Very few will deny that President trump opened a regrettable era in the history of his country, and his choice of Ministers and policy does not stand up to scrutiny. Very few will disagree with the assertion that his decree prohibiting entry into the country to citizens of some Muslim countries are unjust, inhumane and possibly illegal. American judges don’t know what to do with the presidential decree.
The reason that is referenced by the President, is the need to protect the country from terrorists, and no one can deny its weight. And yet, it should be noted that trump is not as simple as it seems. Last week one of the presenters asked him, does he respect his Russian counterpart President Putin. “Yes,” replied trump, “I respect him”. “But he’s a killer,” said the journalist Trump. “There are many killers, do You think that our country is so innocent?”, responded trump. It was a remarkably honest statement of the American President. However, anxiety has caused immediate reaction of one of the Senator-Republican, criticized trump for what he suggested that Americans — whom he certainly considered respectable and peaceful people — can be compared to such monsters as the Russian. As the Senator noted, Americans and Russian are two completely different types of people.
The reaction of the Senator points to the basic problem of the USA. It reveals the great distance that separates well settled in life, rich and overwhelmingly white elite companies from the rest of the people. For the top of the external world is filled with people, only thinking about how to harm the peace-loving USA. As made clear by the officials when a ban on trump’s entry into the country immigrants from seven Islamic States, even young children with valid visas could be considered as terrorists. The white house approved a ban on the entry of five year old Iranian child, U.S. citizen, residing with his mother in Maryland. For four hours delayed at the airport, claiming that he “could pose a threat to security.” The white house also said: “to Proceed from the fact that someone solely because of their age and sex is not a threat, is quite wrong and reckless”.
So the United States — the bulwark of peace and democracy, constantly threatened by foreign terrorists? Russian murderers, and the Americans not? These patterns of thinking prevail everywhere in America, especially among white-skinned populations. Reports of the death of one or two Americans in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Syria closeup published in many American Newspapers and confirm the widespread opinion about the bloody terrorism. Of course, we can argue that cruel, senseless, reactionary, fanatical, ruthless and brutal terrorism exists in the world and especially in the Islamic world. And yet, what are the real threats to US security?
After watching television news, which show you how thousands of people with properly executed documents are not missing at airports for the sole reason that they came from seven prohibited countries, you feel not only outrage, but also confusion. The terrorist threat of the United States necessarily comes from abroad. We cannot deny the fact that after 11 September 2001, no American died from a terrorist attack committed by a citizen of one of these countries. Undeniable is also the fact that not a single person who has been refused entry or deported in accordance with the decree trump last week, was not considered a terrorist. In recent years, in the US there were several murders committed by foreigners, but the real killers in the USA are Americans themselves.
Often the killers are American teenagers. “Every day, the expert says, — seven children and adolescents in the United States die from gunshot wounds”, usually caused accidentally by other children and teenagers. The widest spread of weapons among the population is the highest in the world mortality. In America, the number shot in a day exceeds the annual target in the UK, and the total number of murders from firearms in the United States than in any other civilized country. There is no need to study endless and almost unbelievable statistics. Suffice it to say that the chances of an American being shot out of a gun 70 times higher than the French or the Russians. And this fact ought to give great food for thought for the aforementioned Senator. Of course, it is also true that the USA is not just a country, almost a continent, and any statistics on it is impressive. But the horror that inspires firearms, affects all segments of the population, especially when it comes to the police.
Theoretically the police in any country use weapons to defend themselves and protect citizens from criminals. In the US it’s a little different. In 2015 thousands of Americans — approximately three a day — were killed by cops. Similar figures were recorded from in previous years. Thus, we can calculate that every three years the American police kill more people than terrorists from al-Qaeda in that ill-fated day in 2001 in new York. The FBI classifies such killings as “justifiable”, that’s quite funny given the fact that the victims are mostly blacks, a third of them unarmed.
In the last 10 years for each victim at the hands of terrorism in the United States and in the world has more than thousands of victims of the use of firearms in the country. In figures it looks so: in 2004-2014 About 70 Americans were killed in the country in the attacks, and 300 thousand died as a result of armed violence. American citizens killing American citizens, and not visiting the Muslims.
Representatives of the U.S. government, meanwhile, stubbornly refuse to see the terrible facts of the flip side of the coin: the number of people in the Muslim world who die at the hands of Americans. As I mentioned recently, (EL MUNDO, August 2016), it is no exaggeration to say that the United States, under the guise of “freedom fighter” are the world’s most powerful instigator of death and violence. The magnitude of the mortality provoked by the United States, is truly incredible. Only public data on the dead during the us invasion of Iraq in 2003 that was a false statement about what this country has weapons of mass destruction exceed the figure of 250 thousand people.
In the last 10 years, the U.S. government regularly uses unmanned aircraft for attacks on alleged terrorist bases. Only in Pakistan over the years, American drones have destroyed 2,600 people who Americans call terrorists are obvious: many of the dead they did not appear. And how many have been killed by drones not only in Pakistan but also in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, the Islamic States, turned into a field of ongoing hostilities? Only in Syria, according to estimates, more than 11 thousand children were killed in the war, which was mainly conducted by the government of Syria, Russia and the United States. And Syria is among the countries where trump plans to ban the entry of immigrants. It is not the immigrants, he argues, they are terrorists. Let’s see what they think about the judges of the United States.
Henry Kamen (Henry Kamen), British historian, recently published a book, “the Emperor Charles. The life of king Caesar”(ed. Esfera de los Libros).
