Better the Trump we know ….

Ever since his series of unexpected triumphs, in the American party primaries that began a few months ago, concerned watchers around the world are having sleepless nights agonising over a possible Donald Trump presidency. And I wonder why. Yes its true that Mr Trump’s political incorrectness and lack of sensitivity to the feelings of certain […]

Ever since his series of unexpected triumphs, in the American party primaries that began a few months ago, concerned watchers around the world are having sleepless nights agonising over a possible Donald Trump presidency. And I wonder why.
Yes its true that Mr Trump’s political incorrectness and lack of sensitivity to the feelings of certain people, are a cause for concern to most global citizens, I still don’t see why we should all get worked up because he seems set to win the Republican primaries and eventually his party’s nomination for the 2016 presidential elections.
The worse case scenario, for people really opposed to Donald Trump’s political fortunes, is for him to emerge as the next president of the United States. We all know why the rest of the  world always gets ‘involved’ when an American presidential election is around the corner. As the world’s only superpower and self-appointed global policeman, her fortunes are inevitably tied to the fortunes of the whole world.
But should this make us afraid that a politically incorrect man is at the top of the world? Frankly I don’t think so. I think having a man as raw as Mr Trump as the US president will be just what the world needs. I think we are  at a point in time where we need a global president whose mind the world can read. As the saying goes ‘better the devil you know than the saint you don’t know.’
After the series of politically correct saints we have seen in the Oval Office, who had said one thing and done another, we need someone we can read like a book. This will enable us guard against his moves and prepare our defences against his imperial tendencies.
An Arab sage said ‘A man’s character is hidden under his tongue.’ This means that any time a man like Trump gives vent to his real feelings, through his outbursts, we glimpse a negative side of him that we can guard against.
A Hausa proverb says ‘In ka san halin mutum sai kaci maganin zama da shi’ which roughly means ‘if you know a person well you can get the right antidote for living with him.’  With a man like Trump at the helm of American affairs, no one will tell you he is in pursuit of peace when he is actually advancing the cause of war.
That was what we saw in the case of ‘Saints’ Clinton and Obama. Bill Clinton did not start or take part in the Gulf war, but he did make sure he regularly bombed Iraq and violated the no-fly zones in the country, thereby killing numerous innocent Iraqi civilians. During his eight year long reign,  crippling sanctions on that Gulf country led to the death of half a million Iraqi children. A feat his Secretary of state, Madeline Albright said was ‘worth it’.
Similarly Saint Obama did not participate in the plot that was 9/11 but he did make sure he used the same drones used to perpetrate the manufactured terror attacks of September 11th,  to extra-judicailly chase and kill alleged terrorists anywhere in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It was this same smooth-talking and politically correct Obama that went to the University of Cairo and promised a world-changing dialogue with the Muslim world. But he did go ahead to support all kinds of forces against the attainment of  peace and stability in the Muslim World.
With friends like these saints, we can’t fear devils like Donald Trump. Indeed, we should welcome undiplomatic raw- talking politicians like Mr Trump because by his very nature he will be unable to assemble a “coalition of the willing,” as did fellow Republican George W Bush, in order to attack some hapless Third World country. And with the world getting so interdependent, it will be hard for the US to start going it alone anytime it feels like invading another country.
Having Donald Trump as the US president might actually be a blessing in disguise for the rest of the world, as his very attitude of offending and looking down on other world leaders will alienate them so much from his foreign policy agendas and end up making the world safer for other citizens of it.
About twenty-five years ago I started reading his book,  ‘The Art of the Deal’ I got bored and stopped quarter-way. Around that time he and his ex-wife Ivana Trump were always gracing the pages of American high society magazines, being caught at one function or another by some paparazzi. For some reason I wasn’t fascinated enough by Donald Trump to think twice about anything I read and saw about him. But now I feel differently. I think we will be better off with a Trump we know how to handle than a dark horse we will pay dearly to fathom.