On Wednesday Trump signed his disingenuous executive order (dishonestly titled, “Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation”) in a scornful attempt to apply a band aid to the gaping wound to our national character he himself inflicted.
In a “final update” to this shameful, sorry episode in American politics, I naively changed the title of the piece to “The End to An Unnecessary, Un-American Tragedy at Our Southern Border.”
While the Trump administration’s policy of taking children away from their migrant and asylum-seeking parents is indeed unnecessary and un-American, it certainly is not the end, because…
• There will never be an end to the traumatic effects – the “toxic stress” — and life-long mental health issues because of the inhumane separation and incarceration of these innocent children.
• There is no end to the unfathomable grief the children and parents who may never be reunited will experience.
• There is no end in sight to the damage this human rights disaster is doing to our nation’s image of a staunch defender of human rights and decency, a crisis “just as damaging as Abu Ghraib.”
• What is even more frightening, there is no end in sight to this American nightmare and moral crisis for as long as this administration is in power, for as long as its shameful, cruel, un-American policies continue
America does not need a crafty, future tense slogan to prove its greatness. America does not need to be made “great again.” With a very few exceptions, including the one today, America has always been great — and will continue to be great.
Lead image, credit: Jonathan McIntosh
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.