taxes, it provided some public services.
Whether it offended the BBC’s sensibilities or not, it was a state
BobaFloutist 4 hours ago [-]
Are you sure that the "so-called" was addressing the claim of statehood, and not of being Muslim?
zhoBEENG 6 hours ago [-]
You are completely correct. As much as many people don´t want to hear it, Mexico is a failing state. It´s extremely obvious when you are there that the United Mexican States lost most of the reins some time ago.
It started with the debt crisis, and its causes, but was definitively realized by 1994 when the Zapatistas took much of Chiapas.
Too much emphasis is put on the drug cartels alone, when the problem is much larger. I suspect by the end of the century maps will no longer show Mexico in its current form.
ASalazarMX 4 hours ago [-]
They are not states, but a tool of regional political groups. They do the illegal things politicians in power avoid if they want to maintain the facade. They don't have the monopoly of violence, they're intentionally allowed to act without serious retaliation.
Idk. I'd probably put it the other way - part of the state turned into gangs.
Most of the core leadership of major cartels who haven't been arrested were mid-level officers in the DFS (Mexico's version of Italy's SID and Turkey's MIT from Operation Gladio days).
And what is interesting isn't the narcos who are arrested and indicted by the DoJ, but those who are arrested and then let go.
The story of Salvador Cienfuegos is a good example of that - arrested by the DEA on drug charges that were sealed while being Defense Minister, but charges were dropped for diplomatic reasons [0] or the DEA's investigation into AMLO in the 2000s and 2010s that was eventually dropped [1]. Meanwhile, giants like El Chapo or El Viceroy were successfully extradited or in the case of El Mencho killed.
To me, it feels like "untouchables" like Cienfuegos, Adán Augusto López, and Marcelo Ebrard or established networks even above them are likely running the show.
Sort of like how the KGB broke bad in the 90s or the Turkish military in the 1980s-2000s or the KCIA before Korea democratized in the 1990s or how leaders in the vice industry in Thailand tend to be associated with military leadership or how both the IRA and Protestant paramilitaries turned into drug cartels in North Ireland.
I also don't think it's a party ideological thing - PRI, PAN, and now MORENA have the same mid- and upper-level people.
But further, perhaps our sense of morality atrophies when we concede the idea of just violence (just as in "justice") only to the state.
I presume those fighting the cartels might have more of a developed sense of civic pride and duty than anyone in a more stable place. Perhaps I'm wrong though
esseph 4 hours ago [-]
> But further, perhaps our sense of morality atrophies when we concede the idea of just violence (just as in "justice") only to the state.
> I presume those fighting the cartels might have more of a developed sense of civic pride and duty than anyone in a more stable place. Perhaps I'm wrong though
100%. You can either become familiar with violence and temper it, or you are simply subject to violence by anyone that wishes it upon you.
For most of the Western world we grow up as "house cats", but that isn't the case in much of the world.
monkaiju 6 hours ago [-]
Not sure its fair to equate a gang fueled by drug smuggling to a self-defense militia.
wmf 5 hours ago [-]
Without oversight, a self-defense militia may expand beyond its original scope in unfortunate ways. The history of the Italian Mafia can be instructive here.
bluefirebrand 4 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure that a self defense militia was the standard way that people would defend their farms and livelihoods against violent outsiders for the majority of human history
cwnyth 6 hours ago [-]
Apparently, words can just mean whatever people want, so long as it aligns with one's feelings or helps them feel superior to others.
tejohnso 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I guess "self-defense militia" aligns more closely with some people's feelings than "violent gang" does. To each his own.
eth0up 6 hours ago [-]
In case you need one, you have made a friend. Excellent comment, which fits the scene as might a custom tailored glove.
14 6 hours ago [-]
The reminded me of Johnnie Cochran "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit" slogan he used during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
esseph 4 hours ago [-]
That gang has international arms. They have logistics trains. They have industry analysts! Sometimes maybe they have Pay and HR issues. They're a global business with external trade agreements with elements in other countries. They lease other business services back and forth like B2B.
6 hours ago [-]
eth0up 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
inigyou 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
monkaiju 6 hours ago [-]
Oh yeah, you wont catch me defending the US government one bit.
