The U.S. military launched drone strikes on Libya on Friday, the first in Libya since January. Trump has yet to mention these airstrikes as he’s been too busy fighting with professional athletes about how they protest. If I’m counting correctly, there have been six Middle Eastern countries Trump has authorized military strikes in despite no authorization from Congress (and seven if you include Somalia): Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Not to mention Trump has praised Saudi Arabia, a state that directly funds Wahhabism and an oppressive war in Yemen that does nothing to reduce radicalization.
Important criticisms of Hillary Clinton last year included her foundation receiving millions of dollars of support from the human rights disaster Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But I’m not sure which is worse: taking bad people’s money or actively praising them. In fact, in what meaningful way is Trump’s Middle Eastern policy different from Clinton’s? Clinton was for a two state solution, while Trump didn’t seem to know what that meant–is that it?
Trump’s foreign policy has been pretty incompetent in other areas outside the Middle East. He’s failed to provide appointments for many ambassador positions, including South Korea. Speaking of which, Trump said he would control North Korea, but the DPRK has conducted more missile tests during his presidency (that’s 7 months) than any presidency in history. Even by using his own stated (terrible) goals of renegotiating NAFTA, tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, and reducing sanctions on Russia, he has failed to do what he said he would. In the case of Russia sanctions, this came at the hands of his own party overruling him in Congress.
Trump is a loud, robust failure in foreign policy. And rather than spend any energy actually trying to end military involvements like he said he would, or even do routine things like appoint ambassadors, he is igniting culture wars on Twitter. I think he prefers these to actual policy because there are no metrics to success when engaging in a cultural flame war online. It’s just “our tribe” vs “their tribe”, and no one can win because we’re not actually discussing anything. I think there are nuances to be had in this week’s particular flare up with the NFL and the national anthem, but they’re not worth teasing out because it’s so easy to get bogged down in an emotional fight.
So rather than engage with Trump’s culture war cage match this week, I think it’s more productive to point out that there are real issues he’s supposed to be dealing with, and he’s failing miserably. We’ve been at war for 16 years now. Soon, recruits will be traveling to battlefields that Americans have been fighting in since before these soldiers were born. But Trump would rather tweet about football players protesting.
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