President Trump on Tuesday offered U.S. assistance as he called on Mexico to “wage war” against the country's murderous drug cartel “monsters” in response to the brutal killing of multiple Americans a day earlier.
“If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively,” Trump tweeted. “The great new President of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!”
Officials say at least six children and three women, apparently all U.S. citizens living in a community of Americans in Mexico, were gunned down after their convoy came under fire during a daylight ambush Monday. Six children were found alive, five of whom have been taken to hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. One child is currently missing, and authorities are searching the mountainous area on the Sonora-Chihuahua border for the child.
Those attacked were members of the LeBaron family, a well-known American clan who has lived in the community in the northern part of the country for decades, according to The New York Times. The attack targeted citizens who live in a community founded as part of an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth," Trump tweeted. "We merely await a call from your great new president!"
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador refused that approach, however, saying at a Tuesday news conference, "The worst thing you can have is war."
"We declared war, and it didn't work," Lopez Obrador said, referring to the policies of previous administrations. "That is not an option."
Trump has repeatedly raised concerns about levels of gang violence and drug-related crime in Mexico, particularly as it relates to securing the U.S.-Mexico border. The two countries have stepped up cooperation on that front over the summer, with asylum seekers being returned to Mexico to await hearings, while Mexico has also increased its troop presence on both its northern and southern borders.
Read More...
Trump calls for 'war' against Mexican drug cartel 'monsters' after Americans murdered
Current News
The NeverTrumper Who Lectured America on the Rule of Law Is Taking a Plea Deal
John Bolton spent years telling you that Donald Trump was a threat to American institutions. That the rule of law mattered. That classified information was sacred and the men who mishandled it were unfit for public trust. Read more
From ‘Mother’ to ‘Gestating Parent’: A Civilization Loses Its Words and Then Itself
The Roman Republic did not collapse because its legions were defeated in the field. It eroded, gradually and almost imperceptibly, from within. Sallust, writing in the generation before the Republic’s final crisis, identified the mechanism with uncommon clarity: when a civilization abandons the virtues that built it, the language through which those virtues were expressed becomes the first casualty. Words grow contested. Then they are redefined. Then they are replaced. By the time a republic wakes to what has happened, the vocabulary of self-governance has already been emptied of its meaning. Read more
The Lie of Institutional Neutrality: What Pride Month Reveals About Who Controls the Cathedral
Alexis de Tocqueville, writing of democratic despotism in Democracy in America, described a system that would not tyrannize through violence but through the steady degradation of citizenship — a society in which an “immense and tutelary power” would keep citizens “in perpetual childhood,” covering the surface of society “with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform.” He envisioned an authority that would not break wills so much as soften them, not forbid but prevent, not punish but enfeeble. Read more
Marc Elias Went to Court to Kill the Fund That Would Pay Back His Victims. Senate Republicans Are Helping.
Marc Elias went to federal court to kill the fund that would pay back his victims. Senate Republicans are helping. Read more
They Called It a Peaceful Protest. A Reporter Had to Hide Her Network Logo to Stay Safe.
They called it a peaceful protest. Read more
Thucydides, Tehran, and the Temptation of a Quick Settlement
In the seventh year of the Peloponnesian War, Athens found itself holding a position of unexpected strength. Its navy was dominant, its treasury sufficient, its enemies fractured. Sparta, exhausted and humiliated by losses at Sphacteria, sent envoys seeking terms. The peace was theirs to dictate. Read more