President Trump Tells Fox, There Is Military-Industrial Complex and It Loves Perpetual War
May 20, 2019 (EIRNS)—In his broad-ranging interview aired last night on Fox News, President Trump had some very pointed remarks to make about the existence of a military-industrial complex in the U.S. and its desire to have unending wars.
In the context of discussing policy toward Iran, Trump emphasized that if he had to take on Iran, it would be “economically.... I just don’t want them to have nuclear weapons,” he told interviewer Steve Hilton, “and they can’t be threatening us....”
He elaborated: “With all of everything that’s going on, and I’m not one that believes—you know, I’m not somebody that wants to go in to war, because war hurts economies, war kills people, most importantly—by far most importantly.”
In reponse to Hilton’s asking if he could “reassure people you’re not looking for some conflict in Iran,” Trump replied,
“Well, I’m the one that talks about these wars that are 19 years, and people are just there—and don’t kid yourself, you do have a military-industrial complex. They do like war. You know, in Syria, with the caliphate, so I wipe out 100 percent of the caliphate. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to have these crazy people who run around blowing up stores and blowing up things—these are seriously ill people. I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, they’re wiped,’ you know, ISIS. But, I wiped out 100 percent of the caliphate. I say, ‘I want to bring our troops back home.’ The place went crazy. You have people here in Washington, they never want to leave.”
Continuing: “I say, ‘You know what I’ll do, I’ll leave a couple hundred soldiers behind,’ but if it was up to them, they’d bring thousands of soldiers in. Someday people will explain it, but you do have a group, and they call it the military-industrial complex. They never want to leave. They always want to fight.”
Trump explained, “No. I don’t want to fight, but you do have situations like Iran. You can’t let them have nuclear weapons. You just can’t let that happen.”
