How The Donald Plans To Trump Radical Islam

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump delivered a major foreign policy speech yesterday (August 15) outlining the ways he plans to combat the threat of radical Islam – an ideology he calls hateful and oppressive of women, gays, children, and non-believers.

But before that, he described how the Obama-Clinton foreign policy unleashed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and destabilised the Middle East. He pointed out that before Obama took office, Libya was stable, Syria under control, Egypt ruled by a secular president and Iraq witnessing a reduction in violence, but all these countries are now in turmoil and chaos.

He alleged that Hillary Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state between 2009-2013, deserved a lot of blame for the violent turmoil in the Middle East. He questioned her temperament, moral character, mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS.

Trump called the Obama-Clinton doctrine a complete failure and put forward his own to defeat radical Islamic terrorism. Here’s how he plans to do it:

1) No regime changes

He claims that the current US strategy of nation-building and regime change is a failure and has created a vacuum that allows terrorists to grow and thrive. To prove good judgement he points towards his staunch opposition against Iraq war from the start and his equally strong advice against Obama pulling out of the Iraq recklessly.

Trump said that Obama-Clinton should not have tried to establish democratic rule in Libya or overthrow Mubarak in Egypt.

“If I become president, the era of nation-building will be ended,” he declared.

2) New alliances

Trump said that any country that shares the goal of halting the spread of radical Islam will be America’s ally. He vowed to work with all such countries, including Russia, to pursue joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy ISIS, international cooperation to cut-off their funding, expanded intelligence sharing and cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting.

Trump declared that he will not just focus on destroying ISIS alone, but also seek to decimate other terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, and starve funding for Iran-backed Hamas and Hizbollah.

3) Ideological warfare

If elected president, Trump would not only use military, cyber and financial warfare in dismantling Islamic terrorism, ideological warfare would also be a weapon in his arsenal.

He reminded that the US won the Cold War, in part, by exposing the evils of Communism and the virtues of free markets. Similarly, he says, his administration would speak out against the oppression of women, gays, people of different faith and the horrible practice of honour killings.

4) New immigration policy

A Trump administration would introduce new rules on immigration that would admit only those to the US who share American values. He bats for introduction of an ideological screening test akin to the one the US had during the Cold War where membership in a totalitarian or Communist party kept an alien from admission as an immigrant.

Trump said that his administration would prepare a list of regions where adequate screening cannot take place and will stop processing visas from those areas. Additionally, to perform adequate screening, he said that the US cannot continue with current policy where it admits about 100,000 permanent immigrants from the Middle East every year apart from hundreds of thousands of temporary workers and visitors from the same region.

5) New commission on radical Islam

One of the first acts of President Trump would be to establish a commission on radical Islam whose mandate will be to identify and explain to the American public the core convictions and beliefs of radical Islam, to identify the warning signs of radicalisation, and to expose the networks in our society that support it.

He plans to include reformist voices from the Muslim community in the commission which he hopes would work with his administration.

Trump’s proposed commission will help develop new protocols for local police officers, federal investigators and immigration officials.

President Trump will not close down the Guantanamo Bay prison and place a renewed focus on human intelligence and capturing high-valued targets to gain information that would help dismantle terrorist organisations.

Trump said that every federal investigator and prosecutor in the country will work with a clear mission of stripping out the support networks of radical Islam in the US.

Striking a note very different from his usual divisive campaign rhetoric, Trump acknowledged the need for a bipartisan and international consensus to defeat radical Islam and said that only a renewed spirit of Americanism can help heal the divisions in America.

“It will do so by emphasising what we have in common – not what pulls us apart,” he added.