U.S. troops chased Villa for nearly a year and never caught him. Our forces withdrew and left the Mexican revolution to wear itself out.

Were Trump to send another expedition into Mexico, López Obrador would not only object but probably send the Mexican army to oppose our intervention. There would be Russian, Chinese, and other UN Security Council motions to condemn Trump’s actions and impose economic sanctions on us. And the Dems would add another ground of impeachment to their agenda…

We no longer engage in assassinations. A covert operation in Mexico to hit the cartels’ leaders is an attractive thought but obviously illegal. Similarly illegal would be a program of extraordinary rendition — kidnapping — to capture cartel leaders and bring them to the U.S. for trial.

But the possibility remains for another covert operation. In the extraordinarily unlikely event that López Obrador could be persuaded to allow U.S. special forces into Mexico to capture cartel leaders and turn them over to Mexican authorities — and if the cartel chiefs could remain guarded by U.S. forces after capture to prevent corrupt Mexican officials from helping them escape — they could be extradited to the U.S. for trial and imprisonment.