FEATURING DR. STEPHEN ZUNES – President Donald Trump this week compared himself to Dwight D. Eisenhower, a critic of the American “military industrial complex,” casting himself as an anti-war leader who was unpopular with the generals but loved by troops. Trump, who appears to be losing the military vote to his rival Joe Biden, has been attempting to do damage control to his reelection campaign after a damning article in The Atlantic exposed his denigrating remarks toward fallen US soldiers during a 2018 visit to Paris. In fact, under Trump’s Presidency, top ranking officials have hailed from the weapons manufacturing industry and Trump has overseen the escalation of an air war in Afghanistan—the longest official war in US history. 

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies. He also serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. He is also an associate editor of Peace Review.