Trump moves a step closer to bombing Mexico in ‘impossible war’

In 2019 six children and three women — all dual US-Mexico citizens from a Mormon community — were massacred on a dirt road in the border state of Sonora when gunmen ambushed their convoy.

The brutality shocked President Trump, who was serving his first term in office, into calling for “war” on Mexico’s cartels. He came close to designating them as terrorist organisations, only to decide against it after a personal appeal from Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was the president of Mexico.

But there was no reprieve this time. On Monday Trump signed an executive order to put Mexico’s cartels on the list of foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs), alongside the likes of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Islamic State.

The designation is part of Trump’s plan to “wage war” on Mexico’s cartels, which he has claimed “essentially run” Mexico. The objective is to stop fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid responsible for almost 75,000 overdose deaths in the US in 2023, from crossing the border.


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Trump moves a step closer to bombing Mexico in ‘impossible war’

The US president has reclassified cartels as terrorists as he seeks to stem the flow of lethal fentanyl. It is a risky strategy

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[Tall Timbers]

You could decimate the current cartels, but new criminal gangs would rise up from among the criminal survivors. I do think the USA has cause to war against the Mexican cartels if Mexico can't control them, and with all of the military weaponry the cartels have been accumulating, they have become a real threat to our borderlands which further justifies taking military action against them.