They don’t talk about ISIS in history class because they’d have to mention Donald Trump. He took office, and in less than a year, six months maybe, ISIS went from a regional superpower in the Middle East to a historical footnote. They wrecked some ancient archeology, burned people alive, and now they’re – wait, who are we talking about? Oh, the guys Obama couldn’t do anything with that took over large areas after America pulled out of Iraq. Them.
Trump is on his way back to the Oval Office, and he’s announced a plan to deal with the drug problem by killing that tree at its roots. Yes, one can only assume that the people making millions killing our kids won’t stop, but think about this. Elite forces sent to eliminate cartel leaders, underbosses, and the operations in surgical strikes might be a better use of taxdollars than sending weapons to Ukraine.
I think we’ve tried this before, but maybe only in the movies—the ones where the CIA isn’t funding the operations, and China isn’t providing raw material. We live in a weird world. I’m also interested in the larger play. Trump measures everything in terms of leverage. He is always working on a deal. Public statements, leaks, promises, and policies are meant to move the opposition – whatever it is – in his direction. Sometimes without doing anything else.
And it works. So, what do we make of this?
Say hello to my little friends.
Trump has proven himself to be effective at deploying resources, and he likes to keep his promises. Not a war on drugs but a war on Drug cartels. This isn’t something he did the last time (I don’t think). He worked the border and enforced immigration law, and the influx of drugs declined in terms of opioid deaths. This was the first decline since Obama and Democrats opened the border – which disappeared when Biden-Harris slithered into office.
So, What might the deal-maker-in-chief have in mind? In a call to Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, he brought trade, tariffs, and (probably) this.
“That is why Trump went so far as to say during the campaign that if Mexico did not cooperate on these issues,” Montes de Oca continued, “he would make public the U.S. government’s intelligence information on politicians in Mexico who are related to drug cartels.”
Considering the cartels’ influence in Mexico — Sheinbaum was elected after a record number of presidential candidate assassinations, per Reuters — it’s safe to say this would likely expose a significant amount of lawmakers.
I’m not sure if this would motivate them to let him hit cartel leaders with special forces, but he can probably manage a border tighter than the last time he was in office.
We’ll see.
One clarification. Yes, there were air strikes against ISIS and no, Trump would not be doing that in Mexico. Doing to ISIS is meant to infer erasing cartel bosses as a measurable force, and as suggested in the text, that’ll be a lot harder to do given that Cartels generate billions in revenue (incentive) where ISIS was just a faction of zealots in the desert.
