Republican primary contender Donald Trump has built a surprising successful campaign around his own personality quirks, but has rarely made much in the way of substantive policy declarations. His recent comments on ISIS may suggest he’s better at soundbites than thought out policy.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump declared this morning that his strategy was to send ground troops against ISIS “any place where they have oil,”and that he would “take the oil for our country,” reiterating “I’d just take the oil.”
The reality, however, is that much of ISIS territory isn’t oil bearing in the first place, with most of the much-vaunted ISIS oil centered around eastern Syria. The infrastructure for that oil is aging, ramshackle, and in many cases already blown up in months of US airstrikes.
Trump’s comments appear to suggest he envisions the oil paying for the war, which both severely underestimates the cost of a protracted US occupation and overestimates how much oil could be stolen from Syria and western Iraq, even if the US military was to set about to take it.
The whole country of Syria has about 2.5 billion proven reserves, at a current price of $44 per barrel. Researchers put the cost of the last Iraq occupation at roughly 50 times that amount, $4-$6 trillion. That’d be an extremely “best case’ scenario too, if the US went in with the express purpose of looting the region it could expect dramatically more resistance than it did last time, and from more than just ISIS.
The general idea is correct. Go after their finances, much of which is based on oil. Would Trump dare punish the oil transnationals who buy cheap "IS" oil? Unlikely. "IS" oil is or was out there, that was well known. I'm not you can just "take it" but it wouldn't hurt to help Syria retake those areas. Not sure about Libya.
> "IS" oil is or was out there, that was well known.
On the contrary, that is not know at all. Pretty much all of their refinery capacity is down, logistics are nonexistent and do your really expect foreign capital to flow in to get the pumps into action?
My understanding is that the pumps or some of them are working just fine and big oil is buying "IS" oil and it's well known how little they are paying for it.
The rich boy coward appears more than willing to sacrifice poor kids in the U.S. and abroad in order to shore up his credentials for president. So how is Donald Trump different from the rest of the millionaire capitalist crowd running for the Republican nomination?
Except the oil doesn't belong to ISIS, it belongs to the country that the oil was extracted from! ISIS is not a recognised country they have NO land that is actually their own Territory under UN rules! So how do you go in and take the OIL, it has to be given back to the country that it actually belongs to, in this case Iraq!
As usual we have a Presidential candidate that is a fool has no grasp of what the actual law says including laws that are on the US Domestic statute books!
For the sake of being famous, the famous people need to be heard every now and than, otherwise behind that mask of famously, the idea is to renter Iraq and occupation of Iraq, behind the mask of that famously yours, the idea is to what Bush and Paul wolfowitz wanted to do, start a bigger war with all nations in Middle East, let Israel to conquer half and for Anglo Saxons the other.
Donald Trump is a mad man!
Haha, Trump won't be around much longer. During the debate he bluntly exposed the truth about Uncle Sam, and how His "democracy" works. He has ripped the facade of freedom off the face of fascism in a very public place to a receptive audience. That is a Crime Against Empire that can not be allowed to go unpunished.
TRUMP: I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. And that’s a broken system.
Donald,it's not OUR oil.Statements like this make me cringe in wonderment at the idiocy of a hamster wheel of insanity expressed by our poohbahs.
The real irony is oil has dropped another 4% today. There is no where to store the current glut as tanker capacity is nearly full. Fighting a war for a commodity where at the present time production is far exceeding demand with no place to store the excess supply is bad business. Donald Trump has declared bankruptcy many times for his various follies and this is another one.
Okay, I admit this whole Middle East upheaval has had me befuddled since 9/11. Why is Washington, DC involved, since Al Qaeda, ISIL/ISIS, Taliban, etc. and every other group of criminals who have formed up into light infantry fighting forces at best that operate in the region are not a threat to the American people here in the Western hemisphere?
They have no deep water surface or submarine navy to traverse the great Atlantic or Pacific oceans. They have no air force with long range bombers that can fly over the U.S. They have no ICBM missiles that can be launched over vast distances and rain destruction down upon our fascist corporate State. They are not capable of manufacturing sophisticated weapons to be deployed against a large population. They are engaged in fighting locally for reasons of religious ideology that have no affect on the U.S. other than possibly closing avenues of oil trade which would be stupid on their part. George Bush's flippant quip about, "We have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here" should have been a clue this whole thing was a setup from the beginning. Are we that stupid to continue believing the war rhetoric?
But … maybe they're already here? Yes, that must be it, of course. They're here alright, in the Pentagon and in the media centers of the broadcast news empire, filling our heads with the daily propaganda of fear. I'm sick of the whole thing; it's ridiculous. Other than the failure to protect our southern borders, there's no danger and no need for the U.S. military to be there or anywhere else around the globe for that matter. They need to be paddling the Rio Grande, not in the Mediterranean or South China Seas.
Let's vote to end it because it's unnecessary, unaffordable and just plain asinine. It's time to stop spending taxpayer money on the whims of armchair generals and admirals to pay for the polishing of their overrated and undeserved medals and ribbons and the chauffeured limousines that drive them around the capital beltway.
Until this statement, I would have considered voting for Trump as the lesser of evils. Now, not so much.