Shoot and 'Bomb the Mexicans' is Resonating More with MAGA Voters than 'Build a Wall'

 

If you ignore the fact that US addicts have created the demand and cashflow to fund the drug cartels south of our border and that guns purchased in the United States and smuggled south have created some of the best armed criminals in history, perhaps you can blame the Mexico and points south for the drug crisis here in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 110,000 Americans died in 2022 from fentanyl overdoses, often imported across our southern border. While the United States is nowhere near taking the bulk of the responsibility for this horrific statistic, GOP candidates are suggesting some equally horrific solutions.

Sending US troops into Mexico, without Mexico’s consent, is high on that list for some. Not only would that effectively be a US invasion of another country, but the global anti-American sentiments all over the world would make us seem a bigger pariah than we are considered now. Not to mention the very low probability of anything resembling success. We spent two decades in the heroin/opium capital of the planet – Afghanistan – with not even a dent in that drug trafficking nation. Next.

Ron “Please Let Me Be America’s Autocrat” DeSantis, joined by several prominent Republicans, seems to carry the rising de facto state motto (“shoot first, ask questions later”) to a new level. Writing in the July 3rd Los Angeles Times, Jean Guerrero writes: “When then-President Trump proposed shooting migrants in the legs and firing missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs, he did so in private… Republican politicians are now expressing their bloodlust in public. As ‘Build the Wall’ loses its edge, ‘Bomb the Mexicans’ is becoming mainstream in the GOP.

“[In late June], Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — Trump’s top challenger for the Republican presidential nomination — promised to deploy the U.S. military against transnational cartels in Mexico and advocated for executing people crossing the border who are carrying drugs. ‘You absolutely can use deadly force,’ he said.

“All of the party’s top presidential contenders endorse a counter-terrorism operation against cartels in Mexico, in some cases regardless of Mexico’s desires. Trump has called for ‘battle plans’ targeting drug traffickers ‘just like we took down ISIS.’” Except ISIS was not even a country. The precedents he should be looking at are Iraq (now anti-American and very pro-Iran), Afghanistan (we just plain lost), and Viet Nam (another big loser). Bombing cartels will, of necessity, take out innocents since these toxic gangs live and operate in villages where ordinary people live. Some cartels fund local public works that their government is not willing to cover.

Guerrero continues: “The idea exploits the grief of tens of thousands of Americans who’ve lost loved ones to fentanyl, sometimes made in Mexico with chemicals from China. Republican bills introduced in both chambers of Congress seek to authorize military force in Mexico. Other legislation would designate cartels in Mexico as foreign terrorist organizations or classify fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, among other things.

“No politician has proposed bombing the U.S. corporations behind thousands of opioid-related deaths, but why would they? To rally American support for state violence, bloodmongers need racism… A new NBC News poll found that military force against cartels, at least at the border, was more popular than all other policy positions in the survey, including anti-transgender messages. About 86% of Republican primary voters and 55% of all voters favored using troops at the border to stop drugs.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) has been sounding the alarm about Republican proposals that lay the groundwork for an invasion of Mexico. During a House Foreign Affairs committee meeting about a bill to classify fentanyl under the Chemical Weapons Convention, he argued that it gave victims’ families false hope.

“‘There’s literally a black hole in this piece of public policy that doesn’t address the American side at all,’ Castro said. He was referring to the U.S. demand for drugs and government data showing American citizens represent the vast majority of drug traffickers, despite the popular perception of cartels as Mexican.

“Republican legislation also ignores the fact that cartels in Mexico operate almost exclusively with guns smuggled in from the U.S. in defiance of Mexico’s gun laws, some of the most stringent in the world. Imagine if Mexico were planning to invade the U.S. to attack American gun companies, which make products known to kill tens of thousands of Mexicans each year and which refuse to take basic steps to stop gun smuggling. Instead, Mexico is merely suing the gun manufacturers.

“‘If we really want to fight criminal organizations and drug traffickers, we need to decrease their firepower,’ Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, legal advisor for Mexico’s foreign ministry, told me.” The arrogance of American gunmakers is evidenced by weapons bearing images of infamous Mexican bandit emblazoned on the gun (see above rifle stock). As the second photograph illustrates, Mexican police, frequently outgunned or simply relegated to cartel payrolls, find major caches of cartel assault weapons.

But given the MAGA need for seemingly simple solutions, which are usually unlikely to work, and the proclivity to blame “others” (especially when racial attributes are possible), there is absolutely nothing is the proposed violence that will remotely make the drug problem go away. As Guerrero noted from one White victim of a drug crime inspired by the tough talk: “She had thoroughly internalized the GOP’s scapegoating of Mexicans. ‘If it stops the drugs from coming across the border, I will bring a gun down there and I will start shooting,’ she told me.

She broke into sobs. ‘I’ve never felt that way,’ she said, ‘it’s not because I hate — I don’t hate immigrants. I don’t hate them as people. But I hate what they’re doing to our country. They’re invading our country, stealing our livelihoods, murdering our children.’… If President Biden doesn’t stop the drugs, she said, it’s only a matter of time before private citizens organize an offensive at the border. ‘Me, my family, my husband, and everybody I know is ready to do it,’ she said.” Ask these “patriots” to take semiautomatic assault rifles off the market… and they scream like stuck pigs.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the battle over killer narcotics has to start here, against drug companies, our own drug gangs and our out-of-control gun trade.