by Donald Trump
Putin has big plans for Russia. He wants to edge out its neighbors so that Russia can dominate oil supplies to all of Europe.19 Putin has also announced his grand vision: the creation of a “Eurasian Union” made up of former Soviet nations that can dominate the region. I respect Putin and the Russians but cannot believe our leader allows them to get away with so much—I am sure that Vladimir Putin is even more surprised than I am. Hats off to the Russians.
IRAN
Obama’s plan to have Russia stand up to Iran was a horrible failure that turned America into a laughingstock. Unfortunately, our current foreign policy toward Iran has been just as embarrassing and disastrous.
First, there was the epic and inexplicable failure of Obama to speak out strongly for freedom during Iran’s so-called “Green Revolution.” As the world watched, Iranian college kids and dissidents took to the streets to peacefully protest for democratic reforms and human rights, only to be violently suppressed by the regime’s thugs. What did Obama do? As incredible and outrageous as it might seem, he sat silent. We’re talking about an Iranian regime led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a guy who has declared Iran’s desire to see one of our greatest allies, Israel, “wiped off the map.” But did Obama stand up for the voices of freedom and against the anti-Israel forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard? Not a chance. Had Obama stepped out to help the protesters early, the regime could have easily been overthrown and we would not have our biggest problem today. When it comes to defending human rights in the Islamic world, Obama shies away because he thinks America should be apologizing to Muslim countries rather than speaking out. It’s a disgrace.
The greatest outrage, however, has been Obama’s unwillingness to stand strong in the face of Ahmadinejad’s nuclear weapon ambitions. Iran is the most sanctioned member of the United Nations. Since 2006, Iran has been the focus of five Security Council resolutions demanding that it stop its uranium enrichment.20 And yet, knowing all this, Obama continues to concoct his kindergarten-style “solutions” for dealing with the Iranian threat. For example, even as the adults in the intelligence world are wracking their brains about how to stop Iran from developing an operational nuclear weapon, Barack Obama proposed something so childish I’m almost embarrassed to write about it. Obama wanted to create a telephone hotline between America and Iran. I kid you not. Obama’s solution to thwarting a nuclear Iran is to set up a little telephone line that our military can use to talk nicely with the Iranian terrorist regime that threatens to destroy America.
As pathetic and ridiculous as that is, here’s the most humiliating part: Iran laughed at him and rejected the plan outright. Worse, once they heard Obama’s proposal and realized what a joke the guy is, they were emboldened to get tough. “In addition to rejecting the hot line,” reported the Wall Street Journal, “Iranian military officers have threatened to deploy Iranian naval forces in the Western Hemisphere, including potentially the Gulf of Mexico”21 (emphasis mine).
How did the White House respond? Obama sent his press secretary out with this message of strength: “We don’t take these statements seriously, given that they do not reflect at all Iran’s naval capabilities.”22 How reassuring!
The point isn’t that Iran’s navy is incapable of anchoring its ships off the coast of Florida. The point is that Iran’s government has so little fear, so little respect for America’s leadership, that it feels free to make the threat. The Iranians know our president will sit back and do nothing, just like he did during Iran’s Green Revolution. They know Obama’s instincts are to apologize, grovel, and retreat. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, “Tehran appears to be taking a more aggressive posture in the Persian Gulf, in part as a response to the scheduled drawdown of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.”23 In other words, because Obama made the horrible decision to announce a date of withdrawal, Iran now feels emboldened to throw its weight around. By the way, in 2011, U.S. defense officials reported that there have been several “near-misses” between Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) speed boats challenging U.S. and allied war ships.24 Way to go, Mr. President.
America’s primary goal with Iran must be to destroy its nuclear ambitions. Let me put this as plainly as I know how: Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped—by any and all means necessary. Period. We cannot allow this radical regime to acquire a nuclear weapon that they will either use or hand off to terrorists. Better now than later!
At the end of his second term, President George W. Bush authorized a covert program to “undermine the electrical and computer systems” at Natanz, Iran’s uranium enrichment facility.25 What came out of that initiative was the creation of the world’s most advanced cyber-weapon ever. With technical support from Israel, as well as technology from other allies, the Stuxnet cyber worm was unleashed against Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and made them spin so fast they destroyed themselves. The operation was very successful and destroyed roughly one-fifth of Iran’s centrifuges. No one knows for sure how many months or years we put back on Iran’s nuclear clock. Some analysts say six months, others one or two years. But that’s the point: the clock is still ticking.
Many experts believe the only way to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat is to bomb their facilities. Israel has used airstrikes to knock out nuclear facilities twice: once in 1981 on an Iraqi nuclear site, and again in 2007 to destroy a nuclear bomb plant in Syria. It’s clear that Iran is preparing itself for this possibility. In September 2011, Iran moved its most important nuclear fuel production to a “heavily defended underground military facility” to guard their supplies from a possible air or cyber-attack. The White House spokesman for the National Security Council said the move was a direct violation of the UN security requirements and was “another provocative act.”26 But, as usual, Obama will do nothing. He’s too busy trying to get reelected, going to fundraisers, and vacationing.