What I'm saying is a group of people in a community taking up arms to defend themselves is not inherently the same as a drug cartel.
tejohnso 6 hours ago [-]
The only equating I did was to point out that either way you're stuck having to align with a group of people willing and ready to commit lethal violence with lethal weapons.
Use whatever words you want but I think that's clearly violent and it's clearly a gang, which by definition is "a group of persons working together" or even more specifically, "a group of persons working to unlawful or antisocial ends". In this case the newly formed gang is certainly unlawful.
unclad5968 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure that it's certainly unlawful to defend yourself against gang violence, but I'm not a Mexican lawyer. It's such an odd thing to say that people defending their homes are now a gang because they fight back against the cartel.
esseph 4 hours ago [-]
Laws != morality
esseph 4 hours ago [-]
> I guess I'd rather have the state maintain a monopoly on violence.
The OP is saying they want the state to maintain the monopoly on violence.
My counter to that argument is the very existence of the current Afghan government.
It's a "Are you sure you want that?" statement.
crypttales 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Dig1t 4 hours ago [-]
Mexico has gun laws which are significantly more restrictive than the USA. There is only one legal gun store in the country, they must all be permitted, calibers are limited, and only permitted within the place of residence. "Monopoly on violence" is an illusion that's propped up mostly by the culture of the people who live in a country.
Sweden's gun homicide rate has increased by 400% since 2010 due to nothing other than demographic change.
In the 1990s, I traveled into Tijuana from San Diego County a few times. We usually walked, because of reasons.
For people traveling north into the USA, the border checkpoint included long queues of vehicles and people alike, customs inspections, routine searches of everything, passport checks, and questions by actual Border Patrol officers.
Walking south into Mexico, there was a broad, unsupervised walkway and a one-way turnstile. Large signs read:
WELCOME
¡BIENVENIDOS!
NO FIREARMS
And that was it! We were in Mexico!
int0x29 6 hours ago [-]
These self defense groups sound great until you think about all the problems with vigilante groups. Also they have a history of turning into cartels.
That and all things being equal I suspect most of the people in these groups would rather not be fighting.
autoexec 6 hours ago [-]
It's not an ideal situation, but since the Mexican government refuses to do its job and protect their people and uphold the law what choice do they have?
Right now these people are just doing whatever they can to survive but it's just treating the symptom. The source of the problem is the Mexican government who is either incompetent or happy to take bribes to look the other way while their citizens are left the mercy of paramilitary gangs.
Thlom 6 hours ago [-]
What can the government do at this point? We are talking about criminal syndicates with basically standing armies. If the Mexican government goes to all out war it will lead to a humanitarian disaster.
autoexec 6 hours ago [-]
They should send in the army. How is what's happening there now not already a war and a humanitarian disaster? The only difference is that the civilians are the ones forced into fighting and they're having to buy their guns from rival gangs to do it. Actual soldiers with the firepower of the government should be doing the fighting instead of random farmers.
jordigh 5 hours ago [-]
Calderón did exactly that. Fought an all-out war with the cartels. 60,000 people dead and nothing changed.
autoexec 5 hours ago [-]
He fought a war against unsanctioned drug trafficking. Drugs are not an enemy you can defeat. He should have gone to war against the cartels, but then I guess that's hard to do when your Secretariat of Public Security is working for them. Either way, as with any war, deaths are to be expected. Freedom and sovereignty are usually considered to be worth the cost.
e40 6 hours ago [-]
What choice do they have?
This is not your usual vigilante group. This is a reaction to an overwhelming force of criminal gangs killing citizens and the government being powerless to stop them.
autoexec 5 hours ago [-]
> This is a reaction to an overwhelming force of criminal gangs killing citizens and the government being powerless to stop them.
Is the Mexican government, with their tens of billions in military spending, actually "powerless" to stop these gangs? I very much doubt it.
esseph 4 hours ago [-]
> Is the Mexican government, with their tens of billions in military spending, actually "powerless" to stop these gangs? I very much doubt it.
Then to be blunt, you don't know how a fucking thing.
The cartels have their own intelligent networks, anti-air missiles, RPGs and anti-tank weapons, encrypted radio comms and their own 5G/LTE networks. They have helicopters, armored vehicles, etc. In many cases they have the support* of the people.
