by Ron Madeen, Stevensville
“Clear and Present Danger.” A Thomas Clancy novel and 1994 Harrison Ford movie depicted a rogue US Executive branch decision to kill Columbian drug warlords with a smart bomb launched from a Pacific US Navy aircraft carrier. The movie also depicted the actions of a CIA/US Army special operations force who operated without Congressional authority in jungle search and destroy missions to eradicate drug manufacturing plants. While the entire audience knew the operation to be illegal, most whispered “right on” when the drug lords or drug soldiers got whacked. Seven years later, President Bush announced the 22 most wanted terrorists who had masterminded or aided in the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and the first and second World Trade Center attacks killing over 3000 US citizens. In the ensuing 21 years there are still four or five of those most wanted terrorists unaccounted for. The others have been captured, died of natural causes, died on another terrorist battlefield or, in the case of five of them, have been sanctioned and killed by CIA or US Armed Forces drone/smart bomb strikes. There is a significant legal discussion arguing the legality of sanction action and if the collateral damage is legal. Most of us, listening to or watching the reporting of these actions, make no excuses as we whisper/say/shout “Right on!”.
Two decades since 9/11 about 700,000 people in the USA have died from synthetic opioid overdose. In 2022, the death count will be about 70,000 synthetic opioid deaths, almost exclusively from fentanyl poisoning. While we can’t point to an organization like Al Qaeda as the responsible entity we do know that the majority of the fentanyl products are manufactured in Mexico from precursors imported from other nations, the People’s Republic of China being foremost among those. In Mexico, where organized crime (drug cartel) is more powerful than the Mexican federal or state governments, the number of criminal centers of power are probably not that numerous. But the number of cartels is not important, nor is the argument of how we attribute a specific death in the USA to a specific cartel. Man, we are way beyond that. If a criminal cartel is involved in synthetic opioid manufacture, importation, and distribution, THAT entity is guilty of a murder that is AT LEAST as important as those murders in 1993, 1996 and 2001 that generated the list of the 22 Most Wanted.
It is time for our Congress and our President to be proactive, not reactive. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids must be designated as Weapons of Mass Destruction. The head of the cartels and their primary lieutenants must be designated as narco-terrorists. With that footing, it is time for another list. It is time that murderers are held accountable and if monetary rewards do not result in their capture and prosecution then the next step is obvious: sanction and elimination. I DON’T care about Mexican sovereignty; by allowing the cartels to exist and murder our citizens, the Mexican government abets (and probably profits from) the crime. Parallel to this effort, the aforementioned precursors are components of weapons of mass destruction and we can be totally within our rights of self-defense to intercept and seize these materials on the high seas or (in conjunction with Mexican Customs) in Mexican ports and airports.
It is time for our country’s leadership to grow some and get some. All they will hear from the citizenry is “RIGHT ON!”
Gomez says
The real question isn’t “How do we stop the drug traffickers?”, but “ Why are people in so much pain that they feel they need to escape their lives?”