What do you immediately think of when you read this:
A top leader of the Gulf drug cartel was killed during a two-hour gun battle with Mexican security forces in the border city of Matamoros, authorities said.
Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, known as “Tony Tormenta” or “Tony the Storm,” was killed in the shootout Friday, Mexican military officials said in a statement.
Something like this, maybe:
A recent drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal region killed one of al Qaeda’s top commanders, two Pakistani security officials told CNN Tuesday.
Sheikh Mohammad Fateh al Masri, described as the group’s senior operational commander, was killed in North Waziristan, one of the seven districts of the country’s volatile tribal region.
Only the names change, but the game goes on. Permanent war is permanent war.
Odie Hugh Manatee
It’s the adult version of Whack-A-Mole. The game never ends, you just score points and plug more money into it to play again so you can score even higher!
As long as they have the quarters they get to play.
General Stuck
You won’t say that when liberals are forced to wear international peace symbol arm bands for identification.
sherifffruitfly
Is the analogy simply that “someone died”?
Has the US invaded Mexico?
Was the guy killed by US people?
Is the US military action in Mexico (because it’s sooooo analogous) generating a younger generation of Mexican terrorists?
Hey, John Cole stubbed his toe! Reminds me of when Hitler stubbed his toe!
Stupid analogy is stupid.
Cat Lady
Tony Tormenta is a cool name though. The automatic Boston accent translator in my brain reads it as Tony Tormentor, which is cool too. Also.
Permanent War. The upside is our military commanders at least are busy doing something other than plotting how to overthrow the secret islamofascistkenyanusurper Obama.
General Stuck
@sherifffruitfly:
Until our esteemed blog host forgives himself for supporting the Iraq war and wingnuts in general. five fucking years ago posts like this one will continue.
cathyx
There’s money to be made with war. ‘Nuf said.
C Nelson Reilly
@Cat Lady:
Tony Tormenta is a cool name, but I still think Carlos the Jackal is better
Chyron HR
Chris Squire.
General Stuck
@Chyron HR:
yes
joe from Lowell
Every week, the garbage truck comes and collects my trash, but a week later, it’s full again.
I guess they should just stop, because they aren’t eliminating the production of trash.
@cathyx:
There are Democratic votes to be gained through immigration reform. ‘Nuf said, right?
joe from Lowell
@General Stuck:
Among the many, many, many different reasons why the Iraq War was stupid and detrimental to our security and interests is the effect it had of turning people against the actual business of dealing with al Qaeda.
The logic goes:
1. George Bush said invading Iraq was part of handling terrorism.
2. The Iraq War was stupid and pointless, and bore no connection to dealing with a real problem we face.
3. George Bush said that _________________ was part of handling terrorism.
Therefore, ___________________ is stupid and pointless, and bears no connection to dealing with a real problem we face.
J sub D
Don’t you see? All of this violence in Mexico (and elsewhere) over the obscene prohibition driven profits in the illegal drug trade proves that prohibition is working! We’re winning the war on drugs! We’ve turned the corner, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. If we don’t fight the drug cartels in Mexico we’ll be fighting them here. Just a few more billions in military aid to Mexico, another million or two Americans incarcerated and marijuana, cocaine and heroin use will be a thing of the past.
At least that’s what our drug czars, Dem and GOP alike, are asserting. That I can’t walk to the closest liquor store (to purchase approved addictive and dangerous drugs) without some complete stranger offering to sell me cocaine or heroin is ignored in their pronouncements.
The public’s continued support of this insane policy after decades of failure bolsters my contention that people are stupid.
bootsy
All I see is furriners getting to practice their Gawd-given second amendment rights… Using American Guns! USA! USA! USA!
Tractarian
Gotta side with sherifffruitfly and joe from Lowell on this one.
There really is no connection between the two events except they both involve state-sanctioned extra-judicial killing.
Now, you could argue that the drone strike in Waziristan could lead to a “permanent war” because it would enrage and radicalize local tribesmen to the point where they might someday become drone targets as well.
But it’s not like people in Matamoros are going to be rushing to join drug gangs just because Tony Tormenta was killed.
