Oil-well fires burn near the town of Qayyarah, Iraq, 2016. Photo: Planet Labs.This essay was originally published in e-flux journal no. 84 (September 2017) under the title ‘What We Are Fighting For’
On the campaign trail in 2015, Trump stood triumphantly at the podium in Fort Dodge, Iowa, describing how he would deal with ISIS in Iraq:
I would bomb the shit out of ’em! I would just bomb those suckers. And that’s right, I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up every single inch, there’d be nothing left. And you know what? You get Exxon to come in there and in two months—you ever see these guys, how good they are, the great oil companies? They’ll rebuild that sucker brand new, it’ll be beautiful. And I’d ring it, and I’d get the oil. [1]
