{"id":11150,"date":"2016-09-12T07:59:45","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T07:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=11150"},"modified":"2016-09-12T08:20:43","modified_gmt":"2016-09-12T08:20:43","slug":"trump-will-never-ready-lead-foreign-policy-max-boot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/politics\/trump-will-never-ready-lead-foreign-policy-max-boot.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump will never be ready to lead on foreign policy: Max Boot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump will never be ready to lead on foreign policy: Max Boot<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Trump will never be ready to lead on foreign policy: Max Boot<\/strong> :Republican presidential nominee can’t stop with ‘rookie mistakes.’ Back in July, when Donald Trump suggested that he might not defend NATO allies if they are attacked by Russia, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell chalked it up to a \u201crookie mistake.\u201d Well it\u2019s now September, and Trump has been running for president for more than a year. Yet he continues to make jaw-dropping statements on the subject of national security.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump was at his best \u2014 faint praise \u2014 in a scripted speech last week on national security that was full of standard Republican boilerplate. He promised to repeal sequestration, the defense budget cuts that he had said didn\u2019t go far enough, and to rebuild our military strength. The only discordant note was his accusation that Hillary Clinton is \u201ctrigger-happy and unstable when it comes to war.\u201d This, coming from a man who had vowed to \u201cbomb the s–t\u201d out of the Islamic State terrorist group and to kill the relatives of suspected terrorists, is a case of what psychologists call \u201cprojection.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Once he got off-script, Trump ventured into rhetorical thickets that no presidential candidate has ever entered. In an interview with Matt Lauer, he doubled down on his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of the most dangerous dictators in the world. \u201cWell, he does have an 82% approval rating,\u201d Trump said, as if polls mean anything in a country without freedom of speech.<\/span><\/p>\n

Confronted with a list of Putin misdeeds by Lauer \u2014 \u201cHe\u2019s also a guy who annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, supports (Bashar) Assad in Syria, supports Iran, is trying to undermine our influence in key regions of the world, and according to our intelligence community, probably is the main suspect for the hacking of the (Democratic National Committee) computers\u201d \u2014 Trump was nonplussed. \u201cDo you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?\u201d he responded, as if the democratically elected leader of the United States is a worse malefactor than the dictator of Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump claimed that Putin has \u201cbeen a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.\u201d That was not a slip of the tongue. The next day, Trump\u2019s running mate, Mike Pence, was trotted out to say: \u201cI think it\u2019s inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It might be accurate to say Putin is \u201cwilier\u201d or \u201cmore ruthless\u201d than Obama, but to praise him for being strong \u2014 a positive attribute with connotations of \u201cbrave, resolute, steadfast,\u201d according to the Oxford English Dictionary \u2014 is utterly inappropriate. Especially when it is not leavened by a single word of censure for any of Putin\u2019s crimes, from the murder of journalists and political rivals to the invasion of sovereign countries. Trump has never had a single negative thing to say about the Russian strongman \u2014 not a single cutting jibe of the kind he has routinely directed against \u201clyin\u2019 \u201d Ted Cruz and \u201cCrooked Hillary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Even worse, Trump repeated his praise for Putin and attacks on Obama in an interview with Larry King on RT, the Kremlin-run TV channel. He even attacked the supposedly \u201cdishonest\u201d U.S. press corps while speaking\u00a0 on the propaganda outlet of a state that represses the news media. Imagine if a Republican politician had denounced U.S. policy in the 1940s in an interview with Lord Haw-Haw or Tokyo Rose, and you get a sense of how outrageous this is.<\/span><\/p>\n

There were other jaw-dropping statements from Trump this past week. He claimed again that he opposed the invasion of Iraq \u2014 a blatant lie that Lauer did not correct. He repeated his pledge to take Iraq\u2019s oil \u2014 a war crime \u2014 by leaving \u201ca certain group behind,\u201d presumably an indefinite military occupation. He said we should \u201cset up a court system within the military,\u201d apparently unaware that such a system has existed since the 18th century.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh and Trump cavalierly impugned the professionalism of America\u2019s military and intelligence officers. He said our generals are \u201cembarrassing for our country.\u201d He spoke about the classified intelligence briefing he received and claimed, based on his supposed reading of the briefers\u2019 \u201cbody language,\u201d that they \u201cwere not happy\u201d with Obama. Both military and intelligence officers are apoplectic about Trump\u2019s attempts to drag non-partisan professionals into the political muck.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s comments suggest that he is still not ready for prime time \u2014 and never will be. He has made no effort to educate himself about the requirements of being commander in chief. He sounds as ignorant and deluded today as he did when he started running for the presidency. Only now, he is a lot closer to having life-and0death power over hundreds of millions of people.<\/span><\/p>\n

Max Boot is a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/strong> : http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/opinion\/2016\/09\/12\/trump-never-ready-lead-foreign-policy-max-boot\/90237698\/<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t