Josie
The violence in Matamoros was more widespread than this article would lead you to believe. I live about 60 miles from Brownsville and the local media was reporting a long period of heavy arms fire and smoke rising from several points in the city. People were coming across to escape the mayhem. The bridge was closed for a while, and a swat force was stationed on the bridge until around 10:00 last night. This is no joke, and I hope the powers that be are aware of the possible spillover effects and are making a plan to deal with it. When you live about 15 miles from the border, it isn’t a theoretical situation.
John Cole
The connection is quite clear. A “top leader” for the opposing faction of an unwinnable war was killed. In two more months, we will kill another “top leader.” And maybe a week later, another “top leader.”
It is not hard to figure out the similarity and the futility, and that our policies are doing nothing to deal with the underlying situation.
sherifffruitfly
@John Cole:
Pretty sure this will be Obama’s Katrina, too.
“our policies are doing nothing to deal with the underlying situation.”
Confirming we are all Mexican now as well.
lols
El Cid
These cartels are not like your drug gangs any more.
They are narco-paramilitary armies who often win open battles with the police and military, as well as carrying out systematic massacres to intimidate anyone opposing them — including patients at drug addiction treatment facilities.
Last week a scholar at the National Defense University found that the leaders of several of the worst and deadliest narco-paramilitaries were Mexican military officers brought to the US to train in counter-insurgency, anti-drugs interdiction, and so on.
Once returning to Mexico, these individuals were easily bought for a much higher bidder, and have begun the sorts of organizational upgrades, armory improvements, and tactical and strategic advances for which these officers were trained.
I can’t see any likelihood that they will be defeated by force.
The much heralded ‘victories’ against the Colombian cartels in the 1980s took those organizations out, and made the large cities much safer, but drove the industry to the countryside where the former government and military allied paramilitary death squad forces control both the vast majority of rural territories and the local governments within those areas.
Still, we continue to provide the profit motive to the increasingly integrated narco-paramilitary networks extended from Colombia through Central America (typically led by former guerrillas and death squad leaders) up throughout most of Mexico.
El Cruzado
Obligatory Onion link:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/eighty-percent-of-alqaeda-no-2s-now-dead,5159/
joe from Lowell
@John Cole:
Just like my garbage. They empty it, and it fills up again, so they empty it, and it fills up again.
Such a waste. They should just stop collecting my garbage.
joe from Lowell
@John Cole:
In Af-Pak, THIS PARTICULAR policy is doing nothing to “deal with the underlying situation.” That’s true.
So, as long as you pretend we aren’t engaged in peace talks with the Taliban, we aren’t encouraging detente between India and Pakistan, we aren’t building up the capacity of the Afghan government, we aren’t promoting development in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, we aren’t leaving Iraq – in other words, if you ignore all of the policies that do something about the underlying situation – and look only at the policies intended to deal with the symptoms of that situation, then you can conclude that our policies aren’t doing anything about the underlying situation.
Uh…thanks for that, I guess.
Chris
It gets even better (well, for this example, anyway): “Matamoros” originally meant “killer of Moors.” Which is what Muslims were known as centuries ago.
John Cole
I keep forgetting how much Joe likes to get his war on. Yes, Joe, this is JUST LIKE taking out your trash. Except we could change policies immediately that would lessen the amount of trash you generate. And we are talking about human beings, and not your Colt 45 empties and old boxes of ding-dongs. And that no one was accidentally caught in the crossfire while your garbage was being taken out. And we don’t spend hundreds of billions of dollars locking up people who wanted to take your trash.
Other than that, of course, it’s the same fucking thing.
Jonathan
joe from Lowell, when they pick up your garbage each week, does it make the headline news?
John makes a perfectly valid point: These men, no matter how horrible they may be, are still pawns in the 11-dimensional chess game that is American foreign policy. That the military and press elevate them to queens (sorry, it’s a chess analogy, gotta keep it realz) after they’re captured or killed doesn’t change the fact that there’s thousands more of them, and that capturing them doesn’t do anything to the actual crime syndicate.
Is that so hard to see?
And John, if my paraphrase was off, I apologize. This was such a spot-on post, I couldn’t believe that some folks would take exception to it. I forgot that the internet is all about, “Your opinion is slightly different that mine! You are a horrible person to post your opinion on your blog! I’ll get my revenge by commenting and pointing out our slight slight differences, which makes you an idiot, sir!”
