Yesterday, Donald Trump gave us yet another reason why he’s unfit to be president. As he sees it, the Middle East would be much more stable if two of its most brutal tyrants–Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi–were still in office.
Trump was discussing the situation in the Middle East with Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” Trump conceded that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was “probably a bad guy.” However, he said that if we kept our current line that Assad has to go, Syria would end up being a “mess”–much like Iraq and Syria are now.
Todd pressed him on it, asking if Trump thought the Middle East would be safer with Saddam and Qaddafi still in office. Trump’s answer was immediate–“it’s not even a contest.” He pointed out that the Islamic State was born in Iraq–a common theme in his stump speech. He also argued that if Qaddafi were still in office, the Benghazi attack would have never happened.
We’ve heard this before. It’s almost identical to the foreign policy line for much of the Cold War–prop up brutal tyrants in the name of containing Communism. What did that get us? It drove Vietnam into the waiting arms of the Communists, as well as Cuba. In Iran, it resulted in trading the shah for the mullahs. And on, and on. Does Trump want to go back to those bad old days? Apparently so.
If I had been Todd, I would have asked Trump if he would have sided with Qaddafi during the 2011 revolt. Given that Trump has announced in capital letters that he has no problem leaving tyrants in office if they keep terrorists on a short leash, I have to wonder if he would have sat and watched Qaddafi open fire on his own people had he been in the White House. I have to suspect he would have, given that he has previously stated he would boot out any refugees from Syria if he were president.
Trump echoed similar sentiments in a speech he gave the previous day in Franklin, Tennessee, a crimson-red suburb of Nashville. While he conceded that Saddam’s rule was “vicious,” he added that during his tenure, “there were no terrorists in Iraq.” Saddam’s approach to dealing with terrorists was very simple. According to Trump, anyone suspected of involvement in terrorist activity would be dragged into court for a five-minute trial and executed. Apparently Trump forgot that George W. Bush justified his windmill-tilting expedition into Iraq on the notion that Saddam was giving aid and comfort to al-Qaeda. Then again, we’re talking about Trump–a guy who has amply demonstrated that facts are just something in his way.
Many of my longtime readers on Daily Kos know that I opposed the Iraq war almost from the time Bush started beating the drum for it in 2002. The wrong thing, even if it’s for the right reason, is still wrong. But had we simply allowed things to take their course, I have to wonder–would there have been a spontaneous revolt against Saddam along the lines of the 2011 Libyan revolt? It’s very likely, given the reaction of Iraqi citizens when a giant statue of Saddam was toppled in the middle of Baghdad. Would Trump have supported keeping Saddam in power had such a revolt taken place? Judging by his statements from this weekend, the answer to that question is a resounding yes.
If Trump were to succeed in his quest to buy the presidency, we already know that he would return to a foreign policy that resulted in a number of outrageous foreign policy crimes. By declaring that he is willing to keep tyrants like Saddam and Qaddafi in power in the name of containing terrorism, he forgets that when you fight evil with evil, you just get more evil.
