In a recent Tweet, Trump made the case that he had the better Middle East policy saying “During my Administration, we had peace in the Middle East, and we will have peace again very soon”. No doubt the Democrats have adopted a bloodthirsty genocidal policy in the Middle East by backing Israel's massacres in Gaza and Lebanon and their bombing of Syria and Yemen but Trump’s record and proposed policy is no better.
In reality, his Middle East policy is really no different from that of the Democrats, both the Republicans and Democrats are tools of the same neo-con establishment calling for endless wars in the Middle East.
In this article, I will show how Trump is no different from the Democrats and did not in any way bring peace to the Middle East.
Trump ramped up the War in Syria.
One of the few things I will give Trump credit for is the fact that he ended Tymber Sycamore, the CIA program that armed rebels (many of them linked to groups like Al Quadea) in an attempt to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria.
While Trump did end this program he in no way ended the war in Syria and instead decided to continue it in other ways. He bombed the Syrian government twice as president once in 2017 and again in 2018.
What is often not talked about is that Trump wanted to go even further than these two Missile strikes in Syria and actively had to be talked down from wanting to invade Syria and “take him (Assad) out” and only begrudgingly backed down when his advisor, KT Macfarland told him it was “an act of war”.
One only has to look at the aftermath in Iraq and Libya to see what would result from American regime change in Syria. As New York Times reporter Robert F Worth put it, allowing the U.S.-backed sectarian rebel groups to take over Syria would lead to “sectarian mass murder”.
Another massively overlooked part of Trump’s Syria policy is the fact that he bombed a crucial water dam in Syria, in 2017. The only reason the dam did not overflow was that engineers on the ground were able to fix it, but had the dam overflown (which it almost did) “the destruction would have been unimaginable” and “The number of casualties would have exceeded the number of Syrians who have died throughout the war.” as a Syrian engineer who worked on the dam told the New York Times.
The Trump administration also killed 70 civilians in a single strike on Syria and then covered it up falsely claiming the strike hit ISIS.
Trump also kept American troops occupying one-third of Syria and openly bragged about stealing the oil. Aside from the fact that he took Syria's oil, a blatant war crime, the occupation was part of a siege warfare strategy to keep Syrians as miserable as possible in hopes that they would rise up against the government.
The Defense Department Dana Stroul bragged that through this occupation, one-third of Syrian territory was “owned via the U.S. military” in order to deprive Syrians of their “resource-rich economic powerhouse” and bragged that this deprivation along with sanctions on Syria was intended to keep “the rest of Syria in rubble” and “prevent reconstruction aid” in order to force regime change in Syria.
The sanctions referred to by Stoul were another Trump administration policy, which he signed into law in 2019. According to a UN report, these sanctions have “perpetuated and exacerbated the destruction and trauma suffered by the Syrian people since 2011” and have led to “the total economic and financial isolation of a country whose people are struggling to rebuild a life with dignity, following the decade-long war”.
The Trump administration's policy of depriving Syrians of their “economic powerhouse” as well as the sanctions has led to 90 percent of the population living below the poverty line.
Trump could have ended the war in Yemen, but he chose not to.
Trump not only continued the Obama-era policy of supplying weapons and intelligence to Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war in Yemen but had the chance to stop it and chose not to.
For context, Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders and Republican Senator Mike Lee worked together in writing a bi-partisan bill that would end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. The bill initially failed to pass the Senate but after Saudi Arabia murdered Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, the bill received more support and eventually was passed in the Senate in March of 2019 and the House in April 2019.
All Trump had to do to end the war was to sign the bill, but he instead used his veto power for the second time in his presidency to block it, therefore continuing the war and American support for it.
Trump could have brought an end to the genocidal war- that killed over 377,000 people when direct deaths are included- by simply signing a bill that had already passed in the House and Senate but chose instead to use his veto power to continue it.
Trump’s Warmongering Iran Policy
Along with Syria and Yemen Trump also followed the neocon agenda in Iran. Just like in Syria Trump narrowly avoided a full-scale war with Iran when he assassinated Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian general who was seen as a very influential and popular figure in Iran due to the role he played in fighting ISIS. As the BBC said the assassination of Soleimani was “very good for ISIS, and will speed up its recovery from the blows it took when its "caliphate" was smashed”.
