DONALD TRUMP [should be] DISQUALIFIED

-snip-

He is an idiot and handled that interview poorly, but I can't fault him on his underlying thoughts on the issue; no elected official should actively turn down votes from ANYONE, no matter who they are or how dumb their beliefs. Telling someone not to vote goes counter to what the country was founded on in the first place, and it's not how someone gets elected to begin with. The correct response would be that he condemns their actions, but they are free to vote for whomever they choose, he is not affiliated with them and thus has no control over what they do.

pineappleing around half-assing a war, then really pineappleing up by withdrawing, up until very recently when we actually started getting somewhat serious again (the effects are very evident in how the oil prices have fluctuated)

It's been more an "occupation" than a "war", for the past 15 years. We are trying to liberate people who don't want to be liberated for the most part; some do, in some areas, and it would be fine to focus on those areas for resettlement and occupation, but for the rest, a "war" would have us turning their cities into glass craters. Force, force APPLIED CORRECTLY, is the only thing that gets through to extremists. There will be civilian casualties, it's inevitable, and I understand why people would be mad about that; there are two lines of reasoning, and I can't with good conscience follow either. One is that, by not overthrowing their corrupt religious groups, the civilians are as much to blame as the terrorists are. The other is that they are too afraid to do anything. I can't follow the former because of the latter, and I can't follow the latter because they should at least get -some- form of backbone after tens of thousands of years, every human has a breaking point and they should have reached theirs long ago. The answer isn't nuking entire cities, though it would be be quite satisfying to do so and simply wipe our hands of this whole ridiculous issue, but it certainly isn't to fight defensively against them, either. Defensive is what they are best at fighting against, because they have no fear of rushing in to their deaths, it's what the terrorist organizations want to do, what they -don't- want to happen is for them to get raided in the middle of the night and die "without honor" or whatever bullpomegranate they feed themselves.

While it is incredibly callous, the best deterrent would be to start fighting in ways where they are forced to break their own religion's rules in order to engage; I don't know enough about any of it to know how that might be done, but it will discourage them from continuing very quickly, out of fear for their eternal souls which is the only thing they are currently fighting for. We shouldn't need to control people by using fear, but I feel like we as a planet have given that goddamn desert every pineappleing opportunity to shape up and the time for them to solve their own problems in a peaceful, civil manner is well past. Ignoring them is only a viable option when they are not attacking us constantly; if they would just go back to fighting amongst themselves and killing their own people instead of ours, then sure, we could leave them alone again.