Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump sat down for an interview with ABC yesterday where he condescended Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and played back-seat driver to military operations in Iraq.
Trump sad he could teach the experts a thing or two about strategy which he learned from the "Army War College" that he never attended.
TRUMP: They wanted to get the ISIS leaders who they thought were in Mosul. Those people have all left. As soon as they heard they were going to be attacked, they left
STEPHANOPOULOS: The defense secretary says 35 of them have been taken out.
TRUMP: The resistance is much greater now because they knew about the attack. Why can't they win first and talk later? Why do they have to say 3 months before they attack 'we're going in?' So you can tell your military expert that I’ll sit down and I’ll teach him a couple of things.
It's highly doubtful that Trump could even find Mosul on a map.
According to officials and leaders, the campaign to retake Mosul, which is being fought by local Iraqi and Kurdish forces with the help of American advisers and special forces, may take months to complete. The operation has barely even begun and an operation of this scope is hardly concealable, so the idea that ISIS leaders have already fled the area because they were alerted to the attack, as Trump insists, is absurd. Trump has no fucking idea what he's talking about.
Neither do I for that matter. I can only base my interpretation of the situation on the word of analysts and defense officials who do know what they're talking about. Trump is not willing or capable of listening to others. Trump doesn't even listen to his own advisers and would probably overrule them as president.
Trump reminds me of another infamous fuhrer in that respect.
If you're interested in what's actually happening on the ground, this is a very deep guide.