Whether or not one agrees with Donald Trump's announcement Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy there, the fallout of that move absent the bigger context of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal has undoubtedly put U.S. diplomats and Foreign Service Officers in the region in danger. The Washington Post's Josh Rogin writes:
The State Department has set up a 24-hour task force to collect information and coordinate response to Trump’s speech, which has already caused protests at several U.S. embassies and consulates abroad.
The State Department’s executive secretariat and bureau of Near East affairs stood up the task force Wednesday afternoon inside the seventh-floor operations center “to track worldwide developments following U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” according to an internal notice I obtained. The task force will include participation from State’s bureaus dealing with diplomatic security, consular affairs, public and legislative affairs and others. [...]
“Trump is putting diplomats as well as American citizens at risk,” one official said. “He is putting a bullseye on the U.S. and making Israel a target for more violence right before the holidays, which always is a time for high alerts.”
This means Trump is two-for-two on putting Americans working abroad at risk, not to mention inflaming tensions in one of the most volatile regions of the world. When Trump tweeted out right-wing extremist anti-Muslim videos last week, the State Department also went into heightened alert.
Officials feared that the tweets, which appeared to depict Muslims engaged in different acts of violence, would spark a reprise of the violent protests at US embassies in the Middle East which are already on high security alert. Protests erupted in September 2012 following the publication of an anti-Muslim video on the internet.
In both cases, Trump acted unilaterally—once simply on the whimsy of self-gratification (he felt like it!) and once completely ignoring warnings against making the Jerusalem announcement from top administration officials who are both more knowledgable and sane than he is.
Two administration officials confirmed that [Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis were opposed to the move internally, due to security concerns.
This is serious business, folks. As I said last week in my column, we have someone at the helm of our country who is both not fully in touch with reality and becoming increasingly erratic at the same time that he has almost unfettered power to make deadly foreign policy decisions.
If Trump is going to have the unchecked power to put American lives at risk, it’s high time for an inquiry into whether he is mentally and emotionally fit to perform the duties of his office.