Trump's Foreign Policy Speech

Unh!  I wish he would not use the term radical Islam.  Radical comes form the word radix, root... people mean extremist when they say radical.  I esteem myself a radical Christian, and unless I am discussing religion with radical Jews and radical Moslems, I am bored.  Extremist Christians bore me, as do mainstream Christians, Jews and Moslems.  Extremists, Christian, Jew and Moslem, put a halo on violent rent-seeking, they could care less about the religion for which they will kill. And mainstream religious folk are simply embarrassed by the faith claims of their tradition.  They chafe at the requirements of the original, the radical, and explain it away.

And then, in a foreign policy speech opportunity, he centers on Islamic extremists?  Of all of the problems we have?  Well, it is a kind of pandering, social conditioning has made Islamic extremists the witches of today, the commie infiltrators, the child molesters, the bete du jour.  So give them what they want, a speech on Islamic extremism.

It is an OK medium in which to compare and contrast.  Both Hillary and Trump have a record of their ideas on contemporary events.  Trump looks good in his perspicacity, no doubting that.  But who knows what decisions he might have made, and how they might have turned out.  Certainly his actions would have been different, but we cannot know if they would have been better.  Many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.

But as to his speech, here is a .pdf of the text.

After a litany of horrors perpetrated by Moslem criminals, Trump says:

We cannot let this evil continue. 

Nor can we let the hateful ideology of Radical Islam – its oppression of women, gays, children, and nonbelievers – be allowed to reside or spread within our own countries.

Nice pivot!  Front running Hillary... his agenda is the same as Hillary's... fighting immigrant crime is about gay rights!  Did anyone covering this speech notice that? Perhaps he is sincere, but this will put Hillary in a bind, how much of the hundreds of millions in the "Clinton Foundation" is behead-the-gays Saudi money?  At any rate the first eight pages of a 20 page speech states he will end extremism in oppression of gays, kids, women in our own country.  Wait, wasn't this a foreign policy speech?

This is complete nonsense:

Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, is now flush with $150 billion in cash released by the United States – plus another $400 million in ransom. 55 Worst of all, the Nuclear deal puts Iran, the number one state sponsor of Radical Islamic Terrorism, on a path to nuclear weapons. 56 57

All I can imagine is he knows this is a slanderous characterization of Iran.  And after detailing, in effect, how Hillary is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, he decries the USA finally giving back the money we stole nearly 40 years ago.  I think his picking on Iran is tactical.  He has to know that Iran could be our best friend in the Middle East, far better than Israel.  The Iranians are Aryan, not Semitic, and can match Israel for talent and achievement.  Shia Iran has no dog in the Sunni Arab/Jewish fight. Yes, of course they have their hands in plenty of places, but they are also adult supervision, contrary to the smear campaigns.  Iran is strategically located, and protected by both Russia and China.  China's Belt and Road initiative depends on Iran, and Iran welcomes the initiative, but would love to have USA counterbalance to Chinese "friendship."  The Donald's strategy?  By pandering to the socially conditioned "source of all evil in the world" when the Donald makes a sensible peace deal with them, he win-wins: he gets a deal that makes sense anyway from sane actors, and he is the hero who was able to overcome great evil.

A specific example illuminates Trumps thinking:

One more point on this: I have long said that we should have kept the oil in Iraq – another area where my judgement has been proven correct. According to CNN, ISIS made as much $500 million in oil sales in 2014 alone, fueling and funding its reign of terror. 88 If we had controlled the oil, we could have prevented the rise of ISIS in Iraq – both by cutting off a major source of funding, 89 and through the presence of U.S. forces necessary to safeguard the oil and other vital infrastructure. 90 91 I was saying this constantly and to whoever would listen: keep the oil, keep the oil, keep the oil, I said – don’t let someone else get it.

Um... so Cheney was right?  What we wrecked we could have rebuilt in our own image with their own resources?  Again, he agrees we ought never have invaded in the first place, and certainly as the Pope said in so many words "the rape resulted in a child, now you must take care of the child."  What to do? I dunno if keeping the money is the right response after a robbery.  I'd like to see better ideas.

