United States Trump 2nd Term - Planning and Beyond

Because America Bad, everyone against America Good, that's all.

Pretty sure if someone ran an IP trace on Noodles, they'd come back with a Russian IP address.

Lol no. How long have you been in this community? I was on Spacebattles over 20 years ago, and if you were to look back on my posts I was well known to be a Canuck and used to be very rah rah pro American.
 
It'd be nice if we could work on both the supply and the demand sides of the drug/cartel problem but realistically I expect we're going to try force on the supply side for now. This vaguely hopeful part of me that has been speaking up of late hopes and improving economy and moderating culture might help with the demand side as drugs are an escape. Cynical Gen X me says I should know better.
 
Lol no. How long have you been in this community? I was on Spacebattles over 20 years ago, and if you were to look back on my posts I was well known to be a Canuck and used to be very rah rah pro American.
Oh god, that's so much worse than just being a Russian. A goddamn canadian? At least Russia has a leader that you can respect in a twisted dictatorial kind of way.

Whereas Canada has as its dictator-in-chief a goddamn limp wristed pedo teacher.
 
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I love how immigrants (that are not illegal) and a lot of black people PRAISE the fact Trump was elected while it is most white people who complain about Trump.

Not saying that blacks are not complaining, but most immigrants DID vote for Trump.

Which means that 'no, my leftist fake news generator, Trump is not racist'.
 
Most of them are/were regional conflicts that didn't actually majorly threaten the US directly. But we do have a quite a few wins for us, even if they don't stay as long term wins. Not even counting all the UN conflicts I didn't list, which would add to both the wins and losses when we were involved directly. But here are some of the "wins"
  1. Korean War, while ongoing, can be considered a win since we stopped North Korea from taking control of South Korea.
A bit of a stretch, but fair enough.
  1. We supported the winning side in the 1958 Lebanon crisis.
As far as I read about the region and when I travelled there, you were invited by the legitimate government and three other parties (the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Kataeb) so that was not the winning side but it became so and Camille Chamoun still had to resign.
  1. We accomplished our objective in the Operation Dragon Rouge and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Belgium won against Simba rebellion as whole.
Took a year still but ok.
  1. We successfully supported the Loyalist faction in the Dominican Civil War.
Again, this is more of a repeat of Lebanon (at best), the guy who was elected after the Caribbean Hitler got what he deserved, angered the magnates and army sections of the island nation and got accused of being a commie because of social reforms. Then they got invaded by Lyndon and the OAS forces, and there's no indication that Bosch wouldn't have been pro-American like Balaguer.
  1. Had another smaller conflict in the Korean DMZ which basically meant things stayed the same still.
Paul Bunyan?
  1. Successfully invaded Grenada in 1983.
An island the size of Italy most populous city, and you had help from the inside.
  1. Had the Tanker War against Iran while they were fighting Iraq, which ended in a UN ceasefire, and we didn't really do much but attack a bunch of military installations they used to attack our shipping and then also one civilian airliner by apparent mistake.
I mean that would be like me claiming victory after a boxing match where my opponent had one hand tied and got beat up before it. You can claim it was a PR diplomatic victory though, that is fair to say.
  1. Invaded Panama and installed a government friendly to our interests from between December 20, 1989 - January 31, 1990
I mean, you put him there, with likely previous knowledge from the CIA that he was unreliable ally at best (which also likely ignored such unreliability) and was mini-Erdogan to a degree.
  1. Gulf War was a victory even if later stuff basically messed everything up and then enforced a no fly zone over Iraq pretty successfully depleting Iraqi air defense assets. Then the Iraq war was when things start getting to be "inconclusive"
Yeah, barely, with also a lot of propaganda to justify it.
  1. Invaded Haiti to reinstall a president after a coup ousted him.
Didn't Bush Jr ousted that same president? And that president also claimed that the US ousted him?
  1. Then we did have numerous conflicts with ISIS which basically ended with some nation's or another's government retaking territory that was occupied by ISIS, so however you want to measure that.
I measure it as US wasted resources, so that it could potentially have a puppet, which turned out to be a pyrrhic victory because the only one who won were the Israelis (who are 20km from Damascus) and the Black Turks in Ankara, who both thought that with Assad gone, everything would be hunky dory, which, turns out, it is not, because you still have Syrians (regardless of ethnicity and faith) that won't return, despite the initial spike of returning refugees, and turns out the Turcophile rebels are not exactly unified and will likely also backstab the Turks like in 1916 if given the opportunity. Could be also a proxy or direct war between Israel and Turkey, which will likely result in US choosing the first rather than second (and for once that would be a good choice).
It'd be nice if we could work on both the supply and the demand sides of the drug/cartel problem but realistically I expect we're going to try force on the supply side for now. This vaguely hopeful part of me that has been speaking up of late hopes and improving economy and moderating culture might help with the demand side as drugs are an escape. Cynical Gen X me says I should know better.
Right now it you can try to do "Hey, like money ? Want to enjoy it? Then stop raping, killing and so on otherwise you will have to buy a nicely finished coffin!" because the dead can't enjoy money.
Yes. Because it's Bukele. An El Salvadorian. It isn't a foreigner coming in to do it.

