Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson reminded viewers how long American troops have been deployed abroad, including in Afghanistan, Iraq and Germany, which he indicated was a form of “mindless interventionism.”
Carlson explained how there was bipartisan support of the situation with one exception, President Donald Trump.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Here’s a fact that will make you blink. We are now approaching the 19th anniversary of the arrival of American troops in Afghanistan. They’re still there, despite repeated promises from politicians on both sides they are not going anywhere for the meantime, and Americans are still dying there.
That’s true in Iraq, too. We’ve had troops in Iraq for 17 years. Why are they there? No one knows why they’re there. At least no one will say so out loud with any clarity.
Many thousands of American servicemen are deployed in many dozens of countries around the world and have been for generations. Now, in some cases, there may very well be a good reason they are there. In many other cases though, we just don’t talk about it. You’re not allowed to.
In Washington, mindless interventionism is very much a bipartisan project. Both parties support it.
Just this summer, Republicans and Democrats reached a rare moment of unity. They joined together to demand that we keep thousands of American troops in Germany where they’ve been for 75 years. Why should they stay another 75? Well, presumably, to keep the Soviet Union from invading Hamburg.
Maybe there’s another reason. No one mentioned what that reason might be.
The more troops we send overseas, the better. That is one thing virtually everyone in Washington agrees on, except Donald Trump.
Trump, whatever you think of him does not agree. He does not believe that and he said so for the last five years. Trump has been talking relentlessly about bringing the troops home from countries around the world, and maybe more than any other single reason, talk like that makes official Washington hate Donald Trump.
Last night, the White House announced that we are finally bringing home many American soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, and you would think there would be widespread celebration. That means families united; Americans out of harm’s way.
But very few in Washington are celebrating. The Press Corps, including some people who should know better, are still busy telling you how much Donald Trump hates the troops and wants them to die. The guy who is bringing them home. Add that to the irony file which is bulging.
So what exactly is going on here? Well, one clue comes from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, a woman called Laura Cooper. Cooper testified before Congress during the impeachment proceedings last year. And during those proceedings, she said that Pentagon officials began receiving, quote, “phone calls from industry,” in other words, calls from private companies that produce and supply weapons and military hardware to our military after the White House put a hold on high price military aid to Ukraine.
So weapons manufacturers wanted more weapons flowing into Ukraine because they wanted to make money from the sale of these weapons. It’s not complicated. And they knew they could pressure the Pentagon to override a decision by the democratically elected President of the United States. That’s what they did.
This happens a lot, and everyone in Washington knows it.
On Labor Day, the President finally said this out loud. He called out the defense industry for the first time in decades. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Biden shipped away our jobs, threw open our borders and sent our youth to fight in these crazy endless wars, and it’s one of the reasons the military — I’m not saying the military is in love with me, the soldiers are — the top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So there’s a lot of truth in that, and the President of the United States would know, and precisely because a lot of what Trump said is true, Donald Trump was not allowed to say it out loud. Democrats in the media were enraged that he said that.
Nearly half of senior Defense Department officials are linked with military contractors. No one ever says that out loud. And if you do, would you hate the troops?
What is going on here? You might think it’s purely partisan, that this dishonesty is a way to get rid of Trump and install Joe Biden and his handlers, and there’s no doubt that that’s part of what’s going on.
But there’s something bigger. Democrats and some Republicans, by the way, are priming the public for a revival of interventionism if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are elected.
If they make it to the White House, Biden and Harris are planning a new war, this one in the far away and strategically irrelevant nation of Syria. They’re not even trying to hide that, and they haven’t been for a long time.
Back in 2018, we were told we need to intervene in Syria immediately because Bashar Al Assad, the leader of that country used chemical weapons against his own people. Every channel told you that.
This show noted correctly, but there wasn’t actually any evidence that had happened. Despite what they were telling you, there was a lot of lying going on, and that’s never been proven by the way, despite what they say. But the left didn’t even ask questions. They swallowed the whole thing whole the first day. Watch the hysterics about it on MSNBC.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: If Vladimir Putin — if — if — if Vladimir Putin masterminded the last week in Syria, he has gotten everything he could have asked for.
Do a small chemical attack. Nothing — nothing like the big ones you’ve done in the past. And then Donald Trump can fire some missiles at Syria. That will do no real damage. And then the American news media will change the subject from Russian influence and the Trump campaign and the Trump transition and the Trump White House.
It’s perfect.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, it’s perfect. This is lunacy. Who cares how much of Syria Vladimir Putin controls. Good luck with it.
