Source: Bigstock

Oh God, oh God, is there no limit to idiocy? From Yahoo News, presumably meaning news for or from yahoos:

“Tom Homan, the man tapped by Mr. Trump to lead his border closures, recently told Fox News the president-elect ‘will use [the] full might of the United States Special Operations to take ’em out,’” meaning fentanyl traffickers in Mexico. The colloquial “take ’em out,” I suppose, is to provide a glow of casual virility. To be sent, saith Yahoo, are the Special Forces, Green Berets. Good troops, but hopeless for the intended purpose, which is itself hopeless.

Sending troops to Mexico may be the damnedest fool idea I’ve ever heard, and I have lived in Washington. Those proposing it seem to know nothing of Mexico, nothing of the military, and nothing of the cartels. They appear to think that the narcos will come forth and do chivalric battle mano a mano with the Special Forces. The idea is so stupid that even Lindsey Graham might notice. Though I doubt it.

The Special Forces cannot stop the flow of fentanyl from Mexico to America. Mexico cannot do this. The United States cannot do it. The reason is that vast numbers of Americans, unhappy and borderline desperate, want fentanyl to alleviate existence. Mexicans, a happier people, do not use fentanyl, though they have access. As long as there is so much demand from people willing to pay high prices, someone will supply the market. If Mexico disappeared tomorrow in a flash of blue light, a month later the flow would continue by other means. Have you ever seen a nighttime radar map of the hundreds of boats off the shore of Miami?

Allow me a few thoughts on this folly:

First, Sheinbaum won’t permit it. (For the enlightenment of 90 percent of Americans, Claudia Sheinbaum is president of Mexico.) She has said that the introduction of American troops would be a breach of Mexican sovereignty and she is having none of it. She is smart enough to know that getting U.S. troops in is much easier than getting them out. Thus the introduction of American soldiers would require a direct military invasion. Here we go again.

Second, narcos do not wear shirts saying “I’m a narco” in Day-Glo letters. They look exactly like everybody else. How do the Special Forces—do tell me, oh do—find narcos in Guadalajara, a city of 6 million and home to many narcos of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel? Do they say to passersby, “Hi, I’m Sergeant Ferguson and I need you to tell me you are a narco so I can shoot you.” This Homan guy seems about one generation removed from trilobites.

Third, narco drug labs do not carry neon signs saying “Narco Drug Lab.” Washington may not have thought of this. Labs look exactly like surrounding buildings. Since cartels have lots of money, and labs are cheap, if one is shut down, another will pop up, perhaps in a remote city. Think Whac-a-Mole. What fun.

Fourth, Mexico is a huge country of 130 million. The cartels are all over the place, and mobile when they need to be. Special Forces are few. Do the numbers. In both cities and countryside, narcos can simply fade into the surrounding population. What now?

Fifth, outside of the cities, narcos tend to hole up in the mountains, such as the Sierra Madre. Have the fern-bar Napoleons of Washington been to these parts? I have, as for example around the Barranca del Cobre. The terrain is impossibly rough, heavily forested, usually on steep slopes. The locals, including narcos, know every inch of the winding, narrow, almost impassable trails. The Special Forces do not. The Spanish word for ambush is “emboscada.” Worth noting.

Sixth, the Mexican population would side with the narcos. For one thing, narcos tend to care well for their pueblos, drilling wells, building infrastructure and such, which buys loyalty. There are books on this, but mostly in Spanish. For another, Mexicans have had multiple bad experiences of invasion by America, which of course most Americans have never heard of. The resulting hostility is quiescent but intense. Handing out candy bars to children will not change this. Finally, wars in which civilians are indistinguishable from the bad guys inevitably lead to dead civilians, this being encouraged by the narcos. Every 6-year-old girl with her head blown off by panicked GIs will lead to fifty young men picking up rifles, and not with friendly intent.

Seventh, escalation would be almost inevitable. In the countryside, the SF would quickly find that it needs helicopters to chase the narcos and to avoid ambushes and IEDs. Helicopters require bases, which will be attacked, so Army forces from America will be needed to protect the bases, and so on. This song is well-known to oldsters from Vietnam and youngsters remembering Afghanistan. All of this, if actively pursued, is a sure road to a long, grinding, losing fight.

And of course the arms industry, sensing a cash spigot, would offer technological solutions, send money. More Reaper drones at millions per, with magic foliage-penetrating radar to allow the usual bombing of the wrong locals, amounting to recruiting for the narcos. Biometric identification systems to find narcos. That sort of thing. Once the money begins flowing, lobbyists will go into overdrive to keep the incursion alive.

Eighth, hostages. Well over a million Americans live in Mexico, mostly retirees but now a good many digital nomads trying to escape worsening conditions in the U.S. They—we—are easy targets. Gringos clump together in places like San Miguel de Allende, Puerto Vallarta, the north shore of Lake Chapala. They hang out in known bars and restaurants, easily bombed or subject to five gallons of gasoline through the entrance followed by a match. The narcos do these things, but so far not to Americans. This could—would—change.

The narcos are bad, bad boys. They are perfectly capable of kidnapping a gringa, killing her with a propane torch, and leaving her naked, horribly burned body in a shopping mall with a note: “Yanqui go home.” This is not Fred’s sick fantasy. These things happen.

How will the wussy-hawks in the Potomac booby-hatch respond to a million terrified expats streaking for the Texas border, abandoning houses, belongings, and comfortable lives crafted over years? Where will they then go?

Trump would then have to withdraw and lose face, not his preferred mode, or let the killing of Americans continue, maybe not what Congress would want, or escalate, as futile as it would be stupid.

Ninth, trade with Mexico, which is huge. Here I speculate, but an interesting question is whether, and with what effect, the narcos could interrupt commerce with the U.S. The narcos are not stupid. They successfully run a massive drug trade involving Asian, South American, and Middle Eastern suppliers and customers in North America and Europe. Good conservatives, they do this despite governmental regulation. Could they seriously crimp American factories by blowing up trucks and terrorizing labor, and killing American managers and their families? I don’t know. They will think of it.

That these questions, instantly occurring to anyone familiar with Washington’s interventionist wars, have eluded the kiddie hawks in the federal bubble, and certainly the Homan trilobite, augurs ill.

Do the larval Clausewitzes in Washington not understand any of the foregoing? The Special Forces are soldiers, not magicians. They can’t do what can’t be done. The whole idea reeks of Washington’s characteristic arrogance and ignorance, its lack of curiosity, its usual overestimation of its own powers, its underestimation of the adversary, and its incomprehension of the kind of conflict it is beginning—war after war, world without end, learning nothing.