ISIS has grown enormously over the last four years. The standard line on the Left is that Donald Trump’s pre-inauguration words and now his actions are recruiting fodder for ISIS. That refrain of the Democrats is dubious – but if it holds any salt at all, then the Democrats are currently helping ISIS recruit.
President George W. Bush, at the end of his Presidency, warned America of the risk of withdrawing precipitously from Iraq. Nevertheless, the United States military forces, under the direction of then President Obama, quickly started a withdrawal from Iraq that was completed in 2011. Not coincidentally, by April of 2013, the Islamic State of Iraq had united with al-Nusra Front to form Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
At that time, ISIS was confined to the immediate area of Iraq and Syria. President Obama famously referred to ISIS nine months later in January of 2014 as the “JV team.” Just over a year later, however, according to ABC News, on “the second anniversary of the declaration of its Islamic ‘caliphate,’ or kingdom . . . the group has gone from obscurity . . . to the world’s most brutal terrorist network, not only responsible for thousands of deaths in the Middle East but also linked to hundreds more in dozens of terrorist plots in the West.”
During that growth period, Donald Trump was not responsible for American policy in any way and his views on the subject hardly known. Indeed, from its founding in 2013, the time of President’s remark that ISIS was the JV team, and for the rest of 2014, Trump was not a factor at all geopolitically.
Once the campaign for the Presidency got underway in earnest, the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, often said that Donald Trump’s rhetoric on terrorism was a recruiting tool for ISIS. When pressed on actual evidence of that recruitment strategy by ISIS, the Democrats were not able to produce it – but that didn’t stop them from making the accusations.
By the end of Obama’s second term, December of 2016, according to CNN, “the self-proclaimed Islamic State has conducted or inspired more than 140 terrorist attacks in 29 countries other than Iraq and Syria, where its carnage has taken a much deadlier toll. Those attacks have killed at least 2,043 people and injured thousands more.”
That is an enormous growth spurt by any stretch of the imagination. So much so that ISIS warranted and still warrants serious discussion as a Top 3 consideration as the most dangerous foreign policy challenge the World faces – with Russia and Iran being the other two.
Was all of the growth, from a JV team to Top 3 threat, all the fault of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric? Obviously not. Was his rhetoric responsible for any of the growth? Was it a recruiting tool for ISIS?
There is precious little factual data to support any of the conclusions pushed by the Democrats. It is more likely the World’s weak response to their threat, led from behind by President Obama, allowed for all of that growth.
It is also very important to note that, throughout all of history, tyrants have demonized external people or entities to justify taking away the rights of the people they subjugate – not because the danger is real but because they desperately need a bogey man. Hitler did that using the Jews, capitalists and communists. Stalin did that. Mao did that. Iran has done that about America for decades now – long before Trump was a factor on any radar.
The point is, even if Trump was used by tangentially ISIS, if Trump didn’t exist, they would have used something else to justify their actions – just as Iran has.
In short, Trump did not lead to the growth in ISIS because he was not a significant recruiting tool. HOWEVER, for the sake of argument, let’s assume the Democrats are right that Trump’s rhetoric was a factor in recruiting or that his Executive Order immigration suspension is now – like ISIS recently claimed.
So what was it that Trump said that was detrimental according to the Democrats?
The Democrats claimed Trump was painting too broad a brush when speaking about Muslims and Islamic terrorism to the point that Trump was essentially anti-Muslim. By being anti-Muslim, Trump was casting America as an enemy of Muslims everywhere.
Now the Democrats and the Left say that Trump’s immigration executive order is a “Muslim Ban.” Of course, it is not – it is directed at certain problematic countries that were originally designated by President Obama because dozens have been arrested from those countries. It is no more anti-Muslim than President Obama’s July 25, 2011 Executive Order that disproportionately impacted far more Muslim countries than Trump’s order.
The fine point of the matter is that the Democrats and the Left are grossly exaggerating the nature of the Trump Executive Order by calling it a Muslim Ban. By exaggerating that in such a vociferous fashion world-wide, the Democrats and the Left are casting America as an enemy of Muslims everywhere and ISIS has dutifully picked up on that.
In other words, the Democrats are helping ISIS recruit.
