 One of the, one of the, you probably read the story about these four Americans who traveled into Mexico, I think because one of the women there was going to get elective surgery, I think, anyway, some kind of cosmetic electric surgery in Northern Mexico and they drove across the border and to get that surgery. And you know, they got somehow into a conflict with the local drug lords who thought they were probably competing drug smuggling operation, maybe of Haitians, given that they were black and so there were some, anyway, the cartels started shooting at them, ultimately killed two of them, two were rescued and brought back to the United States, one of them severely injured in the leg. This is on top of just the ongoing constant massive violence instigated by the drug cartels in Mexico, the thousands and thousands of deaths per year. And of course, this is on top of, and maybe this is all a consequence of, the fentanyl trade and the smuggling of massive quantities of fentanyl across the Mexican border. This is an incredibly profitable trade, fentanyl supposedly is relatively easy to produce, cheap to produce, and you can move large quantities of it. And of course, it sells for high premiums and the consequence of it, we all know over those deaths increasing dramatically, fentanyl use increasing dramatically, and deaths are the consequence increasing. And of course, the United States in its wisdom, when they see a situation like that, they want to declare war, they want to go to war, right? So oh my God, people are dying from fentanyl overdose, so let's go to war on fentanyl. So there's one way in which we deal with these kind of issues, there's one way in which we deal with these issues, and that's by applying more force. This is what governments do really, really well, applying more force, more money, more guns, more weapons, more troops, more walls, more fences, more force. And so there is now a massive and a real push primarily among Republicans, but it's not found upon among Democrats either. But there is a real push basically to designate cartels as terrorist organizations, which would I guess, it's not clear what exactly that designation would do. But it would at least give the US authorities the pretense of then I guess using violence within Mexican territory, applying drone technology to killing Mexican cartel members and leaders of the Mexican cartel. And ultimately I think if the Mexican government doesn't do anything about these cartels, actually deploying US troops inside Mexico to deal with these cartels. In other words, what is being proposed and what is being proposed really among pretty much every Republican candidate running for president. Trump has stated this as a goal, what's in a Vivek has stated this as a goal. We haven't heard anything from the Santas, so who knows what the Santas thinks. But pretty much everybody seems to believe that the solution to these drug cartels is to go to war with them, right? The war on drugs has been such a huge success. The war on poverty has been such a huge success. And generally it's wars have been such massive success, throwing more force, more coercion, more gunfire, more death and destruction at this problem. Since it's solved all other problems, defeating the communists in Korea, Vietnam, solving all the problems in the Middle East and bringing us democracy over there. And then of course eradicating the drug trade completely with the exception of fentanyl because a war was declared on drug, and of course we have no poor people because we have a war on poverty. Wars have been so damn successful the way the United States wages them, then why not, let's have a war on fentanyl and on Mexican drug cartels. I mean this is of course insanity and what exactly are they going to do? We're not going to release the, what do you call it? We're not going to eliminate the rules of wars the United States has practiced it forever. So no civilian casualties and yet we're going to fight a war in Mexico, in Mexico civilian populations against a drug cartel. What are we going to do exactly? We're going to bomb them. We're going to, with no civilian casualties, we're going to send tanks in. We're going to send actual troops in. Or we're just going to build a bigger wall, a thicker wall, a taller wall. I mean there is significant violence in Mexico primarily towards Mexicans. To the extent that going into Mexico is really dangerous, Americans should just stay home. To the extent that particular people have killed Americans and we know who those people are, they should be hunted down ideally by the Mexican authorities and persecuted, prosecuted and persecuted. And if the Mexican authorities won't do it then yes the United States government should in its responsibility for protecting the individual rights of Americans go in without declaring full on war and without trying to stop the fentanyl trade which is insane, try to punish those who have inflicted pain on Americans. But none of that is what's being proposed. What's being proposed is either massive intervention into Mexico, which nobody will actually admit. All these presidential candidates, I think with respect to Vivek Vivek says yeah we should just bomb them, we should just bomb them, we should use artillery, we should do whatever it takes to just crush them and decimate them and turn them into dust. We could, God forbid, I don't want to sound like a real radical and really crazy, we could take away their monetary support, we could actually take away the profit motive from the drug trade from the cartels by decriminalizing fentanyl, by legalizing it. By the way somebody said, oh fentanyl is already legal, no it's not, fentanyl, a certain variation of fentanyl is legal in hospitals under careful monitoring but fentanyl, the kind of fentanyl that's sold in the streets, synthetic fentanyl and the kind of fentanyl sold to anybody, that is not legal in the United States, indeed that's why cartels are involved, because it's not legal. Drug margins are massive, I mean but it makes good television, I mean for these people to go on television and say yeah we want to warn the cartels, we want to declare the cartels terrorist organizations, we want to start killing them off, we are, yeah I mean that sounds fantastic, what's the plan, are you really willing to go to war with Mexico if Mexico government doesn't cooperate, no I think they should, it's under Mexico, it's government that all this violence is happening, Mexico should be doing something to eradicate the violence, I'll do a story probably not today about El Salvador and what El Salvador is doing in terms of violence and how much the violent rate has come down dramatically but not today, I mean God, all this is Republicans and Democrats and Republican presidential candidates flexing muscles in some kind of pretend that they can solve the drug war that has been waged since the days of Richard Nixon with really zero success, zero success. But if you legalize fentanyl, import it legally across the border, you dry up all the profits dry up, all the profits dry up and the cartels basically turn in each other, I don't know to do what, but they're finished. Why doesn't the Mexican government take on the drug cartels? Because you know too many people within the Mexican government it appears and within the Mexican military within the Mexican police are corrupt themselves and are on the payroll of the cartels. So you know don't pay too much attention to all these politicians you know drumming up support for a new war in Mexico, they don't know what they're talking about, they don't know what it would involve, they don't know what it would take and they have no concept and like all the other wars the United States has fought since World War II, we'd probably lose it and we'd lose it for a reason because the reality is and I said this decade a year ago, you can't have a war against an inanimate object, wars against people, you can't have a war against drugs, you can't have a war against fentanyl. You can have a war against cartels, you define the enemy clearly and they set out the strategy to destroy them, we could do that, but we won't because we don't have the strategist, we don't have the will, we don't have the moral and mental capabilities to actually execute a war like that that destroys them and then for what? Once the cartels are destroyed, will new cartels come around? You notice you don't hear much about the Colombian cartels anymore. Why? Well because they've been replaced by much worse M13 style cartels in Mexico and in Central America, but cartels haven't gone away. If you defeat all the cartels and fentanyl remains illegal and demand for fentanyl remains high, all that will happen is you'll have more cartels, new cartels, different cartels, maybe different places and you will have spent a huge amount of money potentially going to war with Mexico, a bunch of Americans would have got killed doing this, a lot of Mexicans would have got killed doing this and you'd be right back to swear one. The fact is that as long as there's demand for drugs, there will be supply for drugs. As long as there's demand for drugs and you make it illegal, there will be supply of drugs and there will be a lot of casualties because that supply of drugs will be delivered through violence because you made it illegal. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. 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