President Trump: Do you have any idea of what America First means?

Mr. President:

Your decision on Jerusalem, and the speech in which you announced it, are as far from any form of an America First foreign policy as it is possible to be. Your speech was a grab-bag of tired rhetoric, earnest platitudes, and wishful thinking, much like your earlier speech on Afghanistan. Your citing of the Congress’s near-unanimous support for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, moreover, suggests we elected the wrong man to go after and eliminate the corruption that has engulfed the national government. The near-unanimity of Congress, as you must know, is bought by the bribes disguised as campaign contributions paid to the so-called representatives of the citizenry by the disloyal political, social, and financial leaders of the Jewish-American community, and their enforcers in propaganda outlets such as Commentary, the Weekly Standard, Forward, and others.

When you were thinking through the decision, Mr. President, did you ask yourself the question, “What does the United States get from taking this action?” If so, what did you identify as the advantage accruing to the United States? In your statement, you specifically said that the decision to move the embassy was in the interest of the American people. Well, how will it benefit them? You seemed to indicate that moving the embassy would aid the peace process. Mr. President, there is no peace process. The religious war between Israeli Jews and Muslims will continue until one or the other is wiped out. Happily, a quick look at the map will tell you that neither outcome would hurt U.S. interests nor degrade the nation’s security.

As always, Mr. President, you surely have at hand more information than any of your critics, and so your decision might be supported by what is often too loosely termed intelligence. What it is not informed by, sir, is common sense.

Mr. President, the United States has been involved in a “religious war” with Islam since Osama bin Laden declared war on the republic in 1996; that is, for more than 21 years. For all of those years, your predecessors and now you have railed against that reality, preaching nonsense about the war having “nothing to do with religion,” that the Islamists have bastardized Islam and it is really a “religion of peace,” and that the Islamists should not be considered anything but cowards, nihilists, bad guys, extremists, or some other term that would help hide from Americans the reality of the religious war in which the republic is mired.

This use of obfuscating terminology, Mr. President, might soothe the minds of the multiculturalists and politically correct, but they do not change the enemy’s mind about what he is fighting for, which was in 1996, and is today, to break the U.S. economy, to stop U.S. military, political, social, and economic interventionism — you know, the things that contradict any sane understanding of America First — in the Islamic world, to end the rule of Arab tyrants, to destroy Israel, and then to annihilate the Shia. If your senior advisers and generals have not explained this to you, and you believe that you are fighting pseudo-religious gangsters and winning, you are simply wrong on both counts.

Almost everything you have done in the Muslim world since your inauguration, Mr. President, has reinforced the Islamists’ motivation and helped strengthen and spread their message. Indeed, you have not been different than Obama, Bush, and Clinton, and like them, you have opened the door for more war with the Islamists. In this religious war, Mr. President, your administration’s actions have

  • Reinforced the hatred of the Islamists — and Muslims generally — for U.S. military intervention. From the cruise-missile strike in Syria, to the “mother-of-bombs” in Afghanistan, to sending additional troops to Iraq, Afghanistan, and — for the first time — Syria to intensifying drone strikes in several locations in Africa, America’s reputation for having no regard “for Muslim Blood” has been amplified. The formula is simple, Mr. President, more intervention = confirmation of the mujahideen’s narrative = greater traction for the Islamists among Muslim youth = an unending religious war that is helping to break the U.S. economy.
  • Reinforced the Muslim world’s belief that the U.S. national government wants them to be ruled by tyrants. Your cordial visit to and subsequent consistent praise and support for the current and future Saudi tyrants; your very public efforts to build a strong relationship with the Egyptian tyrant-president, installed by an Obama/Hillary Clinton supported military coup; and your well-publicized support for the Philippine President Duterte’s martial-law-backed war with Islamists associated with the Islamic State have all been pitch-perfect in harmonizing Bin Laden’s declaration of war and the stated positions of the Islamic State.
  • Reinforced the Muslim world’s accurate view that much of the U.S. national government, Congress, and media have been suborned by wealthy and influential Jewish-Americans working for Israel and against genuine U.S. national security interests, which do not include never-ending war with Islam and the need to ensure Israel’s survival. Your administration’s decision to permanently base U.S. troops in Israel and move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — Islam’s third holiest site — is simply more proof for radical, militant, and nominal Muslims that Israel directs U.S. policy in the Muslim world and that there is no way to change this reality other than war.
  • Reinforced the reality first established by George W. Bush and Barack Obama that the United States has sided with Shia Iran and other Shia Muslims to promote Shia expansionism in the Middle East; to subordinate Sunni Muslims in Iraq and Syria to Shia regimes; and to turn a blind eye to the murderous retributions being exacted against Sunnis by the Shia regimes, their police and military forces, and their militias.

