"Malicious, counterproductive and inept," is how Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson characterized President Trump's recent travel directive. Formerly a policy adviser at the Heritage Foundation, and for five years a speechwriter for George W. Bush, Gerson is hardly a "bleeding-heart liberal." No doubt there are Republicans and other conservatives who support the president's order, but criticism from both the left and right has deservedly reached vitriolic levels.
Gerson further described the Trump administration's travel ban as "the half-baked work of amateurs who know little about security, little about immigration law and nothing about compassion." "Every U.S. president since World War II has disagreed with the stunted and self-defeating view of the country now held by Trump," he criticizes. He ends his essay with, "When Donald Trump speaks on foreign policy, tyrants rest easier and dissidents and refugees lose hope."
This seems an apt summary of our situation. It would be bad enough if the President and his cabinet were merely inexperienced tinkerers, but the current administration are not so harmless as that. They have real goals and objectives, and suffer from the delusion that they know how to achieve them. This delusion runs so deep that the administration aren't even aware of their need to check with staffers who actually understand how immigration, national security, or the global economy work. Having chosen, on day one, to make enemies of the press, they have no way to explain themselves to the public. Having chosen similarly to make enemies of multiple intelligence agencies and replace knowledgeable staffers with sycophants, there is no expertise on hand to guide them.
I fear for America, and now I fear America.
No comments:
Post a Comment