continuing the discussion from the Jack Smith thread:
If ignoring the sovereignty of Pakistan to kill Bin Laden is acceptable in the interests of national security, what’s the problem with invading Mexico?
Don’t encourage them! The last thing we need is Trump running on “54-40 or fight, and, I’m only being honest here, between the snowbirds and the Canada geese, those socialists up north started this!”
Off the top of my head, despite rhetoric from the right, Mexico is a close strategic ally, trading partner, and friend of the United States. Any unilateral military action by the US that kills or maims Mexicans would throw that whole relationship in jeopardy. Pakistan is lesser in all those areas compared to Mexico, the one target of the raid was not a citizen of Pakistan, and by himself was considered a major national security threat (as opposed to vague “gangs” and “drug lords”).
One problem I see with invading or bombing Mexico is that there are a lot more Mexicans in the USA than there ever were Pakistanis, it is a neighboring country with well established smuggling channels for people and weapons and the mafia has deep pockets but no scruples.
Of course we can ignore Mexico’s sovereignty to advance US interest but that doesn’t make it a good idea. Mexico and the United States certainly have some issues with one another, but overall we’re pretty good neighbors with one another since Truman’s Good Neighbor policy towards Latin-America. As a whole, Mexicans don’t hate us and its in our best interest to keep in that way.
If the United States wishes to do something about the cartels in Mexico then I humbly suggest we look into the conditions that led to their creation in the first place. Namely our war on drugs. Narco terrorism is places like Columbia and Mexico are fueled by our insatiable desire for drugs. But that kind of introspection is beyond the GOP I think.
Sovereignty exists only as much as one causes others to respect it, typically through diplomacy or military.
Pakistan, through it actions and inactions, lost that respect from the U.S. in the matter of Bin Laden. Hence, the American military action in territory claimed by Pakistan. The price the U.S. paid for violating Pakistan’s sovereignty was worth the goal. If Mexico and the U.S. reach a similar point where the price paid by the U.S. for violating Mexico’s sovereignty is worth the goal, then the U.S. will do it.
This isn’t meant to single out the U.S. Every country makes that same calculation; it just happens that the U.S. has more impunity than others. For example, see India’s recent violation of Canada’s sovereignty by murdering a Canadian citizen in Canada. India decided that goal was worth the cost, so they did it.
A big one (of many) is that we have over 60 million Latinos living in the United States. It would make the protests against the Vietnam war look like a walk in the park.
Plus, for Pakistan to publicly complain about the violation of its territorial sovereignty would necessitate answering why Bin Laden could live in a safe house just a short distance from a headquarters of Pakistan’s intelligence service.
Don’t worry folks, MTG has got you covered. She’s making it all legal-like by drafting a declaration of war in her official capacity as a congresswoman.
Nobody tell her that Congress can’t declare war against an organization that’s not the government of a sovereign country.
I’m not so sure about that. Non-governmental organizations can definitely wage war (see Wagner Group, Islamic State, Taliban, etc). It seems reasonable that Congress could declare war against them.
Wagner is a PMC, a mercenary organization selling its services to government entities. Both the Islamic State and the Taliban are government organizations. Notably Congress hasn’t declared war on any of them - and hasn’t declared war against another nation since WWII, even when we removed the Taliban from its position of being the governmental organization in power in Afghanistan in 2001.
Ultimately, any discussion of what happens between sovereign states turns on realpolitik. What is “right” and “wrong” depends entirely on how much power you have, and what goals you are trying to accomplish.
I don’t think anyone would debate the assertion that the US has the physical capability to bomb any country on Earth, and to do so largely-consequence-free, if the country being bombed isn’t a nuclear power. So the question of “Why not Mexico?” turns on the question of “What is the US trying to accomplish, and will bombing make that goal more or less likely to be the end result?”
The history of US involvements in various quagmires since the mid-1960s suggests that getting into another quagmire, and one that shares a border with the US, is likely to end badly. At least when you’re bombing Pakistan, the pissed off Pakistanis are on the other side of the planet, not just the other side of the Rio Grande.
The war on drugs has been an utter disaster. An American invasion would all but guarantee the next president of Mexico would be a left wing, anti-American populist. That is surely to make the war on drugs even less successful. Right now, if the DEA calls up the Federales and asks for assistance, they mostly get it. With a Hugo Chavez type leader in power, I don’t see that type of cooperation lasting very long. Somehow I doubt there are enough crayons in the world to explain this to MTG.
Which only serves to make it impossible for Congress to declare war on them. Congress has declared war 11 times. There’s a list of them here, notably they are all declarations against sovereign nations.
Yep. it is one of the reasons why America has a higher % of its citizens in prisons than any other free nation. Most “mass shootings” are drug gang fights- altho sadly often innocent bystanders are killed.
Please note that Declarations of war are passe internationally anyway. Pretty much WW2 was the last hurrah of doing it. Russia did not declare vs Ukraine.
And we ‘declared war’ on Poverty and Drugs. Notably in none of these did a congressmember with a room temperature IQ announce that they were drafting a resolution actually declaring a state of war to exist between the United States of America and these concepts to be voted on by Congress. Because that would be laughably ridiculous.