While Trump’s pressure campaign is working — Mexico has been cooperating — U.S. attacks on Mexican soil are still possible. In August, President Trump reportedly signed a directive to authorize the Pentagon to use military force against Latin American drug cartels previously designated as terrorist organizations.
Soon thereafter, we saw a U.S. military drone strike on a Venezuelan drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean. That was followed by an additional two similar strikes on Venezuelan drug boats belonging to the Tren de Aragua terrorist drug cartel.
Much attention has been paid to these strikes, with critics calling them illegal, and a potential preamble to strikes on Venezuela. I personally find them justified and no different from the hundreds of drone strikes Barack Obama launched against terror targets in multiple Eastern countries.
Many see them as long overdue action against criminal and terror groups hurting and killing Americans.
But while many are focused on Venezuela, few are paying attention to how that directive also gives the U.S. military the authority to strike Mexican drug cartels, even inside Mexico. And how President Trump may actually do it.
For now, this threat has been part of Trump’s pressure campaign against Mexico to make them help the U.S. deal with this major security threat, but Trump may decide the pressure isn’t working well enough.
If so, according to Rolling Stone magazine, Geoffrey Corn, director of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University School of Law, and retired U.S. Army judge advocate who served as the Army’s senior law of war adviser, says:
“You have to make a credible argument that the U.S. faces an armed attack.”
The Trump team’s “characterization that we’re under attack by these cartels is essential to using the president’s war powers.”
Corn notes that the Trump administration has characterized illegal migration as an invasion, so it is reasonable to consider drug smuggling into the U.S. as an attack.
He says based on these conditions, he could craft an argument that since Mexico is unable to prevent use of its territory for this drug attack, U.S. special operations raids are a proportional response.
And this may be coming.
The magazine’s liberal writers reported that:
…knowledgeable sources, working in or close to this iteration of the Trump White House, say that unless Mexico gives Trump what he wants, this administration is serious about attacking its neighbor to the south. And according to administration officials and others familiar with the Trump administration preparations, it’s not a bluff…
They added:
…a senior administration official says, “It’s not a negotiating tactic. It’s not Art of the Deal. The president has been clear that a strike … is coming unless we see some big, major changes.”
And while the magazine derides Trump’s directive and subsequent actions as “a Mafia-style intimidation campaign, with the supposed goal of extorting the Mexican government…” The writers admit that Trump so far is getting big results.
For example, the magazine noted:
Mexico extradited 26 alleged cartel members to the United States in a move hailed by Attorney General Pam Bondi as part of the Trump administration’s “historic efforts to dismantle cartels and foreign terrorist organizations.” The fugitives face a variety of federal and state charges, including drug trafficking, kidnapping, murder, and money laundering. Among those apprehended are leaders from major drug cartels, including the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG).
But if Trump decides that this cooperation isn’t enough, how might military operations against the Mexican cartels develop?
Well, plans already in the works have reportedly included everything from drone and air strikes, and commando raids, on cartel infrastructure or drug labs, sending military trainers and advisers, and waging cyber warfare against drug lords and their networks.
But Trump will likely want a big win as well.
Rolling Stone’s writers argue that:
If, or when, Trump decides to blow something up in Mexico, he will be presented with an already prepared menu of options, sources say, which would include possible targets like high-profile cartel hubs or leadership hideouts, or drug-making facilities, as identified by American intelligence gathering. …a former Army intelligence officer…says if the Trump administration does act, the target will likely be big and symbolic.
In such a scenario, the president, according to those who’ve spoken to him about this, would want a target deemed important enough to drug-lord operations that he could go on TV to make a national address and tout the historic nature of the military operation, as he did with the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Meanwhile, U.S. military and intelligence preparations continue. The Pentagon, DHS, and CIA have already increased reconnaissance flights of Mexican drug cartels, part of an ongoing surge of surveillance near the southern border.
More notably, though, units at Fort Bragg, home to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees Delta Force and Seal Team Six, are reportedly preparing target packages for the president and secretary of war.
Don’t be surprised if we see U.S. direct action against the Mexican drug cartels sometime soon.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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GOOD!
I’s decades overdue. The Cartels own the Mexican Government.
The women who want abortions essentially are saying: ‘I have a right to kill that baby’ ! Similarly, Venezuela is saying: ‘We have a right to force our drugs on the U.S. !
Oh, it’s illegal to attack people engaged in illegal activity. Right, snowflake.
Strike 24/7
Hit exec homes
drug farms, labs
seize assets
sink boats