Posted on 10/09/2015 6:46:49 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Speaking Tuesday night to Brett Baier, Donald Trump sounded more like Democrats Sheila Jackson Lee and Dennis Kucinich than like the Republican front-runner for president. Asked whether he stood behind his 2008 interview where he said it would have been a wonderful thing if Nancy Pelosi had attempted to impeach President George W. Bush, Trump said this: I think he was a disaster and I think it was one of the worst decisions ever made. [He] has totally destabilized the Middle East. If you had Saddam Hussein, you wouldnt have the problems you have right now.
Im sorry, but this is nonsense. The Middle East was not stable with Saddam in power, and the present instability is far more related to the Arab Spring and the American pullout from post-Surge Iraq than it is to the initial decision to invade. In 2009, Barack Obama inherited a Middle East where American and Iraqi forces had crushed the al-Qaeda insurgency, Libyas Moammar Qaddafi was effectively neutralized agreeing months after Saddam fell to abandon his own WMD stockpiles and Irans power was checked in part by the presence of American combat troops next door.
First, lets dispense with the absurd notion that with Saddam Hussein still in power, you wouldnt have the problems you have right now. From 1980, when he launched his war with Iran, until the fall of his regime in 2003, there were few greater agents of instability in the world (much less the Middle East) than Hussein. He invaded his neighbors, gassed his people, built up a vast stockpile of chemical weapons, supported terrorism, and triggered multiple military confrontations with the U.S., including Operation Desert Storm the largest American military deployment since Vietnam.
Even when he was allegedly contained walled in by no-fly zones, hampered by sanctions, and subject to periodic bombing raids he still fomented regional discord. He was a prime financial supporter of the Palestinian suicide-bombing campaign that caused more Israeli civilian casualties on a relative basis than American casualties suffered on September 11. He hatched a terror plot to assassinate George H. W. Bush. He fired on American planes and pilots who were lawfully enforcing the no-fly zones. He interfered with lawful weapons inspections. And we now know thanks to comprehensive New York Times reporting and the stories of countless Iraq vets that he maintained secret stockpiles of chemical weapons.
If these historical facts dont persuade, then why not the example of Husseins Baathist comrade in Syria, Hafez al-Assad? No Western power invaded Syria, yet the nation is the site of the worlds bloodiest war, its the incubator of ISIS, Syrian migrants are now swamping European shores, and U.S. and Russian forces now find themselves in combat in the same country and in dangerous (and hostile) proximity.
#share#Trumps statement also discounts the Arab Spring a movement that had little (if anything) to do with Iraq. In December 2010, a young Tunisian grocer set himself on fire to protest his treatment at the hands of local police. Within days, protests swept the nation, and by January 2011 the government was overthrown. Less than two weeks later, Egypt erupted in protest. The first Syrian protests started in January also. In February, Libya was torn apart by violence.
While no one should pretend there was an easy or obvious American diplomatic or military response to the Arab Spring, the Obama administration did worse than fail it kept choosing to back the wrong side. It launched a war on behalf of a ragtag group of jihadist militias in Libya jihadists who soon enough transformed into violent enemies of the U.S. It backed the revolutionary Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt even to the point of sending it advanced American weapons even as it violated the Camp David Accords, persecuted Christians, and supported Hamas. Then, when the Brotherhood was overthrown in one of the worlds largest political protests, the Obama administration incredibly imposed an arms embargo on the new, allied government that took power.
The Obama administrations history of incoherence and weakness in Syria is by now well-known, but we cant overlook the single most destabilizing thing that the Obama administration did during the Arab Spring complete its withdrawal from Iraq. At perhaps the most strategically critical moment in the Middle East since the Arab-Israeli wars, the Obama administration created a yawning power vacuum one that has since been filled, with gusto, by ISIS, Iran, and now Russia.
For Trump to look at this recent history and declare that it would all be better if only Iraq still had its 78-year-old genocidal dictator in power complete with his history of invading other nations, manufacturing and using chemical weapons, and supporting terrorists is simply astounding. No one is denying that serious mistakes were made in Iraq, beginning with the invasion and continuing until our decisive tactical and strategic shifts during the Surge. But facts are facts, and by 2010 even the Obama administration was bragging about Iraqs prospects, with Joe Biden declaring that it would be one of the great achievements of this administration.