I'd also point out that Bukele did not just massacre the gangs in some glorious battle. He tossed them in jail. So which jail are you planning on having the cartel tossed in? Are we going to take Mexicans in Mexico and drag them up to the United States and...then what? Throw them in jail without a trial? Have a trial and really get the courts clogged up?

Like, this is just another symptom of:
@LordsFire Largo is largely right about this. It was a local who did it and he didn't went Rambo or Jason Voorhes on them, though unlike Largo I don't think the locals would have cared if the someone who did that job was local, but as long they achieved the gangs BEING GONE (REGARDLESS IF ALIVE OR NOT) nobody cared. Thing is, Buyekele ACHIEVED THAT . Salvadorians were hostages in their own country by degenerates and they were and still are perfectly ok with the gangs being gone one way, as long that is achieved and remains so.
No one hates illegals more than legal immigrants.
No one hates indecent, unethical and immoral people more than decent, ethical and moral people.
 
@LordsFire Largo is largely right about this. It was a local who did it and he didn't went Rambo or Jason Voorhes on them, though unlike Largo I don't think the locals would have cared if the someone who did that job was local, but as long they achieved the gangs BEING GONE (REGARDLESS IF ALIVE OR NOT) nobody cared. Thing is, Buyekele ACHIEVED THAT . Salvadorians were hostages in their own country by degenerates and they were and still are perfectly ok with the gangs being gone one way, as long that is achieved and remains so.
The other thing that should be pointed out about Bukele is that it took time.

Bukele took office in 2019. The crackdown began in March 2022, though it should be noted that Bukele was taking other anti-gang measures before that (much of that meant to be positive, to give gang members productive alternatives). And it is still ongoing.

How long is this special forces operation supposed to last? A year? Two years? Three? Every day longer that you're in Mexico just increases the chances of something going wrong, of the Mexicans getting angrier, and the chances that things get more escalatory. The Pershing expedition is a good example of this. The Mexican government grudgingly accepted Pershing at first. But after two months, the Mexicans had enough, we came damn close to shooting incidents which would have resulted in a war, and the US gave up on the thing because there was a war in Europe going on which had to take prioritization.

Good thing that there's nothing going on in Europe or say, the South China Sea that we need to worry about.
 
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I am once again repeating that this is a pointless, extravagant waste of money. Why not just restrict operations to US territory? Why should the taxpayer be forced to fund the cleanup of Mexico, something that may take half a decade and hundreds of billions of dollars?

I don't even understand your logic here. Do you really want to invade Mexico just for the sake of it?
 
I am once again repeating that this is a pointless, extravagant waste of money. Why not just restrict operations to US territory? Why should the taxpayer be forced to fund the cleanup of Mexico, something that may take half a decade and hundreds of billions of dollars?

I don't even understand your logic here. Do you really want to invade Mexico just for the sake of it?

They honestly think the USA is an unstoppable force of nature and all problems can be solved by blowing shit up. Everyone is just an american who doesnt know it yet, so they will naturally welcome american occupation. When it doesnt work, its always someone else fault. The liberal media. Weak politicians. Foreign powers. Or they just didnt create enough corpses. Its never because the strategy itself was stupid and unworkable, no, its because of wreckers and saboteurs ruining the plan.
 
