Aftandilian in Al Jazeera on Trump and the Middle East
Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published an Op-Ed on United States President Donald Trump’s comments dealing with the Middle East in his State of the Union address.
Aftandilian’s article, entitled “Trump’s Mixed Messages on the Middle East,” was published in Al Jazeera on February 7, 2019.
From the text of the article:
Although PresidentDonald Trumpdid not spend a lot of time on the Middle Eastissues in his largely self-congratulatory State of the Union address before Congress on February 6, what he did say on these matters was a mix of positions reflecting isolationist strands of his “America first” approach on the one hand, and some neo-conservative positions on the other.
A large part of Trump’s strategy is to keep his political base happy in the hope that it will continue to stick with him through the 2020 elections. This means he has to fulfil, or show that he is fulfilling, his campaign promises from 2016.
His political base from 2016 included: white working-class Americans from rural areas and the industrial heartland who came to see the Iraq war of 2003 as a mistake and questioned why the US was spending so much blood and treasure in the Middle East; Christian evangelicals who not only espouse strong anti-abortion sentiments but are uncritically supportive ofIsrael; and Republican party foreign policy hawks who were adamantly opposed to former President Barack Obama for signing the Iran nuclear deal,pulling UStroopsout of Iraq and supposedly being weak against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and other terrorist threats against the US homeland.
Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999).