-- Indefinite detention in CIA black sites and in the Guantanamo US military prison where 779 persons have been imprisoned since early 2002, over 16 years and 40 still in Guantanamo as "forever prisoners" who the U.S. administrations have said will never receive a trial as through a trial, they would have the opportunity to talk officially about the criminal acts U.S. government officials have perpetrated on them, including the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel;
-- 779 prisoners have been held by the U.S. military at since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. Of those, 729 have been released or transferred, including one who was transferred to the U.S. to be tried, and nine have died, the most recent being Adnan Latif, in September 2012.
-- 40 men are still held, and five of these men were recommended for release by high-level governmental review processes under President Obama, decisions that Donald Trump has chosen to ignore since taking office in January 2017. Trump has only released one man since taking office, Ahmed al-Darbi, who was returned in May 2018 to Saudi Arabia for ongoing imprisonment, six weeks later than he was supposed to have been repatriated under the terms of a plea deal he agreed to four years earlier.
-- the use of assassin drones that despite the U.S. rhetoric of minimal civilian casualties, have killed thousands of civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen;
-- U.S. complicity with Israel in the horrific criminal treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and
-- U.S. assistance to the Saudi Arabia military in the Saudi war on Yemen.
Now turning to the current U.S. Empire and its vulnerabilities that may cause its severe weakening or collapse -- the administration of Donald Trump.
Trump, like Bush, was not elected President of the United States by a popular majority. The arcane U.S. electoral college system has in two of the last five U.S. presidential elections put into the presidency persons who received fewer votes than their opponents, which has left the country dramatically divided.
The 2000 election of George Bush left those on left of the country angry and alienated, and those on the right gleeful and working fast to begin unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to destroy civil rights through the Patriot Act and world-wide surveillance of phone conversations and emails and to severely degrade the environment.
The election of Barack Obama in 2008, the first African-American, minority and political novice infuriated the right that worked during his two terms for eight years of presidency to stall every initiative of his presidency.
With the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the signature policies of the Obama administration have been under assault and reversal. Healthcare, the Paris Climate treaty, the Nuclear Agreement with Iran, opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba, environmental regulations on the air, water and land, long standing trade agreements, opening environmentally sensitive areas on land and in the oceans to drilling for oil, and most recently the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement have first been publicly ridiculed and then destroyed.
The singular accomplishment of the Trump administration in my opinion has been the diplomatic opening with North Korea and the meetings of the North Korean leadership with the leaders of China, South Korea and the United States (in that order) -- actually more of a decision of the North Korean leadership that believed its national defense strategy of developing nuclear weapons would protect it from U.S. sponsored regime change.
Has the short Trump presidency of less than two years lessened the legitimacy of the United States in the eyes of most countries of the world and the people of the world?
Trump's racist Immigration policies, including the travel bans on persons from seven Muslim countries; the separation of families seeking political asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border due to dangerous conditions in their home countries; the detention/imprisonment of children; the theft of migrant children from their parents; making young children defend themselves in immigration court; have made Trump's immigration policy the subject of investigations by global human rights organizations.
These policies have tapped into a part of the American public that wants to be isolationist and have little to do with the rest of the world except take their resources by force. U.S. bullying of other nations to bend to the will of the U.S. in trade policies that, in Trump's words, "Make America First."
There are few traditional pillars of "legitimacy" that the U.S. government has left. The Trump administration is relying on its bullying though a massive 10 percent increase in the U.S. military budget that brings it to $700 billion, more than the military budgets of China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, UK, India, France and Japan, the next seven largest military budgets combined.
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