World leaders & media will soon simply ignore Trump tweets & US’ global standing will totally disappear. Horrors in London & Manchester make clear Trump anti-terror “strategy” – centered on Saudi & other Sunni Arab states – is complete fraud. Those regimes either can’t or won’t control terror committed in name of Sunni political Islam. ISIS and its followers hate Iran – who Trump blamed for global Islamist terror – almost as much as Israel and the West. Equally bogus is Trump’s injection of US domestic gun control issue into problems of other countries. He’s right that terror is not about choice of weapons – but about politics. Which is exactly why his ignorant sputterings about Islam, as London mayor Sadiq Khan correctly points out, only encourage Muslim alienation from the West: “He’s playing into the hands of extremists.” Other Americans tried to compensate for Trump’s destructive foolishness: Bush top Europe adviser says he only undercuts key relationship for US. “America is safer when we rally our friends and allies against the bad guys rather than pick [ nonsensical ] fights with the good guys.” As for Muslim immigration, sadly, perpetrators all seem to be long-time residents of UK – which only underscores the fundamentally political nature of the terror problem – and how almost everything Trump does just makes the situation worse. Here, Khan earlier this year, at a service at Westminster Abbey after attack on Westminster Bridge.
On one level, President Trump reacted to Saturday night’s terrorist attack in London much as his predecessors might have.
He expressed solidarity and telephoned Britain’s prime minister to offer condolences. “WE ARE WITH YOU,” he wrote to Britons.
But even as the investigation into the attack was getting underway,
Trump wasted little time in using the episode to defend his hotly disputed travel ban on visitors from certain predominantly Muslim countries
and to criticize the judges who have blocked it.
And by Sunday morning, he decided to go after the mayor of London as not being tough enough on terrorism.
Along the way, he
- mischaracterized the mayor’s position,
- renewed a trans-Atlantic feud stretching back a year, and
- widened his rift with US’ traditional European allies further.
And he set off a chain reaction in the news media world,
triggering partisan reactions that illustrated just how polarized both the US and world have become about the uninhibited, Twitter-obsessed president.
Trump’s penchant for picking fights is well established by now,
but it continues to confound and exasperate foreign leaders who are not accustomed to such rough-and-tumble interactions with American presidents.
The niceties of international diplomacy have never had such a reality-show flavor to them in the modern era,
but Trump has thrilled his nationalist base with his “America First” approach,
and all the complaints from overseas only seem to embolden him.
The latest contretemps came when Trump heaped scorn on Mayor Sadiq Khan of London.
“At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump either misunderstood what Khan had said or distorted it.
During an interview shown on the BBC, the mayor said he was “appalled and furious that these cowardly terrorists would target” innocent civilians
and vowed that “we will never let them win, nor will we allow them to cower our city.”
Another Attack in London Adds to the Toll of Terrorism in Western Europe
There have been more than a dozen deadly terror attacks in Western Europe since 2015.
He went on to say that residents should not worry as they encounter more police officers patrolling the streets.
“Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days,” Khan said.
“No reason to be alarmed.
One of the things the police, all of us, need to do is make sure we’re as safe as we possibly can be.
I’m reassured that we are one of the safest global cities in the world, if not the safest global city in the world,
but we always evolve and review ways to make sure that we remain as safe as we possibly can.”
Khan’s office later dismissed Trump’s post, saying the mayor was too busy to reply.
“He has more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks
urging Londoners not to be alarmed when they saw more police — including armed officers — on the streets,” his office said in a statement.
The exchange reflected the tensions between Trump and US’ traditional allies in Europe.
The president returned home a little more than a week ago after meetings in Belgium and Italy that put on display disputes over trade and the role of NATO,
then followed up by pulling the US out of the Paris climate change accord, over the objections of European leaders.
Trump Picking Insane Fight w London Mayor Simply Because He’s Muslim
The friction has been especially acute for more than a year between Trump and Khan, the first Muslim to serve as mayor of a major Western European capital.
During last year’s presidential race, Khan criticized Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the US,
and endorsed Hillary Clinton, prompting an exchange with Trump’s campaign.
Critics of Trump in UK and US faulted him for his acrimonious response to the Saturday assault.
“I don’t think that a major terrorist attack like this is the time to be divisive
and to criticize a mayor who’s trying to organize his city’s response to this attack,”
former Vice President Al Gore said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Damon Wilson, who was President George W. Bush’s top Europe adviser, lamented that the spat only undercut a relationship that mattered to the US.
“America is safer when we rally our friends and allies against the bad guys rather than pick fights with the good guys,” he said.
But the White House showed no signs of backing down,
and a top aide to Trump amplified the attack shortly afterward. Dan Scavino Jr., the president’s director of social media,
posted a message referring to Khan’s criticism of Trump a year ago for his “ignorant view of Muslims.”
Addressing Khan, Scavino referred to his “tweet 13 months ago, after you criticized … now President @realDonaldTrump — and WAKE UP!!!!”
Other American officials sought to smooth over the dispute.
“I commend the strong leadership of the @MayorofLondon as he leads the city forward after this heinous attack,”
Lew Lukens, a career diplomat serving as acting American ambassador to London, wrote on Twitter hours later.
This is just the latest time the American Embassy in London has had to manage turbulence in the relationship since Trump took office.
The London government complained vociferously after the White House aired a conspiracy theory that British intelligence helped President Barack Obama secretly spy on Trump during last year’s campaign, which Britain denied.
London complained again when American officials leaked details of the investigation into last month’s terrorist bombing in Manchester.
Trump’s initial arguments about the meaning of Saturday night’s terrorist attack stirred debate both at home and abroad.
How the Attacks in London Unfolded
Three attackers drove a white van into pedestrians on London Bridge on Saturday night before stabbing people at nearby Borough Market.
“We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!” he wrote in one message Saturday night.
“We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people,” he wrote in another on Sunday morning. “If we don’t get smart it will only get worse.”
“Do you notice we are not having a gun debate right now?” he added. “That’s because they used knives and a truck!”
Trump first tussled with Khan publicly last year shortly after Khan was elected.
At the time, Trump’s proposed Muslim ban applied to all Muslims from all countries who were not American citizens,
but Trump said he welcomed Khan’s election and would make an exception for him.
Khan replied that he wanted no exception and accused Trump of harboring “ignorant views about Islam.”
Khan said Trump would only encourage Muslim alienation from the West.
“He’s playing into the hands of extremists,” he said.
The feud continued after Trump’s election.
In March, after a terrorist attack in London, Donald Trump Jr. posted a link suggesting that Khan had said terrorist attacks were just “part of living in big city.”
In fact, what Khan had said was that “part and parcel of living in a great global city” was being vigilant against terrorism and supporting the police.
Source: Trump’s Off-the-Cuff Tweets Strain Foreign Ties – The New York Times