In the third debate Donald Trump stuck with his allegations that Hillary and Obama were the reason for the formation of ISIS, due to the withdrawal of troops in July of 2011. He stands by his allegations. Even as the facts are leveled against him and his stance, his refusal to let this go reminiscent of his birther lie.
But, the simple and true fact no matter what way you slice it, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama had absolutely nothing at all to do with the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. That was negotiated under the Bush administration in 2007, after the end of the Iraqi war, which said that the United States would fully withdraw by 2011, which it did. Hillary was First Lady from ’92-’00, and Secretary of State from 2009-2013, and Barack Obama, President from 2008-2016, therefore neither Secretary Clinton nor President Obama had any influence over the treaty that was signed in 2007, and even though Secretary Clinton was Senator of New York from 2000-2009, Senators do not influence treaties, that is called an “Executive Agreement” that is a power of the President of the United States to make treaties without the approval of Congress, and since there was massive support for this treaty in the Senate, even if then Senator Clinton had voted against it it would have passed due to the overwhelming support from the Republican Party and its Senators; it passed because 91% of Republican Senators supported the treaty. So, in actuality, Trump’s own party was the sole reason troops were withdrawn from Iraq. Even factoring in Secretary Clinton’s vote for the 2002 Iraqi Invasion, this vote did not give President Bush a “carte blanche” to invade, it did not do any such thing, and in fact, it did quite the opposite. As stated by the Huffington Post article written by Jeffrey Marburg-Goodman, it “did indeed authorize President Bush, under strict requirements of the 1973 War Powers Act, to use force, Section 3(b) of the Act also required that sanctions or diplomacy be fully employed before force was used, i.e. force was to be used only as “necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq,” and to do so only upon the President certifying to Congress that “diplomatic or other peaceful means” would be insufficient to defang Saddam…” Nowhere did it authorize the horrify atrocities committed in that terrible war. This does not, however, excuse Trump due to statements he has made showing he has no respect nor regard for the lives of thousands of civilians, such as, “I like that Putin is bombing the hell out of ISIS,” and when he excused killing the families of terrorists by saying, “They knew exactly what was going on.”
And then, last night, Trump made yet another ignorant, clearly false statement – you left Iraq, therefore you lost Mosul; when the troops left, the city immediately fell— obviously I am paraphrasing, as what exactly he said has escaped my mind, but this is plain and simple a lie; the troops were withdrawn in 2011, yet again, because of the Republicans, and Mosul fell in 2014, 3 years after troops withdrew. Mosul fell because it fell; it was and wasn’t our fault. It was our fault because of Republicans – such as Mr. Trump himself – supporting the Iraqi Invasion, leading to one of the worst intrusions into foreign affairs the United States has made in its aaproximately 240 years of existence, leading to 500,000 deaths and causing a complete collapse of government and economy that the region cannot recover from, not due to their own ineptness, but due to our destruction of oil fields and of cities and industrial compounds during the war. He blamed the fall of Mosul on Clinton, even though she was not Secretary of State in 2014 as she was excused in 2013. Therefore, his allegations have no foundations in reality.
