Lately, a few percipient observers, including myself have remarked that Bernie Sanders has been sounding just a bit Trumpy on the subjects of immigration and international competitiveness. Now, it seems, Donald Trump has been sounding a bit Rand Pauly on the Middle East. Bloomberg Politic’s Melinda Henneberger reports on the scene with the Donald at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, New Hampshire:
He called himself the “most militaristic person in the room,” then added, “but you have to know when to use it.” And he also says not only that we should never have gone into Iraq, but that we were better off with Saddam Hussein in charge there. “You had Iran and Iraq and they were the same; they were twins…Well, we took one out and look at the mess we have; we destabilized the Middle East. I’m not a fan of Saddam Hussein, but he ran the place, and he had no weapons of mass destruction. And now, instead of Saddam Hussein, we have far more brutal.” No, this is not an unheard-of view, but it is one that has generally been heard only from Democrats. Yet when the Republican front-runner says these things now—that we have nothing whatsoever to show for all the blood spilled there—many heads nod.
Trump doesn’t lose them even when he mocks outright what many of his fellow Republicans still see as the success of George W. Bush’s surge in Iraq: “They talk about ‘the surge, the surge.’” And though he told Chuck Todd, in an interview that aired on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, that American ground troops may have to take out the Islamic State, he also said this in New Hampshire: “At some point, we had to go out; we can’t stay there forever; we have to rebuild this country.”
This is typical Trump double-talk, labeling himself “militaristic”, but, you know, not every second, taking on the veneer of super-toughness to hide the conclusion that George Bush’s whole Middle Eastern policy was a disaster, based on fundamentally flawed premises and achieving results that were precisely the opposite of what was promised. Rand Paul used to talk like this, pre-ISIS, but a few beheadings turned him into a coward. His clumsy attempts to make himself look slightly less militaristic than the other guys only served to make him look weak.
Trump, of course, will simply bellow down anyone who charges him with weakness. Right now, he has the money, and the votes to do so. For a Democrat, the Trump campaign is truly the gift that keeps on giving. And this time around I actually agree with him! So wonderful to hear “heresy” on foreign policy spoken out loud (very loud) in a Republican campaign! I wonder if we’ll hear anything similar on the Democratic side!
Afterwords
As Ezra Klein points out, on domestic issues Trump is
running as the “anti-Republican Republican,” challenging the party’s business elite
as it has not been challenged in years on immigration, free trade, and
entitlements, while ignoring the “social issues” (i.e., abortion and gay
marriage) that have been the traditional sop to the “little people” in the party.
And now it seems that Trump is challenging the elite on foreign policy as well,
discarding the neo-conservative policies that had been Republican dogma since
George H. W. Bush went down to defeat in 1992. Pat Buchanan must be smiling
(well, except for abortion and the gay stuff).
