AT LEAST NO ONE WILL PRETEND NOT TO UNDERSTAND WHY THEY HATE US ANYMORE:

After President Trump signed an executive order on Saturday giving the Joint Chiefs of Staff 30 days to devise a plan for destroying ISIS, I emailed several senior U.S. military officers--some active duty, some retired, all with combat experience in our recent wars--and asked them what sort of plan the chiefs should submit.

One of the officers, a general, wrote back, "They might begin by telling him to lift this stupid and heinous visa ban."

The remark highlights a big problem not just with Trump's scattershot orders but also with his tenure so far as commander-in-chief: He doesn't seem to understand the political nature of war or the strategic consequences of politics.

Both former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had defined the enemy in significantly narrower terms while in office, eager to avoid any moves that might make it appear as if the United States was at war with Islam.

For Bush, the enemy was al-Qaeda and state sponsors of terrorism to include former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Iran and the Taliban. Obama insisted that Bush's definition was a recipe for "endless war" and singled out an even smaller group. To him, the enemy was a series of terrorist death cults that he said were perverting the peaceful religion of Islam.

The executive order on immigration and refugees was produced at a "frenetic pace" that included none of the interagency reviews that characterized similar orders in the Bush and Obama administrations, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said.

"The process was remarkable," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. "Nobody in the counterterrorism community pushed for this. None of us ever asked for it." [...]

The measure drew negative responses across the world, some of which was heard by U.S. forces on the ground in the Middle East.

U.S. commanders advising Iraqi forces reported back that their partners were mystified by the order. "It's already flowing back," said the senior counterterrorism official. "They are asking, 'What do you think of us? Do you see us as the threat?' "

Some Iraqi lawmakers proposed banning U.S. troops and civilians from entering Iraq -- an action, if followed through, that could lead the authorities in Baghdad to turn to Russia and seek more support from Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the ban would be "recorded in history as a great gift to extremists and their supporters."

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