Mark Meckler is the president of the Convention of States Foundation and a leading proponent of the right-wing movement to get state legislatures to call for a dangerous Article V convention that will consider constitutional amendments to radically alter American government and society by making much of what the federal government now does unconstitutional.

“I don’t think there’s any way to solve this permanently without military action,” Meckler declared. “[We need a buffer zone] like the DMZ between the Koreas. It needs to be a kilometer of cleared territory that is a no man zone; you come in here and we believe you have hostile intent, we’re going to clear you out.”

“We need to exterminate the cartels and that means going into Mexico,” Meckler asserted. “Now people would say, ‘You’re violating a sovereign country’s territory.’ Well, Mexico is not a sovereign country any longer. Mexico is a failed narco state. The federal government is not in control of their military. The federal government is not in control of their police Their state governments are not, their local governments are not in control of their police forces. That is a failed narco-terrorist state and so we have to treat it as such.”

“To me, this is like Gaza. They’re invading our country. They’re invading our country every day. They’re killing our people, and we have to go in and use maximum force to oust them and create a buffer zone along the border. If we do that, we’ll have border security. It’s that simple.”

    • limelight79@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Don’t forget the Wall and no man’s land between two countries where guards are authorized to shoot to kill!

  • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The logic of this rhetoric is essentially the same as the logic of modern Russia- “we need a buffer zone”, and the target country “is not a country” and it’s not genocide or imperialism when we have a reason to do it but we don’t have a reason so we have to tell lies to convince our people that we do have one.

  • ratman150@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    What a fucking idiotic war mongler. We should be strengthening our ties to Mexico not fucking starting a war.

    • paddirn@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      We pretty much are anyways. Alot of US manufacturing is already transitioning over to Mexico. I thought they even recently overtook, or are close to overtaking, China as one of our top trade partners. I think at some point the migration issue may solve itself and people will complain about Mexico taking all our jerbs.

    • Match!!@pawb.social
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      9 months ago

      Strengthening ties to the Mexico government is pretty unpalatable given its failure to defeat cartels

  • edric@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Sooo once the invasion is complete and the new southern border is with Guatemala, they’re gonna want to invade them too because the migrants are coming from there? And go on and on to Hondura, Nicaragua, etc.

    • Gork@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      The best place to stop is Panama. Then you’d have a very small land border and can concentrate all of your army stacks in one province.

      Source: played video games in the past

        • Gork@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Sure! I’m a fan of the older Hearts of Iron games. They regularly go on sale on Steam. They run on potatoes and I think they’re a little easier to get into than Hearts of Iron 4.

          Hearts of Iron 2 - My favorite, especially with the Armageddon and Doomsday alternate history time-frames.

          Hearts of Iron 3 - Also a good one, but I didn’t have as many hours in it as 2.

          I’m still waiting on some sort of current timeframe Grand Strategy game. There isn’t really one outside of mods.

      • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Bruh you can’t put all your stacks in a small easily encircled space like that! When’s the last time you tried to unite the Americas on HOI4

    • flipht@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      I mean honestly it’s immigration with extra steps for us and fewer steps for the migrants. But who are we kidding? These people are looking at the lack of public outrage regarding Gaza and 2 years of war in Ukraine, and they’re thinking, “If no one cares about Russia or Israel, then it’s not like they’ll stop the US.”

  • B_Larson@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    The War in Iraq lasted 8 years and cost over 1 trillion dollars.

    So aside from the immense risk of starting a war with a nation right next door to you, …aside from the fact that there would be no clear strategic objectives, it would also cost a fortune.

    If the US wass really serious about supporting the Mexican government against the cartels, then they would start with increasing financial aid to said government. But these very same people would probably be against that idea.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      The War in Iraq lasted 8 years and cost over 1 trillion dollars.

      We invaded in 2003 and never really left. In fact, US military units in the country got hit by Iranian rockets just a few weeks ago. They’re still costing money, btw.

      If the US wass really serious about supporting the Mexican government against the cartels

      The US isn’t going to fight the cartels. The US loves the cartels. They get us all the drugs we consume and give us a lucrative market to sell our surplus small arms.

      • MelodiousFunk@startrek.website
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        9 months ago

        The US loves the cartels. They get us all the drugs we consume and give us a lucrative market to sell our surplus small arms.

        Shipping powders back and forth
        Singin’ black goes south and white comes north

        - John Perry Barlow

    • limelight79@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Yeah, what’s the endgame of invading? Make Mexico part of the US? Uh…aren’t the racists going to have a problem with that?

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    9 months ago

    Why don’t we just declare war on the entire world. Maybe then these shitbags will have the show they wanna watch.

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Or we could legalize drugs 'n shit and completely tank demand for cartel goods.

    But nah they’d rather go full Russia on Mexico.

    • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Cuntservatives want an enemy they can whine about during election cycles, they don’t want to solve the problem, they want to make the problem worse and worse until they get the excuse to declare martial law.

      • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Yes but if the government was able to provide a source of clean/safe drugs for addicts and help them break addiction the correct way with therapy and support instead of punitive prison… then maybe we’d have fewer addicts and therefore no cartel business

        • radiohead37@lemmy.world
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          Agreed. People are harming themselves with drugs and what does the government do? Make it worse by putting you in prison and making it much harder for you to get job in the future and get back to a normal life.

        • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Not maybe, absolutely.

          Every circumstance that wide decriminalization occurs, it brings better outcomes than prohibition consistently.

      • Chuymatt@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        No doubt, but also focusing on treatment and preventative measures like UBE and actual mental health care would massively reduce demand as well.

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Yup, and how great would it be if people who were addicted to them were able to get the help they need without fear of going to prison?

      • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Not as harmful as 40 years of destroying families and lives over dictating what we as adults are allowed to put in our body.

        Also: Alcohol is a LOT worse than meth, harm-wise. Long AND short term.

        I’m not advocating meth, that shit will addict you first hit and send your life into a spiral.

        But most ‘meth damage’ comes from a complete abandonment of personal hygiene and squalid living conditions, not the drug itself. I mean there’s dirty meth that has additives that can fuck you up but chemically clean meth is pretty benign.

  • theodewere@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    best thing for Texas to do is secede so that Mexico can re-occupy it… then the border becomes Oklahoma’s problem, and Texas doesn’t have to worry about it any more…

  • RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Mark… how did that work for you the last time?

    That’s right… you fell down and broke your Alamo.

    • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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      Member when George Bush shut down the border completely and it only lasted 48 hrs before his phone was ringing off the hook with angry corporate farm owners???

      I member.

  • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Just give them Mexico and they’ll be appeased, they won’t go to Guatemala next! There’s no reason for them to keep going south, it’s not like they’ve previously used their power to overthrow democratically elected leaders in central America before

    This is the exact same logic used when Germany invaded Poland for fuck’s sake. These dipshit aren’t even original

  • snownyte@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Tell me, Mark, was it that simple the day we marched into the Middle-East for over 20+ years before everything became undone in less than a week once we left? All of those billions and billions we’ve spent in that effort. Was it really that simple?

    Nice hitler salute in the image, you fucking clown. (Even if it’s not, I’ll treat any gesture like that from a right-winger as an admission of nazism).

  • HuddaBudda@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    These people have no understanding of what a war with the Mexico cartels would look like.

    People that think that Mexico will just roll out tanks. Not realizing that they would just attack our infrastructure and make it costly to move into Mexico

    Political assassinations would be a monthly event. Mass shootings beyond the norm in America. Prices would shoot up. Drug epidemics would be in every major city as cartels would have to mass produce to fuel their war.

    A war with Mexico is a war only weapon manufactures will win.