And what were those attacks about?

The attacks were about the bodies coming home. If Iraq was tearing itself but our boys were fine, do you think the public would give a shit? They gave a shit about our boys dying, that's the reason why they gave a shit in Vietnam. And for better or for worse, our boys weren't dying in Iraq under Bush while they were under Obama. That's why Iraq dropped off the news.
And more people died to gang violence in Chicago than died in Iraq across the span of our presence there.

But that somehow didn't become a political hot topic, did it?

The Democrats were trying to turn the Iraq war into a defeat almost from the outset, and ultimately succeeded, largely through their control of the media, just like with Vietnam. A war which was largely lost not because of the number of casualties the US might have suffered, but because the Democrats refused to so much as keep sending aid to the South Vietnamese.

If it was actually about the lives lost, about the permanently wounded, then the easy and blatant counterargument is how many lives are lost to Cartel violence and the drugs they bring in each year. If the cartels inflict double the casualties the jihadis did, something extremely unlikely, we'd still have to be in an ongoing war with them for something like 20 years in order to match Fentanyl overdose deaths in just one or two years.

Yes. Because it's Bukele. An El Salvadorian. It isn't a foreigner coming in to do it.

I'd also point out that Bukele did not just massacre the gangs in some glorious battle. He tossed them in jail. So which jail are you planning on having the cartel tossed in? Are we going to take Mexicans in Mexico and drag them up to the United States and...then what? Throw them in jail without a trial? Have a trial and really get the courts clogged up?



Like, this is just another symptom of:


The answer to this, as the above example is further evidence, is that you have utterly no idea of what your plan actually is. "Crush the cartels" is a slogan. You show up with your badass special forces, all ready to go Rambo...and then what? Is the plan to kill some heinous cartel leader? Is it to occupy territory, create a buffer zone? Is it to seize a bunch of drugs and guns? Is it to lower the amount of drugs crossing the border? Is it to force some kind of surrender? Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

All you have is a bunch of wishful thinking, and your talk about how the Mexicans will liberate us with flowers (just like Iraq) is a further example. It's possible that you're right and the Mexicans will be overjoyed. But what if they're not? What's the plan then for special forces surrounded in hostile territory? What if the Mexican Army tells you "Fuck you, this is our country, we will shoot you if you come in." Are you prepared to escalate? Are you prepared to launch a general invasion of a country with the third of a population of the United States and what might happen from there?
Putin launched his war assuming that the Ukranian army was a paper tiger and that he would be in Kyiv in three days. His assumption turned out to be wrong, and now he's been stuck in a war for three years and he's gone from nationalist wunderkind to turning his country into a Chinese colony.

You think that just because you have better drones and planes that this can't happen to you? For over 50 years we've had Americans claiming that some new technology will help us beat the guerillas this time.

tl;dr we have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.
...So 'I didn't lay out a complete operational plan for dismantling an international multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise, so I must be engaging in wishful thinking.'

That's your argument?

Really?

Did it occur to you that if our military can plan and execute operations that destroy actual foreign militaries on the far side of the world, they're capable of making such plans and executing them in immediately bordering nations? Especially against far weaker paramilitary criminal groups?

Do you think the Cartels infrastructure is concealed from US Intelligence?

Do you think it's hardened against air attacks?

Did it occur to you that I'm assuming basic competence on the part of the Trump administration's diplomatic and legal teams? That Mexico has prisons that can host a lot of these cartel members once you intimidate them into surrender?

In fact, are you capable of any kind of thought that things might not go the worst way possible at all?

They honestly think the USA is an unstoppable force of nature and all problems can be solved by blowing shit up. Everyone is just an american who doesnt know it yet, so they will naturally welcome american occupation. When it doesnt work, its always someone else fault. The liberal media. Weak politicians. Foreign powers. Or they just didnt create enough corpses. Its never because the strategy itself was stupid and unworkable, no, its because of wreckers and saboteurs ruining the plan.
I'm not going to bother responding to anything else you say until you apologize for this gross mischaracterization and strawmanning.

