In Raleigh, North Carolina last night Donald Trump said Saddam Hussein got at least one thing right. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s praise for dictators has extended beyond Iraq, including in January when he said that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un should be given “credit” for the expediency with which he kills his political and military rivals.
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The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who frequently criticizes U.S. foreign policy under President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said: “Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right?”. But you know what he did well?
Trump didn’t acknowledge that Iraq was listed as a state sponsor of terrorism during Hussein’s reign – the Iraqi leader once used poison gas against 5,000 Iraqi Kurds to quash dissent.
He told his audience: “They didn’t read ’em the rights, they didn’t talk”.
Although the US supported Saddam against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq was listed by the U.S.as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Jake Sullivan, the Clinton campaign’s senior policy adviser, said that the comments from the Republican nominee show that he is unsafe. “He was a bad guy, really bad guy”, Trump said. That was wrong. But Saddam was not killing al-Qaida fighters, either, as might be construed from Trump’s remarks. And you look at what happened, I mean, look at Libya, look at Iraq. As president, Trump has said he would force member nations to increase their contributions, even if that risked breaking up the 28-country alliance.
Those three were among more than 100 Republican foreign policy elites who signed a March open letter opposing Trump on the grounds that he is unqualified to oversee American national security-a searing concern that Trump has not assuaged with his shifting statements on foreign policy and unfamiliarity with basic issues. “Trump’s cavalier compliments for brutal dictators, and the twisted lessons he seems to have learned from their history, again demonstrate how risky he would be as commander-in-chief”. “I wanted to emphasize, because I knew if I didn’t emphasize, they’d say I like Saddam Hussein”.
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House Speaker Paul Ryan was also critical of Trump’s praise of Hussein when asked about it on Fox News, according to CNN. “He committed mass genocide against his own people using chemical weapons”, Ryan said of Hussein, but added that he disagrees with Trump’s sentiment.
