He’s not bringing troops home, people. It’s another lie.
by digby
Why anyone believes a word he says is beyond me but apparently tens of millions of them do. Believing that he’s actually an isolationist takes some real self-delusion:
Some people want the United States to protect the 7,000 mile away Border of Syria, presided over by Bashar al-Assad, our enemy,” [Trump] tweeted. “I would much rather focus on our Southern Border which abuts and is part of the United States of America.”
He’d have us believe that this is a campaign promise kept: an America First foreign policy that refuses to risk American blood or waste U.S. dollars in the Middle East.
“Now,” he claims, “we are slowly & carefully bringing our great soldiers & military home.”
But it isn’t so.
Take it from the Pentagon reporter at Fox News, who reports, “Since May, U.S. forces have increased in Middle East by ~14,000 … There are currently more than 60,000 U.S. troops deployed to various countries and aboard warships.”
In another tweet, Trump declared, “The Endless Wars Must End!” To which a noninterventionist congressman, Justin Amash, retorted, “Then we’ll need a new president who will end them. President Trump has had nearly three years to end them and has done zero. He keeps sending more troops to the Middle East … He vetoed legislation that would have limited U.S. involvement in the Yemen war.”
In fact, even as Trump ordered those U.S. troops stationed beside the Kurds to move elsewhere in Syria or the Middle East––not back to the United States––he ordered other Americans to risk their lives thousands of miles from their families: He sent almost 2,000 U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia, a rich country with its own military, controlled by a regime that perpetrates brutal human-rights abuses.
The presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was cited by Osama bin Laden to help convert men to al-Qaeda.
He points out that Saudi Arabia is stiffing the US already. They have almost certainly figured out that all Trump wants is a photo op — everything else he can just lie about with impunity.No need to actually pay any money. He doesn’t care about reality anyway.
He just does what he wants in the moment and says “waddaya gonna do about it” just as he did in business.
Trump’s interventionism on Saudi Arabia’s behalf is certainly unacceptable to Congress, the body that the Constitution vests with the power to declare war. Earlier this year, the House approved a resolution, 247 to 175, directing the president to withdraw the U.S. from the Saudi war on Yemen. A bipartisan Senate majority had already approved the same resolution. But Trump defied those majorities. And he defied the will of Congress again to sell the Saudis arms.
In his former life he succeeded in slithering out from under most of his debts and those that he couldn’t he just turned to daddy or some criminal organization to bail him out. How that works in politics is still to be seen but so far the GOP establishment is stepping nicely into daddy’s shoes.
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