President Donald Trump renders honors during the 136th Coast Guard Academy commencement exercise in New London, Conn., May 17, 2017. The ceremony was the President's first service academy graduation as commander-in-chief. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Patrick Kelley.
President Donald Trump announced this week that he will be removing all remaining U.S. troops from Iraq in the near future.
He told the Iraq Prime Minister that he would arrange for troops to leave the country but would make sure that national security interests would not be jeopardized with the withdrawal.
“We’re helping where we can,” Trump said regarding the sustained U.S. military presence in Iraq, which is closing in on two decades of occupying the nation. “But it’s a separate country. They have a prime minister. They have people in office. They have to run their country. We’ve been in Iraq for a long time.”
“Frankly, I didn’t think (the Iraq War) was a good idea … Now we’re getting out, we’ll be leaving shortly,” he added.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that troops will leave Iraq “as soon as we complete the mission.”
“The president has made it clear he wants forces down to the lowest level as quickly as they can. That’s the vision he has given us, and we’re working with the Iraqis to achieve that,” Pompeo added.
This flies in the face of what Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who works as the top general for the Middle East, said just last month. He made remarks inferring that the U.S. would maintain a permanent foothold in Iraq to play world police.
“I believe that going forward, they’re going to want us to be with them,” McKenzie said to reporters in July shortly after leaving Iraq. “I don’t sense there’s a mood right now for us to depart precipitously. And I’m pretty confident of that.”
President Trump has called the War on Iraq the “worst single mistake” in the history of the country, placing the blame squarely on former President George W. Bush and his cabal of neocons, many of whom are now Joe Biden supporters, who sold the public on a lie.
“The worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country: going into the Middle East, by President Bush,” the president said in an interview with The Hill in 2018. “Obama may have gotten (U.S. soldiers) out wrong, but going in is,to me, the biggest single mistake made in the history of our country.”
“Because we spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. Now if you wanna fix a window some place they say, ‘oh gee, let’s not do it.’ Seven trillion, and millions of lives — you know, ‘cause I like to count both sides. Millions of lives,” Trump continued.
“To me, it’s the worst single mistake made in the history of our country. Civil war you can understand. Civil war, civil war. That’s different. For us to have gone into the Middle East, and that was just, that was a bad day for this country, I will tell you,” he added.
The president has also made candid comments about the military-industrial complex, the entrenched Pentagon bureaucracy that lobbies for endless war so globalist defense contractors can keep cashing out on the blood of U.S. troops.
“I’m the one that talks about these wars that are 19 years and people are just there, and don’t kid yourself, we do have a military-industrial complex. They do like war!” Trump said during a Fox News interview last year.
“You have people here in Washington, they never want to leave!” Trump continued.
“If it was up to them, they’d bring thousands of soldiers in. Someday, people will explain it, but you do have… you do have a group, and they call it ‘the military-industrial complex.’ They never want to leave. They always want to fight. No, I don’t want to fight,” the president added.
Trump needs to follow his instincts and bring the troops home. The Democrats are now the War Party. Trump must make his GOP the party of peace and prosperity to win in November.