Appearing on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Dr. Ben Carson, second place in most GOP presidential polls and the Washington Examiner‘s power rankings, said he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, agreeing with Donald Trump, and indicated that he might not have invaded Afghanistan in 2001, a position he has been toying with for some time.
He indicated that he would have favored a policy of isolating extremist elements in the middle east, but conceded he would have considered “aggressive action” in 2001.
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“Declare that within five to 10 years, we will become petroleum independent. The moderate Arab states would have been so concerned about that, they would have turned over Osama bin Laden and anybody else you wanted on a silver platter within two weeks,” Carson said.
“I think that probably would have trumped any loyalty that they had to people like Osama bin Laden,” Carson added.
He was then pressed by Stephanopoulos. “But they didn’t have any loyalty to Osama bin Laden. The Saudis kicked him out. He was their enemy.”
“Well, you may not think that they had any loyalty to him, but I believe otherwise,” Carson retorted.
Carson then pivoted to Iraq. “I don’t think Saddam Hussein was an existential threat to us,” he said, but then added that he does not necessarily oppose military intervention in the present.
“It’s a very different situation right now. Now, we have global jihadists who want to destroy us and our way of life,” Carson said.
Carson then appeared to backpedal a bit on his previous full denunciation of the 2001 Afghanistan invasion.
“Well, I was primarily talking about Iraq. You know, I wasn’t particularly interested in going into Afghanistan but I do think that we should have taken aggressive action,” he said. “And I think, you know, creating a base that did not require tens of thousands of our troops, that required a group.”
“And, being able to use our drones and being able to use our intelligence and things of that nature, I think that’s probably all that was necessary in Afghanistan,” Carson added.
