US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Sunday that the Middle East would be more stable if dictators such as Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were still in power in Libya and Iraq.
Trump pointed to these two countries to argue against current efforts to drive Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad out of power.
“You can make the case if you look at Libya, look at what we did there, it’s a mess,” Trump said on NBC.
When asked by NBC’s Chuck Todd if the Middle East would be more stable with Gaddafi and Saddam in power, Trump replied, “of course it would be”.
Trump, who leads Republican public opinion polls for the presidential vote in the November 2016 election, has said he supports Russian efforts to fight Daesh militants, even though Russia has backed Al-Assad.
Trump said in remarks broadcasted by ABC’s This Week that he would not establish a no-fly zone over Syria, as suggested by several other candidates, including Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
“I think what I want to do is I want to sit back and see what happens,” Trump said, before suggesting that the Soviet Union’s war in the 1980s against Afghan Mujahideen rebels “destroyed” the Communist bloc.
“Now they’re going into Syria, there are so many traps, there are so many problems. When I heard they were going in to fight ISIS, I said: ‘great, let them,’” the billionaire real estate mogul told the show.
Russia began conducting airstrikes last week in Syria against Daesh and other extremist groups.
But Western countries have said the strikes are targeting moderate rebel groups and are intended merely to bolster Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, an ally of Russia.
When asked about the ongoing migration crisis sparked by the fighting in Syria and Iraq, Trump reiterated previous comments that he would send back the refugees the United States has promised to take in, claiming they likely included Daesh fighters.
He said he “saw the migration” and observed that most of those fleeing were “strong men”, although This Week’s host, George Stephanopoulos noted that half the refugees are believed to be children.
“We don’t know where they’re coming from; we don’t know who they are. They could be [Daesh]. It could be the great Trojan Horse,” Trump said.
Trump added that the United States has “screwed up the Middle East so badly, breaking up Iraq, we have so destabilised the Middle East”.
Remarking on the migrant issue, Trump said: “If I win the presidency, they’re going out. We are not going to take responsibility.”