United States Trump 2nd Term - Planning and Beyond

Not really. It wasn't a thing for at least the first 100-150 years.
... Because it wasn't in the constitution for the first 100 years. It was added in the 1860s. This will be overturned by SCOTUS unless they use the argument of "illegal immigrants aren't subject to our jurisdiciton" which will likely fail, but maybe not.


As for the drug trade stuff, that cannot be stopped through violence. Why? Because the combined demand of millions of drug users is more powerful than the US military. Now what could be stopped is perhaps flow through Mexico. Those cartels themselves could be stopped and shattered, and that would have good results. But other, different methods will replace it. So it'll have a middling impact on drugs, but a good impact on security.


Meanwhile, I'm still waiting on a commutation for Ross Ulbricht, which is supposed to happen this morning hopefully, but Trump seems to have cooled off. Right now his pardon/commutation is trading around .94 on Polymarket.
 
Has this worked with Hamas and Hezbollah?

I feel like everyone’s ignoring a distinct difference between the cartels and the Taliban or other terrorists orgs. Die hard believers in the cause, these people are not.

The cartels are not ideological or ethnic independence movements. The entire point of their existence is to make money via illicit means. You cannot make money, if you are dead.

I feel like the calculus for the average cartel member suddenly changes if they now stand a good chance of having their head popped by spec ops or coast guard.
StormEagle pretty much answered your question AnimalNoodles.

You're trying to equate two different things.

Cartels are not motivated by the same things as those terrorist organizations. Make it so they can't benefit from all that illegal trade and you'll see some voluntary course corrections.

You have to tie all this in with dis-incentivizing illegal immigration, sex slavery, and drug use as well.
 
Trump already promised they're going to get tariffed anyways, so that's not a threat. And if you're going to tell me that Trump will strike a deal, Mexico has no reason to believe that he won't renege and put tariffs after he gets his special military operation. Or did you forget that he made a trade deal with Mexico last time yet has already indicated he wants to tear that deal up?

And the working relationship is irrelevant. If this working relationship is so cool, surely Mexico won't object if we just send in the army to deal with the cartel instead?
We are sending small teams supported by air assets that we already support them with.

It would also help thier government as well.

But you obviously think Mexico will HAVE a choice.
We will say we are going tk fight the cartels, either you help us or we will do it without your permission.
What are they gonna do? Fly combat patrols and shoot down our air support?

We already work on Anti drug operations with the Mexican military, this would just be us working stricker
 
One thing to remember is this is not half a planet away where we have to send things through the Med, or around the horn of Africa. This is next to our country.
 
I am happy the US fighting cartels. Again, it's a problem of demand. But if a Singaporean approach is taken it will still have a positive effect, because it potentially means that the cartels will have to be discreet, like mafias in Italy became after the mid-1990s when people got fed up with bombings and weekly or monthly murders.

Which POTENTIALLY translates into less murders, rapes and other shitty behaviour. Which POTENTIALLY translates into safer streets neighbourhoods. Which means I might POTENTIALLY be able to go back to Latin America and not worry about myself or my family there.

I think even Meloni would be glad as well since some of the mafia/cartels are family-based in the actual sense of the word, such as the ndrangheta, supposedly the strongest criminal organization, who is entirely family-run. You won't out your cousin, child, brother, sister and so forth.

On a different note, I might just bring my CV/resume in the next few days/weeks/months to the closest American consulate I can find. I might even have a better chance that finding a job in Italy or writing Hispanic or Mixed Race on my resumes like those times I tried to qualify for a remote job in the mainland US.
 
This will be overturned by SCOTUS


And why would it be? State and federal laws re-interpret the bill of rights all the time, and suddenly people are acting as if the Constitution is some sacred, untouchable script the moment someone suggests, 'Hey, this abuse is a problem and has been a problem for a while. Let's fix this.'

The same people caterwauling about 'sensible gun laws', or shutting down conservative voices online through any means necessary('Um, the first amendment only protects you from the GOVERMENT, sweatie') will flip and start screaming about the Bill of Rights totally protects their hecking precious brownerinos to flood the country without consequence.

Spare me. SCOTUS is not the be-all, end-all you seem to think it is; Bruen, despite being unequivocally pro-2nd amendment, just had various liberal states double-down on onerous and restrictive gun laws. So what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
 
And why would it be? State and federal laws re-interpret the bill of rights all the time, and suddenly people are acting as if the Constitution is some sacred, untouchable script the moment someone suggests, 'Hey, this abuse is a problem and has been a problem for a while. Let's fix this.'
No, they don't. That bolded part shows how little you actually understand about the constitution.

Only the judiciary interprets the constitution, not the legislature, and certainly not bills.

Spare me. SCOTUS is not the be-all, end-all you seem to think it is; Bruen, despite being unequivocally pro-2nd amendment, just had various liberal states double-down on onerous and restrictive gun laws. So what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
And this is just dumb strategy. We own SCOTUS for the next 10 years. We own the presidency for 4 years, and we sorta own the legislature (can't beat a filibuster) for 2 years. You want to attack the place you have the most power in favor of a temporary advantage?

And yes, the liberals doubled down on gun laws, but those gun laws too are being shut down, it just takes time. Your argument isn't even good: "Scotus is useless, because when SCOTUS did something, liberals whined and did things that will shortly be destroyed by SCOTUS."
 
So, if I understand you, you worry the terrorists will be terrorists if America treats them as terrorists?

Idiotic.

We aren't going to allow them to operate in the United States any longer, if that requires violence, so be it.

You clearly underestimate just how deadly tier 1 special forces are, no they aren't movie "Rambo's", but they are certainly effective and lethal, which the Cartels will quickly discover. I reject your cowardly worldview, I reject that we HAVE to allow Cartel thugs to operate with impunity at the souther border.

