Summary
President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration are debating the extent of potential U.S. military action against Mexican drug cartels.
Options discussed include targeted airstrikes, cyberattacks, covert operations, and “soft invasions” using special forces. Trump has warned Mexico to curb fentanyl trafficking or face military intervention.
His key appointees, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, support some form of military action, framing cartels as terrorist threats.
Critics fear this could escalate tensions with Mexico and spark significant international controversy.
What’s USA’s record against insurgents? I know Trump went to the Taliban to make a deal after more than 2 decades fighting them.
It’s a bit more complicated than most people realize. They know about Vietnam (loss), Iraq (win), and Afghanistan (loss). But there’s also;
More recently -
And through the years -
You can see why we were a tad over confident going into Vietnam and even afterwards we thought we just needed to make some adjustments to our tactics.
He’ll hand over the Mexican government to the Zetas in exchange for some empty promises.
You joke but this proposal would effectively be a declaration of war on heavily armed criminals who already run parts of the country. There’s every possibility he destabilizes the place enough that surrendering Mexico City to the Zetas is how it ends.
We just elected an attempted insurgent!
Idk, seems to me like a successful insurgent. Maybe not an immediate result but, with no real punishment, and getting in anyway, he def got away with it, and rewarded for doing it to boot. If there are future (non sham) elections, the message is loud and clear, this I’d acceptable behavior.
If he tries to cut a deal with them it’ll probably include Texas annexation 😬
I wholly support Texas going elsewhere and shutting the fuck up.
Mexico can have Texas back. We should send them a Thank You card for doing so.
I’d be down, love their president and all she’s for.
Not remotely comparable. Different fighters with different experiences and motivations. Fighting next door vs. halfway around the planet changes logistics, uh, a teeny bit. Different US government and soldier motivations.
We’ve never done anything like this, no way to tell what will happen.
Bro…
We didn’t win at the Alamo.
We won at a hell of lot more times and places though. In fact the Alamo stands out partially because we were generally winning on the border region all the way through Mexico’s 1920 conflict.
And the United States wasn’t the world’s sole superpower. That’s like saying Republicans defeated slavery. True, but things have changed just a bit.
The good guys (the ones opposing slavery) won.
That is true, yes.
Well, except for all the other times we invaded countries in Latin America.
And except for that time we invaded Mexico all the way down to Mexico City.
“Invaded” with both hands tied behind our back.
And my reply was to a post about failing in Afghanistan. So, uh, everything I said still stands.
Well there was that one time, about 212 years ago, and ya’ll had a terrible time about it.