"Donald Trump is a baleful influence on American politics in my view, but he’s not wrong about everything. Part of the reason for his popularity is that he refuses to carry Republican baggage from the Iraq war."
-Spengler, from the opening paragraph to this post. Concluding paragraphs here:
"The trouble is that most Americans don’t trust us Republicans with military power. The last time they gave us a blank check, we lost 5,000 lives, took 52,000 battle casualties, sent 900,000 returning veterans to VA hospitals, spent $1 trillion, and disrupted millions of lives (with 1.5 million troop-years of deployment) with little to show for it. Iran’s regional hegemony began with the Bush administration’s 2005 decision to back the pro-Iranian Iraqi Shi’ite leader Nouri al-Maliki. George W. Bush stuck with Maliki throughout, because he believed that democracy would fix Iraq and the rest of the region. And as long as we refuse to admit our mistakes, the voters won’t trust us. Why should they? The present mess in the Middle East arises from policies that both Obama and the Republican mainstream supported.
"It’s painful that we have to hear the truth from the likes of Donald Trump. Sen. Ted Cruz has criticized American mistakes in Iraq, but hasn’t gotten the same level of public attention. Americans will begin to trust Republicans only after we admit that we made mistakes in the past, and promise that we will not demand great sacrifices from them in pursuit of ideological experiments like “democratic globalism.” And Heaven help us if Trump takes on the mantel of truth-teller."
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