Zubair K Khan

According to Spengler, who always lambasted current US policies, American General Michael Hayden, who ran the National Security Agency and later the Central Intelligence Agency in the George W. Bush administration was perhaps the most prominent signatory of a letter from fifty former US national security officials  who served in Republican administrations, declaring that Donald Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” required of a US president and, if elected, “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”Trump responded to this allegation in following words, “The names on this letter are the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place.” That is exactly correct. He might have added that they are incapable of learning from their mistakes and doomed to repeat them if given the opportunity.

According to numerous analysis, Trump is vulgar, ill-informed and poorly spoken. He has no foreign policy credentials and a disturbing inclination to give credit to Russia’s Vladimir Putin where it isn’t due. But he has one thing that above stated fifty former US national security officials lack, and that is healthy common sense. That is what propelled him to the Republican nomination. The choice, sadly, lies between an unlearned interloper with common sense and an Establishment whose policy response is predictable as the emergence of a gum ball from a supermarket machine after a quarter is cranked in. They are mediocre ideologues incapable of learning from past failures, clinging to their careers because they are unsuited for honest work. Trump may not know much but he is capable of learning. Three administrations of Bush father and son have produced a monotone Establishment of functional foreign policy morons. One can’t find many prominent national security officials to oppose the signatories of the anti-Trump letter because a whole generation of functionaries has been bred from the same stable. America will have to learn security and foreign policy from scratch.

Did goof ups in US security and foreign policies really create a global mess? Yes of course these did.  And not only Trump rather many others insiders support this view point. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and now Turkey all are glaring examples of  these goof ups. Everyone in the world who has inside knowledge of events leading to various turmoils  know America deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place. Regrettably majority of American political leaders are incapable of learning from their mistakes and doomed to repeat them if given the opportunity. This naked but hard truth revealed by Trump is paving his way to success. However if he fails, the expectations to reform the planet as peaceful place likely to doom.