Much has been written over the last several months on the inflammatory, crude, insulting, and uncivilized statements Donald Trump has made against just about everyone from women to veterans and their family members.
At this point the insights he has provided us into his psyche should leave no doubt that he will lead us down a dark and self-destructive road if we are foolish enough to elect him president.
{mosads}Among the most disturbing is his statement that the United States must “take out” the families of terrorists based on the mere assumption that they are aiding and abetting or failing to warn of terrorist activities. When asked what he would do if national security officials challenged the legality of such orders, which could constitute war crimes, Trump expressed confidence that if he issued them, they would be obeyed.
He has made explicitly clear his disdain for America’s moral leadership as weakness and confused barbarism with effectiveness.
His statements on torture convey a gratuitous and undisciplined sentiment that is unbecoming of a Commander in Chief of the United States and that would begin to warp America into the enemy it is fighting if not reined in.
There is no incontrovertible evidence that waterboarding was necessary to acquire critical intelligence and there is at least one case in which torture may have yielded false intelligence that the Bush administration used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Former CIA Director General David Petraeus has described them as damaging to the U.S. and unnecessary for actionable intelligence collection, ruling out all but the most extreme “ticking time bomb” scenario.
Without a doubt, ISIS is a truly evil entity that needs to be annihilated. Trump’s characterization of President Obama as a weak leader is ridiculous when compared with objective reality however. From January 2015 to July 2016, an estimated 45,000 members of the Islamic State members have been killed, compared with three U.S. troops killed in the same time period: a ratio of 15,000:1.
Employing the airpower and intelligence assets of allies and partners and supporting local forces to clear and hold ground instead of getting Americans bogged down in endless counterinsurgency is smart, poised strategy.
Trump, in contrast, has said that the U.S. should work with Russia in Syria despite the fact that it is indiscriminately bombing Syrians and not targeting ISIS, as he incorrectly claims.
On Iran, Trump has characterized the nuclear agreement the Obama administration negotiated as disastrous and claimed that he would renegotiate it. Although the agreement is not ideal, it does buy 10-15 years of time to pursue détente and there is no reason in principle why the agreement could not be extended before critical provisions of it expired a decade from now.
Trump’s bombastic temperament makes it more probable that he would get us into a war with Iran that would involve American ground troops. Ultimately, the U.S. retains the option to bomb Iran’s nuclear program. There is no justification for a preventive military strike however.
Finally, Trump has pledged to keep American ground forces from getting mired in the Middle East but has expressed utterly absurd views that would lead exactly to that and worse if implemented. The notions that the U.S. could forcibly acquire Iraq’s oil and not be bogged down indefinitely by insurgencies supported by the governments of the region plus Russia and China are two completely contradictory and irreconcilable ideas.
Thomas Buonomo is a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, former military intelligence officer, and geopolitical risk analyst with expertise in Middle East affairs.
The views of Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill