At a Commander in Chief Forum organised by NBC, presidential hopefuls Trump and Clinton were fielded questions by war veterans. Matt Lauer was the host.
Trump fared worse. The real-estate mogul slouched in his chair, twisted and babbled through Lauer’s kid-glove questions. Both Clinton and Trump took cheap shots at each other, despite telling Lauer they’d hold off, but Trump also dumped on Obama every chance he got.
“It has absolutely been a disastrous war,” Trump said when asked about the U.S. invasion of Iraq. “And by the way, perhaps almost as bad, was the way in which Obama got out.”
Then, in a confusing rant, Trump claimed that “under Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble.” Showing how deeply he misunderstands the military, he promised he’d get better generals.
A canny Iraq war veteran stood and asked Trump what he’d do after he defeats the Islamic State, and the answer was both enlightening and frustrating. “Part of the problem that we’ve had is that we go in, we defeat somebody and we don’t know what we’re doing after that,” Trump said.
Which is true. The idiot savant of American politics stumbled into the greatest problem of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the U.S. government achieved two military victories, but shattered these countries in the process. America failed at reconstruction in ways we’re only beginning to understand.
Trump then blamed Obama for the Islamic State and advocated imperial, blood-and-treasure foreign policy as a solution for Islamic extremism. “Take the oil,” he said. “If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS.”
“How are we going to take the oil,” a bewildered Lauer asked. “How are we going to do that?”
Trump didn’t have a clear answer. “It used to be that to the victor belonged the spoils,” he said after rambling about the beauty of Iraq’s oil. “I always said take the oil. One of the benefits we would have had if we had taken the oil is ISIS wouldn’t have had the oil to fuel themselves.”
Trump crafts tautology into digestible pop art. It’d be impressive to watch if he weren’t trying to become the most powerful person on the planet.
Trump went on to claim that the people briefing him on national security matters obviously disliked Obama, based on their body language, and he further lauded Russian potentate Vladimir Putin.
source: War is Boring