Story highlights Lemmon: A country at war must understand that what starts at home doesn't stay there

The world is watching to see how the US honors its commitment to those who joined it in battle

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the New York Times best-seller, "Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield." The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.

(CNN) The executive order signed Friday by President Trump banning refugees from the US may have been designed to put America's safety first, but it defies America's promise to leave no one behind. And in the process, the order sows confusion and leaves American lives hanging in the balance.

Talk to veterans of the post-9/11 wars and you feel immediately the urgency of their desire to reverse this order that is now turning away Iraqis and Afghans who risked their lives for America.

To address some of the questions around just who is included in this temporary ban on visitors from seven countries -- including Syria and Iraq -- Defense Secretary James Mattis is now preparing a list of Iraqis who served with the US military and who the Pentagon believes should be allowed to enter America without facing a ban.

"There are a number of people in Iraq who have worked for us in a partnership role, whether fighting alongside us or working as translators, often doing so at great peril to themselves," Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters about the list of names the Pentagon is gathering. "We are ensuring that those who have demonstrated their commitment tangibly to fight alongside us and support us, that those names are known in whatever process there is going forward."

Also clear is their disbelief at the enormity of the public relations disaster that America has inflicted upon itself as US service members fight ISIS and the Taliban, the fear for those Americans who remain in combat and may have to face this order's consequences firsthand and on-the-ground -- and their amazement at a country so divorced from its wars that it wouldn't realize the consequences of banning people from some of the very nations in which Americans now are serving.

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