Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these Television Companies and more, including cox. It is extremely rare. But friends dont have to be. This is joe. When youre connected, youre not alone. Cox, support cspan as a public service, along th these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Now a National Security and Health Policy discuss the possible use of the military to combat the illegal flow of fentanyl across the southern border. Topics include legislation in congress that would authorize military boards to target the Mexican Cartel and the consequences of intervention in mexico. Hosted by the cato institute, this runs about an hour and 20 minutes. And 20 minutes. Good afternoon everyone. My name is justin logan, i am the director of defense and Foreign Policy studies at cato. It is my pleasure to welcome you, in this form, an uncommonly formal august afternoon in washington, to our forum on proposals for using u. S. Military at
The director of defense and Foreign Policy studies at cato. It is my pleasure to welcome you, in this form, an uncommonly formal august afternoon in washington, to our forum on proposals for using u. S. Military at the border to counter fentanyl. You will hear a lot of reasons this afternoon why proposals for using the u. S. Military in and around mexico to counter fentanyl is a bad idea. It is important to state at the outset that there is an underlying crisis happening in the u. S. Overdose deaths and precise data are hard to come by. As we can tell, somewhere on the order of 60 and 80,000 americans per year, last year in 2022, are dying of fentanyl related overdoses. Provisional data from the cdc suggested there were more than 70,000 fentanyl Overdose Deaths in the country last year. So, there is a real underlying crisis happening in the u. S. , that helps to explain why politicians have begun to latch onto the problem. June, nbc news poll, they illustrated the public is quite anxio
Chairman, the house now has a task force on countering the cartels and its chair talked a little bit about some examples of what a umf might do. What we want according to this individual is to get mexico to ask for military support such as Close Air Support while they are prosecuting may target, which is exactly what happened earlier this year. This is getting back to this idea of mexico is in a civil war or an insurgency or something. But they just do not understand it or will not fight hard enough. I mentioned before this idea of insurgency, counterinsurgency, stability operations. I remember during the battle days in iraq and afghanistan thinking at least 7000 miles away. A terrible thing for us to be doing, but at least it is really far away. But the idea that you would import an insurgency and stick it on your border in your largest trading partner seems to me the height of imprudence. There is this idea of living in an alternate reality. There have been shootouts using military e
Inaugurated the global war on terrorism but we will replace it with a mexico au mf and you just thought, is this progress . What do you make of this . There is a sense that maybe we went bananas there for a while but how about a mexican invasion . There is the fatigue of big wars, tens of thousands of troops deployed to iraq and afghanistan but most americans are, for better or for worse, a nerd to a small footprint, small drone strike. What they are contemplating is use of that which is a few missile strikes, performative and symbolic missile strikes against drug labs in mexico. We are putting the war back on the war of drugs. There is a real downside even if these were pin strikes. There are many downsides to attacking cartel and damaging our relationship with mexico. I think it does reflect where the conversations i dont think many are serious. That said, this does normalize them and make it more likely that they future president may act on them. I want to read a quote here from the
Congress that would authorize military force to target Mexican Cartels and the consequences of military intervention in mexico. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is justin logan, i am the director of defense and Foreign Policy here at cato. It is my pleasure to welcome you to this form of this uncommonly, wonderful sunny august afternoon in washington to our forum on proposals for using u. S. Military at the border and counter fentanyl. You are going to hear a lot of reasons this afternoon why proposals for using u. S. Military in and around mexico to counter fentanyl is a bad idea. But, i think it is important to state at the outset there is a real underlying crisis happening in the United States vis vis fentanyl. Overdose death or precise data on Overdose Deaths are hard to come by. But, as near as we can tell somewhere on the order between 60 and 80,000 americans per year last year in 2022 anyway, are dying of fentanyl related overdoses. Provisional data from the cdc, for example, s