"Obama Killed a 16-Year-Old American in Yemen. Trump Just Killed His 8-Year-Old Sister."
"This is why it is crucial that — as urgent and valid protests erupt against
Trump’s abuses — we not permit recent history to be whitewashed, or
long-standing U.S. savagery to be deceitfully depicted as new Trumpian
aberrations, or the war on terror framework engendering these new
assaults to be forgotten. Some current abuses are unique to Trump, but —
as I detailed on Saturday — some are the decades-old byproduct of a
mindset and system of war and executive powers that all need uprooting.
Obscuring these facts, or allowing those responsible to posture as
opponents of all this, is not just misleading but counterproductive:
Much of this resides on an odious continuum and did not just appear out
of nowhere.
It’s genuinely
inspiring to see pervasive rage over the banning of visa holders and
refugees from countries like Yemen. But it’s also infuriating that the
U.S. continues to massacre Yemeni civilians, both directly and through
its tyrannical Saudi partners. That does not become less infuriating —
Yemeni civilians are not less dead — because these policies and the war
theories in which they are rooted began before the inauguration of
Donald Trump. It’s not just Trump but this mentality and framework that
need vehement opposition."
