So is the architect of bringing “democracy” to the Middle East, Paul Wolfowitz! Senator Clinton voted FOR the Iraq War.
Republicans Against Trump: Bush Advisor Wolfowitz Says He’ll Likely Vote for Clinton
SPIEGEL: Mr. Wolfowitz, as deputy secretary of defense under President George W. Bush, you supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Today, many people regard this war as a key factor behind the instability in the Middle East as well as the rise of the Islamic State (IS). Do you feel personally responsible?
Wolfowitz: No, because Islamic State is mainly a direct result of the failure in Syria. That’s where IS has grown. That’s where IS spread from. The Western alliance should have supported the Sunni opposition against the Assad regime from the beginning. As far as Iraq is concerned, if it had stayed stable the way it was in 2008, IS would not have been able to expand in Iraq the way they did. The mistake was that Barack Obama withdrew the armed forces from Iraq too fast.
SPIEGEL: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump criticized the war in Iraq, too. He has announced he wants to stop “current policies of nation-building and regime change” — precisely the policy you backed.
Wolfowitz: It would be a huge mistake to abandon democracy promotion. Peaceful political change has been enormously successful in the past years in Eastern European countries as well as in countries like South Korea, South Africa, Chile and Indonesia. However, if possible, the use of force is something to avoid except in cases where genocide is threatened, like Bosnia or Libya or with regimes that threaten our security, like the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. After a regime is removed, however, it is dangerous to leave a security vacuum. This is where we failed in Libya and in Iraq.
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SPIEGEL: Paris, Brussels, Orlando, Nice — is the West threatened even more today by terrorists than it was 15 years ago?Wolfowitz: Fifteen years ago, we had 3,000 people killed in a single day. We had a very real concern that terrorists were going to get their hands on anthrax [traced to US Army lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland] or sarin. The fact that that hasn’t happened is itself an achievement. But, obviously, these so-called smaller attacks are a problem. People change their habits. I know Americans who don’t go to Paris because they think it is too dangerous. I think that is an overreaction. Countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh have been living with this level of terrorism for a long time. But life goes on.
Wolfowitz: We are already seeing a degree of instability in the world because Obama seems to have consciously wanted to step back. Trump is going to be “Obama squared,” a more extreme version of the same thing.
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SPIEGEL: Who are you going to vote for in November?Wolfowitz: I wish there were somebody I could be comfortable voting for. I might have to vote for Hillary Clinton, even though I have big reservations about her.
h/t Arthur Gilroy. It’s a complicated world led by a single superpower, isn’t it!?
My focus is foreign policy and the reach of the US across the globe. As I have written months ago when Bernie Sanders was an option for Democrats …
○ Neocons Jumping Ship, Will Likely Vote for Hillary Clinton
○ Humanity – Today’s Syrian Refugees Rejected as Jews in 1930s
Confirmed this week, IS leader Abu Baghdadi was not only imprisoned by U.S. Occupational Forces in Camp Bucca but also in Abu Ghraib. A stain on the United States for generations to come.
