He's talked about it before, but at the "Commander-in-Chief Forum" last night, Trump doubled-down on the idea that when we went into Iraq, we should have done a whole bunch of things differently, especially … keep Iraq's oil.
In the past, Trump argued that this would have paid for improved veterans benefits; last night, he twisted it around that this would have prevented ISIL from getting oil revenue from it.
Like so many of Trump's foreign policy plans, this one suffers from a host of difficulties both logistical and moral.
For example, he suggests that we could have "kept the oil" by keeping some people there in-country at the oil wells. But those people (troops) need a logistical pipeline. And the oil needs to be transported, to either refineries or to port facilities. So now you need troops surrounding all of that, too. Pretty soon — well, you've basically had to occupy the entire country, indefinitely, to take their oil.
And, meanwhile, the Iraqi people are, I am sure, nodding and smiling and saying, "Thank you, America, for siphoning off all our oil, our only real natural resource, so that we don't mistakenly use it for evil."
The logistical difficulties are backed up against moral difficulties, starting with international law and the Geneva Conventions, which basically say, "No, invading another country and then taking their stuff is a naughty thing." Even if there's a possibility that naughty people inside the country might take the stuff themselves and sell it for their own nefarious purposes.
An analogy would make this clearer. Everyone around the world was scandalized over the looting of Iraqi museums immediately after the downfall of the Saddam regime. What if a President Trump, in that same situation, ordered the looting of Iraqi antiquities, to be shipped overseas and auctioned off to wealthy private collectors to (a) help pay for the war, and (b) keep the artifacts safe from hypothetical Muslim extremists who would destroy them. And, of course, we would also sponsor archaeological digs in Iraq, surrounded by barbed wire and tanks, to extract still more cultural treasures to sell back home.
That's effectively the same thing, with the exception that, in the case of oil, there were a lot of people who were already accusing the US of getting into the war solely to raid Iraqi oil fields. Trump's answer would seem to be, "No, of course that's not why we did it, but, hey, as long as we're here …"
So, let's sum up: Trump's Iraqi oil policy is (a) a wild-assed idea that is impractical and/or prohibitively expensive to actually do, and (b) a dick move against the Iraqi people, a violation of international law, and a placement of profit over principle.
In other words, par for the course for Donald Trump.
Trump Lays Out His Master Plan To ‘Take The Oil’ From Iraq
To the victor goes the oil!That was the theme of Donald Trump’s master plan for how he would keep the Middle East from reigniting after he swiftly dispatches the Islamic State as president.
Asked at the NBC News’ Commander-In-Chief forum about he planned to keep the Islamic State out of Iraq once he defeated them, Trump returned to his oft-recited call for the U.S. to “take the oil” from Iraq, and even offered a few details how he would g…
And so have Clinton aids.
All neocons are the same basically.
+Stan Pedzick It was certainly a drum that the neocons beat leading up to the Iraq War. It's not something that Clinton herself ever pressed for (so far as I am aware), and not even Dubya went quite that far.
I'm certainly watching what the folk Clinton is surrounding her self have as a track record, but I'm paying primary attention to what each candidate is actually putting forward as policy. As far as I can tell, Trump actually wants to go back into Iraq (as part of his Sooper Sekrit Plans to defeat ISIL) and, as long as we're there, take the oil fields over — or at least is trying to pull in support from voters who think that's a swell idea. Clinton is … not.