Overall, Mr. President, instead of keeping the Sunni Islamists on their back foot after the temporary destruction of their Caliphate, the announcement of your decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem has given them a base from which to start to rebuild their fortunes, as well as an issue that will have broad and enduring traction across the Sunni Muslim, especially among military-age males.

None of the foregoing is to say that the U.S. war with Islam is America’s “fault.” Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11, and so they needed to be annihilated. The military you command, Mr. President, has utterly failed to do that, and today is celebrating the defeat of the caliphate, which is, at best, a transient victory that returns the Islamic State to what it does best, which is insurgency.

What the foregoing is meant to say, Sir, is that your decision on Jerusalem and the other actions of your administration noted above are fully consistent with those of Obama, Bush, and Clinton, all of which tenaciously, if wrongheadedly, worked to strengthen the motivation and media appeal of the Islamists, and to spread the international jihad to new areas of the world. Did any of your advisers, for example, tell you to expect an IS-associated Islamist organization in the Philippines to be strong enough to capture and hold the city of Marawi for more than a hundred days? I doubt it.

The time has come, Mr. President, to — as the saying goes — shit or get off the pot. America First means that foreign policy decisions — especially ones dealing with war — are made by answering the single question “Is this in the interests of the American people.” Taking America to war is always the correct choice if the republic’s survival is at risk, otherwise, it is never the right choice. Today, Israel’s survival, the survival of Arab tyrants, the expansion of Shia territory and power, or the survival of European governments that have signed their own peoples’ death warrants by welcoming Muslim immigration and allowing the return of foreign fighters, are not life-or-death interests of the United States. None are worth American blood or dollars.

If you are truly dedicated or at least interested in America First foreign policies, Mr. President, please realize that they begin at home. Begin by (a) squaring with Americans by telling them that the United States is engaged in a religious war that was caused by the Islamists, but that much of the oxygen it needs to thrive is supplied by U.S. interventionism in the Muslim world, which has been the status quo U.S. policy since the presidency of the first Bush; (b) by building the southern border wall immediately as a national-security emergency; (c) by dumping the amnesty-wanting head of DHS that you just appointed and appointing Sheriff David Clark to the post; (d) by immediately designating AIPAC and other Jewish-American organizations as what they are, agents of a foreign power; (e) by beginning to apply the Logan act to all public officials — elected and appointed — who take money from or work on behalf of those organizations; (f) by withdrawing from NATO so as to avoid involvement in Europe’s approaching civil wars, as citizens seek to regain their natural rights from the authoritarian EU and its dedication to imposing Muslim privilege over the native born; (f) by halting all foreign economic and military aid and apply the savings to border control and the large-scale deportation of illegal aliens; and (g) by enforcing all the laws equally against all offending citizens.

This is important, Republic-saving stuff, Mr. President, and you have gotten it all wrong so far. It is time for you to get on the stick and make America First a reality, rather than a vote-gathering throwaway line.

Author: Michael F. Scheuer

Michael F. Scheuer worked at the CIA as an intelligence officer for 22 years. He was the first chief of its Osama bin Laden unit, and helped create its rendition program, which he ran for 40 months. He is an American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst.