As he's done many times before, Donald Trump praised deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Tuesday.
"He was a bad guy — really bad guy," Trump acknowledged. "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. They were terrorists. Over. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism."
The Clinton campaign, predictably, pounced with glee. "In reality," said Clinton advisor Jake Sullivan, "Hussein's regime was a sponsor of terrorism — one that paid families of suicide bombers who attacked Israelis, among other crimes. Trump's cavalier compliments for brutal dictators, and the twisted lessons he seems to have learned from their history, again demonstrate how dangerous he would be as commander-in-chief and how unworthy he is of the office he seeks."
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It looks like we're going to get another debate about the lessons of Iraq. Pity it's going to be significantly worse than the one we got in 2008.
Donald Trump believes that, because Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, he "did well" at killing terrorists. But what terrorists is he talking about? Al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq at the time of the war, not because Hussein had killed them, but because, as a Sunni terrorist group organized partly in response to the ongoing American presence in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Hussein was not their target — we were.
Meanwhile, the Hussein regime comprehensively terrorized Iraq's Shiite and Kurdish population. It also supported international terrorist organizations, as the Clinton camp says. But probably the most prominent of these — the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (which has since formally disarmed and been removed from the State Department's list of terrorist groups) — was an Iraqi proxy in the war against Iran. In the most literal sense, Hussein was a terrorist. There just wasn't any evidence that he was sponsoring terror against us.
So perhaps Trump means that Hussein could have been a reliable and effective ally against the terrorist groups that were targeting us — specifically al Qaeda? Well, the royal family of Saudi Arabia is not known for reading Miranda rights to suspected terrorists — nor to anyone else. And they are formally our allies. Have they been reliable, though? Or effective? The evidence — including support for Sunni terror groups in Syria, a brutal war in Yemen that has opened the door to ISIS and al Qaeda in that country, and, most recently, their failure to prevent a series of terrorist attacks within the kingdom — should not encourage us on either score.
The situation with another ally, Pakistan, is similar. The Pakistani military and intelligence services are hardly reticent about using brutal force. And they've been the recipient of considerable American largesse. But that same country turned out to be the hideout of no less a figure than Osama bin Laden himself.
So why would anyone believe that, in a hypothetical world where Saddam Hussein survived, the Iraqi strongman would have been a useful ally against Sunni terrorist groups?
Trump acts as though "ally with dictators to fight terrorists" is a policy that America has never tried before. But we have done so often — we are still doing so today — and we certainly did so in the past with Secretary Clinton's firm approval. Unfortunately, the evidence that terrorist groups with genuine popular support can be defeated simply by sheer brutal suppression is very thin indeed. But Trump's views don't derive from evidence; they are just an expression of exasperation with failure — which is why they are connecting with at least some part of a similarly frustrated electorate.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, believes that because Saddam Hussein was a brutal and erratic dictator, he needed to be removed to open the possibility to a better future for Iraq — the only solution to the root cause of terrorism. But removing Hussein led Iraq into chaos instead — a chaos that has now spread well beyond Iraq's borders. Notwithstanding this manifest failure, Clinton went on to support regime change in Libya — with similarly chaotic results that she has similarly ignored. Her great regret today appears to be that Syria has managed to descend into chaos largely without American help.
Her response to Trump — and the media pile-on that has parroted it — barely deigns to acknowledge that Trump is making an argument worth refuting. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who supported terrorism. Ergo, it cannot be possible that removing him from power was a bad idea that was doomed to make things worse. Trump purportedly learned "twisted lessons" from history — but what lessons did Clinton herself learn from a history she helped shape?
Clinton's neoconservative tilt in foreign policy is not news — and that's precisely what is wrong with it. She's the candidate of experience, but she seems incapable of learning from it — her overall worldview is virtually unchanged from what it was 20 years ago. If Trump's views feel like little more than an emotional reflex, Clinton's feel eerily faith-based. And the one thing they appear to share in common is a groundless conviction in the efficacy of force properly applied.
Back in 2008, Barack Obama won the Democratic primary and then the general election substantially because of his opposition to "dumb wars." In office, though, his foreign policy has only fitfully followed his own motto of "don't do stupid [stuff]." Meanwhile, bad "stuff" continues to happen — and the president's most honest response seems to be little more than: We're doing all we can.
Americans have reason to be frustrated by what often feels like an increasing spiral of chaos overseas. But it's pretty depressing to realize that, in response to the failures of the last eight years, the best our two major parties can come up with is to advocate doing the same stupid stuff that we've tried, and failed with, before.
