Sen. Tom Cotton said that the United States might have to take unilateral action against Mexican drug cartels after nine Americans were murdered in northern Mexico.
Appearing on Fox News Tuesday, the Arkansas Republican trashed Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s response to the massacre that killed three women and six children.
“It’s plain that the Mexican government can’t handle this,” Cotton said. “President López Obrador came into office almost a year ago saying that his strategy for dealing with the cartels was going to be more hugs, not bullets.”
“That may work in a children’s fairy tale, but in the real world when three American women and six American children were gunned down and burned alive, the only thing that can counteract bullets is more and bigger bullets,” he continued. “If the Mexican government cannot protect American citizens in Mexico, then the United States may have to take matters into our own hands.”
After the murders, President Trump offered to help Mexico declare “war” on the cartels and help “wipe them off the face of the earth.”
López Obrador declined the military assistance and said the offer was “not in agreement with our convictions. The worst thing is war.”
The Americans killed Monday were part of a fundamentalist offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who settled in the region decades ago after splintering off from the Mormons over the issue of polygamy.
A suspect was detained near the Arizona border, who was holding two hostages in a truck. The suspect was also in possession of four assault rifles, ammunition, and various large vehicles, including a bullet-proofed SUV.
The motive for the brutal killings is still unclear, although Mexican authorities said that the gunmen might have mistaken the group’s large SUVs for those of a rival gang.
