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Trump’s Foreign Policy: Obama’s Third Term, Bush’s Fifth

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English: President George W. Bush and Presiden...
President George W. Bush and President-elect Barack Obama meet in the Oval Office of the White House Monday, November 10, 2008. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti- war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances,” Illinois State Senator Barack Obama said in 2002. Later in the same speech: “What I am opposed to is a dumb war.”

Although elected president at least in part on his image as “the peace candidate,” Obama owned eight years of constant war. He waffled on then partially reversed the withdrawal from Iraq negotiated by his predecessor. He stretched the eight-year Afghanistan war to 16 years and counting.  He began or expanded operations in Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, escalating even to extra-judicial assassinations of American citizens.

On foreign policy, Obama served George W. Bush’s third and fourth terms. Now Donald Trump looks set to serve Bush’s fifth term  and/or Obama’s third.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump threaded the same rhetorical needle as pre-presidency Obama, referencing “bad deals” instead of “dumb wars.” Like Obama, he touted his disapproval of the Iraq war. He took Bush’s “humbler foreign policy” campaign rhetoric a step further and publicly floated the possibility of dissolving NATO. Even the future of US military support and financial aid to Israel seemed to be (briefly) up for discussion.

Those watching closely noticed, of course, that Trump was very much back and forth on foreign policy.

One minute he talked like a non-interventionist. The next minute he railed about “rebuilding”   a US military that’s already the most powerful and expensive war machine on the face of the earth and has been since World War II.

One minute he was for good relations with other countries, the next he was threatening to reverse Obama’s two real foreign policy successes, the nuclear deal with Iran and the thawing of relations with Cuba.

He soothed the Israel lobby with a speech to its main organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), reversing his previous claim to “neutrality” in the Arab-Israeli conflict in Palestine and promising eternal support for the Israeli (read: for Likud) side of that conflict.

Trump is nothing if not a masterful performer. He managed to play both sides of the foreign policy coin, signaling “business as usual with extra jingoism” to hawks and “less interventionism” to doves.

Unfortunately, as with Obama, many doves — even some libertarians, who ought to have known better — fell for it. And some of them still ARE falling for it.

Since taking office, Trump has proven beyond a shadow of doubt that it is indeed business as usual. The drone strikes continue. Navy SEALs have murdered dozens of civilians including an 8-year-old American girl in Yemen. Instead of withdrawing US troops from Syria, Trump touts escalation of American involvement with the establishment of “safe zones” to corral war refugees. He’s even turned on his supposed friend Vladimir Putin, promising an extension of sanctions against Russia on behalf of Ukraine’s regime.

Time to take off the rose-colored glasses. Donald Trump is the War Party’s dream president.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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War Crimes: Key Decision Point for a New President

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Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki
Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki, age 8, killed in a US military raid in Yemen

In 2011, American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki  and Samir Khan were murdered — killed without charge or trial — on the orders of then-president Barack Obama.

Two weeks later, al-Awlaki’s teenage son, Abdulrahman, also an American citizen, was murdered — again, killed without charge or trial — also on Obama’s orders. When questioned on the propriety of murdering American teenagers, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs asserted that if Abdulrahman al-Awlaki had wanted to live, perhaps he should have had “a more responsible father.”

On January 29, Anwar al-Awlaki’s eight-year-old daughter, American citizen Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki, was murdered, along with about 30 other civilian non-combatants, in the course of a raid by the US Navy’s SEAL Team Six in Yemen.

I have now thrice mentioned that particular murder victims were American citizens. The fact that they were American citizens isn’t really that important in the scheme of things. Murdering people is wrong regardless of the victims’ nationalities. But it does explain why we KNOW about these particular murders.

New US president Donald Trump has a decision to make. Is he going to prosecute American war criminals who murder eight-year-old girls, or is he going to be a war criminal himself?

Because he is new to the job, I’m trying to give Trump the benefit of doubt. It’s quite possible that the mission resulting in young Nawar’s death was planned and on rails before he was ever inaugurated, and that his approval was pro forma and not in full cognizance of what it implied. After all, he’s been a pretty busy guy these last couple of weeks.

If that’s the case, then Trump’s clear duty as commander in chief of the US armed forces is to initiate an investigation aimed at identifying and prosecuting the criminal conspirators whose actions culminated in the murder of dozens of civilians, including Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki.

Otherwise, he himself becomes one of those conspirators.

Of course, it’s possible that he was informed  in detail of the mission and signed off on it in full knowledge of its nature. In that case he joins all of his living predecessors (and quite a few long-dead ones) in the rogues’ gallery of war crimes kingpins.

Trump campaigned as a candidate of real change, including in the area of US foreign policy. That would be a good thing for many reasons, not the least of which is that with a quarter century of continuous war comes the near certainty of atrocities and the absolute certainty that when those atrocities go unpunished they will multiply in number and worsen in effect.

The murder of an innocent eight-year-old is a pretty clear decision point: Was Trump serious or was just blowing  smoke? How he handles this situation will tell us which.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Trump: Just the Newest Leader of an Old Cult

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U.S. President Donald Trump greets the crowd from the presidential review stand during the 58th Presidential Inauguration Parade in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20. The parade route stretched approximately 1.5 miles along Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Capitol to the White House. (U.S. Army Reserve photo by Master Sgt. Michel Sauret)
U.S. President Donald Trump greets the crowd from the presidential review stand during the 58th Presidential Inauguration Parade in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20. The parade route stretched approximately 1.5 miles along Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Capitol to the White House. (U.S. Army Reserve photo by Master Sgt. Michel Sauret)

In his first week as president of the United States, Donald Trump issued a flurry of executive orders on a number of subjects.

Some of those orders, such as his withdrawal of presidential recommendation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty (presidents propose treaties, the Senate ratifies them) and a hiring freeze in the executive branch, seem to fall squarely within his powers as laid out by Article II of the US Constitution.

Others, such as his conditioning of federal funding for “sanctuary cities” on their willingness to start doing the federal government’s work for it, his order to begin building a wall along the US border with Mexico, and his ban on entrance into the United States by nationals of seven predominantly Muslim countries, not so much.

Trump’s early actions as president have given rise to substantial protest, not to mention litigation. Will he get away with ruling by decree? The Constitution says no. History says yes. The Trump presidency is far from sui generis . Rather it is the inevitable culmination of America’s long slide into a nearly worshipful attitude toward executive power — what Cato Institute vice-president Gene Healy dubbed, in his 2008 book of that name, The Cult of the Presidency.

The theory of American government is that the president is the chief executive. Words mean things. The president’s job is to implement — to execute — the will of Congress as expressed in legislation. He’s not the homeowner. He’s the housekeeper.

That’s the theory. In practice, presidents have, over time, carved out considerable personal power for themselves. Especially since World War Two and especially in the area of foreign policy (for example, Truman’s decision to go to war in Korea first and ask Congress for approval second), they’ve tended to treat Congress as a rubber stamp. Instead of following Congress’s lead, they expect Congress to follow theirs.

And it’s worked. Americans have become accustomed to regard the president as what George W. Bush called himself: “The Decider.” Or, as Barack Obama put it, “[w]e’re not just going to be waiting for legislation …. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone.”

The “strong executive/weak executive” debate goes back to the founding of the United States.  For the last half century and more, the “strong executive” side has been winning out. The result: President Donald Trump and, for all intents and purposes, the finale of our national transformation from republic to banana republic.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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