Letters: Trump should be treated the same way as Isis

The following letters appear in the 10th December edition of the Independent

The US presidential hopeful owns several golf courses in the country (Getty Images)

Donald Trump’s remarks could lead to violence and the death of innocent people. They should be treated in the same way as comments by Isis, the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis or any other groups whose mission is to spread hate.

I hope and pray he will never get the chance to be Commander-in-Chief of the US, because a bigot and racist like him would make the world a more dangerous place.

Abubakar N Kasim

Toronto, Canada

Donald Trump’s absurd pronouncements are not half as frightening as the Republican electorate’s roars of approval.

Peter Forster

London N4

Anyone familiar with the history of the past hundred years will easily recognise the nature of Donald Trump’s most recent comments. It is the same sort of people saying the same sort of things. Previously it was about the Jews, and now it is about the Muslims.

Carlos Riera

London W8

We need to ban Donald Trump from entering the UK. It doesn’t matter what he owns here. Or how he flies into the country. The man is a liability. And he should be dealt with in exactly the same way as other foreign radicals have been dealt with in recent years, whether or not he’s a presidential contender.

Paul Dunwell

Elstow Brook, Bedfordshire

The bien-pensants are “appalled” by Donald Trump’s suggestions that Muslims be registered on a government database and foreign Muslims denied free access to the US.

Of course, Trump and other leaders of the populist right such as Le Pen and Farage offer simplistic solutions to complex problems, but at least they address the problems.

I cannot recall when I last heard a mainstream leader speak honestly, far less sensibly, about Europe, immigration, energy, the climate or our relations with the Muslim world.

Rev Dr John Cameron

St Andrews, Fife

Donald Trump, a sound Republican, obviously supports the right of the American people to bear arms. It is clear that he has no objection to the fact that 30,000 Americans are killed by guns every year, as long as those guns are not held by Muslims.

Bill Fletcher

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

The aspect of Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration that does not seem to have been debated is its breathtaking stupidity. One imagines that a prospective Muslim immigrant with malign intent would pretend to be Christian or Jewish or Buddhist or anything other than Muslim. So how would the US Department of Homeland Security identify Muslims?

Andrew C Blundy

London SE18

A ban on Muslims entering America is wrong, but a ban on toupées entering the White House may be right.

Sally Barker

Newcastle upon Tyne

It’s been quite a week for big-mouthed bigots. Trump vs Fury for the title? For those of us who like boxing and tune into the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year, it also presents the challenge of boycotting this year over the Fury furore.

The one thing that can be put forward in Fury’s defence is that he doesn’t aspire to be leader of the Western world with his finger on the nuclear trigger. But I can imagine senior figures at the BBC bracing themselves for nuclear fallout of another sort if Fury wins in what many would see as a victory for sexism and homophobia.

No doubt Fury’s defeat of Klitschko was a considerable achievement. But sporting icon? On that question, Fury should be out for the count.

Paul Connew

St Albans

I am informed by my grandchildren that trump is another word for a fart. Says it all really.

Mark Thomas

Histon, Cambridgeshire

Flooding demands long-term solutions

Defences are necessary to help when serious flooding occurs, but what is the Government doing about the underlying causes of flooding?

George Monbiot and others have shown, broadly, what needs to be done, but there seems little Government interest. When serious events occur, the Prime Minister calls a Cobra meeting, but this is essentially a panic measure to deal with an immediate problem. Members of the committee are ministers and external organisations who have to cope urgently.

It is time for a broad, politically disinterested commission to investigate the underlying causes of the problem. Members should be experts in meteorology, climate change, agriculture, forestry, land and water management, and any other relevant subject.

Probably only an independent commission with gravitas can bring this or a future government to introduce essential long-term measures which may be unpopular with some people, such as hill farmers and lovers of the countryside as we know it now, but will be essential if we are to avoid events as bad as, or worse than, that of last weekend.

Peter Le Mare

Allithwaite, Cumbria

It’s not irresponsible to try to stop war

It wasn’t enough to have the Prime Minister trying to bully us into silence over the bombing of Syria, labelling those who disagreed with him as terrorist sympathisers; now Tristram Hunt, a Labour MP, has waded in, labelling the anti-war movement as disreputable and irresponsible.

The press colluded to give a one-sided account of a peaceful anti-war vigil in Walthamstow. The organisers of the vigil have had no right of response, but what is particularly ugly about this story is Blairites such as Hunt besmirching a whole movement for narrow political advantage – making more trouble for Jeremy Corbyn while portraying themselves as the victims of “weak leadership”.

Holding protests outside party offices has been a feature of British politics for many a year; now Hunt would like us to think they are an oddity, irresponsible in nature and action.

MPs are public figures. They stand for election once every five years, and do so as part of a political process which is contested. MPs should surely expect that their constituents have the right to protest to them, to lobby them, to try to persuade them to change their minds.

Hunt considers the Stop the War Coalition to be disreputable because of the “strong words” Hilary Benn faced when backing the bombing of Syria. Blairites are throwing their toys out of the pram; being held to account by their constituents is now a form of bullying. Yet these same individuals stood aside when Jeremy Corbyn was insulted, lied about, misinterpreted and pilloried by the press.

Who is the more irresponsible and disreputable? A coalition that has tried to stop the endless Middle Eastern wars that the UK has been taken into since 2001 which have achieved nothing but failed states and destabilised a whole region? Or MPs who voted for all of these wars, with the latest vote undertaken by many Blairites as the launchpad for a leadership challenge?

Julie Partridge

London SE15

Bombing is bound to result in revenge

As one of Keith Gilmour’s “peaceniks” (letter, 8 December), I am happy to address, on a somewhat wider scale, his plea for an explanation not simply of “why smaller donations are worthless” but of why they are pointless at best and counterproductive at worst.

The act of killing Isis fanatics in Syria or anywhere, along with anyone else in the vicinity, by means of drones or fighter bombers can never be the answer; nor can it fail to build up hatred for those doing the bombing, and the West in general, in the hearts and minds of families and friends of those unlucky enough to make up the “collateral damage”. To be told that they were not the real target will be no consolation.

Many of these arbitrarily selected victims will have families and friends already legitimately spread throughout the world, and in a number of them violent hatred for the West is being created and nourished.

The cretinous and dishonest theory that this lottery of death and destruction from the air won’t trigger a limited number of Muslims into taking what they see as revenge reveals a seriously worrying lack of ability on the part of our “defence experts” and some of your correspondents to see that two and two make four.

Eddie Dougall

Walsham-le-Willows, Suffolk

Police waste time at tube stations

As a result of the Leytonstone stabbing, more police officers have been deployed at London’s Tube and train stations. Great.

At the two Tube stations I use every day I now regularly see two or three police standing around, maybe all day – doing absolutely nothing to make us more secure.

If I were a terrorist, I’d just go to a mall, a multiplex cinema etc and commit my atrocity. What a waste of police time and resources.

Stanley Knill

London N15