People risk their lives to help us in the Middle East. Many fight alongside our troops. Just translating for us or driving one of us around gets people marked for death.
These allies -- these friends, these heroes -- are now barred from entering the United States if they come from countries where we need their help the most. The week-old executive order banning travelers from hotbeds of jihad grants no exception for them.
The very first person detained by this executive order, according to Foreign Affairs magazine, risked his life for us. "It was not a positive message sent to interpreters, translators, and contractors supporting the U.S. military in combat zones when the first person detained under (President Donald) Trump's order was a former translator entering the United States under the Special Immigrant Visa program, which rewards those who have risked life and limb working for our nation."
If you think I'm laying things on too thick, don't take my word for it. Look up the article on this issue from the properly non-liberal Wall Street Journal. It has a big picture of the Pentagon over it on the Journal's web page. The people in that building were scrambling this week to undo this.
Turn to the Air Force Times if even the Journal is too "liberal" or "mainstream." Iraqi military pilots training in the United States were also caught on this tar baby born of paranoia.
I'm only emphasizing the heroes caught in this ban because they are the very best -- the unanswerable -- example of the bad faith this ban displays. If these heroes have not earned our trust, who can?
We need to improve the vetting process, defenders of this order say. It's not based on anti-Muslim prejudice, they say. Problems can be fixed, they say.
No one will ever invent a better vetting process than volunteering to help us under great risk of getting killed. Yet even that was not enough. Even that did not lift the taint of suspicion of any Muslim that this order smears upon the people of seven nations. What chance under what process would a mere legal resident or fleeing refugee ever have?
Someone wearing our uniform will not die today because a Muslim hero helped. Yet we slammed our door in those helpers' faces. Five thousand American ground troops are in Iraq. Some are in the front lines at the battle of Mosul right now. They are fighting for and in a country that found out it made the ban list through news reports.
No, this is not good policy marred by bad execution. We clamped down such a ban without even a passing thought for people like these. Even Muslims on our side in the war against terror are broad-brushed as "them." Monday, Iraqi lawmakers approved a ban on U.S. nationals entering their country. I do not expect the government to go through with it. Iraq needs us. What we need to realize is that we also need them. Even if we did not, we should not be treacherous.
A child shining the boots of a U.S. serviceman in any of these countries risks more to help defend the United States than I ever did, or anyone else living here except active-duty military, veterans and their families.
The "experts" say this ban will help our worst enemies. Terrorists will use this as propaganda, we are told. That is true and has been said before. Here is the new thing: This propaganda will be true. The best propaganda is. We do not care about the lives of those we use. We do not value Muslim life. Oh, we can "fix" this. We can change policy. But we can never undo the fact that we, as a nation, had to be reminded, prodded and taken to court to undo a dishonorable thing. We might not even undo it. We have not done that yet.
The devil tells the truth when it suits his purpose. What we have done suits the purpose well.
Commentary on 02/04/2017