The top conetnders for the Republican presidential nomination all want to send the U.S. military into Mexico to shut down the drug cartels.
The Republican Primary Consensus for Sending the Military Into Mexico | Reason | Matt Welch:
May 24, 2023 - "When Sen. Tim Scott (R–S.C.) ... announced his 2024 presidential bid on Monday, the speech was predictably full of the upbeat, anecdotal, ain't-America-grand stuff that Scott, like generations of Republicans before him, has made central to his political career. Then things suddenly turned dark. 'When I am president, the drug cartels using Chinese labs and Mexican factories to kill Americans will cease to exist,' Scott vowed. 'I will freeze their assets, I will build the wall, and I will allow the world's greatest military to fight these terrorists'....
"Scott's bellicosity was no mere bolt from the blue. As Reason has been documenting for six years now, Republicans, even while otherwise souring on U.S interventionism abroad, have increasingly concluded that the alarming spike in domestic fentanyl overdoses would best be treated by sending the military into Mexico. Donald Trump first floated the idea, while he was president, of designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations — thereby allowing for extraterritorial prosecutions, enhanced investigative powers, and increased penalties for domestic drug-related crimes — in March 2019.... Trump himself in the summer of 2020 twice asked then–Defense Secretary Mark Esper whether 'we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,' according to Esper's 2022 memoir. Notable MAGA politicians Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) have both suggested violent interdiction south of the border, as have a bevy of more traditional hawks. There are a handful of escalatory bills bouncing around Congress.
"Open presidential primary contests, filled with hot air as they may be, are nonetheless useful X-rays of a political party's ideological heart.... So ... here are the top six 2024 GOP presidential candidates talking in their own words about using the U.S. military in Mexico to fight fentanyl-dealing drug cartels. Below that are some Reason arguments against merging the war on terror with the war on drugs.
Donald Trump.... 'When I am president, it will be the policy of the United States to take down the cartels, just as we took down ISIS and the ISIS caliphate,' the former president said in January. '[I will] order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations.'
Ron DeSantis.... 'Would you build the wall and would you use the military to go after Mexican drug cartels?' Florida's governor was asked at a press conference this month, replying, 'Yes, and yes.' He elaborated: 'The border should be shut down.... You do need to construct a wall.... We also have to come to terms with all the amount of fentanyl that's coming into our country.... You ... gotta go in and you gotta really go in with all guns blazing and using all the leverage that you have to be able to do it.'
Mike Pence.... 'The cartels are in operational control of our borders,' the former vice president said at a campaign stop in March.... "National security begins with border security. We need leadership that will secure the southern border of the United States of America as a priority.... Not only do you have this humanitarian crisis coming across, [there's] the impact on our economy, families, and communities, the flow of illegal drugs.... We have to have leadership willing to use American strength."
Nikki Haley.... 'When it comes to the cartels,' the former South Carolina governor said in March, 'you tell the Mexican president, 'Either you do it or we do it.' But we are not going to let all of this lawlessness continue to happen. And we can do that by putting Special Ops in there, by doing cyber, by really being strategic—just like we dealt with ISIS, you do the same thing with the cartels.'
Vivek Ramaswamy.... 'If the U.S. military has one job, it is to protect U.S. soil here in the United States, including the southern border,' Ramaswamy said in a March interview. 'And treating the cartels like terrorists doesn't just mean freezing their assets.... I think it means justified military force to decimate the cartels, Osama bin Laden–style, Soleimani-style.... And I think it's important to do it in…one cycle of aggressive shock and awe. And that solves the fentanyl supply-side problem.'"
Tim Scott .... Asked by NBC News to clarify his use-the-military comments in his announcement speech, Scott said: 'What we should do is whatever it takes to secure our southern border and stop the Mexican cartels from bringing fentanyl across the border.... Should we have more of a military presence on…our southern border? Obviously we should.... Should we say exactly what we're gonna do? Of course not."
Read more: https://reason.com/2023/05/24/the-republican-primary-consensus-for-sending-the-military-into-mexico/
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