Former Attorney General William Barr authored an op-ed recently in which he took time to put a spotlight on and outline just to what extent the Mexican drug cartels are responsible for in regard to devastation within the U.S. and called for intervention from the U.S. military to put a stop to the insane carnage.
Barr spotlighted recent pieces of legislation which was introduced by Congress which would give President Joe Biden the power to make use of the U.S. military to kick off a war against the drug cartels creeping up to the southern border, stating that since the head of the snake was now sitting right along the southern side of the border, that it where the fight needs to take place.
The op-ed, which ended up being featured in the Thursday edition of The Wall Street Journal, spotlighted that the 100,000+ Americans that were dying as a result of drug overdoses was more than the total number of American soldiers killed from the most bloody year of fighting for U.S. forces back during World War II.
Barr did note, however, that simply looking at the sates for the number of Americans killed from Drug Overdoses does not actually reflect the full extent of the damage afflicted to the country by Cartels.
“A 2017 analysis, accounting for the costs of healthcare, criminal justice, lost productivity and social and family services, estimated that the total cost of America’s drug epidemic was more than $1 trillion annually, or 5% of gross domestic product,” he stated. “Given the explosion in illicit drug deaths since then, this estimate now seems conservative.”
Barr also spoke about how aggressive action targeting the cartels is very effective and worked back during the early 1990s when a joint operation carried out by the U.S. and Colombian governments took place to try and take down the two most powerful cartels in the world at that time, the Cali and the Medellín cartels. Barr stated that Democrat President Bill Clinton was the one responsible for scaling back America’s aggressiveness in stamping out cartels on their home turf.
Barr went on to outline what he thinks it will take to actually deal with the Mexican cartels:
What will it take to defeat the Mexican cartels? First, a far more aggressive American effort inside Mexico than ever before, including a significant U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence presence, as well as select military capabilities. Optimally, the Mexican government will support and participate in this effort, and it is likely to do so once they understand that the U.S. is committed to do whatever is necessary to cripple the cartels, whether or not the Mexican government participates.
Second, the danger cartels pose to the U.S. requires that we confront them primarily as national-security threats, not a law-enforcement matter. These narco-terrorist groups are more like ISIS than like the American mafia. Case-by-case prosecution of individuals can be a part of an overall effort, but the only way to defeat them is to use every tool at our disposal inside Mexico. Merely designating the cartels as terrorist groups will do nothing by itself. The real question is whether we are willing to go after them as we would a terrorist group.
It was noted in the most recent DEA National Drug Threat Assessment that most of the nation’s illicit drugs enter via the unsecured southern border.
