Middle East would be more stable if Saddam, Gaddafi still in power: Trump

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Politics | Sun Oct 4, 2015 12:08pm EDT

Middle East would be more stable if Saddam, Gaddafi still in power: Trump

WASHINGTON

U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Sunday the Middle East would be more stable if Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were still in power in Libya and Iraq, saying it's "not even a contest".

Trump mentioned the countries in comparison to current efforts to drive Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of power.

"You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there, it's a mess," Trump said on NBC.

"If you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there, it's a mess. It's going to be the same thing" in Syria, he said.

Asked by NBC's Chuck Todd if the Middle East would be more stable with Gaddafi and Saddam in power, Trump replied, "Of course it would be."

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/04/us-usa-election-trump-idUSKCN0RY0NS20151004

[Autumn]

1. Scary, did someone give him a brain?

[Stuart G]

7. It was just a temp brain...gone very soon..nt

[napi21]

2. I agree with the donald on this one.

Saddam was a bad guy, but Iraq was in pretty good shape. After we destroyed everything, it's terrible.

I still don't understand why the US thinks it knows best for every country that ISN'T ours!

Unless the people in a specific place ASK for our help, we should keep out damn noses OUT@

[840high]

4. ....x10+

[FlatBaroque]

6. A noble thought that sadly diverges frm the PNAC agenda.

Would be nice if the Democratic party as a whole disavowed loyalty to that agenda.

[tblue37]

11. The PNACers and their cronies wanted the oil, so they had to shock doctrine his fanny

to get access.

[cui bono]

3. He's actually right on this.

Too bad that IWR passed. What a fucking mess we created. The entire region is destabilized.

[louis-t]

5. Wow, one of his few brain cells must have divided.

First smart thing he ever said.

[Stuart G]

8. I agree with you..Even a broken clock is correct twice a day. and..I might add that.

none of them except this one would have the nerve to blatantly knock Jeb's brother. Trump does not care, and this is incredibly honest for being a member of the clown car. Jeb will not like this one. To hell with Jeb.

[Blue_In_AK]

9. Stopped clock.

Of course he's right on this one.

[n2doc]

16. +1000 n/t

[Recursion]

10. Damn, for once he's not wrong (nt)

[Lizzie Poppet]

12. He's right: totalitarian states are often quite stable.

Doesn't mean you want to live in one if you are in even the slightest way on the outs with the ruling party, though. It's no coincidence so many such states are human rights nightmares.

Still, that stability is surely a big part of the attraction for people who seem to like living in totalitarian states. That situation wouldn't work for me (lifelong uppity girl with a big mouth...I probably wouldn't last long), but I recognize not everyone has the same ideal balance point between freedom and security.

[pampango]

15. Conservatives like Trump are comfortable with authoritarian governments. Indeed Trump's appeal

to RW populists in the GOP is his macho, aggressive, tough guy, authoritarian image. Many liberals think a President Trump would be dangerously authoritarian.

Even some independents and liberals who don't want their own government to be authoritarian often have no trouble accepting that human beings in some other countries should be content living under such a government under the theory that there are too many nasty guys in their neighborhood.

[daleo]

17. It's not like we replaced dictatorships with democracies

You wouldn't be very comfortable in present day Iraq or Libya, either.

[NuclearDem]

19. "Stability" of a totalitarian regime directly correlates with the instability once it's gone.

Yugoslavia didn't need a foreign invasion to descend into war after Tito's death in 1980.

[bvar22]

13. If you talk enough BS, sooner or later you will accidently say something that makes sense.

The Donald is right on this one, and I hope he says that a million times.
I also wish our Democrats would summon up the courage to say the same.

[hunter]

14. But not as profitable!

[MisterP]

18. oddly accurate, though I think it's because he admires their management skills

ditto Ron Paul on Israel ...

[Skittles]

20. Dubya poked a stick into a hornet's nest

the result was inevitable

[pampango]

21. Juan Cole: No, Donald Trump, Mideast wouldn’t be more Stable under Saddam & other Dictators

The mistake Mr. Trump is making is to think ahistorically, that is, to think as though societies do not change dramatically over time. The Neoconservatives thought they could install a king over Iraq in 2003. But Iraqi society had overthrown the kings in 1958, and there is no going back. History may not be dialectical in exactly the Hegelian sense, but any historical situation does produce other, different situations over time. Moreover, societies can change dramatically. History is not static. It is not like a slab of marble. Historical developments produce new and different historical situations over time, and new generations react to the previous ones by striking out in different direction, even at great risk.


How anyone in his right mind could think that Bashar al-Assad (r. 2000- present) brought stability to Syria just baffles me. He provoked the 2011 uprisings and he caused the civil war by deploying his military against the peaceful demonstrators. That’s stability? It is mostly his fault that over 200,000 Syrians are dead and 11 million out of 22 million are homeless. If you are president and your country is in this condition, you don’t get to say you brought stability. Nor is the problem outsiders. In 2011 there was almost no outside interference in Syria. Bashar drove the opposition to pick up arms. The largely rural and illiterate Syria of 1970 when Bashar’s father came to power is long gone. You can’t keep them on the farm once they have seen gay Paree.

Libya under Gaddafi was not stable by 2011, and it was not the United Nations no-fly zone that made it unstable. It was unstable because Gaddafi’s secret police state had lost its authority for a majority of the population, which rose up against it. That is clear instability, and it was provoked by Gaddafi’s erratic and sclerotic dictatorship and by massive repression. I wandered the halls of the courthouse in Benghazi in May of 2011 and the walls were full of pitiful old black and white pictures of young men, including soldiers, whom Gaddafi had made to disappear, asking plaintively if anyone knew their fate (we know their fate).

Does Mr. Trump believe that Europe was more stable when Erich Honecker ruled significant swathes of Germany with an iron fist? Or when Tito headed Yugoslavia? Inflexible dictatorships that cannot adapt to social change and the rise of new generations cause instability, Mr. Trump. They don’t forestall it. Or, they don’t forestall it for more than a generation.

http://www.juancole.com/2015/10/mideast-wouldnt-dictators.html

[NuclearDem]

22. BINGO

[treestar]

23. Thanks

Like most things Donald says, overly simplistic.