In Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) accused Hillary Clinton of failing to keep enough U.S. soldiers in Iraq to maintain stability in the war-torn nation.
“Iraq has been overrun by ISIS because Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate a status of forces agreement,” Pence said. “And we removed all our troops from Iraq.”
Yet the 2011 deadline for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq was negotiated and signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. President Obama, and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, inherited that plan.
Notably, Clinton warned in March 2008 that too quick a withdrawal of troops could be problematic, telling the Council on Foreign Relations, that “we cannot allow Iraq to become a breeding ground and safe haven for terrorists,” and that her plan “will not mean retreating from fighting terrorism in Iraq.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump was among the most vocal supporters at the time for immediate troop withdrawal. In 2006, Trump told CNBC that the U.S. should simply declare “Victory! Tremendous!” and withdraw from Iraq immediately, and “let them have their civil war.”
“I would like to see President Bush get us out of Iraq, which is a total mess, a total catastrophe, and it’s not going to get any better. It’s only going to get worse. It’s a mess,” he said. “What you have to do is get out of Iraq. You can do it nicely. You can do it slowly. You can do it radically.”
The following year, Trump said on CNN that the way to get U.S troops out of Iraq was simple: “You know how they get out? They get out. That’s how they get out. Declare victory and leave, because I’ll tell you, this country is just going to get further bogged down…So, I mean, this is a total catastrophe and you might as well get out now, because you just are wasting time.”
He continued to urge this in 2008 telling the United Kingdom’s GQ, “First, I’d get out of Iraq right now.” He told the magazine that he wished Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the GOP presidential nominee at the time, “would promise to get us out of Iraq faster,” and called himself the “greatest hawk who ever lived, a far greater hawk even than Bush.”
As late as 2011, Trump told CNN, “Well, Iraq, we shouldn’t have been there and I’d get them out real fast. Afghanistan is not the bigger problem. The bigger problem is Pakistan.”