President Trump isn’t exactly known for his consistency. In fact, he changes his mind fairly often. There’s also evidence to suggest that the last person Trump talks to has considerable influence on his decision-making process.
So perhaps it’s not too surprising that the Trump administration’s foreign policy has resembled a lost driver going in circles without a GPS. Especially inconsistent has been Trump’s evolution on the Iraq War. In a span of three years, the president has transformed from an anti-establishment insurgent who would rather leave the dysfunctional, war-torn country to its own devices into a president implementing the same hawkish Iraq policy he ran against in 2016.
Remember, back when Trump was just one Republican presidential candidate among a dozen others on stage, the real estate mogul carved out a niche as an anti-war Republican, of sorts.
True, Trump talked tough on the campaign trail about the supposed benefits of torture and beat his chest about how he would flatten terrorists with merciless bombing. But the president was also one of the only candidates in the 2016 GOP primary who was willing to stand up, buck orthodoxy, and call Iraq War what it was: a catastrophic and stupid error in judgment. Almost none of the other candidates, certainly not Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, were willing to go that far.
However, Trump basked in the failures of neoconservative foreign policy and made criticism of the Iraq War part of his shtick.
During a 2016 town hall in South Carolina, Trump bashed President George W. Bush and his administration for committing a “horrible mistake.” As Trump said that day, “We should have never been there. Somebody says, oh, that’s not good to criticize? I say criticize? It’s one of the worst decisions in the history of the country. We have totally destabilized the Middle East.”
Days later, Trump made the same point on the debate stage, arguing that “Everything that’s happening started with us stupidly going into the war in Iraq.” He would wind up winning the Republican primary in South Carolina, a state with a large military population, by 10 points.
Nearly four years removed from that contest, where has the Donald Trump who railed against the Iraq War gone? In 2020, Trump now apparently believes keeping thousands of troops in Iraq is so vitally important to our national security that he is willing to threaten Baghdad with economic destruction if Iraqi leaders don’t submit to a perpetual U.S. military presence.
Just this month, the president has warned Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi of economic repercussions if the Iraqi parliament voted to kick U.S. troops out of the country. The Trump administration has followed through, not only planning for a potential sanctions package but also delivering a message to the Iraqi prime minister’s office directly that Baghdad may lose access to its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York if it were reckless enough to send U.S. troops packing.
Trump hasn’t dropped the idea. Even today, after meeting with Iraqi President Barham Saleh at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the president left open the possibility of punishing the Iraqi government if it forced U.S. troops to move out.
So, to be clear, Trump went from fighting to get troops out of Iraq as a candidate to fighting to keep them in the country as president. The Washington, D.C., foreign policy establishment is surely quite happy with Trump’s transition. But “America First” voters should not be.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
