Betrayal of Everyone and Everything

 Bret Stephens wrote the other week that Donald Trump is a man "whose very essence is betrayal of everyone and everything." I don't always agree with Stephens—particularly not on the wisdom of going to war with Iran—but I agree with him here. 

Trump betrayed the people of Venezuela by first disingenuously claiming to want to "free" them from Maduro—and then partnering up with his no less authoritarian successor regime, sidelining the Venezuelan democratic opposition, deporting Venezuelan asylum-seekers to torture prisons, and canceling Temporary Protected Status for the country. 

(All of these betrayals are becoming even more evident and flagrant now that Venezuela is grappling with a catastrophic earthquake—more than proving the need for a new TPS designation that this administration seems profoundly unlikely to grant—and they have continued to snub the opposition among efforts to rebuild from the quake.)

Trump betrayed the people of Iran too—first promising that "help is on its way," when they were being gunned down in the streets—but now that his effort to bomb the country into submission has so spectacularly failed, he suddenly drops any talk of human rights reform. Meanwhile, he has also deported Iranian asylum-seekers to danger. 

But possibly the worst, the very grossest betrayal, remains the way Trump has treated our evacuated allies from Afghanistan. These are people who fought and bled on behalf of our troops. And Trump has repaid their sacrifices by threatening to deport them to an impoverished war zone in the Congo or let them pine away their existences in American detention camps. 

The organization AfghanEvac reported this week on the case of one Afghan refugee, Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal—a father of six—who died in an ICE detention facility less than a day after the government arrested him. Here was a man who fought and suffered alongside U.S. troops. Now, our own government arrests him and lets him die behind bars. 

I am reminded yet again of the inscription Arthur Koestler says he saw on the grave of a Spanish Civil War refugee warehoused in an internment camp in France, on the eve of the Second World War. One of his comrades had written: "Adios, Pedro. Los fascistas wanted to burn you alive but the French allowed you to freeze to death in peace. Pues viva la democracia."

In this case, the Taliban wanted to persecute and torture this man to death. Instead, his supposed allies the U.S. government—the ones for whose sake he put his own life daily at risk—throw him into prison where he expires within 24 hours. Pues viva la democracia. Well, long live democracy. 

Or, as E.E. Cummings put it—in words that seem sadly apt as this country purports to celebrate 250 years of "freedom" this weekend, even as it is jailing innocent people who sacrificed for our country and letting them die:

so rah-rah-rah democracy

let's all be as thankful as hell

and bury the statue of liberty

(because it begins to smell)