Trumps foreign-policy reasoning is not only dangerously simplistic, it plays directly into Democratic hands. Faced with the disasters on Obamas watch, their response is to blame Bush. Its a shame that the Republican frontrunner is reading from that same, tired playbook.
David French is an attorney, a staff writer at National Review, and a veteran of the Iraq War.
If you can be that certain, you should be just as certain as to who will be the nominee.
Who?
“Even when they tell us the sun rises in the east and sets in the west?”
I would have to go outside and verify it with my own eyes.
David French is right: Iraq was not a mistake. Obama’s withdrawal was a catastrophic mistake. Trump’s dammocrap blather is a colloidal mistake.
Bibi said exactly the same thing about Russia and Isil at the UN the day after Trump did. Let your enemies fight it out and pick up.the pieces later
Works.for.me!
Trump is right they need dictators to rule over their heathen asses
RE: The Mid East is never stable. But it was stable-er with the dictators in power. Thats the point.
Ignore Trump for the moment, the author, an Iraq war vet, argues that THIS PARTICULAR DICTATOR — Saddam Hussein is NOT the dictator that makes Iraq Stable-er, and gives his reasons why in the article.
Even Jeb Bush admitted that going into Iraq was a mistake.
David French is a notorious Trump hater who has been exposed in the past for using fabricated evidence.
RE: Trump is right they need dictators to rule over their heathen asses
I guess we should be content with the Ayatollahs running Iran then.
Some have a very ideological view of what should be, hence the Iraq debacle, and partly the rebuilding of Afghanistan (I absolutely support going in an wiping out the Taliban, but then get out. Clear objectives and exit strategy). Saddam was evil, and probably should have been taken out in 1991 when the forces and momentum and regional will was there. But we didn’t. To go in a decade and a half later based on thinking we would democratize a region that is so full of tribal alliances and religious hatred (for each other) arguably was a mistake that has contributed to what we now have. Untold lives lost, billions pissed away, a worsening situation and Barrack Obama. In hindsight (and that is always easy) perhaps it wasn’t the best. Being that we can’t change history (though the liberals try) let’s hope we’ve learned from it.
Trump is real short on nuance and often too willing to shorthand issues to make a sound bite. The analysis has little meaning, but it keeps the chattering class publishing his name. He has put them on the defensive and it is they who must justify their disdain for his utterances.
Fox and NR appear to be subsidiaries of the GOPe and so more suspect than Trump.
“I happen to agree with the article.”
If Saddam were still in power, would we have ISIS in Iraq? That is obviously, very obviously, what Trump was referring to.
Obama and Biden were saying that so they could withdraw all the troops. They never wanted a SOFA with Iraq. They painted a rosy picture to deceive the public.
Saddam Hussein was awful.
What would have been better?
“Obamas withdrawal was a catastrophic mistake”
You may remember that Bush was the one who signed the withdawl agreement:
The U.S.Iraq Status of Forces Agreement was a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. It established that U.S. combat forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. combat forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.Iraq_Status_of_Forces_Agreement
RE: What would have been better?
Staying on in Iraq after the Surge and the Anbar Awakening that stabilized the country.
We’ve stayed in South Korea, Japan and Germany for over 50 years. What makes one ( or Obama ) think that Iraq will be any better?
BTW, the argument we have for Iraq goes for Afghanistan too.
What would have been better than the Taliban?
Colloidal = collosal
John Bolton is endorsing John McCain and donated to his campaign through his PAC.
Jeb Bush on Iraq War: ‘It was a mistake’
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4404627347001/jeb-bush-on-iraq-war-it-was-a-mistake/?#sp=show-clips
THIS.
People’s memories are short. Iraq was stabilized after 2008. The recent rise of ISIS falls squarely on Obama. Yes, I wish we put in place a more aggressive counterinsurgency strategy back in 2004-2005, but that said, it is completely false to suggest that “durr Iraq will never be stable”, since we DID stabilize it. By 2009, US troops were out of harms way and acting only in a support role.
Plus as we know now, Saddam DID indeed have WMD’s.
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