Hacker News Reader

Comment by yourbandsucks | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

He's not anti war as much as he's anti policy that pushes up against Russian spheres of influence. You see no issue with, and in fact a lot of funding and support increase to, Saudi Arabia. Where as Obama had put a pause on things during the initial outbreak. Didn't condemn things outright in public, but the Obama administration was definitely taking a step back during the Yemen war.

The trump administration also has changed the rules of engagement for military strikes on ISIS and other terrorists to allow for the potential of more collateral damage or civilian deaths. The Obama administration set that threshold pretty high to prevent blowback for our actions and feeding terrorist propaganda.

I'm a 2x Obama voter, but Obama totally greenlit and supported Saudi Arabia in Yemen from the beginning. Things were getting hot there in like 2010, this spanned almost his entire tenure. That's another area where as soon as things change hands, everyone has a different opinion depending on if it's the red guys or the blue guys.

As far as hooking Russia/Turkey up, Syria would be a better example IMO. We ceded Syria, the Saudis are still 100% ours. In either case, part of being non-interventionist means ceding things to regional powers.

"The Obama administration set that threshold pretty high to prevent blowback for our actions and feeding terrorist propaganda."

Really???

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/120703074500-bergen-d...

https://www.juancole.com/images-ext/2012/06/graphs-of-death-...

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/120611015028-yemen-ai...

>He's not anti war as much as he's anti policy that pushes up against Russian spheres of influence.

At the moment Russia is extending its sphere of influence by opportunistically exploiting American mistakes in the middle East. Those mistakes were started by Trump predecessors including Bush, Clinton & Clinton, Obama, etc.

>> He's not anti war

One of his main campaign promises was that he would withdraw from all the ill-conceived multi-trillion dollar wars in the Middle East. And unlike Obama he's actually keeping his promises. Give credit where credit is due. Even if it is due to Trump.

Where have we withdrawn from?

Last I checked we're no longer droning people directly in Yemen Obama-style (although Saudis are, and we're helping them), we've defeated ISIS and are in the process of withdrawing from Syria, there's troop withdrawal (although still incomplete due to Taliban stirring shit in September) from Afghanistan. Importantly, we haven't started any new wars on Trump's watch. Obama started several. So did Bush. Clinton before him started one. So did Bush senior before Clinton.

That's as good a peace record as you'll find in a US president in the last 100 years.

Let's see if we actually 100% withdraw from any of those places you've mentioned before Trump leaves office.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com