Source: United States Senator for Florida Marco Rubio
Bukele Has Brought Freedom to El Salvador
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)
April 17, 2023
Compact
Two weeks ago, I made my first official visit to El Salvador and witnessed its story firsthand. For decades, the Central-American nation was little more than a playground for ruthless gangs…until President Nayib Bukele cracked down hard against the criminal element….
In the words of local news media, the gangs now “do not exist”…. Children play on soccer fields that were once whizzing with bullets. Families go out at night without fear of being murdered and mutilated. Businesses sell their wares, no protection money required. In short, people are free and flourishing….
All this hasn’t impressed the Biden administration, however…. [T]he White House has sanctioned key members of his government [and] Democratic Party activists…now badmouth El Salvador as an emerging dictatorship and a bastion of “illiberalism”….
I would be the first to condemn any tyrannical move from Bukele, but I also think it’s absurd to criticize him for giving Salvadoran people their freedom back. Simply put, the left is so allergic to law enforcement that it would rather see Barrio 18 and MS-13 roaming the streets than criminals locked up….
Projected abroad, that allergy to order makes for terrible foreign policy. After all, our hemisphere is an increasingly hostile place…. Now is not the time to push a partner like El Salvador into the arms of our opponents for being too tough on crime….
President Biden seems to think he can lecture and sanction anyone he wants without detriment to our own national security. He couldn’t be further from the truth.