‘Delusional, unstable and dangerous’

It is significant that there have been demonstrations at airports and in cities across the US against Donald Trump’s decree banning citizens from seven mainly Muslim countries from entering the US for months until “extreme vetting” procedures decide who may be admitted.

US citizens are protesting because they understand Trump’s ban, sprung on the world late last Friday, could be unconstitutional and has violated the rule of law, to which the US claims it is bound.

Furthermore, decent US citizens are enraged by the treatment Muslims from the seven countries have received.

Immigration agents detained, interrogated, handcuffed and deported Muslim arrivals, although federal judges in several states issued orders blocking Trump’s decree.

This amounts to the refusal by Homeland Security and immigration officials to respect the traditional separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial authorities.

According to immigration lawyers, Trump violated the immigration act of 1965, which bans discrimination against people from specific countries.

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, told the BBC that the ban could become permanent for citizens from countries which are at odds with the US, like Syria and Iran, or destabilised like Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, because the governments of these countries could not provide the kind of favourable documentation Washington trusts and demands.

One week into his term of office, Trump has created a national crisis and a potential international calamity that could very well boost the standing of Daesh and Al Qaeda in Muslim countries, and alienate Muslim residents in non-Muslim countries.

Instead of taking note of the angry response in the US and abroad, the Trump White House declared the ban a “massive success story”.

Although citizens of the seven countries mentioned above were targeted by the ban, the citizen of only one, Somali Abdul Razai Ali Artan, was involved in an attack in the US.

He wounded but did not kill fellow students with a knife at Ohio State University on November 28, last year.

Since September 11, 2001, 123 people have been killed in the US by naturalised or home-grown Muslim radicals, as compared to 230,000 slain by gangs, drug dealers, spouses, white supremacists, psychopaths, drunks and others, according to sociology Professor Charles Kurzman, who teaches at the University of North Carolina.

However, “Muslim terrorism” has become a chief bogey for US citizens due to the build-up given to it by Trump during his election campaign and brief residence in the White House.

Nothing is said about his administration’s support for deregulation of gun ownership and use, the gun being the weapon of choice of most murderers.

Before he took office, Trump apologists claimed he would cease his hyperbolic speechifying and become presidential by seriously and solemnly taking on his official role, and would behave as a responsible leader.

So far, he has done neither. Instead, he began his presidency as he conducted his campaign. 

He dubbed his inauguration a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion”, using words a Latin American dictator might employ.

These very words exposed him as delusional and unstable. 

And, he began to rule by decree, marginalising the legislature and ignoring the judiciary and the law.

He claimed, falsely, that 1-1.5 million people had gathered in Washington to celebrate his swearing in, but a team of Scottish experts put the number at 160-200,000.

Trump wanted to say that he had drawn more than the 800,000 attending former president Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009. 

A look at the photos taken of the two events show the area was packed for Obama, while large areas were without people during Trump’s inauguration.

On the day after, 470,000 turned up for the Women’s March against Trump. 

Trump was trumped by both Obama and the Women’s March.

When confronted with the hard fact that his rival, Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton, won 2.9 million votes more than him, Trump claimed, wrongly, that millions of “illegal” voters robbed him of a majority. 

Among these “illegals” he counted immigrants and those registered to vote in more than one place.

Voter fraud in the US is minimal and rare.

Trump has also made dangerous statements. 

During his address to the Central Intelligence Agency on the day after his inauguration, Trump said he was sorry the US did not “take” Iraqi oil after the 2003 US occupation. 

“To the victor belong the spoils,” he said, adding, “... maybe we’ll have another chance.”

The Iraqi government reacted angrily to this unapologetically imperialist pronouncement. Such action counts as a war crime.

By making such a statement, Trump has doubly endangered US military personnel fighting with the Iraqi army in the battles against Daesh.

The Iraqi Popular Mobilisation forces, a coalition of largely anti-US Shiite militias, called for the deportation of all US citizens from the country.

This would, if applied to the 5,000 US troops bolstering the Iraqi army’s fight against Daesh, undermine the campaign to defeat this movement and Al Qaeda.

He has repeatedly pledged to shift the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv — where the other 85 embassies are located — risking widespread protests in Palestine and the Arab and Muslim worlds.

He also appointed bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman to the post of US ambassador to Israel, although he is an ardent supporter of Israeli colonisation of the West Bank.

When speaking about US foreign policies, Trump exposes just how deluded he is: “The world is a mess. The world is as angry as it gets.”

Therefore, he does not think he could stir up more anger than is current in this part of the world.

This is where he becomes a very dangerous man: his remarks and deeds provide radicals with recruiting tools and ammunition for violent campaigns against the US and the West.