Worse, we know Obama’s instincts on Iran are horrible. On May 18, 2008, during a campaign speech then-candidate Obama made this breathtakingly ignorant statement: “I mean, think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela—these countries are tiny, compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. . . . You know, Iran, they spend one-one hundredth of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance. And we should use that position of strength that we have, to be bold enough to go ahead and listen.” Then, after his advisors told him what a moronic statement he’d made, Obama went out two days later and reversed his stance: “Iran is a grave threat. It has an illicit nuclear program, it supports terrorism across the region and militias in Iraq, it threatens Israel’s existence, it denies the holocaust.”27 Once again, the guy’s initial instincts are always wrong. And in this case, they endangered America and our ally Israel.
Obviously we must listen to our intelligence experts to decide the best way to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But here’s the reality: because the clock is ticking down, the next president America elects will in all likelihood be the president who either stops Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon or who sits back and lets it happen. Given Obama’s track record of weakness, that’s not a risk America can afford to take.
PAKISTAN
When our tremendous Navy SEALS took out Osama bin Laden, they didn’t find him in some obscure hole in the ground or in a remote mountainside cave. No, they found him in Pakistan right next door to one of Pakistan’s most prestigious military academies. What does that tell you? It tells me that Pakistan knew where Osama was all along.
Get it straight: Pakistan is not our friend. We’ve given them billions and billions of dollars, and what did we get? Betrayal and disrespect—and much worse. When one of our helicopters was downed during the Osama bin Laden raid, Pakistan handed it over to China so that Chinese engineers could study it and steal the technology we spent billions of dollars developing. The Pakistanis think we’re a bunch of dopes. They don’t respect us and they nev
er will as long as Obama is our commander in chief. And it’s much, much worse than just disrespect. In May 2011, Pakistan actually fired on American Apache helicopter crews. As one military official stated, “We’re not allowed to return fire to coordinates inside the Pakistan border. We know it’s the Pakistani military in many cases. Pakistan has been instigating.”28
The fact that our rules of engagement (ROE) don’t allow our military to defend themselves and return fire is absolute lunacy. We need to remove the handcuffs and get tough. You shoot at our troops, our troops shoot at you. End of story.
But there’s an even graver threat emerging out of Pakistan. I’m talking about the rise of the so-called Haqqani Network, a terrorist network estimated to be 15,000 fighters strong. The Haqquani Network is closely allied with al Qaeda. The Haqqanis originated in Afghanistan but have now holed up in Pakistan. They are considered bigger and better funded than al Qaeda. Here’s the worst part: Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is helping the Haqqanis. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen has worked closer with Pakistan than most. He says that the Haqqani Network has become “a strategic arm” of Pakistan’s intelligence agency and is responsible for the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Kabul, the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul, and the truck bomb attack that injured seventy-seven U.S. soldiers.29
And get this: according to intelligence experts, “Pakistan is preparing to replace the billions of dollars of critical military aid it has been receiving from the U.S. by courting China and soliciting help from Islamic ally Saudi Arabia.”30
When are we going to wake up and realize that we are funding our enemies? And when are we going to let our troops hit back? Right now we ban our forces from using Predator drones inside the city of Miram where the Haqqanis are headquartered. The reason? Obama didn’t want to “offend” the Pakistanis. That’s absurd—they’re killing our soldiers! We need to get tough, give our troops permission to return fire, and tell Pakistan that we will sever all economic activity with them until they cut ties with the Haqqani network. If the Pakistani intelligence services work with terrorists, we should declare their military a terrorist organization.31
LIBYA
Obama ran for president on a platform that he wouldn’t start any more “illegal wars.” Guess what? He started an “illegal war.” He never went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war with Libya. Instead, Obama launched one by himself and thrust America into a bloody civil war. Isn’t that what Obama bashed George W. Bush for doing, even though Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein?
Now Qaddafi is dead and gone. So what? We have spent more than $1 billion on the Libya operation. And what are we getting in return? A huge bill, that’s what. It’s incredible how foolish the Obama administration is. Libya has enormous oil reserves. When the so-called “rebels” came to NATO (which is really the U.S.) and asked for help to defeat Qaddafi, we should have said, “Sure, we don’t like the guy either. We will help you take out Qaddafi. But in exchange, you give us 50 percent of your oil for the next twenty-five years to pay for our military support and to say thank you for the United States doing what you could never have done on your own.” The “rebels” would have jumped at the offer and said yes. After all, they didn’t stand a chance—they were being routed—it was over. But did we do that? No. Our leaders are too brainless to negotiate a deal like that.
