Trump Thread

[spmetla]

Bush's foreign policy mistakes can really just be summed up by Iraq. All the other things he did were peanuts. The Afghan war was going to happen since after 9/11 a few cruise missiles at training camps wasn't going to suffice for the domestic need for revenge. The failure there can largely be pointed at Iraq taking troops, money, and attention away.

There were absolutely tremendous mistakes though. After 9/11 he turned down Iran's "Grand Bargain" and instead created the "Axis of Evil" http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a587314.pdf
He let China get away essentially unpunished after the Hainan Island incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident
He tried to expand US influence into Russia's sphere too quickly but understandably caved when Georgia poked the bear for no reason.

His policies toward Israel during the Second Intifada and the Lebanon/Hezbollah War were to essentially ignore/support them.

For comparing the two presidencies I like to point out that we are only 1.5 years into Trumps term. At this comparable point in the Bush presidency we were fighting in only Afghanistan (Operation Anaconda had just started in March), we had the the general good will of the world, Pakistan and Iran were cooed being worried that the US might hit them in it's strife to hit back. The big scandal was the establishing of Camp X-Ray (Guantanamo) and the ongoing debate of how to treat terrorists (POWs versus criminals) as well as the American Taliban John Walker issue.
Bush in that time period hadn't damaged the reputation of NATO but instead had strengthened it by invoking Article 5 and getting our Allies involved in Afghanistan as well.
He hadn't tried to rip up NAFTA or renegotiate our trade deals unilaterally with our strongest allies.

Though I didn't like Obama because I thought him to far on the pacifist side of the pendulum the TPP was a good deal, the Iran deal was in our favor, NATO works well and we need to support them especially in regards to opposing Russian aggression.

Bush '43 was a disaster for the US foreign policy but he had a full eight years of mucking it up and it being largely centered on Iraq starting our forever war in Mesopotamia and then his de-regulation of banking/lending that led to the 2008 economic collapse.

Trump has managed to hugely damage American prestige, trustworthiness, and morals (the preference for strongmen over our allies, the 'shithole country' thing) and has done all this damage without even starting a war, yet...
I greatly fear what he will do over the remainder of his term or (help us all) a second term. I am still not optimistic about what meaningful things can come from his negotiations with Korea, I think he'll negotiate us out of the peninsula seeing as he doesn't want us defending Korea or Japan anyhow. Pulling out of the Iran deal with no violation of it by the Iranians was just stupid, it wasn't the best deal possible but it at least froze Iranian nuclear development. If we at least had our allies on board it would have been something else but the great deal maker didn't even try to make a deal with our friends to back him and instead just slapped them in the face. I think the only foreign policy thing of his I can actually agree on without caveat is the strikes on Syria after the chemical weapons use though that's if I ignore his surrounding policy toward the Syrian war.
Bush was bad but Trump has in a very short time show his potential to be a whole lot worse. Only time will tell but I've seen nothing to counter my pessimism towards Trumps "America First" policies.