After months of all the Republican presidential candidates trying to out hawk one another, front-runner Donald Trump made a surprise appeal to reason Friday, saying he didn’t support “starting World War III over Syria” and that if Russia wants to fight ISIS in that country, the US should let them do it.
With everybody trying to one-up everyone else on wars, Trump still insisted he is “the most militaristic person you’ll ever meet,” but also touted his opposition to the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, saying the US “got nothing” out of the conflict.
Trump’s attempt to retain his hawkish position with any suggestion of not starting a war against someone is liable to be difficult, with other candidates like Lindsey Graham openly talking about ground invasions to kill as many people in other countries as theoretically possible.
Still, the fact that anyone in the Republican field is willing to entertain something short of random, heedless escalation is certainly novel, given the state of the last few months, and that it is a front-runner like Trump suggests that polls showing growing war-weariness among American voters is finally starting to attract some political attention.
America is now so bizarre that it now takes someone like Trump to let in the light.
Oh, Oh! William Kristol isn't going to like hearing this out of Trump. I'll bet he's busy working on a third party ticket.
Trump is a loon. The rest are worse.
Least bad wins? It is a measure of the others that Trump is least bad. Sad. Sick. But true.
Yeah, did you see his lunatic tax plan? He plans on eliminating federal taxes on all married couples who make under $50,000…and on all singles who make under $25,000. And for those that make more than that, most will see substantial tax reductions, like $1,000 a year. Get out the strait jackets! And he plans on closing loop holes the very rich, like the hedge fund investors, have been using to get away with paying zero tax. Put him in a padded cell! And now, he wants us to avoid getting involved in World War III. Is there no end to his madness?
Okay, experimenters if you can hear me, I want to go back to my universe now. I've seen enough. Turn down the probability drive to normal and beam me back please.
I thought we were going to start WWIII over Ukraine.
That's what it has been about from the start………..The neocons have got it into their tiny little brains that they can bring the return of the Messiah if they set up a war on the plains of Armageddon, just think if ISIS take over Syria, what is 60 miles from the Golan Heights……….Jerusalem, what is about thirty miles out of Jerusalem about half way between the Golan Heights and Jerusalem Armageddon! Now this isn't about biblical Prophecy its about a Neocon wet dream!
They do not believe in God,it is a sham,their devotion is to mammon.
Trump is not as crazy as the craziez would have you believe. lol
As an Asian I’d prefer Trump to any of your other candidates from either side. He’s the least toxic. Unfortunately, he’ll never even get the nomination, let alone win.
Lindsey Graham openly talking about ground invasions to kill as many people
in other countries as theoretically possible…'
Graham is stuffed with crap. What are the chances of this cowardly loser
taking part in any USG ground invasion in Syria? Talk is cheap a**hole.
It has probably finally dawned on Trump that letting Putin bog himself down is Syria is a very smart way of dealing with him with no real cost to the US. It's also true that the best way of getting Putin to wade into the Syrian quagmire is for the US to pretend to oppose him. Like most populists, Putin has no policy. He just struts up and down thumbing his nose at people and things he doesn't like. He doesn't like the US. He's thumbing his nose at it in Ukraine. If he thinks that the US somehow "fears" his intervention, he'll send his whole rickety army to Syria! So far, Putin has fallen into every trap that the US has set for him and it looks like he's falling into the Syrian trap as well. So much the better.
You really are just full of it, all the time, aren't you. Putin has fallen into the American "trap" of Ukraine? I suppose Obama twirled a fake moustache and smiled as Crimea voted to joint Russia. You're worse than Truthers.
So… he's agreeing with what Rand Paul's been saying. Maybe he's not an idiot after all.
AlanMacDonald
The most useful thing that Putin could say and do in sobering-up Obama to his responsibility for igniting global conflict would be to reprise the reverse of what Lloyd Bentsen lectured Dan Quayle on in the '88 campaign:
"Mister Obama, I knew Empire, I saw the damage that dreams of Global Empire caused my country, and you sir are allowing a Disguised Global Crony-Capitalist Empire to run rough-shod over your country."
"Mr. Obama, I knew Empire, I had to pick-up the pieces of Empire after my country collapsed, and 'your country is no country', sir — but merely acting like a well disguised and dangerous global Empire — and you better wake-up and do something to save your country from Empire first, and then together we can agree to pull back from this lunacy of Empire war preparation, as your Kennedy and our Khrushchev did by acting as "men of good faith" against the pressures toward global Empire in '62."
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I guess it comes down to: someone insane in foreign policy and apparently sane in other areas or someone reasonable in foreign policy and perhaps unstable in others.
With all others running for president in both parties baying for blood, Trump can set himself up as the peace candidate. It worked for Wilson in 1916; for Roosevelt, in 1940; for Eisenhower, in 1952; for Nixon, in 1968; for Bush, fils, in 2000; and, for Obama in 2012. It is such a proven strategy one has to wonder why no one else has thought of it in this cycle. Could it be that the American lives are being traded for campaign donations from the likes of Haim Sabin, Sheldon Adelson and whole financial phalanx of Israel Firsters?
For a hot minute I thought that maybe Trump was the lesser of the evils now that Rand Paul has joined the Neocons. But his comments over the weekend included the following gem reported by the Washington Post:
: "I don't want to say: 'Well, if I were president, I would do this, I would do that, I would go here, I would attack here, I wouldn't go here.' No, I don't want to do that. I really don't. I don't want them to know what I'm thinking, does that make sense? I want people to be guessing … I don't want people to figure it out. I don't want people to know what my plan is. I have plans. I have plans! But I don't want to do it." http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/…
Same old arrogant Trump. Doesn't understand democracy. In 1968 Nixon claimed he had a "secret peace plan" to end the war in Vietnam if he were elected. Nixon didn't fool many people and after he was elected we learned that Nixon's secret plan was to expand the war to Laos and Cambodia, replace the draft with a volunteer army and to shift the emphasis to air power from American boots on the ground and vainly trying to build the South Vietnamese army into an effective fighting force. The war continued for six more years.
Still, Trump is the only candidate who isn't sucking up to Netanyahu and AIPAC. Maybe that counts for something. But I don't feel comfortable with him having the codes to the red button.
it is indeed true that the rest of the GOP circus makes Trump appear to be quite reasonable, but only by comparison. ….and Hilary? If I wanted to vote for a Republican I'd vote for a Republican. As far as I am concerned Hilary might as well be a Republican which is the biggest insult I can posssibly give her.
At least Bernie is really an independent and was not a member of the Young Republications in college like Maddam Hilary.
because many of these war mongering candidates listen to israel first, they are traitors to america, all of them, america has lost it, see you in ww3 america,