No one listened

Yesterday Trump said this:

I have long said that we should have kept the oil in Iraq – another area where my judgement has been proven correct. According to CNN, ISIS made as much $500 million in oil sales in 2014 alone, fueling and funding its reign of terror. If we had controlled the oil, we could have prevented the rise of ISIS in Iraq – both by cutting off a major source of funding, and through the presence of U.S. forces necessary to safeguard the oil and other vital infrastructure. I was saying this constantly and to whoever would listen: keep the oil, keep the oil, keep the oil, I said – don’t let someone else get it.

If they had listened to me then, we would have had the economic benefits of the oil, which I wanted to use to help take care of the wounded soldiers and families of those who died – and thousands of lives would have been saved. This proposal, by its very nature, would have left soldiers in place to guard our assets. In the old days, when we won a war, to the victor belonged the spoils. Instead, all we got from Iraq – and our adventures in the Middle East – was death, destruction and tremendous financial loss.

Ann Althouse reacted,

It sounds extreme — especially "to the victor belonged the spoils." The idea should be that the oil should cover the expenses of liberating and protecting the people of Iraq.

Leftist tactics

Commenter chemjeff writes at Ace of Spades,

The Iraq War had 3 justifications

- Enforcing UN resolutions
- Destroying a safe haven for terrorists
- Getting rid of WMD

Only the last one got any significant media play, because the war achieved Objective #1 and #2, but it wasn't so clear that it achieved #3 and so Democrats seized on that one to destroy public trust in the war.

To which commenter zombie replies,

Bingo. That's exactly what I was trying to say, but said more clearly.

It's a classic debating technique -- to only attack the one weak argument, and ignore the strong arguments. In fact, it was famously used in the OJ trial to get him off.

Here is how to lose an argument which you should be winning:

"We have irrefutable evidence #1 proving our point. We have irrefutable evidence #2 proving our point. We have irrefutable evidence #3 proving our point. Oh, and also, we have evidence #4 leading support to our position, but it's not rock solid."

Opponent: "Ah HA! Evidence #4 is not proven, therefore your entire case falls apart!"

If you have proof that can't be refuted, don't even mention the more loosey-goosey side issues. It just weakens your case.

Distraction

zombie comments at Ace of Spades,

Of course there were WMDs.

Many were destroyed leading up to, during and immediately after the invasion.

Many were indeed carted of to Syria.

And the remnants were found in situ in Iraq.

But the media down-down-downplayed these to such an extent they they successfully "buried" the news.

Furthermore, and I'm shocked no one cites it anymore, is that the invasion was not based on the existence of WMDs, but rather than Saddam had violated many of the agreements set in place after Gulf War I and the Clinton era. And if he violated the agreements, the the ceasefire was over, according to what was agreed.

The whole "Where are the WMDs?" question was and remains a distraction from the real (and valid) reasons for the resumption of war.

Who lost America?

Are you following the war between the Wall Street Journal and writer Pat Buchanan? The Journal started it with this lead editorial:

Here we go again. In the 1990s Pat Buchanan launched a civil war within the Republican Party on a platform targeting immigration and trade. Some claimed Pitchfork Pat was the future of the GOP, though in the end he mainly contributed to its presidential defeats.

...This is no way to rebuild a conservative majority. What America’s working families need most after the Obama era is a healthy, vibrant and growing economy that creates more jobs, increases paychecks and expands opportunity. A trade deal that would help open up a market of one billion people to the goods and services produced by the American worker is an excellent place to start.

Pat Buchanan responds by asking, who really lost America?

Now it is true that, while Nixon and Reagan won 49-state landslides and gave the GOP five victories in six presidential contests, the party has fallen upon hard times. Only once since 1988 has a Republican presidential nominee won the popular vote. But was this caused by following this writer’s counsel? Or by the GOP listening to the deceptions of its Davos-Doha-Journal wing?

In the 1990s, this writer and allies in both parties fought NAFTA, GATT, and MFN for China. The Journal and GOP establishment ran with Bill and Hillary and globalization. And the fruits of their victory?

Between 2000 and 2010, 55,000 U.S. factories closed and 5 million to 6 million manufacturing jobs disappeared. Columnist Terry Jeffrey writes that, since 1979, the year of maximum U.S. manufacturing employment, “The number of jobs in manufacturing has declined by 7,231,000 — or 37 percent.”

Does the Journal regard this gutting of the greatest industrial base the world had ever seen, which gave America an independence no republic had ever known, an acceptable price of its New World Order?

Beginning in 1991, traveling the country and visiting plant after plant that was shutting down or moving to Asia or Mexico, some of us warned that this economic treason against America’s workers would bring about political retribution. And so it came to pass. Since 1988, a free-trade Republican Party has not once won Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, or Wisconsin in a presidential election. Ohio, the other great Midwest industrial state, is tipping. The Reagan Democrats are gone. Who cast them aside? You or us?

Since the early 1990s, we have run $3 billion to $4 billion in trade deficits with China. Last year’s was $325 billion, or twice China’s defense budget. Are not all those factories, jobs, investment capital, and consumer dollars pouring into China a reason why Beijing has been able to build mighty air and naval fleets, claim sovereignty over the South and East China seas, fortify reefs 1,000 miles south of Hainan Island, and tell the U.S. Navy to back off?

The Journal accuses us of being anti-growth. But as trade surpluses add to a nation’s GDP, trade deficits subtract from it. Does the Journal think our $11 trillion in trade deficits since 1992 represents a pro-growth policy?

On immigration, this writer did campaign on securing the border in 1991-92, when there were 3 million illegal immigrants in the United States. But the Bush Republicans refused to seal the border. Now there are 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants and the issue is tearing the party apart. Now everybody is for “secure borders.”

We did urge a “moratorium” on legal immigration, such as America had from 1924 to 1965, to assimilate and Americanize the millions who had come. The Journal Republicans called that xenophobia. Since then, tens of millions of immigrants, here legally and illegally, mostly from the Third World, have arrived. Economically, they consume more in tax dollars than they contribute. Politically, most belong to ethnic groups that vote between 70 and 90 percent Democratic. Their children will bury the GOP.

Consider California, which voted for Nixon all five times he was on a national ticket and for Reagan in landslides all four times he ran. Since 1988, California has not gone Republican in a single presidential election. No Republican holds statewide office. Both U.S. Senators are Democrats. Democrats have 39 of 53 U.S. House seats. Republican state legislators are outnumbered 2-to-1.

Americans of European descent, who provide the GOP with 90 percent of its presidential vote, are down to 63 percent of the nation and falling. By 2042, they will be a minority. And there goes the GOP.

Lest we forget, the “Buchanan wing” also opposed the invasion of Iraq while the Journal-War Party wing howled, “Onto Baghdad!” ”Unpatriotic Conservatives,” we were called in a cover story by a neocon National Review for saying the war was unnecessary and unwise. Now, a dozen years after the “cakewalk” war, GOP candidates like Marco Rubio and Bush III are trying to figure out what it was all about, Alfie, and what they would have done, had they only known.

Our agenda in that decade was—stay out of wars that are not our business, economic patriotism, secure borders, and America first.

The foreign debt and de-industrialization of America, the trillion-dollar wars and the chaos of the Middle East, the shortened life span of the Party of Reagan, that’s your doing, fellas, not ours.

It wasn't just WMDs

Weapons of mass destruction? Is that why Bush invaded Iraq in 2003? Michael Kennedy points to some other possibilities at Chicago Boyz.