Mexico has a new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who will replace outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). Now, if you’ll recall, AMLO wasn’t my biggest fan. He actually promised to meddle in my election here in America (very illegal) to defeat me because I introduced legislation that would authorize the use of military force against the Mexican drug cartels that AMLO let run his country.
Hopefully, President-elect Sheinbaum will be an upgrade from AMLO. Only time will tell, but I have a challenge to the incoming Mexican president: collaborate closely with the U.S. military to destroy the Mexican drug cartels.
President AMLO’s argument against my plan to authorize the use of military force against the cartels was always a straw man. AMLO claimed I wanted America to “bomb Mexico.” But that wasn’t my proposal at all.
My proposal was to have the American military coordinate closely with the Mexican military in order to combat the cartels. America’s military - our intelligence, our capabilities, our technology - is vastly superior to Mexico’s. Mexico is not able to combat the cartels on its own - the cartels have heavy weaponry and a quasi military that simply overpowers Mexico’s forces. Those are just the hard facts.
The only way to destroy the cartels is for Mexico to allow the United States military to help them deal with this problem. As Chairman of the Congressional Cartel Task Force, this is one of my top priorities and I am cautiously optimistic that a change of leadership inside of Mexico will allow us to finally work with our southern neighbor to combat the cartels who are threatening both of our countries. |
