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Trump's
Presidency-by-tweet, Bad for Muslims, Great for Isis
Compared to the
platitudinous, snide, divisive, war-mongering rant the
world received from Trump, George W Bush was a visionary
By Robert
Fisk
January 27,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "The
Independent" - A bad day for
Muslims, I’d call it. The only mention they got in the
inaugural tweet was pure Hollywood, and very dangerous.
“Radical Islamic terrorism we will eradicate completely
from the face of the earth”. Shorn of its Biblical
reference – the face of the earth comes from Genesis,
does it not? – it was the biggest threat Trump could
offer his people.
Quite apart from the fact that he can’t eradicate
terrorism without looking at why it flourishes
(something Donald Trump showed he had no interest in,
for this was the most nationalist, selfish inaugural in
US history), his 20-minute commercial for Trumpism is
likely to be the finest rallying cry the cultists of
Isis have received since they started chopping off
heads, blowing up monuments and destroying the beliefs
of their co-religionists.
When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room
for prejudice. We will bring back our dreams. Protect
our borders from the ravages of other countries. Yes,
all this and more.
And what “ravages” would they be, I wonder? The Middle
East got not a whimper in this tweet-fest, save for that
one belligerent “eradication”. Indeed, Trump plans to
“completely” eradicate “radical Islamic terrorism”
without the slightest indication of how this ambitious
project might be completed.
But we can guess. Just look at previous presidents at
their inaugurals. Back in 1957, Eisenhower told
Americans that “only in respecting the hopes and
cultures of others will we practise the equality of all
nations”. Take a look at George W Bush – when we thought
he represented the worst kind of presidential monster
America could produce – who at his second inaugural said
that “the survival of liberty in our land increasingly
depends on the success of liberty in other lands”. The
best peace in our world, he added, “is the expansion of
freedom in all the world”. Bush even mentioned the
Koran.
Compared to the platitudinous, snide, divisive,
war-mongering rant the world received from Trump, George
W was a visionary.
No-one expected Trump to go along with Obama’s
high-class inaugural street cred about seeking “a new
way forward” with the Muslim world “based on mutual
interest and mutual respect”. After Islam, Trump went
for crimes, gangs and drugs – “American carnage”, he
called it – and the need to “protect our borders from
the ravages of other countries”.
Quite a lot of nations in the Middle Eastern region, in
which Isis leapt out at us, would also like to protect
their borders from foreign invasion by the US – Iraq and
Afghanistan come to mind – and from the “carnage” of
unmanned drones and special forces operations and
massive arms shipments to states whose citizens flock to
the Isis colours: Saudi Arabia pops up here, although we
can be sure Trump has not the slightest intention of
interfering in the Kingdom’s affairs.
But maybe “defending other nation’s borders while
refusing to defend our own” was intended to frighten the
Gulf potentates who are Trump’s natural friends rather
than Nato. “From this day forward” – the nearest, I
suppose, to Kennedy’s “Let the word go forth” – “it’s
going to be only… America first.” This was a far cry
from the same Kennedy’s call for a struggle against “the
common enemies of man” (tyranny, poverty, disease, war).
All Trump could talk about was American poverty – the
other three ‘enemies’ did not cross his lips as he
addressed the people of the richest country on earth.
Outsiders can’t begrudge a president who wants to heed
the call of a people who believe they have been
marginalised – especially by the elite and privileged
few, although we all know that elitism and privilege are
the hallmarks of Trump’s own proposed new cabinet. But
there was a lack of grace, of eloquence, of charity, of
compassion for anyone outside America that marked the
inaugural speech of the 45th president. And if you
strung out the quotes – almost every single one – each
would make a perfect tweet. Is that the way the man
thinks? This was a commercial break with a sporting
victory: America will start winning again!
No wonder that, in these next 24 hours, media editors
are going to be fighting over the best inaugural
soundbites. Linguists should put this stuff through a
semantics machine. We will get the job done! That all
changes right here – and right now! The forgotten men
and women of our country will be forgotten no longer!
When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room
for prejudice! I will never, ever let you down! We will
bring back our dreams! We will shine for everyone to
follow! We must think big and think even bigger! The
time for empty talk is over! You will never be ignored
again! Trump even thought his country was standing at
the heart of “a new millenium”, 16 years after it began.
It’s easy to say that something was getting loose here.
Does America no longer exist in a world in which others
desire justice and human rights, two qualities which
Trump totally ignored? Is America’s only war with
“radical Islamic terrorism”? And to win this particular
victory “completely”, how will he treat the Muslims of
America unless, when wounded, they “bleed the same red
blood of patriots”?
But fear not. The world’s media will be giving this
wretched man the benefit of their democratic doubt.
Politicians will whinge and whine at Trump’s
vindictiveness (Michael Gove set the standard a few days
ago) and Theresa May has already shown us how she’ll
slide away from Palestine in the interests of the new US
administration. The Arab states themselves – wait for it
– will be among the most fawning of the new president’s
acolytes. Israel doesn’t have to bother.
I can do no better, perhaps, than quote the great
Israeli philosopher/activist/writer/patriot/leftist
iconoclast Uri Avnery, a 93-year-old veteran of Israel’s
first war, who said a few hours before the inauguration
of Donald Trump that “he will be an entertainer
president… the question is, do we really want the most
powerful man in the world to be an entertainer? Or an
overblown egomaniac? A man who knows nothing and
believes that he can solve everything?”
Avnery, already hard of hearing when I last saw him in
Tel Aviv, recalled going to school as a little boy in
Nazi Germany. The inauguration in Washington was a
“Historic Day,” he wrote. “I don’t like Historic Days. I
remember such a day when young men with festive torches
and arcane symbols on their arms were parading through
Berlin.”
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House. |