Next:

If I become President, the era of nation-building will be ended. Our new approach, which must be shared by both parties in America, by our allies overseas, and by our friends in the Middle East, must be to halt the spread of Radical Islam.

Yay.  I could not agree more. End nation building, aka, pre-emptive invasions.  But how you put the "must" in "share" I dunno.  Sound like more of the same.  The paragraph starts with "If" but the entire idea is under a laconic "if."  What happens when our partners don't do "what they must?"

As President, I will call for an international conference focused on this goal. We will work side-by-side with our friends in the Middle East, including our greatest ally, Israel. We will partner with King Abdullah of Jordan, and President Sisi of Egypt, and all others who recognize this ideology of death that must be extinguished.

OK, based on his stated rationale, gays will be heartened by his meeting.

I also believe that we could find common ground with Russia in the fight against ISIS. They too have much at stake in the outcome in Syria, and have had their own battles with Islamic terrorism.

Yes!  As I have said here dozens of times, we need only work out a careful unilateral withdrawal and the Russians and the Chinese will strive in the Middle East with no skin off our backs.  Those two countries have the problems in their back yard.  We trespass in their back yards to start trouble.  Terrorists are over here because we were over there first.  Get out!

O good!  He mentions free markets:

Just as we won the Cold War, in part, by exposing the evils of communism and the virtues of free markets, so too must we take on the ideology of Radical Islam.

More on free markets?  Or anything economic? Nope, that is it.  He goes straight back to...

While my opponent accepted millions of dollars in Foundation donations from countries where being gay is an offense punishable by
12prison or death, 92 93 my Administration will speak out against the oppression of women, gays and people of different faith. 94 95

So somehow free markets... terrorism...  gay rights.... it is all the same I guess.  He goes on for another 8 pages, till the end, connecting gay rights and fighting terrorism.  I wonder a this.

And then this:

We will also keep open Guantanamo Bay, and place a renewed emphasis on human intelligence. Drone strikes will remain part of our strategy, but we will also seek to capture high-value targets to gain needed information to dismantle their organizations. Foreign combatants will be tried in military commissions.

Unh!  Why?  Let those innocent wrong-place wrong-time cab drivers and mentally deficients just rot to death?  Yes, even if innocent, if released they will kill Americans.  Sure, wouldn't you?  But Bush and Cheney knew that when they set it up.  Tell Dick Cheney to expect visitors and parole them to his house. Dump his problem on his doorstep. I am sure he'd have a 100 Blackwater mercenaries waiting, but it would be his problem to solve. How about we give Guantanamo Bay back to Cuba if they will keep the inmates in Cuba?  i dunno, I don't have these problems because I don't make those crazy decisions that get us into those problems.

If you want to see Moslem crime in USA end, then unilaterally withdraw all troops from the Middle East, and unilaterally declare free trade with all countries, like Hong Kong does.  We have no duties on imports from your countries, nor regulations on your products (USA importers by legal fiction become the manufacturers under USA health and safety laws.)  Such a liberal free trade policy will help everyone, including, women, kids and gays.  (Is it not a bit insulting listing gays with women and kids? I dunno.  I've worked with too many homosexuals to consider them somehow helpless, nor would they.)

To be fair, this was a speech on how to deal with ISIS.  I've never paid any attention, so far, to anything Trump has said (or Hillary for that matter) because neither can do much if anything about the economic problems we have.  Circumstances are directing us.  Problems could be fixed, but the politics will forbid it, and as large as Trump is, he can't do it with his ideas.

And that is what we have.  A specific case, problem, and his response: make the world safe for gays, women, kids.  How is that different than any other politician?  How come Trump is so feared, loathed? I wonder a it, but them I don't watch TV or log on to LifeDrain to be told by The Alphabet what my thoughts will be today.  Fear of Trump is pure social conditioning, street theatre.  He has said nothing anyone can fear.  I am not surprised.

I tend toward anyone anti-war.  Trump has stated he is such, but this one time I've read him, meh.  So at this point, Green Jill Stein or Trump?  Same difference.  Antiwar, I am all for it.  The rest we can't do anything about, except start our own business.

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