During an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) argued for U.S. intervention in Mexico against drug cartels responsible for the “killing of hundreds of thousands” of Americans.
Cotton said there was a precedent for the United States to act.
“It is a terrible news story about the loss of two American lives and other two wounded,” Cotton said. “Lindsey Graham is right, though. We’re losing 100,000 Americans every single year to drug deaths almost exclusively because of Mexican drug cartels. If the Mexican government will not or cannot stop these cartels from killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, then America should.”
“And I get the question that you posed to me a lot from Arkansans, and I always turn around to the question to them, I will do it to your viewers, as well – if ISIS and al-Qaeda had set up shop in Juarez or Monterey or Tijuana, what would you expect your government to do if they were killing hundred thousands of Americans a year?” he continued. “Whatever that is, that is exactly what we should do to them in Mexico, with or without the Mexican government.”
“We have a long history of our military protecting us from these threats, from drug traffickers and narco-terrorists,” Cotton added. “We toppled an entire government in Panama in 1989 because of drug trafficking. It is well-known that special operation forces were present in Columbia in 1993 when Pablo Escobar was killed. It is well-known they were present a few years back when El Chapo was arrested in Mexico.”
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