Alan Yahoos
8/19/2016
Trump shares more false memories from the Iraq war and Middle Eastern politics and welcomes Nato’s ‘new’ terrorism division – which has existed since 2004
The Iraq war
“I was an opponent of the Iraq war from the beginning … I nonetheless publicly expressed my private doubts about the invasion. Three months before the invasion I said, in an interview with Neil Cavuto, to whom I offer my best wishes for a speedy recovery, that ‘perhaps [we] shouldn’t be doing it yet’, and that ‘the economy is a much bigger problem’.” – 15 August, Youngstown, Ohio
Unlike the many past occasions Trump has lied about opposition to the Iraq war “from the beginning”, in Youngstown he tried to provide evidence. But the interview Trump cites, from 28 January 2003 and which Buzzfeed recently unearthed, is full of equivocations, and not a clear opposition at all. Ultimately the businessman expresses impatience with George W Bush.
“Whatever happened to the days of the Douglas MacArthur? He would go and attack. He wouldn’t talk,” Trump said. “Either you attack or you don’t attack.”
Bush was “doing a very good job” nonetheless, he added. Almost two months later and a day into the war, Trump declared on Fox News: “It looks like a tremendous success, from a military standpoint.” The day after that, in a San Antonio Express interview found by FactCheck.org, Trump said “war is depressing” and encouraged people to watch a beauty pageant. A year later he told Esquire the war was a “mess”.
Before the war Howard Stern asked whether Trump supported invasion, to which Trump answered: “I guess so.”
“I have been just as clear in saying what a catastrophic mistake Hillary Clinton and President Obama made with the reckless way in which they pulled out.” – 15 August, Youngstown, Ohio
Trump called for a complete withdrawal from Iraq nine years ago, before George W Bush was out of office. On 16 March 2007, Trump told CNN the US should “declare victory and leave, because I’ll tell you, this country is just going to get further bogged down. They’re in a civil war over there.”
The businessman then argued that post-withdrawal chaos was in fact another reason to abandon Iraq. The power that would take over, Trump said, would be “the meanest, the worst guy and he’ll have one thing, one thing, he will hate America, and he’ll use that to flame. So, I mean, this is a total catastrophe and you might as well get out now, because you just are wasting time.”
Although Trump called for Americans to wash their hands of Iraq and any anti-US forces that might rise there, he now argues that the withdrawal of US forces in December 2011, according to a timeline set by Bush and Iraq’s government that Barack Obama oversaw , created the conditions for the terror group Isis to thrive.
The Middle East
“President Obama and Hillary Clinton should never have attempted to build a democracy in Libya, to push for immediate regime change in Syria, or to support the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt.” – 15 August, Youngstown, Ohio
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump all supported intervention in Libya in 2011. None supported occupation to “build democracy” there in the model of George W Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. In a February 2011 video blog, Trump urged “immediate” intervention: “We should go in, we should stop this guy, which would be be very easy and very quick. We could do it surgically.”
“We have to go in to save these lives,” he said. Trump has also claimed to have made “a lot of money” from dictator Muammar Ghaddafi through a failed rental deal in 2009.
Months after Syrian president Bashar al-Assad cracked down on demonstrations against him that year, Obama called for him to resign as Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak had earlier that year. But for years Obama resisted calls to actively intervene in Syria, angering many Republicans and some Democrats, until his administration began to arm anti-Assad rebels.
Obama did press Mubarak to step down as demonstrations swelled against the Egyptian president. Trump also supported rebels’ overthrow of Mubarak’s, telling Fox News on 12 February 2011, “it’s a good thing that they got him out.” He added: “And Obama, and I’m not blaming him for this, but they don’t listen to us.”
“I was saying this constantly and to whoever would listen: keep the oil, keep the oil, keep the oil, I said – don’t let someone else get it … In the old days, when we won a war, to the victor belonged the spoils.” – 15 August, Youngstown, Ohio
It’s true that Trump has said since at least 2011 that the US should “keep the oil” of Middle East nations in which it intervenes, such as Iraq and Libya (although the US has sent only small special forces into the latter).
Although the US military and American interests have taken root in the countries it has fought in, for instance with the permission of Germany and Japan after the second world war, it has not received territory from a defeated foe since Spain ceded Puerto Rico and Guam in 1898. (The US paid $20m for control of the Philippines, which was granted full independence in 1934.)
Trump’s philosophy of war not only looks back to the colonial era, it also contradicts his own insistence that the US must stop investing in other nations. In the same 15 August speech, Trump declared, “if I become president, the era of nation-building will be ended,” even though he admitted that his plan, “by its very nature, would have left soldiers in place to guard our assets” – a costly, indefinite investment in the security of a foreign territory.
San Bernardino
“She wanted to support very openly jihad online … A neighbor saw suspicious behavior, bombs on the floor and other things, but didn’t warn authorities because they said they didn’t want to be accused of racial profiling.” – 15 August, Youngstown, Ohio
Tashfeen Malik, one of the shooters in last year’s San Bernardino attack, did not openly discuss her and her husband Syed Farook’s plans online: the FBI said they used private messages.
For weeks Trump has baselessly said someone saw “bombs on the floor” and “suspicious behavior” – he has repeated this for weeks without any evidence. Investigators found pipe bombs and ammunition in a townhouse rented by the couple in the Redlands, not near their home, and their landlord has said he had no reason to suspect them. Neighbors of this house also expressed surprise and alarm, not concerns about political correctness.
One local news station reported on 3 December that Aaron Elswick, a neighbor of one of Farook’s mother, recalled hearing yet another neighbor say – in Elswick’s words: “She had noticed that they had, I guess, been receiving packages, quite a few packages within a short amount of time. And that they were actually doing a lot of work out in the garage and she was kind of suspicious and was wanting to report it but she was, ‘I didn’t want to profile.’”
Elswick did not name this other neighbor; this appears to be the only account that even remotely resembles Trump’s story, for which there is no evidence whatsoever that anyone saw explosives.
Nato
“I had previously said that Nato was obsolete because it failed to deal adequately with terrorism. Since my comments, they have changed their policy and now have a new division focused on terror threats.” – 15 August, Youngstown, Ohio
Nato has had a Defense Against Terrorism program since June 2004, almost a full 12 years before Trump called the alliance “obsolete”. In July its member nations decided to increase efforts against Isis, specifically, in Syria and Iraq, as its leaders had discussed for months. Trump was not involved.
The press
“I loved when CNN turned off its camera, as soon as I started telling you what sleaze they are.” – 13 August, Fairfield, Connecticut
The major television networks, including CNN, share a camera for many political events, including this rally at which CNN operated the designated “pool” camera. The rally was filmed in its entirety save for a brief moment noted by NBC, when a major thunderstorm interrupted the live feed.
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