Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has threatened to start a public “information campaign” in the United States against Republican lawmakers after several have called on the U.S. military to target drug cartels south of the border.
“I would just like to tell them either they change their treatment of Mexico or from today we will start an information campaign in the United States so that all Mexicans, our fellow countrymen, know about this aggression by Republicans against Mexico,” López Obrador said Thursday during a news conference.
In the wake of the kidnapping of four Americans and the killing of two of them in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico several Republicans in Congress have demanded the United States step up its fight against Mexican drug cartels, even if that means crossing the border to do it.
“The kidnapping and murder of American citizens in Matamoros prove that Mexico is a narco-state,” Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times. “President Biden must make it clear that this horrible violence will not go unpunished. If Mexico can’t stop the cartels, then our nation must use any tool in our arsenal to solve it for them.”
Pfluger’s call to action is also shared by Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), who introduced legislation in January that would create the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to target Mexican drug cartels in Mexico.
“The cartels are [at] war with us—poisoning more than 80,000 Americans with fentanyl every year, creating a crisis at our border, and turning Mexico into a failed narco-state,” Crenshaw said. “It’s time we directly target them. My legislation will put us at war with the cartels by authorizing the use of military force against the cartels. We cannot allow heavily armed and deadly cartels to destabilize Mexico and import people and drugs into the United States. We must start treating them like ISIS—because that is who they are.”
By Joe Gomez
