So how many countries are we to invade and napalm with a scorched earth policy? Lets see.. Bolivia, Peru, Columbia, Ecuador, Mexico, all those are certainly on the list (we have been undergoing extensive crop eradication programs in many ofthese countries for decades, and have a very strong presence, as well as substantial financial outlay invested), we also will need to Napalm a few of our national forests as well :shrug: And this is just looking at the Americas and a few problem countries here.
Of course we have the issue of many known smuggling routes getting closed down just to see new ones pop up. Once upon a time it was the Golden Triangle.. we cracked down on that, closed off many of the orient routes.. then it moved elsewhere.. enter Columbia for the 80's we got tough there.. lopped off the heads of many a cartel there, they wised up, consolidated, outsourced and then we saw various banana republics such as Panama, Haiti ect, get into the act. We closed much of that down and cracked down on the Miami/Florida pipeline.. then things started coming through Mexico, with the Columbians still there despite all the cartel heads we claimed, killed extradited, imprisoned, ect., only now going through new middle men in Mexico. WE take out various heads, we foment a war between Mexico and the Cartels, the Cartels in fight, heads of Cartels get replaced regularly, and soon a couple of cartels are now multiple cartels, all fighting one another, trying to kill each other off - with little success.
And bombing a couple of houses and leaving craters is going to make a difference? There are people lined up waiting for the cartel heads to die, we are doing the traffickers favors when we take out the leaders, because that opens up a position for a new leader, or a few new cartels to get into the picture, take their slice of the pie, and start leaving their trail of bodies behind them. There is an endless chain of ruthless criminals that are well bloodied, and willing to risk death and to deal it out wantonly to get a slice of this multi billion dollar pie, we cannot kill enough to make a dent (and hell they are even doing the killing of their own for us). even if we do in one area, they just move somewhere else and continue business as usual.
The only way to make a difference is to starve them, and to do that there must be a massive change of strategy, and a massive rethinking of whether the last 40 years have made any sort of difference at all, or if rather they have made things worse by facilitating an environment where these cartels are encouraged -yes encouraged- to thrive.