Washington – Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Wednesday his plan for combating Islamic State militants involves targeting not just the group’s fighters but also their families.
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“When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” Trump said on Fox News. “They care about their lives, don’t kid yourselves.”
Trump said if he were president, he would try to avoid civilian deaths in going after the militant group, but he said the Obama administration was “fighting a very politically correct war.”
Trump’s comments about the families of Islamic State fighters came a day after Lebanon released the ex-wife of the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and other jailed Islamists in an exchange with al Qaeda’s Syrian wing.
Saja al-Dulaimi, the ex-wife of Baghdadi, told Al Jazeera after her release that she wanted to return to Beirut and then leave for Turkey.
Trump leads the pack seeking the Republican nomination for the November 2016 presidential election. In a recent Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll of the Republican field, the real estate mogul received 29 percent of support of those polled.
Voters also said in polls that Trump was the best candidate to deal with terrorism. He has criticized President Barack Obama’s strategy for fighting the Islamic State group, saying on Wednesday that the president “doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“I would knock the hell out of ISIS,” Trump said.
This is a prime example of why Trump will be a bad president – he simply can’t relate to nuances of international law and war crimes. It will make him have bad instincts, even as the lawyers, etc. actually restrain him from doing such things.
Trump is painting a target on the backs of his own family members. Even if he believes it, why make it a public issue??
The only man, man enough to even speak the truth. To beat savages you have to become a savage. Was anybody crying over Dresden? Or cologne? Or Berlin? Or Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I don’t think so. The fact that people in this day and age and in this society are appalled at the suggestion, is the reason why we have mass murderers in this country.
“אמר רבי יהושע בן לוי: כל שהוא רחמן על אכזרים לסוף נעשה אכזר על רחמנים” (ילקוט שמעוני, פרק טו, סוף רמז קכא).
Right on, Mr. (future) president.