Brachiator
@John Cole:
Don’t see the connection at all. If the drug war is unwinnable, perhaps drug legalization should be considered (although I don’t quite see how Americans should be telling the Mexican government what it should be doing). Are you suggesting that Al Qaeda is unstoppable and so should be recognized as a legitimate political entity?
I understand that some Americans have a need to focus on the US use of drones. They don’t like it, even though at some level the use of drones is much like the use of snipers, something at which Afghan warriors have excelled since the 19th century.
It would help greatly if people stopped looking at the conflict from the sole perspective of what it means to and for Americans, or from the faulty perspective of some supposedly interminable conflict that has always been happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A couple of things to keep in mind. The area in which the drone attacks occur take place in an area in which the Pakistan government has little control, and to which the Pakistan military is reluctant to commit forces because they want to play a number of sides against each other.
The Taliban, on the other hand (entirely separate from Al Qaeda) have been targeting opposition leaders for assassination for decades. They have no problem using snipers or bombs, and would probably use drones if they could get their hands on them. They also don’t have much problem if innocents are killed along with their targets.
Also, the Taliban have long been clients of Pakistan.
The situation became more complicated after 9/11 when the US began pressuring Pakistan to do more in the supposed “war on terrorism,” but Pakistan has never ceased to look to its own perceived national interests even as it courts or rejects US attention.
Now, US efforts in the region may be a total waste of time, but it is pointless to try to come up with forced and inapplicable comparisons to Mexico’s attempts to reign in drug cartels.
joe from Lowell
@John Cole:
I was against the Iraq invasion when you were calling people traitors, John. FAIL.
Why don’t you crack open a frosty can of STFU with that talking point, and stop projecting your guilt onto those of us who actually are capable of distinguishing between necessary and stupid wars, instead of lurching back and forth between ignorant warmongering and ignorant denunciations?
I guess the part where I talked about all of the policies we’re pursuing to lessen terrorism went right over your head. I get that a lot.
D00d, you just wrote a post conflating the legitimacy of anti-terror policies to the legitimacy of drug prohibition, and you’re bitching at me about drawing an imprecise parallel? I didn’t know they sold weaksauce in oil drums.
joe from Lowell
@Jonathan:
The comparison between the two falls apart because violent enterprises driven by the profit motive are always going to find more recruits, much more easily than those driven by ideology.
Not to mention, stopping terrorism is a legitimate use of government power, while drug prohibition is not.
joe from Lowell
If we legalized drugs tomorrow, the drug cartels would vanish as surely as the bootlegger gangs did.
Since this parallel is so unassailable, somebody tell me what we could do tomorrow to stop terrorism?
Drug cartels are, unquestionably, a consequence of drug prohibition. They vanish entirely in its absence.
Violent religious fanaticism is not a consequence of opposition to violent religious fanaticism. If we stopped using force against al Qaeda, al Qaeda wouldn’t vanish. Blowback is only one factor driving its existence. It should be taken into account, but there are competing forces driving its existence that, unlike drug prohibition, aren’t our doing.
joe from Lowell
My city has a terrific recycling program, and I compost.
So, I guess they should collecting my trash. Right?
Jonathan
@joe from Lowell:
Terrorism has no profit motive? From what perspective? Because I certainly think there is a profit motive from defense contractors who help our military by building billion-dollor boondoggles that will in no way help in modernizing our cold-war defense system.
But again: John’s comparison is based on something more than “drug wars are to terrorisms as Tony the Storm is to Sheik So-and-so,” and that you keep conflating it to that shows a strong desire to not understand the argument.
Shooting men in the head is a waste of time. Honestly. The cheapest asset in any war is a human being. So, in your opinion, the drug war can be stopped by ending drug prohibition? Great. But can it be stopped by shooting (very important) men in the head? I think you might say, “no.”
Stopping terrorism is a legitimate use of government power? Great. But how did shooting someone (very important) in the head (with a drone strike) stop terrorism? I’m pretty sure it didn’t. And I think the argument here is that it didn’t even dent the organization.
And finally, ideology always finds recruits. Profit motive is just one type of ideology (see: Amway). But to think that we can ever make “terrrorism” an unattractive ideology by blowing shit up, well, first of all you have the wrong idea of what the ideology of “terrorism” is. And secondly, you’re naive in the extreme. Blowing shit up makes people angrier and more apt to believe that the country responsible for blowing shit up is actually the bad guy.
