President Donald Trump’s executive order Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States is so egregiously unconstitutional (as several federal judges have already partially ruled) and so illogical in its application that it only makes sense when viewed from the perspective of President Trump’s not-so-secret intent. In the next few months, President Trump intends to escalate the war with ISIS in a such an extreme manner that unwittingly, he is likely to start World War III.
The escalation of war is so horrific that any sane and compassionate human being should naturally want to reject the idea. In order to prevent the catastrophic escalation of a world war, I ask you stand in Donald Trump’s shoes and discover the horrible truth for yourself. Work backward and connect the dots between Trump’s alarming executive actions. You’ll discover why Donald Trump has been in such a chaotic rush in his first week in office.
If you intend to escalate a global war with ISIS in a matter of months, and if you are Donald Trump, you would likely issue the very same Executive Orders and Presidential Memoranda as President Trump from the Oval Office.
Analysis from the Cato Institute tells you that in the last 40 years, foreign nationals from the seven banned countries you have chosen for your expanded war zone (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) have killed zero Americans on U.S. soil. Zero. The main reason to fear foreign nationals from these countries is you have already decided to do something so horrific in these countries that you believe you will turn long-time friends of America into internal enemies.
From this perspective, your draconian move to initially block legal, permanent residents (green card holders) from returning to their homes and block immigrants with visas who have already been extreme vetted for two to three years from entering into this country makes sense.
You know full well that these people have done nothing in the past to bar them from entry to the United States. Instead, you fear what they might do as a result of the expanded war you intend to bring to their native countries.
This is similar to the thinking behind President Roosevelt’s Executive Order which resulted in the round-up of people of Japanese ancestry (two-thirds of which were American citizens) into internment camps. Note the timing. In February of 1942, that Executive Order came just two months before the United States began its first firebombing raids on Tokyo that would eventually kill approximately 200,000 people and displace 1 million from Tokyo alone.
If you intend to escalate your war, you also need a plan for how to conduct it. And if you intend to be particularly vicious in your escalation you would ask for guidance on how to rewrite U.S. laws, so you are no longer committing crimes against United Nations humanitarian law.
Indeed, Paragraph ii of the Trump’s Presidential Memorandum, Plan to Defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which he signed before television cameras just a day after closing the border to seven Middle East countries states that “Within 30 days, a preliminary draft of the Plan to defeat ISIS shall be submitted to the President by the Secretary of Defense.” And paragraph (B) asks for “recommended changes to any United States rules of engagement and other United States policy restrictions that exceed the requirements of international law regarding the use of force against ISIS.”
This paragraph is particularly chilling because during the campaign Donald Trump repeatedly vowed to “bomb the shit out of ’em” and as reported by Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, Trump asked three times during a one-hour security briefing, “If we have them [nuclear weapons], why can’t we use them?”
If you had already decided on a course of action so monstrous you would not want to entertain further council from either the Director of National Intelligence or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — who advise working through capable and motivated local forces in order to insure long-term stability in the region — you would simply reshuffle the National Security Council with another Presidential Memorandum. Trump did this the same day he asked for his war plan with his Presidential Memorandum Organization of the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council.
This move promotes White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon to a seat on the National Security Council — and relegates the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to a sub-committee to attend only when requested.
Politicizing the National Security Council and removing vital military or intelligence guidance is so bizarre that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice simply called the move “stone cold crazy.” In a sarcastic tweet, she also added: "Who needs military advice or intel to make policy on ISIL, Syria, Afghanistan, DPRK?”
If you want to escalate a war, you would also want to demonize your enemy and whip up sentiment for your war. So on Sunday, you tweet as President Trump did: “Christians in the Middle-East have been executed in large numbers. We cannot allow this horror to continue.”
You might even speak to the CIA, as President Trump did during his first week, and brazenly say, “We should have kept the oil. But okay. Maybe you’ll have another chance.”
That President Trump has already decided to escalate war is undeniable. He didn’t just campaign on escalating the war with ISIS to look like a tough-talker; he’s following through on it. His executive actions, his Sunday tweet, and the no-impulse-control quip at the CIA add up to one horrific conclusion: in a matter of months, Authoritarian Donald wants to command his world war.
Never mind that the war with ISIS does not require Donald Trump’s escalation.
The war with ISIS is already largely won. To be clear, even by conservative estimates coalition forces are expected retake Mosul, the last stronghold of ISIS in Iraq, by this summer. The patient process of training and supporting local Iraqi and Kurdish forces to defeat ISIS has resulted in a local military that can finally maintain stability in the region.
In interview after interview with coalition commanders and actual boots on the ground, Atlantic reporter, Kevin Baron, found: “Without fail, they were eager to tell how their strategy of training and fighting ‘by, with, and through’ local forces is working, and not just in the Middle East but all over the world in places Americans rarely hear about, like Yemen, Africa, and Southeast Asia.”
In short, cooperation with the Islamic world is working, and only cooperation with Muslim nations can defeat what at its essence is a uniquely Muslim problem.
Compassionate and sane people know that Donald Trump’s Muslim ban is not only wrong but counterproductive to defeating ISIS. Daily, ISIS recruiting tweets declare that Donald Trump’s order is a “blessed ban” from the “best caller to Islam” which proves the “United States’ deep hatred for Islam.” In a remarkable show of courage and patriotism, dozens of working State Department diplomats have signed a dissent cable that concludes that Trump’s ban “will not prevent terror attacks” and will “immediately sour relations with these seven countries, and as well as much of the Muslim world.”
In one week, Donald Trump has shown he has no regard for our friends and allies, for the rule of law, or for the religious freedom which may very well be the greatest of all American values. In short, he has shown his chaotic leadership to be a threat to American values that have built our great Republic.
As a Congressman, President Gerald Ford said this about impeachment: “What, then, is an impeachable offense? The only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office...”
The power of America resides with the American people. At this moment in history, we must look into our hearts and decide who we want to be. We can come together as a people and insist our elected Congressional Representatives and Senators remove Donald Trump from power through the legal process of impeachment.
If you look closely at his Executive Actions, Donald Trump is telling you precisely where he wants to lead. That road ends in an escalated world war.
Now it’s our move, America. I’m betting on us.