The military expert Donald Trump previously said he could teach “a couple things” responded in kind Thursday, repeating his original claim to the New York Times that the Republican nominee “doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy.”
“I can’t wait to sit down with Mr. Trump and hear what he has to teach me about military strategy,” retired Col. Jeff McCausland’s statement, posted to the website of Dickinson College, where he is a visiting professor, begins.
“He never served in the military and never served the government,” it continues. “Mr. Trump also made it very clear that he had no understanding of the nuclear triad or nuclear strategy.”
Referencing Trump’s plan to “seize” old fields in Iraq, once one of the main sources of the Islamic State’s funding, McCausland writes that it “boggles the mind to imagine how many U.S. troops it would have taken to seize the oil in Iraq and how many U.S. casualties we would have suffered” in such an operation.
McCausland also takes aim at Trump’s frequent complaint that the Obama administration shouldn’t broadcast military plans ahead of time, including those pertaining to the current Iraqi military attack of ISIL-held Mosul.
“It is clearly the desire of the U.S. and Iraqi governments to eliminate collateral damage to the civilian population of Mosul. We do not want Mosul to look like Aleppo,” he writes. “[I]t’s impossible to mask the fact that you’re hiding thousands of troops in the desert outside Mosul as you prepare for the attack and secure bases in the area for logistical support.”
“I reassert my statement to The New York Times,” McCausland concludes. “Mr. Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy.”
