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The United States was well represented on Thursday during the Americas Counter Cartel Conference in Florida, where Secretary of War Pete Hegseth espoused a relentless commitment to eradicating criminal entities from the Western Hemisphere.
Hegseth spearheaded the meeting, which was attended by other military and security leaders from the Caribbean, Central, and South America regions. The secretary looked to the wisdom of America’s former presidents and military minds as he discussed the importance of securing the Western Hemisphere from deadly drug cartels and human traffickers.
“In 1823, President Monroe said we owed the success of that young country to the candor and amicable relations with other powers to affirm our national policy,” Hegseth said. “President Monroe declared, ‘We should consider any attempt by malign countries to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.’ It was the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. And today, some two hundred years later, we still marvel at the wisdom of President Monroe’s declaration.”
Hegseth drilled down hard on America’s “peace through strength” approach that has been championed by President Donald Trump and his administration. He noted that other countries’ soft-on-crime approaches have only resulted in higher numbers of fatalities for the American people, as those ripple effects have reached this nation’s shores over the years.
“More than one million Americans were killed by fentanyl, cocaine, and other drugs – numbers greater than any casualties we’ve sustained in war,” he said.
Hegseth tied this directly, as well, to the illegal immigration catastrophe unleashed by Joe Biden’s administration, which caused a 2,000 percent explosion, he said, in human smuggling, and a profit-boom for cartels and terrorists benefiting from the chaotic conditions.
“What creates chaos?” Hegseth said. “No leadership creates chaos.”
Hegseth said that this retreat from protecting its own citizens was a “great betrayal” of its people. “Well, President Trump recognizes the wisdom of the Monroe Doctrine – and the days of us betraying and endangering our own citizens are finished,” he declared.
Hegseth highlighted the administration’s tremendous strides toward stabilizing the Western Hemisphere – sealing the southern border, resulting in a “20 percent” drop in murder rates in the United States.
He also heralded Operation Southern Spear, the U.S. military campaign to counter narco-terrorism in the Caribbean and Western regions.
“Operation Southern Spear has restored deterrence against the narco-terrorist cartels that profited from poisoning Americans,” Hegseth said. “Last month, we went a few weeks without targeting a single boat. Why? Well, because we couldn’t find a whole lot of boats to sink. And that’s the whole point…to establish deterrence from narco-terrorists who’ve been able to traffic almost unfettered. And if the consequence was simply to be arrested and then released, well, that’s a consequence they’d already priced in a long time ago.”
He added, “A new dynamic had to be put in motion in order for their decision cycle to change. And when adversaries are forced to move out of comfortable positions, as you know as military men and women, they’re more vulnerable when they’re moving in a different direction.”