Brachiator
@Jonathan:
Nonsense. Again and again, egotistical Americans (both on the right and left) falsely assume that the entire world revolves around the US and that no other country has or pursues its own foreign policy objectives.
@joe from Lowell:
I see where you are coming from, and agree with some of your conclusions. However, the Mafia did not cease to exist when Prohibition ended.
Jonathan
@joe from Lowell: “Drug cartels are, unquestionably, a consequence of drug prohibition.”
Yeah, but ending drug prohibition will not get rid of the drug cartels. Did the end of alcohol prohibition destroy the Mob? Unfortunately, that knot is pretty tight at this point.
Not to say I don’t agree with you about ending drug prohibition. It should end, because continuing it doesn’t do anything positive. But your assumption that the cartels would disappear is incorrect. Taking them down will either take creative law enforcement, or, using the Mob as an example, decades of constant battles until they’re replaced by a stronger cartel.
Jonathan
@Brachiator: “Again and again, egotistical Americans (both on the right and left) falsely assume that the entire world revolves around the US and that no other country has or pursues its own foreign policy objectives.”
Hmmm… no. I tend to think when an American weapon, wielded by an American or American-trained soldier or militia-man, kills someone who is targeted for reasons that have to do with American policy, America has something to do with it. Call me egotistical if you want; although, why thinking the world revolves around me has something to do with American foreign policy I cannot fathom.
That’s a great argument, too. Some great, giant boulder bounds down the hallway and knocks me into a wall, giving me a bloody nose. Later I blame the boulder, and Brachiator says:
“Nonsense! You clearly hit the wall with your large nose! Again and again, you egotistical wall-bangers think everything can be explained by a run-away boulder.”
joe from Lowell
@Jonathan:
John’s argument isn’t about defense contractors. It’s about more terrorists rising up to fight for al Qaeda and other terror groups. Let’s try to stick to the topic, instead of bringing in irrelevant hobby horses.
You can keep pretending I don’t understand, as opposed to don’t agree with, John’s argument all you want. I’ve presented my reasons for not finding it convincing. Respond to them, don’t respond to them, it’s all the same to me.
Tell it to the Japanese emperor. I don’t find the pragmatic arguments for pacifism convincing.
I’d accuse you of “a strong desire not to understand” my trash-removal argument, but that would be a really pompous, asshole-ish pose to strike, so I won’t. I don’t think that terrorism can be stopped entirely; I think it’s like trash removal, a problem to be continually managed. In this way, it’s unlike the threat posed by drug cartels, which actually can be done away with entirely.
Killing terrorists, especially top-level organizers, helps to manage the problem of terrorism by minimizing terror groups’ capacity, and disrupting their planning and operations.
This is an article of faith, and I won’t try to argue you out of it. I just don’t share your faith.
…is not what I wrote, or believe.
Is there anything more tedious than a guy on a comment thread striking the “You’re so naive” pose?
What part of my statement
suggests to you that I don’t understand the concept of blowback?
joe from Lowell
@Brachiator:
No, they did not. They had other illegal lines of work to pursue.
However, organized crime as a whole decreased, and the violence and other effects of a giant, highly-profitable black market in alcohol disappeared, creating a quite impressing decline in crime rates.
joe from Lowell
Brachiator,
I appreciate your argument, though, that the drug cartels have already been created, and will still be a problem, even if a diminished one, if prohibition ends. “Disappear entirely” was overstating things.
joe from Lowell
We can make terrorism – or, in this case, the particular strain of international jihadism – less attractive to a broader swathe of people by doing things like
Which we can do, should do, and are doing. Absolutely.
But this isn’t either/or. We can make gang-banging less attractive through community development, economic opportunity, Boys and Girls Clubs, and all sorts of other policies. I continue to cling to the belief that the police should take action against those violent gang members who are active.
Because, you know, I just love violence. Mmm, mmm. mmm! Violence – hee haw!
Because I’m a terrible, terrible person.
Brachiator
@Jonathan:
No, I said that egotistical Americans can only see American foreign policy. They cannot imagine that any other country might be pursuing its own national interests. They are also strangely, willfully blind to the impact of the meddling of other nations in the region’s history.
The Pakistan government weakly protested the use of American drones and then praised the US for selling them $2 billion in arms. They not-so-quietly made it known that if the US was not willing to sell them weapons, they would gladly deal with the Chinese.
