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Maybe a surgical, well-defined seek and destroy mission would be helpful.
But the US is so mentally/strategically turbulent! Afghanistan was supposed to be a surgical seek and destroy punitive mission. Rumsfeld didn't want to do nation-building. But the whole planning process was so chaotic and prone to mission-creep that it just bloated out of all proportion. The same cadres and officers that organized that fiasco haven't been purged or anything, they're still running the US military.
And I foresee all kinds of toxic political and strategic reactions. The Chinese will bitch and whine about their shipping being illegally searched on the high seas, then they'll do the exact same thing to Taiwan six months later. Mexicans in the US will cause all kinds of problems about the inevitable civilian casualties. The cartels might do their standard 'kidnap and kill the politicians' trick in the US instead. A schizo with a hammer got up close to Pelosi's husband, a schizo with a rifle nearly wiped out Trump... You don't get to run a cartel by being soft or weak, I wouldn't want to tangle with these guys.
I foresee a huge risk that such an operation would be either ineffective or suck the US into a cycle of overreaction and unexpected problems that requires grim determination to overcome. Russia is grimly determined in Ukraine but we've yet to see the US reaching that level of seriousness. I think it would be more prudent for the US to stay at home and cultivate harshness in a safer environment.
Sure, this seems reasonable.
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