Trump – Know Thy Terrorists (#201)

One of the most frustrating things about listening to Donald J. Trump after a terrorist attack, or a shooting incident, or him addressing global terrorism for that matter, is he does not know what he is talking about as he uses the incident only from the perspective of appealing to his political base. Now, if he was just an ‘Ordinary Joe’, nobody would care, as his opinions would be his own business and matter little. But when it is the President of the United States, with the power to set policies, and command the attention and actions of the most powerful nation and its army, law enforcement agencies, along with the ability to shape national and international opinion, his opinions even if nonsensical, matter ‘hugely’. Like a child, Trump doesn’t realize the extent of his ignorance and the impact of his actions, and being self absorbed, he doesn’t really care, and that’s dangerous.

There are those of us who consider it important that the global conversation about such a vital topic as international terrorism, be at least somewhat honest and truthful, and inform humanity without the security services that the politicians rely on for safety, accurately; that has not been happening. Trump has driven the conversation on national and international terrorism through general ignorance, narrow political expediency, shameless and blatant falsehoods. To a World trying to deal with the scourge of global terrorism that is definitely not helpful; facts, about the nature and motivations of the various terrorist groups, matter. In all the things Trump he gets wrong, here are some that really matter:

Most Islamic terrorists are influenced by Saudi led, Sunni, Wahhabi influenced extremism, and NOT Iran led Shia Islam. Secondly, the most active and extensive terror networks are Sunni and not Shia, including Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

There are no prominent global Iran based (Shia) global terror networks like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The Iranian Revolutionary National Guards, which the U.S. is thinking of labelling a terrorist group, is in actuality an elite Iran State Military Force, not a terror group per se (something like Pakistan’s super influential Army). Iran does support Hamas and Hezbollah, and Assad of Syria, but those are political parties (elected, or rulers like Assad) even though labelled as terrorist groups.  

To Trump, there is only Iran as a terror sponsoring regime in the World, more or less, because one hears nothing from him, or from his Administration, about the fact that the two most damaging and influential global terrorist groups, Al-Qaeda and ISIS, who America has been battling going on to the larger part of two decades, are both Sunni, the Sect of Islam led by Saudi Arabia. But of course Saudi is portrayed as the friend of the United States, and not as the leader of the majority Sunni Muslims, and certainly not as the country whose extremist Wahhabi influence drives most of the radical Islamic terror that Trump loves to talk about, inaccurately, as it so happens. Even the Muslim countries he has slapped travels bans on are not the countries from which most of the radicalized Muslim terrorists, who have mounted attacks on Americans within America, came from. Most of them came from those countries that are touted more as ‘friends of America’, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Central Asia, and even adversary Russia.  

Iranian based Shia terrorists have never attacked Americans in America, while almost all Islamic terror attacks on American soil have been carried out by Sunni (Al Qaeda, ISIS influenced) terrorists, including the latest New York attack.

This latest incident of the Uzbek-American that mowed down people in New York with a rented pickup truck, gave Trump a chance to display his worst side, once again.

After a nanosecond of trying to act Presidential, he immediately reverted back to his narcissistic tendencies of using the tragedy to garner political points by bashing the Democrats, and picking on Chuck Schumer for the ‘Diversity Visa Program’ under which the Uzbek immigrant came to the U.S. in 2010. Trump of course didn’t mention that Congress had already tried to change the Diversity Visa Program, and that Chuck Schumer had voted for the change, but the Republican Senate had defeated it. These self serving distorted statements mislead the very people whose President he is supposed to be, and lowers the credibility of America in the World. His personal credibility of course was always wanting, and after his 7 months in Office, is at an all time low.

After the New York attack, Trump gave full throat to his bellicosity: calling the apprehended suspect ‘a monster, animal, deranged, loser, savages’; someone who should be sent to ‘Guantanamo Bay’; as an ‘enemy combatant’; someone that should get the ‘death penalty’. Apart from being totally ‘un-Presidential’ in uttering these statements, his loathing for these ‘savages’ that kill innocent American civilians does not extend to American white males that kill far more innocent Americans, and therefore shows his bias, and of course neglects the real problem of terrorism in America, ubiquitous gun violence.  

Additionally, under the United States legal system, these statements of Trump’s are outside the norms of the American political and judicial system, and bordering on illegal, when legal ‘due process’, guaranteed to a suspect, any suspect, is considered. Trump himself subverts the American judicial process and calls the American judicial system ‘a laughing stock – a joke’; entirely oblivious to the fact that as the President of the United States, if he has no respect for the legal system and its due process, then why would anyone else? Getting most of it all wrong and subverting the American democratic, judicial and law enforcement institutions, and re-stocking the swamp, has been Trump’s singular achievement thus far, and an encouragement to all the dangerous elements.  

