By Dave Anderson:
A proposal that is popular sounding and plays to both American fears and American exceptionalism while being both completely impractical AND unrealistic to ever be implemented is a political goldmine. Governor Perry of Texas looks like he will be mining a vein for rich ore over the border for the next four years as he proposes to send elements of the US military to Mexico:
Gov. Rick Perry said deploying U.S. soldiers to Mexico should be one option to curb drug cartel violence in border cities, but only if Mexico invites the Americans.
"I think we have to use every aspect of law enforcement that we have, including the military," Perry said during an interview Thursday with MSNBC. "I think you have the same situation as you had in Colombia...."
The Mexican government has local legitimacy in most areas of the country. One of the easiest ways for the Mexican government to lose its legitimacy is to invite in a large, visible and uniformed American military presence. Plan Columbia entailed massive US equipment sales, donations, significant deployment of American Special Forces teams as well as significant deployment of contractors, mercenaries and spies. The Mexican public may be willing to accept significant equipment infusions but not the rest of Plan Columbia. So there will not be an invitation from the Mexican government for the US Army or National Guard to patrol the streets of Monterrey or Juarez, or for large scale Special Forces deployments either.
Furthermore, the US Army is finally building a little bit of breathing room back into their deployment schedule as Iraq is now a mission for a large division that is officially a "training and mentoring" mission instead of a corps level mission. That drawdown has freed up most of another division to go to Afghanistan without completely destroying dwell time. Special Forces and Special Ops units are heavily involved in Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq, so their availability is even more restricted than main force units.
But hey, reality seldom gets in the way of a political gold mine, especially when that political gold mine allows one to have a 'serious' position that is ineffective at anything other than not pissing off key components of the proponent's political coalition. Advocating sending in the Army while knowing the Army will never be invited allows one to dodge proposals that would significantly harm the cartels in Mexico by crimping their logistics.
The US could do several things to attack cartel logistics. However doing those things are either verbotan in Republican circles, or are verboten in all serious bi-partisan policy elite circles. Legalization in the US would dramatically reduce the black market and smuggling premium for marijuana. The other way to chase cartel cash flow would be to aggressively go after the money laundering banks. But to do that, the criminal feelings might be hurt, and they might go Galt on us. And we can not have that! The other avenue that the US government could actually do some good for the Mexican people would be to reduce the flow of weapons. Requiring background checks on gun-show sales and tracking large scale ammunition purchases would crimp this flow, but it is an impossible suggestion for a Republican to make and an invitation for a Democrat to be painted as a cowardly, gun-taking wimp who is not a real American!
So we get political theatre instead.
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