A leading military official claims that if the US government moves forward with reductions in the national budget, it will castrate the dogs of the drug war and essentially put a halt to defense operations against the cartels. Last week, Marine Corps General John Kelly pleaded before a group of federal lawmakers over the decay of expenditures, referred to as sequestration, that he claims would be catastrophic to his ability to curb drug trafficking into the United States.
General Kelly, who oversees the US Southern Command, told Congress that he is not yet ready to admit “defeat” in the War on Drugs, which he claims would be inevitable if spending caps on the Department of Defense’s 2016 fiscal budget are implemented. “It will put me out of business,” he told Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, during Thursday’s hearing.
The fiscal amputation that Kelly fears will put him out of a job stems from the Budget Control Act of 2011, which was established in an attempt to put a leash on the national deficit. One of the provisions puts a stranglehold on the Pentagon’s wallet by sucking more than $1 trillion from its budget over a ten-year period. This concern is dire, according to Kelly, because the cuts against his troops will hit a high in 2016.
Interestingly, these slashes in defense spending are expected to happen unless an alternative option can somehow manage to gain bipartisan support—a scenario that is not likely. So could this crippling of the Defense Department be a subtle way for the United States to put their part in the international drug war to sleep?
While it is impossible to truly understand the inner workings of Uncle Sam’s master plan for global domination, the latest testimony provided by General Kelly and other military leaders does seem to suggest American efforts against the international drug trade could be minimal within the next few years. In fact, Kelly claims the spending cuts will eliminate his partnership with South America and Latin America. “I would no longer be able to partner, almost at all, with the nations that we work with every day,” he said.
During the hearing, General Kelly suggested that even one more round of spending cuts would be enough to prevent US military forces from stopping shipments of illegal drugs from coming into the United States.
“We got 158 metric tons of cocaine last year, without violence, before it ever even made it to Central America,” he said. “I do that with very, very few ships. I know that if sequestration’s happened, I would be down to maybe one, maybe two, Coast Guard cutters. That means, of the 158 tons that I would expect to get this year, I’d probably, if I’m lucky, get 20 tons. All the rest would just come into the United States along this incredible efficient network.”
The inability to stop these shipments will not only lead to an increase of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine flowing into the United States, but it will create an opportunity for more violence on the borders, according to Kelly. “Once it gets ashore in Central America and moves up through Mexico, we’re taking almost nothing off the market,” he explained.
General Kelly urged Congress to take into consideration the issue of national security before finalizing the 2016 fiscal budget. He claims that allowing more illegal drugs to cross into the US is a threat to the overall safety of the American people. A decision from Congress is expected within the week.
