One of the most cringe-worthy moments from Wednesday night’s Commander-In-Chief Forum came when Donald Trump suggested that there never would have been an Islamic State had we taken Iraq’s oil a decade ago. Well, a pair of retired officers with a combined six decades of military experience think this idea would not just have been wrong–it would have been un-American.
In case you missed it, watch here, via NBC News.
Trump was peeved at how we got virtually no return on the estimated $3 trillion we spent on overthrowing Saddam Hussein and rebuilding Iraq. He wanted to go back to the days of “to the victor belongs the spoils.” For that reason, if he had been president rather than George W. Bush, he would have raided Iraq’s oil reserves–some of the largest in the world.
“I always said, ‘take the oil.’ One of the benefits we would have had if we took the oil is ISIS would not be able to take that oil and use that oil to fuel themselves.”
Later that night on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Cooper asked a panel of military experts what they thought of Trump’s idea. Raw Story got a clip.
It takes a lot to throw Cooper for a loop. But he openly admitted that he “cannot wrap my mind around the concept” of taking a defeated foe’s resources in this day and age. All he could see was a vision of the American military “taking the oil of a sovereign nation”–a move that would only serve to outrage those in Iraq “who don’t hate us already.”
He put the question to retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, retired Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, and former House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers. Hertling, the former commander of U. S. Army Europe, thought Trump’s proposal would be a good idea–“if we were in the 16th century.”
Hertling knows something about Iraq. He commanded the 1st Armored Division during the surge of 2007-08, and spent much of that time in northern Iraq–home to much of that oil. In a remarkably restrained comment, Hertling said that he was “glad he (Trump) is a businessman,” because he can’t figure out how it would be possible for the United States to tap into Iraq’s oil and still leave enough for the Iraqis to live on.
Rogers revealed that during the run-up to the Iraq War, members of both parties in his Lansing-based district were openly suggesting that we should take Iraq’s oil. He pointed out that we did negotiate a certain percentage of oil to cover war expenses. Cooper pointed out that Trump’s plan was to have American oil companies come in and tap the reserves while under Army protection.
Leighton, the former director of training at the National Security Agency and a former member of the Joint Chiefs, put it bluntly–taking Iraq’s oil would be “a nonstarter,” since we would be taking a valuable resource from a country we’re supposed to be building up. Rather than take oil from Iraq, Leighton said that we should give it and other affected countries “a way in which to live their lives” by increasing their oil revenue. He likened Trump’s proposal to “something very similar to what you might expect a Chinese military leader to say in the present day.”
Cooper mused that Trump’s suggestion implied that since Iraq was a defeated foe, we had the right to take their oil. To Hertling, it meant more. He believed that if Trump had his way, our military would be “a mercenary force.” He then let Trump have it.
“It is not the American way of war to go and occupy land, steal its resources, rape its women and do the kind of things that Mr. Trump is saying. It is a simplistic approach that is appealing to a certain percentage of Americans.”
So there you have it, folks. You have two retired officers with a combined 63 years of experience saying that Trump’s proposal is not only a loser, but fundamentally wrong. Hmmm–I think I’ll take the word of Hertling and Leighton over the Donald.