* through fear, intimidation, coercion, social bonds, financial motivators, etc.
The cartels also have tens of billions.
autoexec 3 hours ago [-]
If the cartels had more military fighting power and training than the entire Mexican army, air force, and navy the entire country would have been overthrown by now. If Mexico's entire armed forces really are outgunned and outclassed then I guess the cartels should have it. They might as well take Canada too since their military is roughly as powerful as Mexico's and there's a long list of countries with far less military spending then Mexico they could consider invading since they are so unstoppable.
redwood 2 hours ago [-]
The strength of a military or militant organization is not a binary concept. It is context dependent.. a remote mountain area is the kind of place that the military you describe simply is spread too thin to have much coverage of. Sure they could go beat an insurgent in a single battle but that insurgent will dissolve into the hillsides and re emerge later..
aucisson_masque 6 hours ago [-]
What other choice ? Politics are yet to give a solution after decades of problems.
aucisson_masque 6 hours ago [-]
Mexico has been like that for decades, I believe it's top 1 priority for most Mexicans yet it's still not fixed. What gives ?
At some point when your government is so corrupt, you got to take weapon and organize yourself. It's sad.
rayiner 6 hours ago [-]
Many countries are effectively ruled by gangs and cartels. That’s why kings became kind of a big deal in Europe. The states monopoly on violence was solidified back the
autoexec 5 hours ago [-]
> At some point when your government is so corrupt, you got to take weapon and organize yourself. It's sad.
At that point you might as well point those weapons at the failed government that forced you to have to play soldier instead of protecting you. Not allowing your own citizens to be enslaved by roving bands of criminals is like the single most basic thing a country's government is for. Since the Mexican government has abandoned them and ceded control of that land to hostile armies I hope those poor farmers aren't still paying them taxes.
forinti 6 hours ago [-]
A characteristic of most of Latin America is that the Police and the Army were created to protect power, not the people, and there hasn't really been an effort to change the mentality.
gibbitz 6 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile in the US the laws are being changed to protect the wealthy, while the current administration is siphoning value of national assets into their own pockets. The poorer the country, the more likely this is to happen. I wonder how long it will take for warlords to set up shop in Kansas...
krapp 6 hours ago [-]
That's a characteristic of police everywhere.
burningChrome 4 hours ago [-]
>> Mexico has been like that for decades.
Back in the 60's and 70's my Dad worked or Lockheed Martin. He made frequent trips to Mexico to work with engineering teams there on projects he was working on. It only took him one trip to realize how corrupt the police were.
He had parked outside of his hotel with his rental car. Came out. It was surrounded by Policia. They told him he couldn't park here. "Sure thing, I'll move it and not park here again." "You don't understand gringo, you have to pay the parking fine now." He caught on, and asked how much it would cost to just park here, you know, rent this spot instead of paying their fine? The cops gave him an amount and he paid it and they left him alone the rest of the week he was there. He told me a bunch of other stories about the corruption there, not just the cops. It was pretty eye opening to hear some of these.
The corruption can't be fixed. Its engrained in the system. It was rampant fifty years ago, there is no fixing it - its completely normalized now. The cartels simply used the system against itself to gain total control and power.
redwood 2 hours ago [-]
Because of their neighbors to the north having an insatiable appetite and willingness to spend large amounts of money on illicit goods. Mexico should probably legalize and bring these into a regulated state of the United States would not allow it
hereme888 6 hours ago [-]
About 30% of Mexico is gang-controlled
Kalanos 6 hours ago [-]
the real war the US should be fighting
atmavatar 57 minutes ago [-]
There's no need to fight.
The proper solution is to end the war on drugs, allowing people to do what they will with their own bodies. Once people can legally buy their drugs, the cartels will starve.
Use the money saved from reducing our prison population by 75% to pay for widely-accessible treatment for addiction as well as mental health problems. Build more affordable housing so homelessness is less of an issue. As an added bonus: roll back the last half-century of disastrous trickle-down economics which gutted the middle class, so there's less incentive to start using in the first place.
Reminder: the Nixon tapes reveal that the war on drugs was started in the first place not to protect the public from harmful drugs but rather as a means to criminalize his political enemies (e.g., hippies and black people) in a way that couldn't be challenged in court on 14th amendment grounds.
