US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is using the fight against terrorism as a ploy to get elected, and his foreign policy is simply "a thinly veiled return to gunboat diplomacy and unbridled US imperialism," says Professor Dennis Etler, a political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs.
Etler, a professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday while commenting on a statement by Trump in which he accused President Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton of founding the Daesh terrorist group in the Middle East region.
"In his presidential campaign Republican Party nominee Donald J. Trump is first and foremost a US politician. That means you cannot believe or trust a word he says. His rhetoric is meant to do one thing and one thing alone, discredit his opponent and inflate his own credentials," Professor Etler said.
"Anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows that Daesh is a creation of US imperialism, in collaboration with the Zionist regime and the Takfiri House of Saud," he stated. "For Trump to blame its existence solely on Obama and Clinton is disingenuous at best," he added.
The analyst said the "foundation for both al-Qaeda and Daesh can be traced back to the Carter administration and has been augmented ever since by successive US administrations."
"Trump is merely trying to lay blame on his political opponents, not telling the truth about how the US and its allies have trained, funded and supported terrorists throughout the world, long before 9/11 and ever since," Professor Etler said.
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