Rational people who cared about the United States realized that Syria was a classic quagmire and there was no obvious advantage for us, the U.S., in committing large numbers of troops there. We argued at the time that a foreign war staged on behalf of the so-called Syrian rebels, many of them in fact, Islamic extremists who hate our country was unwise. It was obviously unwise.
In the end, the President settled on firing some rockets into Syria. It was a very short story. But this enraged official Washington, bureaucratic tapeworms like John Bolton were furious. Bolton declared that the absence of the total all-out war with massive American troop commitment was a quote, “personal crisis.” Later, the President said we are pulling entirely out of Syria. He memorably called Syria a land of sand and death.
The Syrian Civil War is still ongoing, by the way and for war-porn purveyors like John Bolton and other liberals, it is still an opportunity. At a fundraiser this summer, Joe Biden declared that the President’s approach to Syria is not enough. Crippling, unprecedented sanctions are not enough, Biden said, we need to escalate in Syria.
Now, you’ve seen this logic before, we saw it in Iraq. That was bipartisan. Joe Biden supported the Iraq War. He doesn’t want to talk about it now.
When asked about it by a veteran, he used the tragic death of his son from cancer as a shield from the question. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am an Air Force veteran here with an Army veteran. We are just wondering why we should vote for someone who voted for a war and enabled a war that killed thousands of our brothers and sister. My friends are dead because of your policies.
JOE BIDEN (D), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: So my son who was in Iraq, okay?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am not going after your son.
BIDEN: You better not.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am not. I am not going after your son. You’re disqualified, sir. Disqualified.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So this moment is bewildering to people who haven’t followed the shifts in American politics over the last 30 years. Liberals used to say they were against war. Give peace a chance, remember that?
Now, Joe Biden’s unquestioning support for wars, wars that don’t help this country at all, is one of his chief qualifications as a Democratic nominee. In May, Biden’s foreign policy adviser, Tony Blinken confirmed that a Joe Biden administration would be eager to get the United States into a war in Syria. Blinken described American troops in Syria that would be Americans risking their lives as a form of quote, “leverage.” Right.
Blinken vowed that Joe Biden will return to Syria in force if he wins in November.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TONY BLINKEN, FORMER DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: And to the extent the United States had any remaining leverage in Syria to try to effectuate some more positive outcome. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has more or less torn that up, too. Pulling out entirely in Syria has taken away significant leverage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Leverage for what? How does this help us? Nobody ever answers the simplest of all questions, the most profound and the only question that matters. Blinken added that it is, quote, “Virtually impossible for him to imagine a Biden administration normalizing relations with Assad’s government.” Again, he didn’t even address how sanctioning Syria helps the United States because that’s not the point. It is never the point.
Last night, John Kerry made the case in MSNBC that no one loves the troops more than John Kerry does. Of course, the Obama administration may have lied about its plans to withdraw from Afghanistan, it didn’t. Of course, the Obama administration turned the nation of Libya into a hellscape of civil war and slavery. But trust me, says John Kerry, I love the troops. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KERRY, FORMER UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: We have a President who is not protecting our troops, not protecting the interests of the United States of America. These young men and women are extraordinary in today’s generation. They serve willingly. They’re volunteers and they deserve certainly the respect of the Commander-in-Chief, if not every single American.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, okay. So John Kerry respects our troops so much, but he would like to send them to countries you can’t find on a map, put them in places where they may die for purposes that have nothing to do with our national security, or the advancement of American interests only to support crumbling postwar international institutions that everyone knows is a joke and are going away.
That’s John Kerry. He respects our troops.
It was just last month that Kerry who again, unlike Trump cares about the truth, and the troops took the stage at the Democratic National Convention and longed for the days with hundreds of thousands of our soldiers died in World War II. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KERRY: The only thing exceptional about the incoherent Trump foreign policy is that it has made our nation more isolated than ever before.
On June 6, 1944, young Americans gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy to liberate the world from tyranny. Out of the ashes of that war, we made peace and rebuilt the world that was and remains exceptional.
It is the opposite of everything Donald Trump stands for.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, that was the golden books version of World War II, cliche piled upon cliche upon cliche. Mindless. It’s propaganda. Democratic voters are starting to believe it. One poll shows that among people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, just 26 percent now support withdrawing troops from Syria. Pollsters didn’t ask why they should stay, but almost no Democrats are for pulling them out.
By contrast, nearly 60 percent oppose pulling out. Trump voters overwhelmingly support withdrawing from Syria. They must hate the troops, wanting them home instead of suffering for years in some remote country that has no connection to the United States. What is going on here exactly?
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.