Warmongering Rag Denounces Trump as Warmonger

The New York Times is running a column for their Sunday edition by Nicholas Kristof entitled, "Donald the Dangerous," where Kristof says that if Trump were elected he might actually start a war.

A second major concern is that Trump would start a trade war, or a real war... Trump has also called for more U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq, and raised the prospect of bombing North Korean nuclear sites. A poorly informed, impatient and pugnacious leader can cause devastation, and that’s true of either Kim Jong-un or Donald Trump.

Of course, Kristof is right that Trump may start a war if elected president, but then again he might not. Trump is hard to nail down on foreign policy, largely because he doesn't really know much about the issue, which Kristof correctly points out in his column.

This has, however, led Trump to take some of the most non-interventionist stances of any of the candidates in the race. It was Trump who pointed out that the U.S. should stop arming the so-called rebels in Syria because, according to him, we don't know who they are. Unfortunately this is not entirely accurate as we know all too well that they're made up largely of al-Qaeda and ISIS forces. On this point, Kristof takes Trump to task for suggesting that we should let ISIS take out Assad in Syria, but fails to include the Obama administration in his condemnation despite that being their exact policy for the past several years by arming the "rebels."

Trump also came out strongly against provoking Russia early on in his campaign, saying that we ought to leave Syria to the Russians rather than bankrupting ourselves in yet another useless Middle Eastern war. In fairness to Trump's ignorance, he then turned around and contradicted himself by saying that the U.S. should enforce a "safe-zone" in Syria.

Regardless, the issue here is not Trump's incoherent foreign policy, but rather the hypocrisy of Kristof and the New York Times. Kristof claims that Trump is dangerous because he might start a "real war," but then endorses a letter from leading conservative thinkers denouncing Trump's foreign policy. Kristof singles out a few of the people who signed the letter, including Michael Chertoff. Chertoff was the second Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, and then went on to start the Chertoff Group which uses its DC insider connections to make vast sums of money convincing Americans that they're about to be killed by bad guys around the world at any moment.

So in a column claiming that Donald Trump is dangerous because he may bring us into yet another war, Kristof cites a man who not only served in the Bush administration, which started several wars, but who makes millions of dollars every year hyping up supposed national security threats. What kind of logic is this?

Furthermore, if Kristof is truly concerned about candidates that might start a "real war" if elected, then where is his condemnation of the New York Times itself, whose editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton and John Kasich for their respective parties' nominations? At the last Republican debate Kasich stated that it's going to be necessary to put boots on the ground in Libya, Syria, and Iraq to combat terrorist forces there. In other words, Kasich is explicitly stating that if elected he's going to start three new ground wars in the Middle East. Where is Kristof's article denouncing him as dangerous? Why isn't Kristof taking the New York Times to task for endorsing such a dangerous person to be the Republican nominee?

Speaking of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, Hillary Clinton supported regime change in all three countries, and urged President Obama to be as aggressive as possible in both Libya and Syria as Secretary of State. Every policy she pushed for in those countries has led to devastation. The regime change that she supported and got in Iraq and Libya has led to genocide and tribal civil war in both countries, and turned them into havens for ISIS and al-Qaeda. Despite this she urged the exact same policy in Syria, but was fortunately unsuccessful. Unfortunately, she did get the Obama administration on board with arming the "rebels" in Syria, ISIS, al-Nusra, etc, in their fight against Assad.

You want to talk about a candidate who not only might but almost certainly will get the U.S. involved in a war? With the exception of Marco Rubio, there is no candidate currently running who holds a candle to Hillary Clinton. Her record of supporting U.S. intervention in the Middle East is clear and unmistakable. She strongly believes in using military power in an attempt to re-shape the world with no regard for how horrible it turns out for the people who have to live there, or the U.S. soldiers who are killed or maimed in the process.

Despite this, what does the New York Times have to say about Hillary Clinton?

Voters have the chance to choose one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history.

I would think that being wrong on every foreign policy issue of consequence for more than a decade would actually disqualify a candidate for the presidency, but apparently not in the eyes of the New York Times. Then again, I'm forgetting that the New York Times supported those very same policies, so what more could I possibly expect? As for Nicholas Kristof, it's clear that he's simply shilling for the establishment. Frankly I don't see the big deal, Trump is certainly unorthodox but none of his policies threaten the establishment in any real sense. The only thing I can think of is that they see it as a threat to their credibility if a reality star is elected president. Regardless, this is nothing more than a hack job by Kristof completely devoid of any principle.