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Comment by Eddy_Viscosity2

9 days ago

Even Cartels know that shooting down civilian aircraft in US airspace would be an escalation that would lead to heavy retaliation. Doesn't seem likely to me.

77 comments

Eddy_Viscosity2

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reactordev  9 days ago

Coming from groups that just pickup busses of people to murder, I wouldn’t be so sure that firing back at the US would be out of the question.

  • nessbot  9 days ago

    Murdering buses of people doesn't bring the full force of the US military on them. The difference is the risk not the depravity.

    • p-e-w  9 days ago

      This is the answer. The cartels would have to be insane to poke that particular bear. They would get crushed like a bug. IIRC they murdered a single US undercover officer in the 90s and the retaliation was so bad that they themselves handed over the perpetrators.

      22 replies →

  • xtracto  9 days ago

    This is different.

    See, Drug cartels over here operate with the blessing and favor of our president. They are tightly connected.

    If a cartel dared to ground a US flight. The US government would have a "free pass" to break all hell loose in Mexico, and Sheinbaum wouldn't have a way to stop it.

    She doesn't want that in any way, so the message to the cartel bosses would be to be very careful in that respect.

    Sure, there have been US citizens killed within Mexico here and there, but those can easily be attributed to local violence. And as retribution, Mexican government sends a couple of wanted criminals to the US.

    • ekidd  9 days ago

      Yeah, if a cartel actually used anti-aircraft weapons on a US passenger plane in US airspace? It wouldn't even matter if MAGA or the Democrats were in charge. The US would collectively lose its shit and spend the next 10 years and several trillion dollars retaliating against the cartels. The media would be ecstatic, because it would give them a decade of story arcs, starting with "our brave troops in uniform" all the way through to covering the eventual quagmire and anti-war protests. By year 6-8, editorial columnists would be writing columns reconsidering their initial support for the war.

      Please, let's not do this.

mothballed  9 days ago

Unless the government is planning an attack on the cartel[s] that is so existential that such action wouldn't be considered an escalation but rather a tic for tat.

A trapped animal will generally use all its facilities regardless of its expected effectiveness.

jmatthiass  9 days ago

Good point. I guess it depends on the force, size, and especially effectiveness of any potential strikes. (i.e. How cornered a cartel might feel and how much flexing an outsized response might stand to gain them.)

bpodgursky  9 days ago

Yes that might be the high-level logic, but if you give a MANPAD to a 19 year old sicario on meth, accidents do happen.

  • quickthrowman  9 days ago

    I’d be surprised if cartels would tolerate hard drug use by their soldiers, it seems like the kind of thing they’d kill you for, lack of discipline.