About a couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me rather disturbing pic. It was the remains of Mexican Cartel victim treated, shall we say rather imaginative if you are into the whole slaughter concept. Ever since I’ve been pondering about making a post about the true consequences of aiding and abetting such a group of deviants by our government and I think it is time to step up and show a very small part of what those monsters (yes, monsters) are doing down there.
One thing we do well in this country is to try to keep the discussion to a certain level of intellect without inflaming passions. We are a country of laws and as antiseptic it may feel sometimes, at the end is the better choice when we are dispassionate about it. Then again we may run separating ourselves so much from reality that we lose touch with it and do not fix what we intended to do in the first place. I am well aware of unintended consequences, but we can strike a balance between what has to be done urgently and doing it right for a long time.
If you are somewhat an aware member of the gun community, you know most of the details of Fast and Furious and more likely agree on the sheer stupidity of the program. We are told always to ask “Cui Bono” who benefits when a program or operation that is obviously wrong from the start gets pushed and in F&F the beneficiary was supposed to be this Administration trying to collect brownie points with the liberal base and those who ran it trying to climb the government ladder.
There was one more group that benefited by F&F and that was the Mexican Drug Cartels who git the weapons. But we do not know or choose not to know the true souls behind the Cartels. We as a country still suffer from what I call The Godfather Effect: We see a head of a Crime family with Vito Corleone colored glasses, a grandfatherly figure taking care of his “family” but pushed into crime because of the circumstances of life & society. He is not bad, he was drawn that way to paraphrase Jessica Rabbit.
Reality is much more gruesome. Crime enterprises like the Cartels get there on sheer power and exercising cruelty and death. Pablo Escobar was a great example of a power intoxicated bastard who had no qualms about blowing an airliner just because a presidential candidate was supposed to be on board and such candidate was gonna make things hard for him. That act alone made Escobar the most wanted man in the world and he was eventually killed. Escobar was a rank amateur compared to the Mexican cartels.
The following pictures are taken from different Mexican blogs covering the Cartel Wars. They gruesome and vividly reflect the reality that Mexicans are living with every day. That people in our Government even thought that it would be a good idea to let weapons fall in the hands of these bastards makes my blood boil. That the people responsible for F&F are going to skate with light slap on the wrist is an insult to any law-abiding taxpayer in this country and it is the bureaucratic equivalent of pissing on the graves of the Cartel Victims.
I think you have been warned enough. Watch at your own risk.
And this video has been making the rounds and most everybody pretends it does not exist. They are two low-level narcos about to be decapitated for whatever they did. The one on the left lived in Phoenix and had served jail time for drugs. The one on the right was a messenger and apparently both were caught skimming/snitching. The bad part begins at around 3:00. Seriously do not watch if you are sensitive.
You now tell me that Operation fast and Furious was worth putting guns in the hands of people who can do stuff like this. Who was the absolute uniformed cretin that said “I think there would be no repercussions if some guns were to fall in the hands of Narcos. They are not as bad as they say. And we can control it”
I hope I have not ruined your day.
PS: I must acknowledge the sheer testicular fortitude of the Narco Bloggers. They blog from hiding because they have been and are targets for the Cartels. Ballsier than the Mexican Government for sure.
As much as we like to talk about victimless crimes, when it comes to the narcotics trade, there are none. Every toot for your nose or joint consumed by a recreational user drives the narco economy and contributes to the violent struggle to control a renewable resource, more valuable than gold.
You’ve forgotten the role of prohibitionist governments in creating these violent cartels. Do you see guys shooting it out to decide who gets to sell liquor on any given corner? Nope. Because the liquor is legal.
Do you really think that people this cruel will just give up and let the price of their product drop and make less money because the government wants to make it legal? It did not happen in Colombia under Escobar and sure as hell it is not gonna happen here.
They move to other illegal activities. This really is modern prohibition. The mafia stopped importing and selling booze…
So, we legalize all other activities too?
In Colombia, the movement to legalize drugs including coke was strong. The cartels themselves nixed that as they knew they would lose market and drive prices down. Plus, the war has ceased to be about drugs as main component and now is power. The cartels are on its way to become their own nations.
Miguel, those who have not lived and worked in these places like we have cannot comprehend the change from an organized hierarchy and increase in violence from the days of old school mafiosos like Juan N. Guerra to the anarchistic free for all now. Today’s cartels are closer to the Salvadorean death squads, the Contras or the various warlords’ combatants in Africa, than the mafia.
