You are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

0
1

[–] Kenn1 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Let me first thank Steven Gern for his service to his country. They are the real American heroes, the real patriots; but, unfortunately, they are also victims of agenda-driven politicians from both sides of the American political divide. With all due respect, Steven Gern does not get it and I don’t blame him, because, like the Iraqis who would kill him, he is a victim of political propaganda from his own side.

Okay, let me start by doing this: Let’s reverse roles here. Let’s say Iraq is the United States and the United States is Iraq, both with all the powers and influence they presently have, including the history between both countries. So, in that situation, Steve Gern is an Iraqi soldier stationed in Minnesota (in the circumstances he’s placed today in iraq). Now, after a new Iraq leader has issued such a ban against America and six other countries, what answer do you think the Americans will give to the Iraqi soldier in his position if that same conversation had ensued over the matter? Are they going to tell him that if he walks into town, he would be welcome with flowers after his country had bombed the shit out of the civilian population in the name of fighting terrorism in America and after the leader that is making this order has proposed they steal American oil? And this, after all the shit that has gone on between both countries since the First Gulf War? Do you think they would happily tell him he’s safe when the Americans who worked with him (Steven Germ, the Iraqi) are being hunted by the terrorists and their sympathisers precisely because they see them as traitors only for them to be betrayed by the same side they are working for risking the wrath of their people? I’m sure everyone reading this gets the point I’m making….

You see, it’s easy to see things from a personal point of view of survival and use that as a basis to reach a conclusion far beyond you if you are an American soldier doing your duty in Iraq. Steven Gern asked why he should allow them into the United States if they think he won’t survive outside on the streets after this Trump announcement, yet this is purely something he sees and feels as an American on the ground in Iraq, an American who is just doing his job as a soldier. But if he was informed enough, he would have realised that he was asking the wrong question, or, at least, he should have continued the questioning to a logical end. For instance, the next question he should have asked, to which I suspect he knows the answer is: “If this ban had not been made, would I have been safe walking around town?” The answer would have been an overwhelming yes because that was exactly what he was doing before the ban! Yeah, before the ban, he was safe!

The real lesson that he isn’t taking away there for emotional and personal reasons is that the ban endangers US servicemen and women and citizens outside the United States - in Iraq and elsewhere - and it also endangers US allies working with them in these places. How many Americans have been killed by Iraqi immigrants or refugees in the US all these years? I mean, he’s there saying their intention would be to kill Americans, implying that this should be the reason they shouldn’t allow them in (a kind of justification for the ban), yet he fails to appreciate the REALITY, which is that they are there already and they aren’t killing Americans! So, why would he feel they would kill them now if allowed in? Of course, he feels that way because of the ban!

So, discerning people know where the problem is. It is with Trump and his pigheadedness. Obama was vetting these people closely and quietly keeping Americans safe from immigrants and refugees without fuss. Now, Trump comes with his loud, big bad wolf style and upsets the whole world and thinks that’s leadership. His first military engagement in Yemen is a failure already. So, why all the noise?

Again, Mr Gern, I salute you. I know you made this video as a genuine patriot raising questions, but this is beyond the narrow confines in which you considered it. This is Trump not thinking through things before acting. This is poor leadership, a leadership that endangers Americans unnecessarily. My humble advice is that you shouldn’t dwell on what they told you the locals will do if you go out; those are the mobs and they cannot be trusted to be reasonable, especially when sozzled on bad history and corrosive propaganda. What you need to think about is the fact that you and the Iraqi soldiers and civilians working with you are in the same boat. The locals will kill them as much as they will kill you because they are working with you. America must always ensure that its policies protect the young men she’s sending in harm’s way and those they work with wherever they go. That should be the message to Donald Trump. Jackboot diplomacy is so Middle Ages, he needs to calm down, think better and act more strategically.

One of your most revered presidents, Theodore Roosevelt in a letter to Henry L. Sprague on January 26th, 1900 advised thus: “Speak softly and carry and big stick; you will go far”. He said it’s a West African proverb and there certainly are many African sayings that mirror that. That phrase became the main fabric of what became known as Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick Diplomacy, a style he described as “the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis”. That style worked very well for him and America when he became president and continued to work very well for America until George W. Bush came in with his neocons to pursue the Iraqi misadventure. Now, Mr Trump is taking the opposite of that advice to a whole new level. There is no doubt that Roosevelt would have told him: “You won’t go far”.