Trump and Clinton both claim they’re the better candidate for stopping terrorism.
Let’s fact-check their statements and their records …
Clinton
Hillary Clinton is largely responsible for regime change in Libya (for oil and gold?), the war in Syria (to help Israel?), violence in Honduras, and the entire concept of “humanitarian war”.
Clinton is largely responsible for the West’s backing of Al Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups, to act as the tip of the spear in fomenting regime change throughout the Middle East.
And she supports Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and other despotic regimes that support terrorism.
Clinton’s policies have greatly increased terrorism. Specifically, Clinton has for many years – as the president’s wife, Secretary of State, and now presidential candidate – been championing some of the largest causes of terrorism, including: overthrowing moderates, arming crazies, supporting dictators who support terrorists, bombing and invading when negotiated peace is possible, and imperial conquests for Arab oil.
Trump
Trump has said some unusually blunt things about terrorism …
For example, he said that the wars in the Middle East have made us less safe:
We’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that, frankly, if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems — our airports and all the other problems we have — we would have been a lot better off, I can tell you that right now.
We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East — we’ve done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away — and for what? It’s not like we had victory. It’s a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized, a total and complete mess. I wish we had the 4 trillion dollars or 5 trillion dollars. I wish it were spent right here in the United States on schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart!
He’s right. Security experts – including both conservatives and liberals – agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increases terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
Trump has also said that the U.S. would be safer if Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi were still in power, and if Syria’s Assad was stronger. He’s correct: all of the countries we’ve “regime changed” have descended into brutal chaos … allowing ISIS and other terrorists to spread.
And Trump has said that we should not back “humanitarian wars”, but only wars to defend our country from imminent threat (pages 141-142).
Trump’s claim that we should temporary close our borders to Muslims obviously rubs Democrats the wrong way.
But anyone who thinks we should let in anyone who wants to come here from the Middle East is naive and dangerous. After all, the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security says that the outmoded U.S. immigration system – and the authorities’ lack of progress in automating their systems – poses a security risk to the U.S. And ISIS has publicly announced that they’re infiltrating immigrant groups to enter the West.
At the least, we need much stricter background checks and screening procedures. Do we need to temporarily close the borders to implement them? Probably not … but until we do tighten screening procedures, we’re leaving ourselves open to a very dangerous situation, with more San Bernadinos (and Paris and Brussels) a real possibility.
Trump’s call for more waterboarding and torture is extremely misguided.
Specifically, top terrorism and interrogation experts agree that torture creates more terrorists. Indeed, the leaders of ISIS were motivated by U.S. torture.
Torture will make us less safe, and create more terrorists.