Former Secretaries of State Madeline Albright and John Kerry have been joined by national security advisor Susan Rice, CIA chief and defense secretary Leon Panetta, homeland security chief Janet Napolitano, and Michael Hayden in filing a brief today in the 9th District Court of Appeals saying of Trump’s Muslim ban that not only does the order aid ISIS by feeding “into the narrative that the United States is at war with Islam,” but that,
“In our professional opinion, the Order was ill-conceived, poorly implemented and ill-explained.”
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson earlier called Trump a “bully” who “can’t take defeat like a man.” His office announced the action with this tweet:
Bipartisan NatSec officials to court: “In our professional opinion, the Order was ill-conceived, poorly implemented and ill-explained.” pic.twitter.com/l02Ncs4vPe
— WA Attorney General (@AGOWA) February 6, 2017
The brief explains that,
“We view the Order as one that ultimately undermines the national security of the United States, rather than making us safer. In our professional opinion, this Order cannot be justified on national security or foreign policy grounds.”
It is a well-known if frequently ignored fact on the right that no citizen of any country affected by the ban has ever committed a terrorist attack on U.S. soil and the brief makes the all-important point that “The overwhelming majority of attacks have been committed by U.S. citizens.”
At length, the brief then explains the various sorts of harm that will be done to the United States by Trump’s order, not only by endangering U.S. forces in the field (of little concern to a draft dodger like Trump) but also intelligence gathering, and, obviously, foreign policy and national security:
Trump’s action was ill-considered and ill-conceived and he has given a golden opportunity to the forces arrayed against him to present a cogent rebuttal of those claims. As presented here, actually foreign policy experts have shown that Admiral Mullin was right to call for Steve Bannon’s dismissal from the National Security Council.
President Obama demonstrated what a sober, pragmatic foreign policy looks like. Republicans hated it. Now they are demonstrating to the world what ideology bereft of facts gets the United States. As this document shows, it puts us all in danger.
