Trump Is Right About What We Did In Iraq
By James Donahue
GOP frontrunner Donald Trump took a slap from Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisor Jake Sullivan this week after Trump said it was a serious mistake removing Iraq Dictator Saddam Hussein from power.
While acknowledging that Hussein “was a bad guy,” Mr. Trump noted that the former dictator was an efficient killer of “terrorists” and that by forcing him out of power during our 2003 invasion of Iraq we have destabilized that area of the world.
“He was a bad guy --- really bad guy. But you know what? He did well. He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. There were terrorists. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism,” Trump said in one of his off-the-cuff speeches Tuesday at Raleigh, North Carolina.
In a quick rebuttal Sullivan said “Trump’s praise for brutal strongmen seemingly knows no bounds.”
Sullivan noted that Trump also has praised the late Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Trump was probably correct when he pointed out that both Iraq and Libya have since become ISIS strongholds since Hussein and Gaddafi have been removed from power. But the conflicts in the Middle East are extremely complex and they involve at least three different major Islamic religious factions plus numerous smaller religious groups and interference by the CIA that have kept the region in turmoil.
The invasion of Iraq by the Bush and Blair Administrations left that relatively stable nation in ruins, and without the iron hand of Saddam Hussein and his Sunni forces keeping forced order, civil war has broken out between the Sunni, Shia, Kurdish, Assyrian, Turkish and Yazidi religious and ethnic people.
After attempts by American and British forces to establish a democratic government in Iraq failed, the nation fell into chaotic civil warfare and led to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). This led to the forced resignation of the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and military involvement by the U.S., Syria, Russia and numerous other nations.
A general description of what is occurring, as it appears in Wikipedia, reads as follows: “Both the Iraqi armed forces, Kurdish Peshmerga and various Assyrian Christian, Turkmen, Yezidi, Shabaki and Armenian Christian forces are facing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Although some 35,000 Kurdish Peshmerga are incorporated into the Iraqi armed forces, most Peshmerga forces are operating under the command of the President of Iraqi Kurdistan in the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq. Assyrian Christian forces include; Syriac Military Council, Assyrian Defense Force, Nineveh Plain Protection Units, Qaragosh Protection Committee and Dwekh Newsha among others.”
As all of this is going on across the bombed and destroyed landscape, aircraft from the U.S., Syria and Iraq and attacking various targets from the sky.
Iraq is a ruined nation deeply engaged in ongoing warfare. And it all may have been prevented if we had just left Saddam Hussein and his Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party continue to keep everybody in line as it had been doing since Hussein came into power in 1979.
We can thank former President George W. Bush and his strongman Vice-President Dick Cheney for the chaos we now must deal with. Mr. Trump didn’t get the story quite right except that he seems to understand that Saddam Hussein had a way of keeping order in a very unstable place. And we truly doubt if Mr. Trump has any answers to the insanity now in place.
By James Donahue
GOP frontrunner Donald Trump took a slap from Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisor Jake Sullivan this week after Trump said it was a serious mistake removing Iraq Dictator Saddam Hussein from power.
While acknowledging that Hussein “was a bad guy,” Mr. Trump noted that the former dictator was an efficient killer of “terrorists” and that by forcing him out of power during our 2003 invasion of Iraq we have destabilized that area of the world.
“He was a bad guy --- really bad guy. But you know what? He did well. He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. There were terrorists. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism,” Trump said in one of his off-the-cuff speeches Tuesday at Raleigh, North Carolina.
In a quick rebuttal Sullivan said “Trump’s praise for brutal strongmen seemingly knows no bounds.”
Sullivan noted that Trump also has praised the late Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Trump was probably correct when he pointed out that both Iraq and Libya have since become ISIS strongholds since Hussein and Gaddafi have been removed from power. But the conflicts in the Middle East are extremely complex and they involve at least three different major Islamic religious factions plus numerous smaller religious groups and interference by the CIA that have kept the region in turmoil.
The invasion of Iraq by the Bush and Blair Administrations left that relatively stable nation in ruins, and without the iron hand of Saddam Hussein and his Sunni forces keeping forced order, civil war has broken out between the Sunni, Shia, Kurdish, Assyrian, Turkish and Yazidi religious and ethnic people.
After attempts by American and British forces to establish a democratic government in Iraq failed, the nation fell into chaotic civil warfare and led to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). This led to the forced resignation of the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and military involvement by the U.S., Syria, Russia and numerous other nations.
A general description of what is occurring, as it appears in Wikipedia, reads as follows: “Both the Iraqi armed forces, Kurdish Peshmerga and various Assyrian Christian, Turkmen, Yezidi, Shabaki and Armenian Christian forces are facing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Although some 35,000 Kurdish Peshmerga are incorporated into the Iraqi armed forces, most Peshmerga forces are operating under the command of the President of Iraqi Kurdistan in the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq. Assyrian Christian forces include; Syriac Military Council, Assyrian Defense Force, Nineveh Plain Protection Units, Qaragosh Protection Committee and Dwekh Newsha among others.”
As all of this is going on across the bombed and destroyed landscape, aircraft from the U.S., Syria and Iraq and attacking various targets from the sky.
Iraq is a ruined nation deeply engaged in ongoing warfare. And it all may have been prevented if we had just left Saddam Hussein and his Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party continue to keep everybody in line as it had been doing since Hussein came into power in 1979.
We can thank former President George W. Bush and his strongman Vice-President Dick Cheney for the chaos we now must deal with. Mr. Trump didn’t get the story quite right except that he seems to understand that Saddam Hussein had a way of keeping order in a very unstable place. And we truly doubt if Mr. Trump has any answers to the insanity now in place.