Aside from this, Trump tore up the JCPOA (aka Iran deal) at the behest of his warmongering Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and placed brutal sanctions on the country. As Pompeo admitted, the point of the sanctions was to make things “much worse for the Iranian people” in hopes that they “will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime”.
A Human Rights Watch report on the sanctions found that they were “causing unnecessary suffering to Iranian citizens afflicted with a range of diseases and medical conditions.” and that “ordinary Iranians are bearing the brunt of America’s sanctions policy”.
Trump dethrones Obama as the drone king
In Iraq and Syria Trump not only continued Obama’s drone war but massively increased it. While Obama conducted 1,500 drone strikes in Iraq and Syria in his second term Trump conducted 16,000 while president. Furthermore, he more than doubled the amount of civilian casualties from these strikes, in Obama's second term he killed 5,600 with drone strikes in Iraq and Syria while Trump killed 13,000 while president. Trump also increased the civilian deaths from drone strikes in Somalia, Obama killed 42 civilians in Somalia during his eight-year presidency while Trump killed 134.
In Afghanistan, the UN found that there was a 67 percent increase in civilian deaths from drone strikes after Trump took office. Aside from the drone strikes Trump also dropped the so-called M.O.A.B. (Mother of All Bombs) in Afghanistan a bomb created by the U.S. in 2003 that is “the largest conventional weapon in the United States arsenal” and comparable “to a small nuclear weapon” according to the New Yorker.
Trump the Netenyahu Cuck
Trump also functioned as Benjamin Netanyahu's bitch while president and gave him everything he wanted. He recognized Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank and allowed them to officially annex the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
Furthermore, Trump armed and backed Israel in one of their most brazen massacres against Palestinians in Gaza before their current genocidal war. When Palestinians in Gaza organized a peaceful protest in 2018 against the brutal Israeli blockade, Israel responded by massacring them with Trump’s support. According to a UN report on these protests, Israel responded to them by killing 131 Palestinians and severely injuring 2,078, the vast majority of which “happened outside the context of hostilities”. The report also found that many of the civilian protesters' injuries resulted in “ sustained permanent disabilities”.
Finally when Trump says he brought “peace to the Middle East” part of what he is referring to is the Abraham Accords, a deal created by Trump that at first glance may seem like a peace deal but a closer look reveals something more cynical. The Trump-created deal allowed Israel to normalize with the UAE, Sudan, Bahrain, and Morocco and was looking to get Israel to normalize with Saudi Arabia. The actual purpose of the deal was not in any way to bring peace but to get these Arab states- who historically backed the Palestinian cause- to abandon them and move toward Israel without any concessions. As Vox magazine put it
Many of those and other Arab nations, like Saudi Arabia, are key backers of Palestinians in their decades-long dispute with Israel. But by getting them to interact with Israel, the idea was that they might let their support for the Palestinians slip and side a little closer with the Israelis.
It turns out that the “peace deal” was headed by Netenyahu who used Jared Kushner as his intermediary with the Trump administration in order to sideline the Palestinians. As the New Yorker reported:
The Trump Administration, led by Jared Kushner, helped draft the Abraham Accords, which aimed to normalize relations between Israel and the Sunni-ruled states, particularly Saudi Arabia, sidelining the Palestinians yet again.
The Democrats' abysmal strategy
If the Democrats actually wanted to counter Trump’s claims that he brought peace to the Middle East or will bring peace to the Middle East, they would repeat the facts laid out in this article ad nauseum. Unfortunately, because they support these policies as well they are unable to go after Trump on them.
Team Purple is Benji's bitch
So let me get this straight. Trump was the cause of the Lebanese Civil War. And the Syrian Civil War? Gotcha. Good to know that the Middle East has always been love beads and roses. Iran and the other local terrorists, I mean Freedom lovers, get along with all the other Middle Eastern people, governments and Royalty. Thank you for clarifying all that.