4 ms·
Coming from groups that just pickup busses of people to murder, I wouldn’t be so sure that firing back at the US would be out of the question.
by reactordev 8mo ago
Coming from groups that just pickup busses of people to murder, I wouldn’t be so sure that firing back at the US would be out of the question.
- nessbot 8mo agoMurdering buses of people doesn't bring the full force of the US military on them. The difference is the risk not the depravity.
- p-e-w 8mo agoThis is the answer. The cartels would have to be insane to poke that particular bear. They would get crushed like a bug. IIRC they murdered a single US undercover officer in the 90s and the retaliation was so bad that they themselves handed over the perpetrators.
- BoredPositron 8mo agoYou are right rationality is their strongest character trait.
- the_sleaze_ 8mo agoThe cartels are incredibly rational - what they lack are morals and ethics
- KPGv2 8mo agoDo you have much evidence of them behaving irrationally?
- mmh0000 8mo agoI would recommend reading the Freakinomics book or listen to their podcasts on drugs. TL;DR: drug cartels are run like businesses. They are very rational. But, unlike your boss, their boss can also shoot you in the face if you annoy them too much
- 542354234235 8mo agoHow are they not rational? Violence is a tool. They operate an illegal business so they can’t sue other parties for breach of contract. They can't call the police if they are robbed or file an insurance claim for what was taken. Even the over-the-top violence has a rationale. They aren't punishing the victims as much as they are attempting to broadcast that there is a higher price to be paid than any gain from giving information, to reduce their future losses and enforcement efforts. It isn’t moral or ethical, but I wouldn’t say it is irrational.
- mikkupikku 8mo agoLots of organized crime around the world manages to operate without cutting all the limbs off somebody then arranging them like flowers in a "vase" made out of the poor soul's ribcage. The cartels take violence far beyond what is pragmatically necessary. Their system of crime breeds excessive violence and insanity.
- xkcd-sucks 8mo agoMarketing, if you don't know the answer it's always marketing
- AlotOfReading 8mo agoThis stuff mostly followed after the zetas. It was a very deliberate strategy to compete in a hostile landscape that others eventually copied to survive.
- anigbrowl 8mo agoIt's notable that a lot of the Zetas came from a military special forces background, making it seem as if their extreme brutality was a strategic choice inculcated during their training. https://ctc.westpoint.edu/a-profile-of-los-zetas-mexicos-second-most-powerful-drug-cartel/ https://ctc.westpoint.edu/a-profile-of-los-zetas-mexicos-sec...
- coolhand2120 8mo ago> How are they not rational? It's the meth.
- colechristensen 8mo agoIt's a business not an ideology.
- ChrisMarshallNY 8mo ago> They would get crushed like a bug. Much as I despise them, I'm not so sure that would be the case. I seem to remember folks saying the same about the Taliban, and the cartels have a lot more money and high-tech kit, than the Taliban. Asymmetric warfare is a tough gig, on all sides.
- janalsncm 8mo agoI don’t think the technology matters nearly as much as the asymmetry. Iraq had better technology than the Taliban and their military didn’t last a week.
- ChrisMarshallNY 8mo agoTrue enough, but the cartels are also experts at running what is basically guerrilla warfare, against each other. Not sure if the Mexican Army has ever tried to take them on. A lot of cartel soldiers come from the army.
- mmooss 8mo agoThat conflates two very different things: * A conventional military war, on a battlefield: Neither Saddam Hussein's military nor the cartels nor the Taliban would last long against the US. * An unconventional insurgency: The Iraqis quickly turned to this approach and it worked very well for them, as it did for the Taliban. The Taliban won, and the Iraqi insurgency almost drove the US out of Iraq and was eventually co-opted. The cartels of course would choose the latter. They, the Taliban, etc. are not suicidal.
- margalabargala 8mo agoThe Taliban did not "win" their insurgency. The US decided to leave because staying was not politically popular, and left. They were not beaten by the Taliban, they were beaten by the political climate at home. If someone is actively kicking your ass, then they decide that you aren't worth the effort to keep hurting and decide to walk away, that doesn't mean you "won" the fight even if you get what you want afterwards.
