Why Is Everyone So Shocked About The "Muslim Ban"?

I put “Muslim Ban” in quotes because Trump’s executive order Friday, which temporarily barred immigration from seven Middle Eastern countries, is not that. If it were, would Indonesia, with 203 million Muslims, not have been included? What about Pakistan? Afghanistan? Saudi Arabia?

The seven countries on Trump’s list (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia) are all majority-Muslim, true. So are many other countries around the world not included on the list. And all seven countries are, without a doubt, some of the most dangerous places on Earth, breeding grounds for terrorists. Somalia and Yemen are basically failed states without functioning governments, as is Libya. Everyone not named Gary Johnson knows about the situation in Syria. ISIS also remains strong in Iraq, and Sudan and Iran are hardly places that can be trusted to send only the best and brightest.

The point is that the order was largely a good decision. (Excluding the stupid decisions to implement it on a Friday afternoon, and to initially include green card holders in the order.) Had Trump actually enacted a ban on all Muslim immigration, it would have also been wrong and stupid, although arguably not illegal.

But if he had introduced a ban on Muslim immigration, it wouldn’t have been much if a surprise. Here’s the statement from his campaign in December 2015, discussing that very possibility. And here’s video of Trump reading the statement:

The policy as introduced in Trump’s executive order Friday is actually more similar to a suggestion by Ted Cruz during the campaign, tailoring any potential pause in immigration to specific high-risk countries.

Trump has been talking about banning Muslim immigration for over a year now. It is telling that the media is now in an uproar over a far better and more tailored policy, first promoted by a Trump rival.

Recapping the First Week of the Trump Era

Today marks exactly one week since Donald Trump took the oath of office and officially became the 45^th President of the United States. And what a week it’s been.

He issued executive orders freezing federal hiring, temporarily halting the creation of new regulations, and allowing executive-branch agencies to waive various parts of Obamacare, including the individual mandate.

He reinstated the Mexico City Policy, barring federal funding of groups that perform abortions overseas, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

He signed executive orders meant to expedite approval of the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, bar federal funding for sanctuary cities, limit the flow of refugees from countries deemed to have a large number of terrorist sympathizers, and formally withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And, of course, he signed an order declaring his intent to construct a “contiguous, physical wall” along the southern border.

He also met with business leaders and the heads of labor unions, talked with foreign leaders, announced plans to meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May later today, and got into a Twitter spat with the Mexican President that led to the latter cancelling his planned trip to America next month.

Obviously, that was a bad way to end the week, and will probably come back to bite Trump—and all of us—later on. But overall, the first week went much better than I or many other critics of Trump during the campaign expected. He gave social, economic, and national security conservatives alike some real victories, of the sort we haven’t seen in years. They won’t be secure, lasting victories until Congress backs up the sentiment with the force of law, but change is already beginning. I was certain Trump, once in office, would not bring real change and would govern substantively no different from Hillary Clinton, based on his past record. If this first week is any indication, I was wrong.

May Week One be only the beginning.

Policy Spotlight: Immigration

It’s fair to say that immigration has become one of the central issues for debate this election, and while I heavily dispute the notion that Donald Trump is the sole or primary reason for that debate, as he and many of his supporters would like to believe (such a key issue had enormous salience in politics long before Trump came along and suddenly noticed the issue, which is the reason he did so in the first place), it has became a mainstay of discussion regardless.

Which is both good and bad, from the perspective of those seeking enforcement and reform of the national immigration system. Good, because the issue is at least being discussed, and becoming more acceptable for discussion—and bad because despite all the talk, much of what is currently being proposed is incoherent, contradictory, or simply bad policy.

A strong, coherent immigration policy would be focused on three distinct stages: enforcement & reform, verification, and finally normalization. In the first stage, the border would be strictly secured, through a combination of increased border patrols, a physical barrier where appropriate (whether a wall or fence, take your pick), and various technological measures such as drones to deter additional illegal immigration. Measures would need to be taken to deter the popular use of tunnels by drug smugglers and human traffickers, as well, and the Coast Guard would also need to be strengthened to protect against attempted entries by sea. Visa overstays, another serious problem, must be cracked down on as well.

