Ex-AG Bill Barr likens drug cartels to ISIS, demands Biden send military

Former Attorney General Bill Barr called Friday for a US crackdown on Mexican drug cartels, urging President Biden to use military force to respond to the poisoning of hundreds of thousands of Americans by fentanyl.

“These narco-terrorist groups are more like ISIS than like the American mafia,” Barr, 72, wrote in a a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Merely designating the cartels as terrorist groups will do nothing by itself. The real question is whether we are willing to go after them as we would a terrorist group.”

Barr, who served as America’s top law enforcement official under former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump, said Congress should pass a joint resolution authorizing “select military capabilities” to beat back drug traffickers in the provinces of Sinaloa and Jalisco.

“Optimally, the Mexican government will support and participate in this effort, and it is likely to do so once they understand that the US is committed to do whatever is necessary to cripple the cartels, whether or not the Mexican government participates,” Barr wrote.

The former AG noted that more than 106,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, according to the National Institutes of Health — with nearly two-thirds of that number due to non-methadone synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

That number of fatalities outstrips “the number of Americans killed in action during the bloodiest year of World War II,” Barr wrote, adding that a 2017 study put the total cost of America’s drug epidemic at “more than $1 trillion annually, or 5% of gross domestic product.

“Given the explosion in illicit drug deaths since then, this estimate now seems conservative,” he went on.

Barr’s op-ed follows similar demands by Republican border state officials. Most notably, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott requested Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris classify the cartels as terrorist groups this past September.

Last month, a coalition of 21 state attorneys general also pushed Biden to label the cartels foreign terrorist organizations.

In January, Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), introduced a joint resolution that would mobilize US forces to combat fentanyl trafficking in the Western Hemisphere.

The “paramilitary” Mexican cartels “use bribery and terror tactics to entrench themselves as essentially states within the state,” according to the former attorney general, posing a “stark choice” for Mexican officials between funding an illicit drug empire and facing “threats of violence” or death.

“Mexican cartels have flourished because Mexican administrations haven’t been willing to take them on,” wrote Barr, who took particular issue with current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration, which he called the “chief enabler” of the gangsters.

“He shields them by consistently invoking Mexico’s sovereignty to block the US from taking effective action,” Barr said. “This posture should anger Americans.”

The former attorney general also noted an unsuccessful effort in 2019 by the Mexican military to confront the Sinaloa cartel, resulting in the release of the son of drug kingpin El Chapo.

Two months ago, the military returned with enough force to recapture Ovidio Guzmán-Lopez, Barr said, but refused to engage the cartel army.

By contrast, Barr pointed to successful US campaigns in Colombia during the 1990s, partnering with the government there to wipe out the cocaine-trafficking Medellin and Cali cartels.

Barr said US forces must similarly “degrade the cartels” south of the border “to the point that Mexican governments can muster the will and the wherewithal to keep them in check.”

“We can’t accept a failed narco-state on our border, providing sanctuary to narco-terrorist groups preying on the American people.”