In his remarks on Saturday, the new US president Donald Trump said the ISIS is the consequence of his country’s failure in controlling Iraq’s oil, adding that they still have a chance to correct the situation.
Since the start of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump used to mention ISIS and the fight against terrorism in his speeches.
“We cannot let this evil continue. Nor can we let the hateful ideology of radical Islam — its oppression of women, gays, children and non-believers — be allowed to reside or spread within our own countries,” Trump said in an August speech. “We will defeat radical Islamic terrorism, just as we have defeated every threat we have faced in every age before.”
Trump also stated that he is not interested in the middle east politics or the ongoing crisis there in anything more than ending ISIS threat, even if that means cooperating with Assad regime and Iran.
Trump said in one presidential debate: “I don’t like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS and Iran is killing ISIS,” indicating that he would worry less about consistent American relationships in the Middle East and more about defeating ISIS and getting the US out of the region.
He stated in the second presidential debate that regime change only causes more instability in the Middle East and while Assad is not exactly a welcome partner, shoring up his government is the best way to stem the extremism that has flourished in the chaos of Syrian crisis.
Invading Iraq again?
Trump has always said again that the best way to defeat ISIS is by its power sources and repeated it again on Saturday adding he would do it even it means invading Iraq again.
“Now I said it for economic reasons, but if you think about it, Mike, if we kept the oil, you probably wouldn’t have ISIS because that’s where they made their money in the first place, so we should have kept the oil. But, OK, maybe we’ll have another chance,” Trump said in the CIA headquarters on Saturday, while presenting Mike Pompeo, his nominee to head the spy agency.
It’s a claim that Trump repeatedly used on the campaign trail. But the president’s willingness to tell the CIA ― and, indeed, the international community ― that he thinks the United States should have looted a country’s resources is a new mark in foreign diplomacy and yet another signal that there will be no shift to more responsible rhetoric now that Trump represents the country as its leader.
The strategy of taking Iraq’s oil is plainly in violation of multiple international laws and United Nations agreements.
Previously Trump said he would take ISIS power by destroying all of their sources rather than taking them, and showed no respect for Iraq’s resources or for the fate of Iraqis.
“ISIS is making a tremendous amount of money because they have certain oil camps, certain areas of oil that they took away,” Trump said in in interview with CNN in 2015.
He continued: “They have some in Syria, some in Iraq. I would bomb them. That’s right. I’d blow up the pipes. … I’d blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left. And you know what, you’ll get Exxon to come in there and in two months, you ever see these guys, how good they are, the great oil companies? They’ll rebuild that sucker, brand new — it’ll be beautiful.”
When the interviewer asked Trump whether he might be destroying the wealth of Iraq if he went after the country’s oil fields.
“There is no Iraq,” Trump responded. “Their leaders are corrupt.”
The interviewer said Iraqis might disagree with him, but Trump pressed on.
“Excuse me, there are no Iraqis. They’re broken up into so many different factions,” he said.