Beyond simple enforcement of existing immigration law, however, new security precautions must be put into place. First and foremost, sanctuary cities are a serious threat to the safety of millions of Americans, and steps must be taken to stop the policy nationwide. Use of E-Verify by businesses to check immigration status during the hiring process should be made mandatory. Immigration from certain suspect countries determined to have a high level of terrorist activity should be reduced or halted altogether, a need demonstrated by the fact that most of the recent perpetrators of terrorist attacks in the United States originated in a handful of countries in which Islamic radicalism is common (however, this is entirely different from attempting to ban members of an entire religion from entering the country). And legal immigration as a whole should be reduced to better match historical levels, allowing new and recent immigrants a chance to more fully assimilate.

There are several more steps that must be taken for the federal government to fully regain control of immigration once more, but once these are achieved Stage Two should come into play—verification. All of the enforcement measures I outlined above, as well as any changes to additional federal law, must be independently verified as actually being implemented, with results readily accessible by the public. For too long, existing enforcement mechanisms for immigration have been ignored, even more so in recent years with President Obama’s unilateral and publicized—indeed widely praised—decision to no longer execute immigration law still on the books. Before any other change is made to national immigration policy, there must be concrete evidence that this carefree attitude has changed.

Finally, and only after both Congress and the public have been convinced that the law is in fact being faithfully executed, there may be a healthy and honest debate about the status of those still in the country illegally, who have not been deported or left voluntarily. Whether that ultimate status would include full citizenship or amnesty, a form of legalization, or something else would be open for debate at that time. But it must be the final step in reforming the national immigration system. There can be no comprehensive bill as long as there are still flaws in border security and immigration enforcement, whether by statute or simple government inaction.

Of course, Hillary Clinton promises to continue Barack Obama’s policy of selectively enforcing the law, while Trump changes his immigration proposals by the week, and sometimes by the day. The list of disappointments and missed opportunities in 2016 also grows by the day.

Remembering September 11th

Yesterday was the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11. A decade ago, it would have seemed unthinkable that anyone would ever need to be reminded of that fact. And yet, fifteen years after the worst terrorist attack in world history, and the deadliest single attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, it seems as if more and more people need to be reminded of what exactly happened that day. Or rather, they know on an intellectual level what happened, but they’ve forgotten what it felt like, or forced themselves to forget.

We spent the first few years remembering, vowing each time to never forget those feelings of pain, loss, and anger—and afraid of another attack, just as devastating. Then, around the ten-year anniversary, people began wondering aloud why it was becoming so easy to forget those feelings, and why people were becoming so comfortable in their forgetfulness.

Today, some of that still goes on, but even those questions become fewer. Each year seems to bring fewer tributes on the nightly news, and fewer people willing to remember aloud.

On one level I suppose that’s to be expected. FDR said that the Pearl Harbor attacks would be a “day which will live in infamy”, but each decade also brings fewer remembrances, as those who lived through that day and its aftermath continue to die off. I’ll be honest: I usually have to look up which day it actually was. The eighth of December? The ninth? It seems like ancient history now, to me and many others.

But 9/11 still feels raw. The perfect recollection of everything that happened that day. The feeling of not fully comprehending what was going on, but seeing all the adults somewhere between worried and terrified and trying not to show it. As with those who lived through Pearl Harbor, nearly everyone alive on September 11, 2001 will never truly be able to forget that day.

And we shouldn’t, because that day changed the country, and the world, forever. We shouldn’t try to forget, because that day is part of our history, both the pain and the heroism of many who gave their lives, especially the first responders in the Twin Towers, and the passengers and crew members of United Flight 93. That day also displayed to the world some of what truly makes America great.

Go here for a list of all those who died in the attacks.

The Iraq War Was Justified

The 2003 invasion of Iraq seems just as unpopular as ever, thirteen years after the bombing of Baghdad. You would be hard pressed to find any political commentator, candidate, sitting member of Congress, or general member of the public willing to say, on record, that the invasion was the right decision. The best you’d be likely to find are those who try to thread the needle, expressing something along the lines of “based on what we were told at the time, the invasion made sense.” And typically, both Clinton and Trump have flipped on the issue, going from supporting the war when it began to quickly turning against it the moment it became politically expedient to do so.

What’s been largely absent from the conversation is a firm argument that the Iraq invasion was the right course of action, both then and now. It was, and if I were a member of Congress at the time, knowing everything we know now, I would still support the decision to invade.