There is a reason: If the Government changes the denominator of Organized Crime to Warlords, it stops being a DOJ matter and becomes a DOD matter. Still I am predicting military action inside Mexico in the future. Shit will spill on this side of the border eventually.
I did not say legalize other things, did I? Thanks for taking a page out of the anti-gunner’s play book. I’ve noticed that the pro-gun community is perfectly willing to follow that form when drugs or abortion is the topic of discussion. Congrats Miguel!
It’s happening because it was made illegal, just like booze. It was predictable. While legalizing drugs doesn’t make it all go away because you’re right about the power, keeping drugs illegal is not helping even a little bit.
Every bit of the power they have is because we made drugs illegal HERE. We dumped all that money into their laps. We keep buying those drugs. Making and keeping drugs illegal is solving what?
If we leave them illegal we are just doing the same “more but harder” insanity that we mock anti-gun groups for doing.
Something must give and something must change. Legalization at least has the novelty of never having been tried… but wait; IT HAS BEEN TRIED! The violence that arose from the liquor gangs stopped nearly the instant that booze was made legal again.
You are stuck on the Prohibition tale. You see legalization as the magical panacea that will heal all our problems which is pretty much what Bradites think will happen with an absolute ban on the personal possession of firearms by civilians (See? two can play the game)
Cartels already are deep int other money making enterprises, but they are interested on being their own State. They already beaten the Mexican Government in case you haven’t noticed, they are in war with other cartels for physical presence and land. That kind of thinking is not criminal but Separationist.
Show me in our Constitution where it gives the Government the power to enact these laws, in the first place. The fact is, the cartels only exist in their present power because of these laws. The Mafia existed before prohibition, as a bunch of small time hoods. It was only the sudden influx of money from prohibition that gave them the power they have now. Sure, they’ve diversified. The Mafia is very powerful, and has it’s fingers in everything. How much more powerful would it be if prohibition had continued? Remember, much drug distribution tin the US is still controlled by the Mafia. Would doing away with the drug laws destroy the cartels? No. It would throttle them down.
When was cocaine legalized? I still read reports of arrests for possesion of it every day
Yet how much of this would be going on if the drugs hadn’t been outlawed? Has is stated in the article Cui Bono? Who benefits from the drug laws? Who benefits from the “War on drugs? The only ones to profit from the “war on alcohol” were the mobs… and the Government. When prohibition ended, did they lay off all the enforcement agents? No. They passed new laws, unconstitutional laws regulating what you can do with your own body, then sent the idle agents to enforcing them
these acts would never have happened if the profits were not so great. The profits are so high because of the drug war.
“Still I am predicting military action inside Mexico in the future. Shit will spill on this side of the border eventually.”
I’d have to agree with you there, and I think in the future the disarmament of the law abiding Mexican population will be seen as one of the greatest crimes against humanity.
(See? two can play the game)
???
So banning one thing is OK but banning another thing is not? What happened to the idea that bans is what you do instead of something?
No, legalizing drugs will not be a magic solution that makes the problems go away. What it will do is reduce the money involved, and that will solve some of the problems (just like prohibition, which like it or not is closer to the issue than gun control). Criminals being criminals is another problem all together.
Larry, the Mexican Cartel problem has ceased to be one of drugs. Th best example I can give you is the Narco Guerrillas of Colombia. It is not about drugs or profit but acquisition of power. Even the Colombian Cartels understood 20 years ago that mayhem is bad for business and they want nothing to do with physically controlling land. The Narco Guerrillas is all about taking over Colombia and thankfully they are failing.
Let me put it this way better: We are about to have an Afghanistan in our southern border.
These were people. We have all lost, watching this. LIfe is all we have.
The narcos are already here,in our major cities!!!! SO …If they shoot at U.S. WE need to shoot back!
I think we can all agree that focusing on the end user is doing little to no good. Personally, I’m for legalizing them because I don’t think it’s anybody’s business but the individual (and their family/friends) what goes into their body. A couple happy side effects of this would be less money making it’s way into the pockets of the various gangs/cartels that use the drug trade for income, and more resources available to target the gangs/cartels on this side of the border.
Nothing can be done to end or control a problem that’s beyond comprehension or control. It is necessary for the bloodshed and death stemming from Mexico’s narco wars and population victimization to spill into every region of our country so that drug users and the rest of society can taste firsthand the consequences of that madness. We will one day see decapitated heads and torsos, limbs and the such littered on our streets