But then again this time seems different, laws aren’t followed or upheld. Human rights are a fleeting staple.
I suspect Mexicans would view it as another Pancho Villa Expedition, which was also event where neither side declared war.
In what world is public opinion not universally against the cartels? It's hard to take you seriously after that.
In that case, the justification was a prerequisite to Congress authorizing a war without losing elections, and then selling it to the US's allies so we wouldn't have to send quite as many troops and thus lose elections. This administration demonstrably doesn't care about justification, authorization, alliances, or elections. So why bother? If they're going to stage an arbitrary Venezuela-like military operation in Mexico because of "cartels", they wouldn't wait for a civilian mass-death event, or for Congress, or regional allies, or public opinion. They didn't wait for any of that in Venezuela.
TBQH this just felt like a cheap and easy way for them to perpetuate the idea that we're always at war with terrorists. Now they're "narcoterrorists", but they're still "terrorists". And this administration might not like obstacles like authorization and due process, but it loves cheap, easy terrorists.
They definitely care about not ratting the cage with the US - they don't harm US federal agents, or take US hostages, and the last incident of Americans being killed in Mexico by cartel-affiliated gunmen in a case of mistaken identity - it was the cartel who handed the perps over and apologised[0]
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/09/us/mexico-matamoros-ameri...
I think you’re getting tripped up by some specific wording and managing to miss the point the poster was making. The point should be taken seriously even if imprecisely articulated. While most folks are against the cartels, there’s a much wider range of belief on how much they warrant government or military intervention and to what degree we should be spending various resources on them. The historical state of play was(is?) that cartels are criminal organizations which are generally a policing matter that has escalated to specialized policing agencies and multinational networks of policing agencies. The marked escalation of the military into this is a more recent piece that is somewhat more controversial. One doesn’t have to be “in favor of the cartel” to ask questions about whether our military should be bombing boats or invading countries to ostensibly neutralize organizations that historically have been subject to policing operations.
To go back to the parallel… the public wasn’t in favor of Al Qaeda before 9/11 either, but there was a huge difference in the level of response the public was in favor of after. It turned from an intelligence monitoring level of response into an active military invasion of multiple countries.
If they were all drug runners, why weren't they put on trial? Why was so much effort made to sink all the evidence? Why did an admiral resign, when told to do this?
Everybody involved, starting from the people pulling the trigger, to the people giving the orders should be getting a fair trial and a swift punishment for that little stint of piracy and murder.
But these people all act like there is no such thing as consequences.
Are there?