When you step back and think about it, it's really an absurd proposition that we ask presidential candidates to publicly tell us their strategies - in exhaustive detail - for attacking and destroying an enemy that you know fully well is listening in. If a candidate is vague, the media complain that he was "short on specifics." But if he's really specific, the media attack the specifics while the enemy takes copious notes and sends flowers in thanks for the heads up.
It's a wonder any of us are still alive when we fight terrorism like this.
The question of how you're going to fight terrorism really comes down to three questions:
Do you understand who the enemy is?
Do you understand the nature of the threat?
Do you intend to be aggressive or passive about it?
With Obama and Hillary, the answers are: 1. They either don't understand who it is or they won't admit it. 2. No they do not. 3. Passive.
Here are Donald Trump's answers, along with a lot of detail that will probably be irrelevant if he ever becomes president - not because he doesn't mean it as he's saying it, but because no one really knows what strategies and tactics you will ultimately deploy until you're in the fight:
I wish Trump would stop ripping on the Iraq War and complaining about "nation building." He's just flat-out wrong about the former, and the latter has become an all-purpose against anything the U.S. might do to help create a less fertile atmosphere for terrorism to fester in the Middle East.
I think some of the Bushies who are now backing Hillary are doing so precisely because Trump is attacking the neocon approach to fighting terrorism. The irony there is that Trump, simply by virtue of the fact that he takes the threat seriously, would probably end up mostly neocon in practice if not in name. The Bushies are getting behind a candidate who will continue Obama's insane policy of denying who the enemy is, and of giving away the farm to malefactors like Iran on the theory that you can buy their favor.
Trump doesn't understand a lot about the nuances of policy, but he knows enough not to do that. His instincts will be aggressive, and Mike Pence and the others around him will make sure the execution is rational. I'd rather have a president who does understand the nuances of policy, but I'll take the issues Trump presents over a Hillary who's bound and determined to continue Obama's nonsense.
At least Trump knows a bad deal when he sees one. Actually so do Obama and Hillary. But for them, a bad deal is the idea.
When you step back and think about it, it's really an absurd proposition that we ask presidential candidates to publicly tell us their strategies - in exhaustive detail - for attacking and destroying an enemy that you know fully well is listening in. If a candidate is vague, the media complain that he was "short on specifics." But if he's really specific, the media attack the specifics while the enemy takes copious notes and sends flowers in thanks for the heads up.
It's a wonder any of us are still alive when we fight terrorism like this.