- Noaidi 8mo agoHow did that full force of the US military work out in Vietnam?
- kgermino 8mo agoPretty badly for both sides
- randallsquared 8mo agoIt was never used, there.
- antonymoose 8mo agoMillions of dead Vietnamese. In any case that was a war against a hardened, experienced, determined enemy fighting for its freedom from any form of colonial occupation, both as a formal military and as an insurgent force in South Vietnam. I scarcely think the Mexican population would rise up in defense of the cartels here.
- boringg 8mo agoI think a lot of people would be cheering on the destruction of the cartels.
- colechristensen 8mo agoThe destruction of cartels would involve careful policing and corruption controls, the best American administrations have been bad at this. The worst... can barely put its pants on much less dismantle foreign organized crime. You can't shoot a missile at a cartel and poof it's just gone.
- ryandrake 8mo agoThey'd probably quickly stop cheering as their own homes and families were destroyed as collateral damage, which is what would happen if the "full force of the US military" were deployed against the cartels.
- infecto 8mo agoThe distinction is those are cases where they are murdering Mexican citizens. If a cartel murdered a bus of people in America I suspect most any administration would retaliate in some form.
- reactordev 8mo ago[flagged]
- _heimdall 8mo agoI think the GP was referring to buses on US soil rather than Americans on buses in Mexico.
- reactordev 8mo agoCartels only strike their own on US soil…
- infecto 8mo agoYou’re missing the point. Absolutely cartel violence impacts all types of people in the US and Mexico but large scale brutal violence that is usually saved for Mexico since unfortunately the Mexican federal government does not have control in most of the regions. There is a huge difference between a one off gang killing in the US and someone taking a whole grey hound bus and burying the bodies in the desert.
- reactordev 8mo agoWhich is why I bring up their affinity for going after busses of people, because they have, in Mexico… The world does not stop at the Us border.
- _heimdall 8mo agoThe world obviously doesn't stop st the US border. The point in this thread was that the attacks on buses full of people have, so far stopped at the US border and that it would be a huge, and dangerous, escalation should that change.
- xtracto 8mo agoThis is different. See, Drug cartels over here operate with the blessing and favor of our president. They are tightly connected. If a cartel dared to ground a US flight. The US government would have a "free pass" to break all hell loose in Mexico, and Sheinbaum wouldn't have a way to stop it. She doesn't want that in any way, so the message to the cartel bosses would be to be very careful in that respect. Sure, there have been US citizens killed within Mexico here and there, but those can easily be attributed to local violence. And as retribution, Mexican government sends a couple of wanted criminals to the US.
- ekidd 8mo agoYeah, if a cartel actually used anti-aircraft weapons on a US passenger plane in US airspace? It wouldn't even matter if MAGA or the Democrats were in charge. The US would collectively lose its shit and spend the next 10 years and several trillion dollars retaliating against the cartels. The media would be ecstatic, because it would give them a decade of story arcs, starting with "our brave troops in uniform" all the way through to covering the eventual quagmire and anti-war protests. By year 6-8, editorial columnists would be writing columns reconsidering their initial support for the war. Please, let's not do this.
- resters 8mo agowho are we (the US)? People who wantonly murder people on fishing boats, etc.
- reactordev 8mo agoI’m not saying our cartel is any better…
- ultrarunner 8mo agoYour use of "our" makes me wonder if the people of Mexico see the drug cartels as "theirs".
- reactordev 8mo agoMerely pointing out that the US administration is operating like a cartel now a days. I doubt Mexicans see the Mexican cartels as “theirs” in the same way. Cartels have only been interested in paying off politicians and (as far as I’m aware) weren’t interested in being politicians. However, our politicians here… would LOVE to be Cartel members and make millions it seems. Because they definitely don’t give a shit about law and order.
- ultrarunner 8mo agoAbsolutely. I suppose my question was really more interested in the perceived legitimacy (or lack thereof).