Imagine the amount of oil we could have secured for America. Think about how much economic relief we would have secured for our people and our businesses. A deal like that would have been so easy to broker. But our diplomats are pansies. They don’t want to “offend” anyone. Guess what? The American people are offended! Our policy should be: no oil, no military support. No exceptions.
Even with Qaddafi gone now, unfortunately, the price we will pay for our stupid Libyan policy may end up being far more expensive and dire than the billion dollars we’ve already blown there. In September 2011, up to 20,000 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles went missing in Libya. According to the left-leaning group Human Rights Watch, the reason this happened was because Barack Obama refused to provide proper protection to guard the weapons stockpiles.32 When weapons went missing in Iraq, the liberal media made a massive story out of it and used the issue to try and defeat George W. Bush. But now, on Obama’s watch, 20,000 shoulder-fired missiles—the kind that can take down a commercial jetliner—are nowhere to be found, and the mainstream media yawns.
There’s no telling how much money those missiles will be sold for on the black market. But there’s one thing you can bet your bottom dollar on, and that’s every terrorist organization will be standing in line to buy them. We know that al Qaeda is already in Libya. Former White House counterterrorism advisor Richard Clark says that the probability of al Qaeda successfully smuggling the missiles out of Libya is “pretty high.”33 When the story surfaced, as usual, the White House shrugged its shoulders. “We have ... worked closely with the [Libyan rebel leaders] as well as NATO in investigating and dealing with the issue of conventional weapons in Libya,” said Press Secretary Jay Carney. “We are exploring every option to expand our support.”34
Nice!
Now here’s the worst of it: guess who “discreetly” provided the Libyan rebels with “humanitarian aid” before the fall of Libya’s capital, Tripoli? That’s right: Iran. When the rebels seized the capital, Iran “congratulated the Muslim people of Libya.”35
Like everyone else, I’m glad Qaddafi is gone. But if we had been smart and negotiated shrewdly, we would have taken 50 percent of Libya’s oil for twenty-five years before we spent mountains of American money. Once again, Obama has proven to be a horrible negotiator and an expert at missing huge opportunities for America. And guess who gets much of that oil from Libya—that’s right, it’s China, not the U.S.
Americans have been too busy fighting the ravages of the Obama economy to notice what a colossal disaster the community organizer has been as our commander in chief. The damage Obama has done to our military and to our standing in the world can only be repaired by electing a new president, one who respects our men and women in uniform and pursues a national security doctrine that puts America first.
SEVEN
A SAFETY NET, NOT A HAMMOCK
Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.
It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy.
It is in violation of the traditions of America.
—President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
1935 State of the Union
In 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared “War on Poverty.” Guess what? Poverty won. Big time.
Since Johnson launched his mythical quest for a government-run utopia, welfare spending has skyrocketed 13 times the amount spent in 1964 (in inflation adjusted dollars). Back then, welfare spending accounted for 1.2 percent of GDP. Today, it’s almost 6 percent.1 That means taxpayers have paid—are you ready for this?—a jaw-dropping $16 trillion on public-assistance programs.2 That’s a totally outrageous sum—until you realize what Obama wants to spend over the next decade.
In 2011, Obama jacked welfare spending up 42 percent over 2008 levels. This huge increase means America is paying $953 billion a year on welfare.3 America is flat broke. We cannot afford to spend $10 trillion over the next decade on dependency-inducing welfare schemes that have created an underclass, demoralized it, and drained taxpayers who are paying for programs that not only make poverty worse but that are notoriously rife with fraud and abuse.
You want an example? In 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported that welfare recipients in California were using their welfare cards to get cash from ATMs at strip clubs. Taxpayers should not be paying for some guy’s lap dance!4 And over in Virginia, taxpayers were outraged when it was revealed that their tax dollars were going to subsidize welfar
e recipients living in luxury apartments, complete with “resort-style swimming pools with fountains and heated spas, billiard rooms, granite counter tops, indoor basketball courts, and stainless steel appliances.” “These are resort-style amenities that the majority of the taxpayers that are subsidizing it don’t have in their own [homes],” said supervisor Pat Herrity. “Luxury has no place in subsidized housing.”5
Look, I believe deeply that America must maintain a sturdy safety net. We have an obligation to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves, whether due to age or illness. Our country has a big heart. And it’s a point of national pride that we take care of our own. It’s one of the things that makes us so great. And certainly our people need a lot more help given that President Obama has been such a total disaster. Today, under this administration, more people than ever in America’s history—a staggering 46.2 million—live under the federal poverty line. Many of these individuals are out of work. They need temporary assistance as they search for the few jobs that remain in the Obama economy. We should help these folks and their kids, no question about it. But it is counterproductive and cruel to allow America’s safety net to morph into a hammock. It is simply immoral for the government to encourage able-bodied Americans to think that a life on welfare, of being supported by taxpayers, is an acceptable lifestyle.
