South of the Border
During the GOP debate a few weeks ago, the question was asked about using the US military to fight the war on fentanyl inside Mexico. The majority of the candidates said “yes” they would use our military to fight the Mexican drug cartels that are manufacturing this crap that is killing Americans on a daily basis. Front and center in that endorsement was Florida Governor Desantis.
I was asked this same question while I was on Beyond the Beltway with Bruce Dumont. I do not endorse the use of US military forces in Mexico to fight the cartels. I just want to be clear on my position.
Here’s why I disagree with most of the GOP candidates on this topic.
What everyone has in mind is our special operations forces conducting raids to destroy cartel facilities and to kill/capture cartel leadership. It sounds really cool and very sexy, like an action movie, and it will start out that way. The Mexican Government and Law Enforcement have plenty of intelligence right now to keep our team busy for quite a while. This is all low hanging fruit; very easy to pick. It will, with time, get more difficult and more dangerous.
The cartels are networks, not unlike the terrorist networks we all fought against in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mapping them out, identifying key players, tracking money, locating facilities, and striking targets are all things we can do. Our military can do this, especially if they operate as part of a Joint, Interagency, Multi-National Task Force. I have no doubt our SOF guys can hit target after target and be successful.
We will fly drones and attack helicopters and fighter aircraft. We will put Special Operations on the ground. We will kick in doors and shoot bad guys. We will destroy fentanyl production facilities. All of that will happen and we will do it over and over until we run out of low hanging fruit. That’s when things will become difficult and we will start generating new intelligence. How do we do that?
We do that the same way we did it in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will monitor communications. We will listen to phone conversations, we will rip data off captured cell phones, we will monitor financial activity, we will watch the movements of key players. All of this will be done to generate more intelligence to develop more targets to strike.
It works. We did it and we did it well for a long time in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, these aren’t terror networks halfway across the world. These are drug cartels operating literally next door, sometimes within a few miles of the US border in places like Ciudad Juarez across the river from El Paso. But, here is the rub and here is why I disagree with using the military in this role. Money and communications do not abide by international borders. At some point, the Task Force that will oversee this operation will be collecting intelligence on American citizens. They will be checking bank records, listening to phone calls, tracking cell phones, tracking vehicles, and monitoring American citizens…sometimes without warrants.
This isn’t going to be a few random terrorist sympathizers in the US. These are going to be people inside the US trafficking and selling drugs. They are also going to be monitoring relatives of those people. Friends. Legitimate business associates. This is not hyperbole, this is fact. This is how terror networks were diagrammed and tracked. People who were related to known terrorists were tracked. People who merely spoke to them were tracked. Their movements and communications were monitored. Sometimes, their DNA was collected. Sometimes they were detained without real cause.
But those weren’t American citizens and we didn’t have a legal obligation to get a warrant to do it. We were collecting intelligence on anyone we wanted. We didn’t have to ask permission. And my guess is, the Task Force overseeing this operation won’t ask permission either.
That’s where Governor Desantis lost me. He loves to tell people he was deployed with the Navy SEALs. He forgets to mention he was a legal advisor and not an actual SEAL, mostly because it sounds way less cool. Yes, he was a lawyer advising special operations forces. So…he KNOWS everything I just described. If he didn’t have his head in the sand while he was there, he knows that was how we operated. With any real thought, he knows this type of operation will expand beyond the sexy raids and into REAL intelligence gathering and that will cross the border into the United States. It’s inevitable.
By the way, did I mention the human risk involved in this? People will get killed while this is going on, and not just bad guys. Mexican civilians will be killed. Relatives of American citizens. Civilian casualties, no matter how carefully you execute an operation, are a fact in combat. It WILL happen. We will also have US casualties. Our servicemembers will be killed or injured while fighting the cartels. It WILL happen. There are BILLIONS of dollars at stake for the cartels. They aren’t going to just roll over. They will fight back. Maybe America has the stomach for all that. I don’t think we do after 20+ years of war, but maybe we do.
With all that being said, the flippant answers by the GOP candidates to use US military forces in Mexico to fight the cartels have clearly not been thought through. If they really thought through it all, they would realize what I outlined above and would be much less apt to commit US forces to a role that will put US freedoms at risk.
Or…more frightening…they HAVE thought through this, they know the impact and the risk to US freedoms, and they want to do it anyway.
Either way, I don’t agree with sending our military South Of The Border.