The problem, of course, is those solutions are hard, it's a lot easier to get voters to root for building more walls and sending troops to kill more foreigners, and there's a lot of money to be made by the military industrial complex and private prison system by prolonging the problem.
autoexec 6 hours ago [-]
Why should the US be fighting Mexican gangs? Mexico should send their own army to fight the criminal gangs. If we want to send our army after gangs we have plenty of them right here in the US. We could start with the ones in our Sheriff's Departments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_in_the_Los_Angeles_Count...
themaninthedark 5 hours ago [-]
And then we would get to hear about American imperialism forever....
hereme888 6 hours ago [-]
Why should the US fight Mexican cartels? They have their own armies and plenty of ammo.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6 hours ago [-]
If you think the outputs of Mexican cartels stay in Mexico, you're severely underinformed. Do you know how many civilian deaths (to say nothing of human trafficking and more) are directly due to Mexican cartels?
The US absolutely has an interest in the destruction of Mexican cartels.
hereme888 6 hours ago [-]
I'm not uninformed about cartel drug manufacturing and resulting American deaths. That's why we had to seal the border, and we need to keep enforcing it. But to send troops into a country that denies their entry is another thing.
I don't mind bombing the cartels from a distance. I'd rather the U.S. continues to pursue diplomatic options vs. war.
seanw444 5 hours ago [-]
What's the difference between an American drone operator dropping a bomb on cartels in Mexico, and an American infantryman shooting at cartels in Mexico?
hereme888 5 hours ago [-]
Safety, law, and politics.
krapp 5 hours ago [-]
Also the cartels are funded and propped up by the CIA. We need them to destabilize the Mexican government, launder blood money, traffic children for our rich pedophiles and push drugs into our poor neighborhoods.
hereme888 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not going down those rabbit holes. If a previous CIA was or was not responsible for that, that's that. Now, we're here.
nitwit005 5 hours ago [-]
Maybe after the US annexes Greenland, for some reason.
sriacha 5 hours ago [-]
Highly recommend the 2015 documentary 'Cartel Land'
jauntywundrkind 1 hours ago [-]
Related, Colombia's new president Abelardo d' Espriella is getting sworn in in a couple hours. He won a somewhat close election against a more peace process party, on a platform of radical violence & all out total war against the various cartels, gangs, and rebel factions.
Definitely huge echoes of El Salvador's intense crackdown. But it seems pretty uncertain that he actually has the military force capable of doing this. Colombia's wide array of insurgents are far more organized and well equipped than El Salvador, ala the Mexico situation here; this isn't like the nasty but kind of low level violence of El Salvador. Who all in all had a pretty easy time at it just built a ton of super brutal prisons, stripping legal protections, and then rounding up a couple % of the state's population immediately (and letting some go too, eventually, after months of brutal incarceration).
I'd love recommendations beyond War Fronts, who in tune into a decent bit. I need to subscribe, to support. They just had a video on Colombia today. https://youtu.be/OiQZCJmkmR8
tantalor 5 hours ago [-]
Our heroic self defense group.
Their brutish narco terrorist cartel.
charlieyu1 4 hours ago [-]
What’s their choices then? At least they got something to protect them
alephnerd 5 hours ago [-]
I'd recommend reading the history of Autodefensas and FARC/FLN in Colombia.
Anti-Drug militant groups have a habit of turning into drug lords as well.
6 hours ago [-]
black_13 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
TacticalCoder 5 hours ago [-]
Those responsible for all those deaths are those doing drugs. A debate could be had as to drugs should be legal or not but if you're doing coke, meth, fentanyl, etc. you simply are part of the problem because those drugs are illegal and represent a big part of the 3 to 5% of the worldwide GDP that's linked to crime (official World CIA factbook numbers).
You are funding these cartels. You are both complicit and responsible for the countless deaths and power these cartels and drug dealers have.
I don't think the US should be fighting drug cartels: I think the US should be punishing consumers much, much, much more.
