Trump is banning visa and Green Card holders from returning to the States. This is notably different.
From a foreigner's standpoint, that isn't notable at all. In fact, it's nothing more than closing a loophole.
When the US government specifically dictates that a kind of foreigners are banned from entering US soil, the exceptions to that rule doesn't change the rule or even the spirit of the rule.
The US government wants those foreigners off their land, and that's it.
I agree that it's a silly rule, but it wasn't implemented overnight.
It's a massive difference, and makes a massive difference in the lives of my foreign friends.
There are people who have been living here for decades affected by this order. They have their entire lives here.
There's a massive difference between preventing someone from establishing a new life here and destroying the life they've built here over years.
As a foreigner, for me this looks like a hypocrisy theater of crocodile tears. But then again, this is par for the course for politics in general, and US politics in particular.
This attempt to dismiss complaints as hypocrisy is really tiresome. Obama bombed some countries so who cares if Trump fucks over law-abiding American residents for no reason.
Also, I'm fairly sure Obama didn't bomb Iran.
Really? Did taxi drivers stop serving the airport? Company leaders asking others to "take a stand"? Liberal media unanimous against it? Judicial intervention?
Because it seems this has 10x or 100x the scale those "widely criticisms" of the bombings had under Obama (during Bush, and for the Iraq war it was only slightly better).
>This attempt to dismiss complaints as hypocrisy is really tiresome. Obama bombed some countries so who cares if Trump fucks over law-abiding American residents for no reason.
Well, that's the hypocrisy though. What's worth protesting "law-abiding American residents" who are denied entrance is not for non-Americans from the same countries who are bombed.
Is the world tiring US with all these demands for consistency?
It's like that Mel Brooks quote: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”
>Also, I'm fairly sure Obama didn't bomb Iran.
No (though Bush did several covert military action and internal meddling there), but he did the same thing Trump did:
"The State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News [in 2013] – even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets."
No, selective interest is absolute poison.
Whataboutism is merely about prioritization.
It allows people to have their pet causes and feel good about themselves while ignoring larger scale evil going on and affecting both their country and the lives of millions.
And it's not like what's suggested is something like "do something about everything bad going on or do nothing" paralysis.
It's like, major major evil affecting hundreds of thousands of lives is going on by your country and you don't give a damn, and suddenly you all jump for a much smaller offense.
Prioritize damnit. You can't largely ignore 10x and cry wolf for 1x. Or you can, and you did, but you shouldn't.
In the 60s they knew how to mass protest for both civil rights, women/gay rights, AND the Vietnam war for example, at the same level of engagement.
What's your end game here? If you want us to go back in time and protest drone strikes more strongly, my understanding is that this is not practical. If you want us to stop caring about Trump's insane actions, I can't understand why. If you want us to care more about more stuff in the future, that makes sense, but it's not the meaning I get from what you write. What are you after?
But the context of Trump's ban is very different. He promised a Muslim ban during his campaign, and according to Rudy Giuliani (tonight on Fox News), Trump asked him for advice on implementing the Muslim ban but in a technically legal way. I see no reasonable interpretation of this as anything other than Trump's team's best effort to discriminate against Muslims while being technically legal.
How about Trump fulfilling his campaign promises while being technically legal?