THERE was a man in the BBC’s Question Time audience and he had a question: 'If British soldiers were on the ground in Ukraine and were fired at by the Russians, would that be the start of World War Three?'
You don’t usually hear it put as bluntly as that, but there are many who’ll say 'The world’s in a terrible state, isn’t it?' and you nod in agreement and know exactly what they mean. A war in Ukraine, ghastly massacre in Gaza, Trump in the White House talking about Ukraine having started the war and how he’d be keen to clear the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and build a Middle East Riviera.
You’ll even hear talk of Trump finding a way to stay in office after this four-year term is up. We are, it would seem, in a uniquely unstable and unjust world.
Well, maybe. But let’s look back to previous presidencies and let’s see what soiled linen they had.
We might start with John F. Kennedy, who was a relentless womaniser and came within a fingernail of starting a nuclear war. Lyndon Baines Johnson sent thousands of young Americans to their death in Vietnam, where Americans killed well over a million Vietnamese. Ronnie Reagan was responsible for the deaths of 325,000 people – he sponsored Contra terrorism in Nicaragua, supported repression in El Salvador and Honduras, he bombed El Salvador and invaded Grenada. Oh, and he was guilty of chemical warfare, spraying the herbicide glyphosate and killing an unknown number of Colombians and Ecuadorians.
Richard Nixon, of course, was a crook who was ejected from the office of President.
In 1989, George HW Bush was elected. He presided over the invasion of Panama and launched the Gulf War, which resulted in the deaths of some 200,000 Iraqis.
In 1992 Bill Clinton left the presidential campaign trail so he could be back in Arkansas for the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a lobotomised man. Clinton was anxious not to appear soft on capital punishment. In recent months, he’s said “Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded. They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself."
George W Bush led the invasion of Iraq in which US military deaths totalled 4,228, while the overall total of those who died in Iraq is estimated to be around 655,000.
Barack Obama is famous for ordering drone strikes against those seen as terrorists. He started just a few days after election and continued during his presidency. The number of deaths he caused is shrouded in secrecy.
Joe Biden? He has funded the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
You can see where I’m going with this. We tend to break American presidents into the group who are not Donald Trump (relatively good) and the one who is Donald Trump (very bad). Certainly Trump uses wild language – ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, so he can convert Gaza into a Middle East Riviera, open admiration of dictators, pardon for the mob who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, among them sexual predators, boasts about grabbing women by their private parts, and on and on.
There is no doubt that Trump is an abomination, a graceless, strutting bully. But it’s not as if his predecessors were whiter than white. In fact, if you look at his record of avoiding foreign wars, Trump’s record is comparatively benign.
Many of us detest Donald J Trump. But maybe that has as much to do with how he sounds and looks, rather than his record for killing innocent people around the world.
