I understand why Trump's "Muslim ban" is a hot topic right now. We have a 24/7 media cycle that can only pay attention to one thing at a time, and it preferences outrage over substance. Trump was a divisive and polarizing figure before he was elected, and he has embraced that role making it easier for one segment of our population to hate him and anything he does or says, and another to idolize him for saying and doing what they have long wished to say and do.

However, the executive order that bans on travel to our country from the seven countries is just the latest in a long list of terrible things that our country has done to cause chaos and harm to the people in the Middle East. Since the days of our support for the jihadists in Afghanistan (funneled through the CIA, of course) during Russia's Afghan War up to the present day, we have been pouring gasoline on fires in the Middle East, Africa and Southwest Asia, by enabling and encouraging the most extreme and radical elements in predominantly Muslim countries to resort to violence to oppose our imperial ambitions.

After the Russians left Afghanistan, we supported a heinous monster in his war against Iran, giving him aid, including the ability to make chemical weapons. Next, came our war against that same former henchman and ally, Saddam Hussein, when the first Bush administration gave him the mistaken impression they would not oppose his own imperial ambition to invade Kuwait and threaten the local hegemony of Saudi Arabia. We then starved and murdered half a million children of Iraq under a sanctions regime approved and enforced by the Clinton administration.

It was inevitable that we would face a backlash from our meddling in the Middle East, and it came from our former Jihadist friends on 9/11, the incident for which the neoconservatives who had been waiting. The 9/11 attacks allowed them to wage a series of seemingly endless wars in the Middle East that have not stopped once they were supposedly ejected from power by Obama in 2008.

These wars have been, and continue to be the biggest issue we face. They led to uncounted consequences that brought us a multitude of problems for both our country but more importantly, for the future peace and stability of the entire world. Wars that killed millions of people (and continue to kill more every day), that destroyed entire societies, and that resulted in regime change in several countries.

Wars that created massive refugee crisis in Europe and elsewhere, because of the many more millions of dislocated people throughout the region. The consequence of these immoral and illegal wars of aggression have affected not only the countries we attacked, but also countries in Europe, and many others around the globe including, but not limited to, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Russia and China.

Indeed, our wars greatly effected our own country, contributing to the numerous crises we now face. Nationalism has been empowered by this constant state of war and threat of "terrorism," and by the glorification of our military, leaving an opening for the rise the white nationalist movement, one exploited by Mr. Trump. These false appeals to American exceptionalism helped mask the great diminution in our civil rights and a vast increase in surveillance by our government of its own people. It also led, under policies promoted by Bush and Obama, to militarized law enforcement agencies, which have been employed to use violence to silence and intimidate lawful dissent, the most recent example being the police and mercenary atrocities committed at NoDAPL protests at Standing Rock to protect the corporate interests oil and gas companies funded by a number of large "Too Big To Fail" banks.

These wars distorted our economy and not for the better. Meanwhile the threat of terrorism, and the wars we've fought to "fight them over there," increased both the size, power and profits of the military industrial complex. It's quite possible the US has passed a tipping point that will make it extremely difficult to end our ongoing Orwellian nightmare, one that began long before the idea that Trump could become President was even a blip on the national radar.

These wars have also further distorted our politics, causing factional infighting and splits within both major parties, where unfortunately the establishment politicians who control those institutions all support the continuation of our endless wars against the faceless enemy known as Terror. Not so long ago, in 2006, the Democratic Party claimed to oppose these wars when George W. Bush was the President. But when Obama assumed office, the anti-war faction within the Democratic party either was silenced or simply evaporated.

Indeed, major think tanks linked to the Democratic establishment are just as keen for increasing our military interventions not only in the Middle East, but also to other parts of the world. Hillary Clinton, the party's standard bearer in the last election, and President Obama, the President who brought us our under-reported remote-controlled drone assassination program, both threatened war against Russia last Fall.

Furthermore, these wars have shown how our major media outlets provide false information to the American public, generating a plethora of what they would label "fake news," were their own stories being reported by "alternative news" sources. In general, corporate media supported our government's war policy, if not each and every tactic employed by various Presidents. And our major entertainment providers have piled on by portraying Muslims as caricatures, insane demons and rabid monsters, people without any concern for taking human life because of their allegiance to Allah.

Thus, is it any surprise that the public's perception of Muslims, and the faith traditions of Islam, have been warped beyond reason? This phenomenon is not limited to the US. It is pervasive throughout the western world. We are now seeing increasing xenophobia, not only in America, but also in many other countries, which have faced terrorist threats that were often in large part directly connected to the wars that our government sponsored and in which our military has participated.

It is not good enough to protest one executive order by the current widely disliked and hated narcissist in the Oval Office. Those protests will accomplish little in and of themselves unless they are connected to a larger, long-term movement that opposes the use of violence by our government, both here in the United States, and most significantly by our armed forces around the globe. Our government, no matter which party wields power, has shown itself to be an authoritarian, and some would say fascist, regime. One that poses a great danger to peace and stability in the entire world. In effect, our nation is literally the equivalent of a Marvel comic book super villain.

To those who are all riled up (and to be fair, rightly so) by President Trump's executive order, I ask where were you when the Obama administration bombed Libya, and gave funding and weapons to terrorist organizations in Syria to act as our proxy forces on the ground there, while we used our Air Forces to bomb innocent people below? Where were you when we bombed weddings and hospitals in Afghanistan, and supported the Saudi-backed coalition that bombed innocents in Yemen?

These questions are not meant to be mean-spirited. They are intended to show that the radical and authoritarian oppression of Americans by our government, and the greater destruction and murder around the world caused by the use of our armed forces by that same government, existed long before Trump's political ambitions were taken seriously, even if he was promoted by the US media at the behest of the Clinton campaign. This power mad empire America became is an evil that compromises members of both major parties - there are few clean hands among our political elites, regardless of whether they are Republicans or Democrats.

If you truly want to eradicate this evil, then don't stop at merely protesting the malicious and odious actions of President Trump. All our politicians need to be held accountable for their support of policies that have harmed our national security and weakened our nation in order that a few dangerously deluded ideologues and greedy scoundrels could revel in the mass murder of innocent people for their own twisted and perverted ends. What we need is a mass movement among the American people that opposes the multitude of war crimes and atrocities committed by our government over the past forty some odd years.

If your opposition to Trump does not extend beyond his executive order banning travel to the United States from seven nations already designated as "countries of concern" under a law passed by a bi-partisan majority and signed by President Obama, it will die out and have no effect on the future course of events. For, as the record shows, the greatest mass murderer and terrorist in the world right now is the US government. The same government that has taken from us many of the protections provided in the Bill of Rights, using terrorism as an excuse.

Our protests must embrace a larger agenda, one that opposes our illegal wars abroad, and the illegal usurpation of power by our government at home, if it is to have any substantial effect on the insidious path down which both Republican and Democratic administrations have taken us during the time of this horrific and misnamed "War on Terror." That anti-war and anti-authoritarian movement is the one we need to see protesting in the streets and airports and communities across the country in the months and years to come. It will require sacrifice and commitment to see it through, sacrifice such as has been shown by the Water Protectors and their allies at Standing Rock, and by those who risked their lives and freedom during the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter protests. Anything less is simply play acting for the media cameras. It might make you feel good for a short time to give Trump the finger, but in the end it will signify nothing, unless it is part of a larger and greater cause.