The President Just Made us Less Safe

President Trump’s executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations and all refugees sparked significant blowback throughout the international community, quickly revealing the reality that the President’s rhetoric and actions have actually weakened our national security, not strengthened it.

The list of countries from which immigration is now banned appears haphazard at best, begging countess questions about the rationale of the selection process. While Iraq is included, an action likely to weaken our alliance with Iraqi forces on whom we are highly dependent to fight ISIS in the region, countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan have been excluded despite being some of the most fertile breeding grounds for Islamic extremism. Many reports have also noted that the immigration ban does not include any of the Muslim-majority nations in which Mr. Trump has significant business interests.

In addition to the ineffectiveness of restricting travel from an arbitrary list of Muslim countries, the decision by the Trump administration to neglect placing any travel restrictions on European countries which are home to numerous home grown terror networks reveals how uncoupled their decisions are from their expressed goal of maintaining Americans’ safety. In other words, if this really was based on some sort of absolutist “America-first” policy, the list would have been a lot longer.

Of course that’s also not mentioning the fact that since 9/11, Jihadi terrorism represents “one-1,870th of the problem of lethal violence” in the U.S. In light of the reality that none of the countries from which immigration is now banned were home to any of the financial or logistical planning of the 9/11 attacks, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that the President’s actions have done nothing but stoke further division both domestically and abroad, while making all U.S. citizens less safe.

Some might make the argument that while Jihadi terrorism represents only a small fraction of overall violence in America, the attacks have been significant and memorable — San Bernardino, Orlando, Boston, etc. This actually gets at the very purpose of terrorism itself, the goal of inspiring fear, while also missing the point that most of these attacks have been carried out by U.S. citizens who were radicalized online. For those already living in the U.S. and prone to radicalization, the current national discourse is unlikely to do anything but further propagate their resentment.

Meanwhile, terror networks around the world are undoubtedly thrilled that they’ve finally managed to provoke the world superpower into such a highly emotional, irrational response to the relatively minuscule level of times they’ve managed to attack us. Just as we reacted as expected after 9/11, in reality by reacting so rabidly and disproportionately we’re playing right into their expectations, giving the terrorists exactly what they want.