Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally, Friday, May 27, 2016 in Fresno, Calif.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally, Friday, May 27, 2016 in Fresno, Calif. Chris Carlson/AP

Trump Was For Invading Libya (and Iraq) Before He Was Against It

The presumptive Republican nominee tries to draw a contrast between himself and Hillary Clinton, but both of them supported U.S. involvement in both Libya and Iraq.

June 6 is the 72nd anniversary of D-Day. The general who oversaw that invasion, Dwight Eisenhower, was elected president in 1952—the last person in either party to win a nomination without holding elective office until Donald Trump. Now Trump is trying to follow in Ike’s footsteps by winning the presidency, too.

But whereas Eisenhower’s record of leading Americans into war vaulted him into the White House, Trump is trying to claim that he wouldn’t have led Americans to war in Libya and Iraq. The presumptive nominee skirmished with John Dickerson over whether or not he’d backed the U.S. intervention there during an appearance on Face the Nation on Sunday:

John Dickerson: Let me ask you about Libya. You have been highly critical of Libya and Hillary Clinton. You were also for military action to oust Qaddafi and military action to take care of the humanitarian situation in Libya. You supported that.

Donald Trump: When you say supported it, I supported Libya?

Dickerson: Yes, you supported the intervention in Libya.

Trump: I did? Where do you see that?

Dickerson then played video of Trump saying, “Now, we should go in. We should stop this guy, which would be very easy and very quick. We could do it surgically, stop him from doing it and save these lives.” Trump replied:

Trump: That’s a big difference from what we’re talking about.

Dickerson: But you were for intervention.

Trump tried to turn this into an argument about whether the aftermath of the intervention was handled well. (He also somewhat bafflingly boasted, “I made a lot of money with Qaddafi.”) You’d be hard-pressed to find people who would argue the aftermath was well-planned, but that’s not the question: Trump suggested that he had opposed the intervention from the start, and that turned out not to be true. The evidence shows he backed it. As Dickerson put it, “This is one of the things that confuses some people about your positions. You said you weren’t for intervention, but you were for intervention in Libya.”

It’s easy to see why Trump would want voters to believe he opposed the intervention in Libya. Not only did the maneuver turn out poorly—despite, or perhaps because, of Qaddafi’s quick toppling, the nation spiraled into civil war, with the violence killing four Americans in Benghazi in September 2012—but Hillary Clinton was a leading advocate for it, making it an alluring talking point to use against her. Needless to say, that’s a harder case to make if Trump backed the military action too.

Some conservatives—and some Bernie Sanders supporters, for that matter—have argued that there’s no real difference between Clinton and Trump. On many issues, that idea is tough to credit, but on foreign policy, Trump has actually tried to run to Clinton’s left. Yet he keeps getting snagged on evidence that he’s not that different.

For months, Trump claimed that he had opposed the Iraq war before it started, a decision that would have placed him a prescient minority—alongside Barack Obama, and notably apart from then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who voted to give the George W. Bush administration the right to pursue the war. Initially, he got away with that: Because he wasn’t a politician, there was no easily found record of his position at the time. But dogged work by BuzzFeed and others eventuallyturned up proof that Trump had voiced support for the invasion in 2002. (My colleague James Fallows memorably put it this way: “Trump. Is. Lying. About. Having. Publicly. Opposed. The. Iraq. War.”) To the frustration of BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski and his boss Ben Smith, Trump kept making the claim, and he kept getting away with it.

Now that Trump has cleared the field of Republicans, there’s more press attention (yes, it is possible) and scrutiny headed his way. Although few Republican presidential candidates were willing to full-throatedly back the Iraq war, they weren’t in a hurry to make support for it a major issue, given that the war was launched by a Republican president and backed by most of the GOP at the time. Although Dickerson didn’t ask about Iraq, other reporters have, and they’re pointing out when Trump isn’t telling the truth. James Fallows lays out how Trump tried to misrepresent his Iraq record to CNN’s Jake Tapper—and even made the easily debunked claim that he’d never been asked to prove that he was opposed to the war.

Conor Friedersdorf has argued that the insular echo-chamber of the American elite makes wars of choice—say, Iraq or Libya—more likely. Pressure to act creates a feedback loop that affects policymakers, while the costs are displaced to other people and other times. Part of Trump’s pitch to voters is that he stands apart from the Beltway elite, and is not beholden to the same mistaken conventional wisdom that binds its members. These two interventions, however, show how Clinton and Trump both came to the same conclusions about hitting Baghdad and Tripoli: The wars would be short, good for America, and good for the world. In both cases, they were wrong, and the major contrast between them is that Clinton was better versed in the specifics of both cases when she made her calls.

Eight years ago, Barack Obama’s early and vocal opposition to the war in Iraq helped him secure his party’s nomination, and to a lesser extent, the presidency. With Hillary Clinton poised to clinch the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, voters will be left choosing his replacement between two major-party candidates who backed both the war in Iraq and the intervention in Libya.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.