In the wake of the Orlando massacre, Donald Trump is quadrupling-down on his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim stance. The 2008 financial market crash? Immigrants did it. The failure of working class wages to keep up over the last 40 years? Blame immigrants. And of course, every incident of terror is the fault of specifically Muslim immigrants, even when it’s not. As the Washington Post has said:
Before the Orlando shooting, Beltway analysts speculated about how a terrorist attack might affect the presidential election. Now we know at least part of the answer: Mr. Trump would reveal himself more clearly than ever as a man unfit to lead.
But Trump didn’t restrict his ravings to Muslims living in the United States. He called for military action in Muslim nations. Citing unnamed military leaders, Trump gave his strategy to kill them there before they kill us here.
"We have generals who think we can win this thing so fast and so strong but we have to be furious for a short period of time and we're not doing it," he said.
Both fast and furious? Perhaps Trump’s secret, invisible military experts are suggesting that he drop in Vin Diesel and a small team of colorful renegades. However, real, live military experts don’t feel that lobbing muscle cars—or bombs—at Syria would stop incidents like the one in Orlando.
“I fundamentally disagree," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Mick Bednarek, who served as the chief U.S. military adviser in Iraq from 2013 to 2015. "The bottom line is [more bombing] has absolutely no bearing on individuals like Omar Mateen in Orlando, who obviously had some mental issues — like his absolute hatred of gays, lesbians and transgender community. Just wantonly increasing bombing against extremist radical groups in Iraq, Syria, etc. is not going to have a bearing on individuals in the United States and change their behavior.”
What’s the difference between Omar Mateen and someone who was a follower of the KKK or a militia group? Who he named in a phone call. Lone wolf killers want to feel like they’re part of something larger, so it’s common for them to claim association with some group. That doesn’t make it real, and it certainly shouldn’t shape our foreign policy.
On military matters, Donald Trump drew bipartisan WTFs.
Juan Zarate, a top terrorism adviser to then-President George W. Bush, also questioned Trump's logic.
… "it is hard though to make a causal link," added Zarate, the former deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism. "It's hard to say disruption [on the battlefield] would have mattered. The ideology is already in the ether and just needs to find the right host."
Mateen could have just as easily have claimed he was fighting for Xur and the Kodon Armada. Like Donald Trump, he was only conducting an international fight inside his head.
Let’s just make sure that Trump’s effects on military matters remain imaginary.