If you're going to engage in bad faith, I'm not going to bother engaging at all.
 
The main issue is that you do a military operation against Cartels.
Brazil did.
They just came back.
Those are not the kind of people who fear militaries at the point of not doing drug trade anymore.
It is too profitable, so facing a tank is worth it.

The question is why is it profitable, and how to make it not profitable or how to make the less violent methods more profitable.
 
The main issue is that you do a military operation against Cartels.
Brazil did.
They just came back.
Those are not the kind of people who fear militaries at the point of not doing drug trade anymore.
It is too profitable, so facing a tank is worth it.

The question is why is it profitable, and how to make it not profitable or how to make the less violent methods more profitable.
You just make sure they are eincapable of growing any drugs.
And Brazil doesn't have the capability in intel the US has to effectively find everything
 
And more people died to gang violence in Chicago than died in Iraq across the span of our presence there.

But that somehow didn't become a political hot topic, did it?

The Democrats were trying to turn the Iraq war into a defeat almost from the outset, and ultimately succeeded, largely through their control of the media, just like with Vietnam. A war which was largely lost not because of the number of casualties the US might have suffered, but because the Democrats refused to so much as keep sending aid to the South Vietnamese.

If it was actually about the lives lost, about the permanently wounded, then the easy and blatant counterargument is how many lives are lost to Cartel violence and the drugs they bring in each year. If the cartels inflict double the casualties the jihadis did, something extremely unlikely, we'd still have to be in an ongoing war with them for something like 20 years in order to match Fentanyl overdose deaths in just one or two years.
Man, it's so great seeing conservatives revive autistic liberal arguments of "We lost more people to gangs than 9/11, therefore 9/11 wasn't that big of a deal" argument.

And Vietnam? Vietnam had the exact same problems that your proposal does. HR McMaster makes it very clear that at the end of the day, the US government itself had no real idea what its objectives were in Vietnam. The JCS, Johnson, Taylor, the Whiz Kids, all had their ideas of what we were supposed to be doing, and they constantly were working at cross-purposes. The result was a muddled compromise where we would neither withdraw from Vietnam nor actually commit towards victory.

It's why I observed earlier that I have more respect for the people who think we should just straight up invade Mexico and occupy the north than this "lol the special forces can do everything" nonsense.
...So 'I didn't lay out a complete operational plan for dismantling an international multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise, so I must be engaging in wishful thinking.'

That's your argument?

Really?
I think that asking what the objective is beyond the vague idea of "Smash the cartel" is already an operational plan.

If you asked me what I think we should be doing in the event of a Taiwan contingency, I could sum it up in a few sentences. Drive the invasion back, sink the navy, get allies on our side, impose a blockade, prepare to negotiate as a direct invasion of the Chinese mainland is excessively dangerous.

In your case it's: smash the cartel.
In fact, are you capable of any kind of thought that things might not go the worst way possible at all?
No. Worst case scenario is that the special forces straight up lose ala Mogadishu or Hostomel Airport, thousands die in the United States as the cartel launches terrorist attacks, the US global position turns into that of Russia as we're shut out from the entire world that is now utterly terrified of us, blue states and especially California attempt to get out of the war on their terms and we start to move closer to a split, Mexican dreams of undoing Guadulupe Hidalgo actually starts to become more than a fringe fantasy, the United States military is shown to be a corrupt paper tiger, and China and Russia take advantage of US distraction to fulfill their own Eurasian dreams.

"Mexico resists US special forces and we get stuck in a war where we don't know what we're doing" is far, far from the worst case scenario.
 
@gral first time I hear it. They came back because the PT governed for over 12 years.
Organized Crime was a problem in Brazil since forever.
The main issue is that often politicians make part of the drug trade.
Like Aécio Neves (one of our deputies).
You just make sure they are eincapable of growing any drugs.
And Brazil doesn't have the capability in intel the US has to effectively find everything
To do the first you need to make the species extinct to fully ensure it.
And I wouldn't say it is an issue of intel but also from individual action.
Some cops think that they should worry more about murder than whether some idiot used weed.

And some would rather rake money so 'nothing bad happens'.
 

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