Have fun thinking about those killed by drug cartels next time you sniff.
a34729t 5 hours ago [-]
I was under the impression ferrying migrants over the border and avocados were almost as big revenue streams as the drugs. Et tu, avocado toast and gardener?
orwin 4 hours ago [-]
No, not really, it's two orders of magnitude smaller overall. Drugs, gold (from illegal mines in the Amazon) and weapons (from US lost military stock/police seizure mostly) drive cartels economy (in that order last time I checked, pre-covid).
Human trafficking and racketeering are for smaller, more local gangs. Most illegal immigrants cross the border legally and overstay, and racketeering have a scale issue. It might have changed recently but I don't see how.
fhn 5 hours ago [-]
those that sniff aren't thinking about anybody except themselves, not one little bit
moralestapia 5 hours ago [-]
This is true, though.
But please do not say this out loud, you might hurt the feelings of a passing junkie.
I guess I'd rather have the state maintain a monopoly on violence.
Like… no, it was a state. It had borders, it had a monopoly on violence within those borders, it collected taxes, it provided some public services.
Whether it offended the BBC’s sensibilities or not, it was a state
It started with the debt crisis, and its causes, but was definitively realized by 1994 when the Zapatistas took much of Chiapas.
Too much emphasis is put on the drug cartels alone, when the problem is much larger. I suspect by the end of the century maps will no longer show Mexico in its current form.
Very relevant book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Cartels_Do_Not_Exist
Most of the core leadership of major cartels who haven't been arrested were mid-level officers in the DFS (Mexico's version of Italy's SID and Turkey's MIT from Operation Gladio days).
And what is interesting isn't the narcos who are arrested and indicted by the DoJ, but those who are arrested and then let go.
The story of Salvador Cienfuegos is a good example of that - arrested by the DEA on drug charges that were sealed while being Defense Minister, but charges were dropped for diplomatic reasons [0] or the DEA's investigation into AMLO in the 2000s and 2010s that was eventually dropped [1]. Meanwhile, giants like El Chapo or El Viceroy were successfully extradited or in the case of El Mencho killed.
To me, it feels like "untouchables" like Cienfuegos, Adán Augusto López, and Marcelo Ebrard or established networks even above them are likely running the show.
Sort of like how the KGB broke bad in the 90s or the Turkish military in the 1980s-2000s or the KCIA before Korea democratized in the 1990s or how leaders in the vice industry in Thailand tend to be associated with military leadership or how both the IRA and Protestant paramilitaries turned into drug cartels in North Ireland.
I also don't think it's a party ideological thing - PRI, PAN, and now MORENA have the same mid- and upper-level people.
[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/magazine/mexico-general-c...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/world/americas/mexico-pre...
But further, perhaps our sense of morality atrophies when we concede the idea of just violence (just as in "justice") only to the state.
I presume those fighting the cartels might have more of a developed sense of civic pride and duty than anyone in a more stable place. Perhaps I'm wrong though
> I presume those fighting the cartels might have more of a developed sense of civic pride and duty than anyone in a more stable place. Perhaps I'm wrong though
100%. You can either become familiar with violence and temper it, or you are simply subject to violence by anyone that wishes it upon you.
For most of the Western world we grow up as "house cats", but that isn't the case in much of the world.
What I'm saying is a group of people in a community taking up arms to defend themselves is not inherently the same as a drug cartel.
Use whatever words you want but I think that's clearly violent and it's clearly a gang, which by definition is "a group of persons working together" or even more specifically, "a group of persons working to unlawful or antisocial ends". In this case the newly formed gang is certainly unlawful.
Like the Taliban?
The OP is saying they want the state to maintain the monopoly on violence.
My counter to that argument is the very existence of the current Afghan government.
It's a "Are you sure you want that?" statement.
Sweden's gun homicide rate has increased by 400% since 2010 due to nothing other than demographic change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_Sweden
For people traveling north into the USA, the border checkpoint included long queues of vehicles and people alike, customs inspections, routine searches of everything, passport checks, and questions by actual Border Patrol officers.
Walking south into Mexico, there was a broad, unsupervised walkway and a one-way turnstile. Large signs read:
And that was it! We were in Mexico!That and all things being equal I suspect most of the people in these groups would rather not be fighting.
Right now these people are just doing whatever they can to survive but it's just treating the symptom. The source of the problem is the Mexican government who is either incompetent or happy to take bribes to look the other way while their citizens are left the mercy of paramilitary gangs.
