Haven't popped into this thread in a while since I'm less interested in not-redpill podcasts and more interested in the historical stuff, but this of all things caught my eye.
As for US SOF fighting the cartels, the Mexicans don't need our help. Mexican Marines recaptured El Chapo, killed nearly a dozen cartel members, and suffered one minor casualty
Despite what the big bad scary improvised APCs would have you believe, cartel forces can't actually stand up to the military in a straight up encounter. It's not uncommon to see headlines like "10 gunmen killed, 1 soldier clipped by gunfire" after major happenings and even the vaunted spec ops deserters (many of the original Zetas, for example) aren't going to be operating with the same sorts of assets as the military itself. If the cartel problem could be solved by just going out and shooting all the bad guys like it was a video game they wouldn't still be around in such fashion, but instead dealing with the cartels involves dealing with a bunch of pitfalls not dissimilar to things identified by this thread as impossibilities of GWOT that special forces couldn't solve either.
- Reserves. The military's reserves are relatively fixed, while cartel reserves are more like "every impoverished Mexican." Cartels actually do quite a lot for their PR, and Mexico+South America haven't exactly had a history of trustworthy institutions. Tons of people "know a guy who knows a guy" and as such can be swayed by the allure of making it out of poverty and living a luxurious, masculine life where you're powerful and take no shit and get to enjoy the spoils of your actions as opposed to the probable reality of ending up dead or in prison within a year.
- Expenses. The military has to pay things like health insurance. Cartels don't.
- Revenue. The trade cartels engage in produce huge amounts of revenue which can be used both to resupply and expand, and for PR as mentioned above. Cartels understand the concept of redundancy just like any other large modern organization, a decapitation strike would need to rapidly wipe out a large chunk of the line of succession for the result to not just be "slot in the new boss" which is a really difficult ask even without considering the fact that the military cannot just outright assassinate people while lacking some excuse/plausible deniability/the ability to cover it up.
- Terror. The extreme, indiscriminate violence cartels participate in and spread all over the internet is partly drug fueled hyper-masculine posturing for each other's benefit, but it's also to keep the population in check and to stop them from having faith in the institutions of their government. They'll go as far as to kill entire towns of people due to leaks implicating certain individuals in cooperating with the US. Nobody can publicly say anything against the cartels or tell them no when they come asking for favors and even the soldiers themselves obfuscate their identities for the safety of their families, leading to a culture of demoralization that keeps large segments of the population effectively paralyzed.
- Corruption. Probably the biggest factor, the institutions of Mexico are insanely corrupt at pretty much every level to such a degree that reformism isn't possible. There will be no change within the system because cartels have already thoroughly infiltrated it. There are examples where the military has fought against cops who are effectively just another arm of some cartel because the local government is in bed with them. Cartels tend to have drastically superior local intelligence to whatever military force is sent to fight them, allowing them to mostly keep the kingpins out of the crosshairs and rapidly shuffle more crucial operations around to leave investigators stymied. A terrified or antagonistic populace that's not helping you out while your enemy can just pay local governments for tip offs isn't a fun combination to deal with.
So, picture the perspective of the humble Mexican marine. You're basically involved in a long term counterinsurgency operation, except even worse. You're in the enemy's home court, the people you're supposed to be liberating are afraid of you at best, your own friends and family are directly in the line of fire, and you're up against a foe who you know for sure is willing to engage in acts of cruelty actively detrimental to their own causes just to get at you, the individual. And amidst all this, you're pretty sure that most of your own guys are on the enemy's books in some way, and you're watching them use their suspiciously earned cash to send their own kids off to safer pastures while yours are still in the fray and reliant on that balaclava of yours never slipping. This isn't a fun thing to deal with even if you do win basically every gunfight... and then there's the times you don't even get to do that.
Meet El Chapo's son, Ovidio Guzman Lopez. There's a lot of reading you can do on this if you look up the phrase "Culiacanazo" but the TLDR is that he got captured and in response his cartel basically held a city hostage and was going to butcher hundreds of civilians on primetime news if Ovidio wasn't released, many of those civilians the families of the soldiers involved in his capture. Ovidio was indeed released (He was captured again a couple years later), proving that these groups are indeed big enough to shove the federal government and get away with it, which doesn't do wonders for trying to solve their issue.
Anyways, the cartel stuff may have only been tangentially related, but I really do find the parallel between that situation and the weird murky counterinsurgency stuff spec ops largely get involved with in the modern day interesting, particularly towards how the hard feelings from dealing with these durdling situations with no end in sight and little visible progress shape the antisocial personalities of the people involved. It's no secret that a lot of people joined spec ops expecting a much more straightforward job of killing the bad guys in fancy schmancy ways and flexing their monopoly on the use of force on others to feel cool and powerful and badass and that those people when confronted with the reality that their efforts were largely for naught turn to despair or sadism.
Also cartel community watch when
