We started a fight – now we have to finish it

Many years ago, I was in charge of a small CIA team working with an intelligence service in an Allied country in the Middle East. We were hunting for a terrorist group that was planning on staging a series of bombings in tourist areas throughout the Mediterranean. Our job was to make sure those bombings never happened.

Ultimately, we successfully located the terrorist group in a remote area high in the mountains. The assault team went in. The key members of the terrorist group escaped and fled into the mountains. We had missed the shot. The group leader and his key personnel were still at large, and the threat still existed.

Over the course of the many weeks that followed, we hunted the group. We tracked them. We located them. We set up to take them out. Again and again, they escaped. We persisted. We followed.

Ultimately, every member of that group was tracked down and eliminated. No bombings ever occurred. No tourist ever died. We finished the job.

I don’t tell that story because I did anything particularly remarkable personally. There are any number of men and women who have served in defense of the United States of America who have done things infinitely more dangerous and infinitely more important. I cite it because it’s an example of how you have to approach things when it comes to national security in general, and in particular when you are dealing with very, very dangerous people.

We just started a fight with the cartels in Mexico. We worked with the Mexicans to take out El Mencho. The cartels responded by setting Puerto Vallarta on fire. They then moved on to demonstrating they could set much of the rest of the country on fire, too.

There is no going back now. We are in it. We have to finish the fight.

That means one hell of a lot more than just every once in a while helping the Mexicans take out any one specific leader. It means ending the era of cartel dominance in Mexico. It means winning.

We changed the rules. This is no longer a game of cat and mouse that ends in prosecutions and convictions. This is a war, and the ferocious response of the cartels, which are busy setting Mexico on fire right now, demonstrates they fully understand it.

We are going to put their people down. They are going to do the same to us. They are going to do a lot more than burn some cars in the streets and terrorize some tourists. They are going to come for us.

Let’s hope we thought that through. Let’s hope the men and women at the new Joint Interagency Task Force-Counter Cartel, which is working with the Mexicans on this problem, understand what they are in for.

The intel will get sloppy. The locations of key targets will get harder to acquire. Assault teams will inevitably hit the wrong targets. Assault teams will hit targets and find that they have been set up, and they have walked into an ambush. People will get caught in the crossfire. The cartels will live to fight another day.

The cartels are not just big gangs. They run large portions of Mexico. They own politicians, police officers, and military personnel at senior levels. We will find that a great many of the people in Mexico we are relying on are actually working for the other side.

This whole thing will get ugly and messy, and all the enemies of this administration will take every opportunity to score political points off of every setback. The American people will rapidly lose patience with missteps and casualties. They will demand a clear victory and a quick end to hostilities.

There is nothing to say that all the violence will take place on Mexican soil. As the cartels feel more threatened, they may well opt to bring the fight to us. We may see killings and bombings in the heart of our major cities.

Cornered animals are the most dangerous. They have nothing to lose. You have no choice but to kill them.

That’s where we are now. We are in a knife fight. To the death. We started a fight. Now we have to finish it.

Originally published by AND Magazine