The USA will crush them if they don't fold and back off, it isn't a question and isn't in doubt. The political willpower is there, the military technology and boots are there. Your fearmongering is just that, fearmongering.



The Cartels have been doing it for decades... so yeah. If Mexico doesn't like it, they should have done something about it a long time ago.
One thing I'd like to add is Uncle Sam took no shit a while back when their citizens were kidnapped to be clapped in irons by Barbary Pirates, they sent their fledgling navy to go to war against them.
 
I wish we could just ignore Bidens bullshit pardons because Mark Milley deserves to be hung for treason. Fauci should also spend what' left of his worthless life in prison alongside Hunter.
 
I feel like everyone’s ignoring a distinct difference between the cartels and the Taliban or other terrorists orgs. Die hard believers in the cause, these people are not.

The cartels are not ideological or ethnic independence movements. The entire point of their existence is to make money via illicit means. You cannot make money, if you are dead.

I feel like the calculus for the average cartel member suddenly changes if they now stand a good chance of having their head popped by spec ops or coast guard.
Thank goodness.

I thought I was going to catch up with this thread, and find people still arguing around the primary differences.


The Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and every other organization we fought the protracted GWOT in the sandbox against are literal death cults who think that dying in the conflict is literally the only guaranteed way into heaven.

Drug cartels are in it for the money, prestige, and fun.



Trying to directly equivocate the nature of such conflicts is absolutely ridiculous.

Jihadis will deliberately seek death, and be willing to do incredibly dangerous things even when they aren't deliberately trying to die.

Cartel enforcers are not interested in dying. You'd probably find a few oddballs here and there, but that'd be one in thousands, not 'every third enemy rifleman.'


Past that, Sympathizers to the radical jihadis were in every nation and neighboring nation we fought the GWOT in. Most famously, the Taliban could never be finished off, because they just retreated into Pakistan every time they got their asses kicked, and politicians wouldn't allow or make a way for the military to actually pursue them to finish them off.

Who, exactly, are the cartels going to retreat to cover themselves behind? The Cartels fight each other, and while some desperate alliance against the USA isn't out of the question, that still doesn't actually protect them from getting attacked by US air power.


Past that, the logistics chain for conducting such operations is hilariously short. Literally just fly or drive across the border, and you're in your Area Of Operations, instead of needing to build a military logistics chain that stretches across the entire planet. You can have air power from US-soil airbases over any part of Mexico in a couple of hours, and that's without making special preparations.


To loop back around to one of the most important consequences of the first point, how will Cartels replace lost numbers once they start getting slaughtered?

Some of the Cartel members are fairly competent combatants, a lot of them are hardened killers. They have a fair bit of pseudo-military equipment; assault rifles, grenades, heavy machine guns, etc.

At best a small percentage of them are competent to the level of regular US line infantry. They sure as hell don't have access to large volumes of APCs, tanks, artillery, air strikes, and a functionally-unlimited amount of reinforcements.

Once cartel members start dying, and dying fast, how exactly are the cartels going to recruit more people? It's a lot harder to sell 'money, prestige, women, booze and drugs,' when the combined might of the most powerful military in the world is coming down on you like a hammer.

The Jihadis saw dying in glorious Jihad as a selling point for joining up.

For the cartels, it is the worst outcome possible. How do you spend your ill-gotten gains when you're dead?


Nobody knows for sure exactly how limited special operations attacks on Cartels would go, or full-on military hammer attacks either. There have been some past precedents, and its usually gone poorly for criminal syndicates fighting professional militaries (though IIRC they sometimes do well against conscript militaries), but modern drone-warfare is a major enough variable it's hard to say for sure how things would go.

My money would still be on the side backed by the largest economy and military-industrial complex in the world. The US military can get their hands on every drone cartels could, and then some. It can also get its hands on military-grade E-war equipment that the cartels either flat out can't, or only could in very limited quantities if certain nations (China, Russia) wanted to risk pissing Trump off to try to prop up these criminal syndicates.

A 'Great War on Cartels' probably wouldn't be completely bloodless for team USA, but I see little reason to think the Cartels could fight any more effectively than the Jihadis (some of whom funded themselves through narco-trade as well...), and a lot of reasons why it could go much, much worse.


Finally, winning.

It's hard to outright win a war against a suicide cult, especially when your political leadership won't let you actually conduct an extermination campaign, or even attack their religious apparatus.

It's a lot easier to win a war against what's ultimately an armed business organization, first off because they're a lot more afraid of dying, and second off because once you smash enough of their business apparatus, they can't fund the conflict anymore. They can't just raise money and volunteers from other members of the cult.
 
Add to this, most Cartel operations invovle terror to keep people from snitching and the like. They use fear, that doesn't work against the US military as we take it as a challenge, you think we are scared, how scared will you be when we level your entire drug compound eith a B52....

Basically imagine the 2018 Wagner fight vs US SF and you get what will happen to the cartels in any open fight
 
What these arguments about the nature of the cartels vs jihadi's miss, is that many of the cartels are proxies for our international adversaries, and work with actual jihadi's for funding and weapons.

Hamas and Hezbollah in particular are part of the drug smuggling trade, for funding reasons, and have favored cartel proxies.

The CCP also use cartel proxies to push fent into the US, and just to try to destabilize the US overall.

And the largest number of Russian intel assets and agents in active service tends to be in Mexico, because the world knows that fucking with the US is much easier if you have a base of operations just south of the border.

Add in the Venezuelan cartels/gangs the Maduro backs to fuck the US for ideological reason.

Maybe there are some cartels that are just crooks looking to get rich, but most cartels should be viewed as foreign proxies in a undeclared proxy war.
 

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