Trump Pledges Foreign Policy Accountability, Rankling DC
Compared to recent policy-infused speeches, Donald Trump’s big foreign-policy address in North Carolina was strangely devoid of, well, policy. This was vintage Trump. Trump mentioned his advisers: “They always say, ‘Sir, please stick to policy. Don’t get personal,’ and yet they’re getting personal all night long, these people. Do I still have to stick to policy?”
In a way, he is correct. You cannot debate policy proposals if only one side is talking about policy. No one knows where Kamala Harris stands on foreign policy, although she gave, in her own words, the final word in Joe Biden’s ears regarding the Afghanistan withdrawal. (We hope J.D. Vance is taking notes on how the situation room works during momentous decisions.) But other than that, no one knows anything about a future Kamala Harris presidency, and her campaign wants to keep it that way, focusing instead on “Joy,” a pastiche, as your humble editor wrote, of an earlier, better campaign. The one thing she talked about, implementing price-controls, was so disastrous a proposal that her allies in the media had to bury the news and deal the campaign a rhetorical slap on the wrist.
So Trump didn’t have to mention anything specific in North Carolina, other than the classics—the Ukraine war will stop the moment Trump wins—Israel was attacked by Hamas but there was peace in the ME with Trump in power—China has a base in Afghanistan, which is the worst humiliation in American history. You get the idea.
But he did mention something, unusual, that no one hears from any politician, much less a Republican. Trump attacked the military brass. After mentioning how the military has turned woke—“Our warriors should be focused on defeating America’s enemies, not figuring out their genders, by that time, hopefully they know their genders”—Trump added that he’d demand the resignations of “every single senior military official” involved in the planning of the Afghanistan withdrawal, which resulted in 13 American deaths.
It has always been my pet project to figure out which politician is interested in changing the national-security bureaucracy of this country—not superficial changes, but a wholesale restructuring. A true populist would have summarily fired the brass, who had three years to withdraw but slow-rolled it to the point of catastrophe, on camera, and then asked the military for a court-martial of those whose planning was responsible for the incompetence and loss of life.
For a man famous for firing people on camera, if he wins, this will be a true test of his character.
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This article was published by The American Conservative and is reproduced with permission.
