STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
The Secret Behind Trump’s Troubles With the GOP
By Daily Bell Staff - July 08, 2016

Donald Trump on Tuesday once again expressed his preference for keeping dictators in power in the Middle East.  While acknowledging that Saddam Hussein “was a bad guy,” Trump praised the former Iraqi dictator’s efficient killing of “terrorists” — despite the fact that Iraq was listed as a state sponsor of terrorism during Hussein’s time in power. – CNN

Probably the real reason Donald Trump has so much trouble with established GOP politicians, especially at the Federal level, is that he is not a backer of a “secret” political conversation.

This is the ongoing conversation about how to support the US military industrial complex..

We are not as sure as some of Trump’s reasons for running for  president.

But it is increasingly obvious that on the core issue of supporting the covert and overt goals of the military industrial complex, Trump is not trusted. His ideas are not approved by established political gatekeepers.

We can see this with the Saddam statement excerpted above. We may disagree with Trump about Saddam, but without him, Iraq has become even bloodier and deadlier.

More:

Trump … said the U.S. “shouldn’t have destabilized” Iraq before pivoting to praising Hussein … Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism.”

… [But] asked Tuesday night on Fox News about the comments, House Speaker Paul Ryan appeared taken aback by Trump’s words.

“He was one of the 20th century’s most evil people,” Ryan said of the former Iraqi strongman. The Clinton campaign jumped on the remarks, with senior campaign adviser Jake Sullivan saying “Trump’s praise for brutal strongmen seemingly knows no bounds.

What both Ryan and the Clinton campaign skip over is that Saddam was actually a CIA asset.

This is typical of the US political conversation It has nothing to do with reality. It is a scripted affair provided to citizens to ensure they are continually alarmed and paranoid.

Here from the UK Independent:

Revealed: how the West set Saddam on the bloody road to power… “We really had the T’s crossed on what was happening,” says James Critchfield, the head of the agency in the Middle East which organised it. “We regarded it as a great victory.”

Iraqis have less happy memories of the day in 1963 when the Iraqi army rose in revolt. It was a coup which shaped the history of Iraq and much of the Middle East for the rest of the century. It started Saddam Hussein on his climb to power.

Never again did his family and his political party wholly lose their grip on Iraq, despite wars and massacres in which more than one million Iraqis, Kurds and Iranians were killed.

Iraqis have always suspected that the coup was engineered by the CIA … Now fresh evidence has emerged that popular Iraqi suspicions were correct. In a new book* Said Aburish, a writer on Arab political affairs, has gathered details of how the coup against Gen Kassem was organised and fine-tuned by the CIA.

Over and over, the politics of the United States serves up false narrative mostly intended to benefit the Pentagon, the CIA and a handful of vast military contractors.

A more valuable and valid conversation would be one that dealt with the endless destabilization, violence and warring that US regularly engages in abroad.

To give Trump credit, he has continues to touch on the issue – and in doing so has displeased GOP leaders just as much as libertarian candidate Ron Paul did in previous campaigns.

Trump did so again recently through a staff surrogate who criticized the current American policy toward Russia during a speech in Moscow.

Here, from the UK Telegraph:

Donald Trump’s foreign policy adviser has slammed  the United States  for showing “hypocrisy” towards Russia, during an address in Moscow …

Giving a lecture in Moscow, where he has previously lived for many years, Mr Page lamented that the West “unnecessarily perpetuated Cold War tendencies” in their dealings with Russia, and called instead for “mutual respect” in order to get “mutual benefits”.

He also accused the United States and its partners of “proactive steps to encourage regime change overseas”.

This is a central difference of opinion between Trump and Hillary Clinton, who is very obviously the chosen candidate of the military-industrial complex.

But this is also a central difference of opinion between Trump and many in the upper-reaches of the GOP.

Trump has been criticized by GOP leaders on a variety of fronts. He has been accused of Antisemitism and being prejudiced against Mexicans.

Conclusion: But the real reason for the antipathy for him in the Republican party has to do with his apparent lack of support for the overseas military entanglements of the American empire. This is actually the most important reason for the persistent tensions between Trump and the GOP and it will never resolve itself. If he manages to become president, it will grow ever worse.

 

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