An important qualifier: This is not to say that the war was conducted perfectly from beginning to end. Mistakes were undoubtedly made, mistakes that if avoided could have saved lives and resources. But the overall objective of the war—to remove Saddam Hussein from power and end any WMD program the Iraqis might then be operating—was laudable and continues to make the world a safer place, for both America and her allies.

Donald Trump actually managed to get it right back in 2002. Responding to a question from Howard Stern on whether he supported the proposed war, Trump said, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

Ideally, coalition forces would have advanced to Baghdad and removed Saddam back in 1991 during Desert Storm, rendering the 2003 invasion unnecessary. But that didn’t happen. What did happen is that Saddam spent the next decade slaughtering his own people, bankrolling terrorism and compensating the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, and thwarting the repeated efforts of U.N. weapons inspectors to investigate the Iraqi biological weapons program.

Contrary to persistent rumors spread by some on the Left that Iraq never had a WMD program, Saddam’s government admitted as much many times over the years following Desert Storm. In addition to the several formal acknowledgements of the existence of a biological weapons program between 1992 and 1998, there were also several pieces of circumstantial evidence, consisting of weapons inspectors being periodically blocked from inspecting certain areas, sometimes by force—and culminating in the 1998 ejection.

In addition, since the initial invasion some previously undisclosed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons have been uncovered, including sarin gas. Based on these facts alone, the arguments for invading Iraq begin to look stronger.

But the subsequent geopolitical effects of the war also raise new questions about the wisdom of the invasion—namely, the rise of ISIS.

Maybe ISIS would never have existed, or been considerably less powerful, had Saddam not been removed from power. Many have certainly argued that the Middle East as a whole would be more stable today with a single dictator, rather than the numerous terrorist groups, including ISIS, now flourishing in Iraq and Syria. But those arguments ignore the clear threat Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posed—by virtue of prior experience, based on everything from his willingness to obtain and use WMDs against Iraqis, to the assassination plot against George H. W. Bush in 1993, to the stonewalling and eventual ejection of the U.N. weapons inspectors. The subsequent discovery of chemical weapons stockpiles only adds further weight to the argument that Saddam was a clear threat, to both the United States and regional allies such as Israel, and needed to be taken out.

And Saddam’s removal improved U.S. national security in other ways, as well. Most notably, and yet rarely reported, is the fact that Moammar Gadhafi, fearing that Libya might be the next country the United States invaded, voluntarily disclosed and began shutting down his own WMD program—only a few months after the initial invasion of Iraq had concluded.

Democrats, Donald Trump, and much of the media would like America to fully buy into the notion that the Iraq War was a manifestly bad decision from start to finish, but the truth is that the war made the United States, and the world, a safer place. The subsequent conduct of the war could have undoubtedly been better—in particular, a more detailed plan for rebuilding the country, as well as a more gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces, could well have prevented much of the turmoil of today—but the invasion itself was the right thing to do.

Germany Responds to Last Week's Terror Attacks With A Call to Ban Axes

Just kidding. That would be the intellectually consistent argument, but liberals in Europe, like in America, don’t always follow arguments to their logical conclusion.

To recap: There have been four mass killings or other terrorist attacks in Germany in just the past week, including both a suicide bombing and a machete attack on Sunday, a mass shooting on Friday, and an ax attack on a train last Monday. The bombing and ax attack appear to have been inspired by ISIS, while the machete and shooting incidents are currently thought to be unrelated. The shooter from the Friday attack was a German citizen of Iranian heritage, while the other perpetrators were refugees from either Syria or Afghanistan.

Following the attacks on Monday and Sunday, the German government made no new proposals on how to stop more such incidents. But after the Friday shooting, high-ranking officials wasted no time naming the true perpetrator, and identifying exactly how similar scenarios could be avoided. Liberals being the same the world over, the answer should already be obvious: Stricter gun control laws would obviously have prevented the tragedy.

Never mind that Germany already has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, taking full advantage of the fact that there is no inherent right of German citizens to bear arms. Never mind the fact that the Friday shooter obtained his weapon illegally to begin with. For some in the German government, there can never be too much gun control, and a crisis must never be allowed to go to waste.

It should also go without saying that there was no similar attempt to draw broad policy lessons from the other three attacks. No calls to ban axes or machetes, just as there was no call to ban trucks following the terrorist attack in Nice. And there was a noticeable resistance by many in the German government to comment on the single variable the ax, machete, and bombing attacks all had in common—namely, the national origins of the perpetrators.