This is not your usual vigilante group. This is a reaction to an overwhelming force of criminal gangs killing citizens and the government being powerless to stop them.
Is the Mexican government, with their tens of billions in military spending, actually "powerless" to stop these gangs? I very much doubt it.
Then to be blunt, you don't know how a fucking thing.
The cartels have their own intelligent networks, anti-air missiles, RPGs and anti-tank weapons, encrypted radio comms and their own 5G/LTE networks. They have helicopters, armored vehicles, etc. In many cases they have the support* of the people.
* through fear, intimidation, coercion, social bonds, financial motivators, etc.
The cartels also have tens of billions.
At some point when your government is so corrupt, you got to take weapon and organize yourself. It's sad.
At that point you might as well point those weapons at the failed government that forced you to have to play soldier instead of protecting you. Not allowing your own citizens to be enslaved by roving bands of criminals is like the single most basic thing a country's government is for. Since the Mexican government has abandoned them and ceded control of that land to hostile armies I hope those poor farmers aren't still paying them taxes.
Back in the 60's and 70's my Dad worked or Lockheed Martin. He made frequent trips to Mexico to work with engineering teams there on projects he was working on. It only took him one trip to realize how corrupt the police were.
He had parked outside of his hotel with his rental car. Came out. It was surrounded by Policia. They told him he couldn't park here. "Sure thing, I'll move it and not park here again." "You don't understand gringo, you have to pay the parking fine now." He caught on, and asked how much it would cost to just park here, you know, rent this spot instead of paying their fine? The cops gave him an amount and he paid it and they left him alone the rest of the week he was there. He told me a bunch of other stories about the corruption there, not just the cops. It was pretty eye opening to hear some of these.
The corruption can't be fixed. Its engrained in the system. It was rampant fifty years ago, there is no fixing it - its completely normalized now. The cartels simply used the system against itself to gain total control and power.
The proper solution is to end the war on drugs, allowing people to do what they will with their own bodies. Once people can legally buy their drugs, the cartels will starve.
Use the money saved from reducing our prison population by 75% to pay for widely-accessible treatment for addiction as well as mental health problems. Build more affordable housing so homelessness is less of an issue. As an added bonus: roll back the last half-century of disastrous trickle-down economics which gutted the middle class, so there's less incentive to start using in the first place.
Reminder: the Nixon tapes reveal that the war on drugs was started in the first place not to protect the public from harmful drugs but rather as a means to criminalize his political enemies (e.g., hippies and black people) in a way that couldn't be challenged in court on 14th amendment grounds.
The problem, of course, is those solutions are hard, it's a lot easier to get voters to root for building more walls and sending troops to kill more foreigners, and there's a lot of money to be made by the military industrial complex and private prison system by prolonging the problem.
The US absolutely has an interest in the destruction of Mexican cartels.
I don't mind bombing the cartels from a distance. I'd rather the U.S. continues to pursue diplomatic options vs. war.
Definitely huge echoes of El Salvador's intense crackdown. But it seems pretty uncertain that he actually has the military force capable of doing this. Colombia's wide array of insurgents are far more organized and well equipped than El Salvador, ala the Mexico situation here; this isn't like the nasty but kind of low level violence of El Salvador. Who all in all had a pretty easy time at it just built a ton of super brutal prisons, stripping legal protections, and then rounding up a couple % of the state's population immediately (and letting some go too, eventually, after months of brutal incarceration).
I'd love recommendations beyond War Fronts, who in tune into a decent bit. I need to subscribe, to support. They just had a video on Colombia today. https://youtu.be/OiQZCJmkmR8
Their brutish narco terrorist cartel.
Anti-Drug militant groups have a habit of turning into drug lords as well.
You are funding these cartels. You are both complicit and responsible for the countless deaths and power these cartels and drug dealers have.
I don't think the US should be fighting drug cartels: I think the US should be punishing consumers much, much, much more.
Have fun thinking about those killed by drug cartels next time you sniff.
Human trafficking and racketeering are for smaller, more local gangs. Most illegal immigrants cross the border legally and overstay, and racketeering have a scale issue. It might have changed recently but I don't see how.
But please do not say this out loud, you might hurt the feelings of a passing junkie.