GUEST COMMENTARY - It's perhaps the biggest, most annoying, and most demonstrable lie in American politics right now.
I keep meeting people in left-wing circles, in Muslim circles, in Arab-American circles, who tell me that they're voting for Donald Trump because he isn't a hawk, he didn't start any new wars, he killed fewer Muslims than Democratic presidents do. This argument is doing my head in, because it just isn't true. It's total nonsense.
So when it comes to Trump and war, and killing Muslims in particular, it's time for a debunking. Number one, he didn't start any new wars, they say. Well, it's not like he didn't try. We just got lucky. In his first year in office, he picked a fight with nuclear-armed North Korea.
He called Kim Jong-un Little Rocket Man, called him short and fat, and threatened him with fire and fury. Trump's own Homeland Security officials were so shit-scared that he'd start a major war with North Korea that they had multiple meetings to prepare for a nuclear attack, a North Korean nuclear strike on American soil.
In his last year in office, Trump illegally assassinated Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani via a drone strike, and the only reason we didn't have a full-on war with Iran is because the Iranians chose to show restraint and not respond in kind. Had Iran, say, assassinated General Mark Milley, America's top general at that time, we would have been instantly in World War III as a result of Trump's actions. Let's be clear about that. In fact, Milley says Trump wanted to attack Iran after he lost the 2020 election. Trump also reportedly wanted to attack Venezuela. And now, for his second term, he's considering airstrikes on Mexican soil. How's that for a new war?
Not far away in the Middle East, but on our own southern border. By the way, this very specific and annoying claim that he was the first president to start no new war, that's just not true. Former president and Nobel Peace laureate Jimmy Carter would like a word. And look, this whole not starting new wars thing is a distraction from the fact that Trump expanded and escalated pretty much every war that he inherited from Barack Obama. Remember... Obama famously didn't bomb the Assad government in Syria, but Trump did in 2017 and again in 2018. Obama didn't drop the single biggest bomb on Afghanistan, the mother of all bombs, the Moab, but Trump did. In fact, the number of Afghan civilians killed by airstrikes on Trump's watch went up 330%. And as writer Ben Krause points out, quote, there were more civilian deaths from airstrikes in Somalia under Trump than under Bush and Obama combined.
Trump also oversaw a 200% increase in airstrike deaths in Iraq and Syria. Number two, well, at least he wasn't a drone president, they say, like Obama was. Look, Obama was indeed a drone president who killed a lot of innocent people with drone strikes. But you know who was a bigger drone president? Donald Trump. Yeah, you just haven't heard about it because much of our media is a joke and because both Muslims and the left, for some reason, have given Trump a pass on this issue. Here are the facts that you need to know. Donald Trump did more drone strikes in his first two years in office than Barack Obama carried out over eight years in office. In fact, Trump didn't just do more drone strikes, he loosened all restrictions on drone strikes, making it even easier to kill innocent civilians. And it was Joe Biden, for all his sins on Gaza (and the Ukraine), who came along and almost ended the drone war without much fanfare and without much credit.
Number three, well, at least Trump didn't do a genocide like Biden did in Gaza. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. In Yemen. How have we just forgotten the Yemen genocide, with tens of thousands of deaths, thousands of kids killed, and a man-made famine? It started on Obama's watch, yes. But in 2018,it was President Trump who oversaw the Yemen war's deadliest and most violent year up until that point. It was Trump who was in charge when a U.S.-made bomb was dropped on a school bus full of Yemeni kids. And it was Trump, like Biden with Israel, who bypassed Congress to get weapons and bombs to his pal MBS in Saudi Arabia, which were then used to kill even more innocent Yemenis en masse. So when you say Trump didn't do a genocide, didn't mass kill Muslims, you're erasing the people of Yemen, and you should really be ashamed of yourself.
To be clear, Trump did try and start new wars, expanded old wars, increased drone strikes, and helped do a genocide in the Middle East. He also supported the invasion of Iraq, wanted America to steal Iraq's oil, and pardoned and praised American soldiers convicted of war crimes in Iraq. He's the president who ramped up the defense budget and surrounded himself with neocon hawks like Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and John Bloody Bolton. And he's the presidential candidate now who is surrounding himself again with hawks, China hawks, who would love nothing more than a new American war with the nuclear-armed People's Republic. So, Donald the Dove? No, that's ridiculous.
It's perhaps the biggest, most annoying, and most demonstrable lie in American politics right now. Don't fall for it.
(Mehdi Hasan is the Founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Zeteo where this article was first published.)