Pakistan has longed backed groups like the Taliban, before the US got involved in the region, and after the US got involved in the region.
And yet you continue to talk solely about US weapons and US foreign policy.
Thank you for proving my point.
Bonus round clue: East Pakistan.
Double bonus round clue: The Great Game.
As an aside, Obama is in India and yet even users of the Internets insist on going to the usual suspects to have the news interpreted for them. But I invite you to take a look at local sources, like the English language Times of India. Great video currently on the home page of Michelle Obama dancing with Indian children.
John Cole
1.) Joe- That was a shitty and unfair thing for me to say. I am sorry. The “taking out the trash” comparison pissed me off. We’re talking about people.
2.) The point is that our policies right now feed an endless cycle of violence, and there is a clear comparison between our failed policies in the drug war and our failed policies in fighting terrorism.
joe from Lowell
John,
That was big of you to write that. I know it can be hard to walk back like that.
Those targeted by these terrorists are people, too. The members of those synagogues in Chicago that the mail bombs were sent to? We’re talking about people – and much better people than an al Qaeda regional commander.
I know you’re a dog lover, too. Would you hesitate for even a second to put down Cujo? If you think I’m going to shed a tear for Sheikh Mohammad Fateh al Masri because he shares my DNA, you’re wrong. I’m not going to throw a party over the death of anyone, but I’m not going to cry over it, either. It had to be done.
Anyway, the point of my trash collection comparison wasn’t to compare people to trash, but rather, the endless, but necessary, aspect of the two tasks. I could just as easily have used street resurfacing, snow removal, or lawn mowing.
First of all, that has nothing to do with your point in bringing up the Drug War, because absolutely none of the problem of the drug cartels is about a “cycle of violence.” It’s about criminals out to make a buck.
Second, your statement is too broad, and too narrow, at the same time.
Too broad: If we put a bullet into bin Laden tomorrow, do you think there is a single human being on this planet who isn’t already our enemy who would become so?
Too narrow: Even if you think there was, do you believe killing important al Qaeda figures has only that effect, and should be judged only by who doesn’t like it? If you were working on a project at work with six other people, and one of them got hit by a bus, don’t you think there would be consequences for the project beyond the feelings of the remaining members?
General Stuck
@John Cole:
Yes, with a lot of the tactics we are using to fight terrorism and those of fighting drug abuse. In the broadest sense possible this is correct. But any analogy, other than using the term war, is very poor comparing drug abuse and it’s causes and problems, and terrorism and it’s result and root causes.
Continuing to fight a ground war in Afghan, imo, is a poor tactic and counterproductive in “the war on terrorism”. Targeting and killing high level leaders of Al Quaeda is not, provided we don’t do it in a way that makes it likely civilians will get killed in the process. I don’t know the details of the drone attack in Afghan was on an occupied building or home, I am on record as against that particular tactic. If it was done out in the open, where civilian casualties are unlikely, then that is a legitimate and justified thing to do in a war that both sides have declared upon one another.
Or, don’t confuse tactics with the overall effort, and make analogies based on the use of a word, like “war”, when there is no other real comparison to make between the subjects of debate.
Just Some Fuckhead
We should legalize terrorism and tax the fuck out of it.
Brachiator
@John Cole:
Just not true.
To speak of an endless cycle of violence in the region clearly ignores history (e.g. British and Russian imperialism in the 19th century) and contemporary efforts by Pakistan to exert its influence in the region.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, among other countries, support terrorists in much the same way that European nations used pirates and privateers as unofficial adjuncts of official state policy during the 16th through 18th centuries.
America’s efforts in the region may be futile, but not just because we are fueling some fanciful cycle of violence.
And what do “our” failed policies in the drug war have to do with Mexico’s own efforts to deal with the problem?
Hell, you could make a better case that if infantile Americans, who can never take responsibility for their own actions, ceased buying drugs, then the market for drugs coming through Mexico would significantly decline, as would drug related violence.
tlauf
The connection is that neither of these “organizations” are top-down command and control operations. Both operate as independent cells with networks of operatives who may not even know each other. Yet we continue to fight against them as if killing some of the top bad guys is a route to victory. Both the American government and the Mexican government fail to see underlying causes, as many of you mention, and both governments refuse to change strategies, but continue to modify tactics with no positive results.