The President of the United States, acting and speaking like a minor mafia boss may fire up his base, but in the main is poorly viewed in majority of America, and the World. Also, the President should be the paragon of proper, acceptable behaviour, especially after a National & International violent incident, and not be the one that wilfully undermines the American legal system, speaks boorishly, and acts like one of the ‘Goodfellas’, especially, when everyone knows the toughest physical scrape this tough talking, tough-guy President has ever been in, is a bad day at golf, maybe.  

He missed his chance at proving his courage, toughness and valour in Vietnam, because of lame clerical draft dodging excuses, among which was a bone spur, in a foot he doesn’t remember.  

Much as this President and other Americans don’t like it, Sayfullo Saipov is an American (immigrant since 2010) like all the rest of non-native Americans.  

The fact that he is Muslim, and from Central Asia, and acted as a terrorist, doesn’t make him any less American, nationality-wise than all the other American killers going around shooting or otherwise killing other Americans. A President should know and acknowledge that, otherwise all Americans of immigrant background, going back generations, become non-Americans if they commit a horrific enough crime (after all why stop at 2010).

An ‘enemy combatant’ should only be a foreign operative that has never been in America as an immigrant or a citizen, and is a true foreigner fighting the American armed forces. Otherwise, how does this crime, the New York Attack, in which of the 8 dead, 6 were foreigners (5 Argentinean and 1 Belgian), rank higher than the shooting in Las Vegas (as combat) where another American, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and injured 546? How does the far superior effectiveness of Stephen Paddock in killing Americans not qualify him to be a ‘super enemy combatant’? Surely in terms of ‘threat to the United States’ and the extent of death and injury caused to America, Stephen Paddock makes Sayfullo Saipov appear as a rank amateur.  

And as if on cue, a day after the New York Attack, Scott Ostrem (47, American, male, white) walked calmly into a Colorado Walmart and shot dead 3 Americans (2 men and a woman) randomly, before driving off; underscoring a fact of terrorism regarding America, local American terrorists are exponentially more of a threat to American lives, on a daily basis, than foreign ones are. Ordinary Americans shooting other Americans pose a far greater risk to the ‘American people’ than foreign terrorists do, and the numbers prove it many times over.    

Is he, Scott Ostrem, also an enemy combatant? Does the cause of the killer really matter to the ones killed? Or is all this rhetoric merely politics, on the one hand to further an agenda to make the American public fearful and paranoid about the threat of foreign terrorists, which allows for greater boosts in massive defence budgets, and, on the other hand, to keep the real threat of endless killings of Americans by other Americans in the background, so no one has to deal with that intractable problem to which there seem to be no solutions, and which also involves the ‘untouchable’ topic of gun violence, and unlimited gun ownership in America.   

By the way, Trump has been mainly silent on the killings in Colorado, and has done nothing to try and prevent such regular killings, or the Las Vegas style massacre from happening again. These internal acts of terror don’t get the vitriol from Trump that the New York or other killings get when Muslim Americans are involved; even when they kill far less Americans, are far less frequent, and far less in numbers.

Magnifying foreign terror - or those Americans of foreign origin, to the level of terrifying ‘bogey men’ - or trying to diminutize them by naming/shaming them, either way, does not address the serious problem of radicalization of Americans or of extremist Islam in general. And ignoring regular killings of Americans by (white) Americans and sweeping these far more frequent occurrences under the ever expanding ‘it’s not the time to talk about it’ rug, even though these homemade killers are an exponentially greater threat to the American public, is classic Trump (and Republican for that matter).

Global terrorism has morphed over the past ½ century from political terrorists of Italy, Japan, Germany, Ireland, Latin & South America, to the current dominant political & Islamic terrorists that overshadow all others. But that does not mean these terrorists are uniform or in the same ideological version of Islam, or with same motivations or agendas.  

Currently, the overwhelming number of ‘Islamic terrorists’ are from the Sunni version of Islam, influenced by Al-Qaeda and ISIS as predominate terror groups. Other groups, and there are many, such as the ones from Pakistan, or other African Muslim countries, are also mostly Sunni Muslims. Iran’s State sponsored terrorism is different, in aim and agenda (mostly political rather than ideological), and is mostly carried out by its intelligence agencies – very much like covert operations of the CIA, and the FSB of Russia, and is much, much smaller in scope (comparatively speaking) than the globe spanning ambitions of an Al-Qaeda, or a ‘Caliphate’ dreaming ISIS. Yet Trump only talks about Iran as the terror sponsoring country of the World, attaching even Sunni Al- Qaeda and ISIS to Shia Iran even though they most obviously are not, and would be more accurately linked to Saudi Arabia. But that is classic Trump, always wrong, always misinforming, and always misinformed.