Former Attorney General William Barr said Friday that the U.S. should take care of drug cartels on the other side of the border with the same fury used to destroy ISIS.
The Biden administration’s approach to combating illicit international criminal organizations is not working, according to Barr. He made the comments on Newsmax’s Greta Van Susteren show.
“They’re basically terrorist organizations,” Barr declared on “The Record With Greta Van Susteren.” They are “increasingly integrating with terrorists,” he added. Their paramilitary is capable of confronting the Mexican armed forces and has a limitless supply of cash to bend any system to their will.
“We are already seeing, I believe, a weakening of the United States’ sovereignty as we try to work through Mexico to deal with cartels,” he added. “I think that’s a losing strategy.”
“These criminal organizations should be treated more like ISIS and less like the mafia,” says Barr.
Under his former employer, President Donald Trump, the United States military freed millions of people from ISIS while reducing their control of land throughout the Middle East. Military leaders credited Donald Trump’s aggressive but non-micro managing style to their success at the time.
“We do not get second-guessed much. Our battlefield judgments in forward areas are accepted. We don’t receive 20 questions with each action that happens on the ground and every decision we make,” Lieutenant Gen. Stephen Townsend stated in 2017, according to The Washington Examiner.
Brett McGurk, a White House special envoy under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, credited the shift in strategy for President Trump’s success against ISIS.
“These delegations of tactical powers from the president have made a tremendous difference on the ground,” McGurk remarked in 2017. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
According to Barr, the current Biden administration has “virtually abandoned” the border to cartels. The cartels are bringing in “poison” responsible for more than 100,000 American fatalities each year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared last fall that fentanyl is a major cause of death in the opioid crisis by 2020. According to the federal government, “the Sinaloa and New Generation Jalisco cartels are most likely responsible for shipping fentanyl into the United States from Mexico.”
Mexican Pres. Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently met with Biden at the White House, where it was hoped that improved ties would be restored after López Obrador snubbed the U.S.-led Summit of the Americas in June. The conversation centered on the worsening immigration situation at the southern border of the United States.