None of the attackers from 9/11 or San Bernardino would have been thwarted by the new rule.
Can we stipulate that President Trump’s new policy on refugees is problematic while also stipulating that Barack Obama is chief among those who have no business criticizing it?
Mr. Obama issued a statement Monday expressing solidarity with opponents of Mr. Trump’s executive order—a rule aimed at addressing a refugee mess created in large part by Mr. Obama’s own foreign-policy blunders. The last president prematurely withdrew American troops from Iraq. He made an empty threat that Syria’s Assad regime would face “enormous consequences” if it used chemical weapons. These mistakes have damaged American credibility and led to the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.
One reason Mr. Trump won the White House is that voters are anxious about their personal safety. Deadly terror attacks on civilians in places like Paris, Brussels and San Bernardino, Calif., have forced many Americans to rethink the longstanding open-door policies. Groups like Islamic State, it seems, can instigate or inspire acts of terrorism when and where they choose. Voters trusted Mr. Trump, more than his opponent, to keep the country safe.
The new executive order, which temporarily bars new refugees as well as travelers from seven countries with Muslim-majority populations, reflects this public mood. As a candidate, Mr. Trump repeatedly promised to enact strict vetting measures to keep out potential Islamic terrorists. After a man who had pledged allegiance to ISIS gunned down 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., last June, Mr. Trump once again called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. Media outrage ensued, but a poll taken at the time showed that 48% of respondents sided with Mr. Trump, while only 40% were opposed.
The president is winning praise from supporters for keeping a campaign promise. Still, the nation deserves a less clumsy shift in border policy and a more thorough explanation of why these changes are necessary. Mr. Trump has said his order will make the country safer, and border security can of course always be improved, but what is the value-added of the new measures? As even the White House acknowledges, travelers from the seven designated countries were already under extra scrutiny from the previous administration.
Mr. Trump also hasn’t explained whether the new policy would have prevented recent attacks had it been in place. Most terrorism in the U.S. is carried out by American citizens. And “not a single American has died as a result of terrorist attacks committed by any citizen of the seven banned countries in this millennium,” explains Lyman Stone in the Federalist. “Additionally, countries whose citizens have perpetrated attacks, like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, were not banned.”
The administration has invoked both the San Bernardino shooting rampage and 9/11 in rolling out the new policy. But neither of the San Bernardino shooters would have been affected by the new restrictions. And the 9/11 hijackers hailed from Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—all Muslim-majority countries that were excluded from the executive order.
Mr. Trump has also cited Europe’s refugee problem as a cautionary tale, and it’s indisputable that some European countries have done a poor job of screening people who arrived at the border seeking asylum. However, the ringleader of the 2015 Paris attack that claimed 130 lives was a Belgian national, and nearly all of the others involved were born in the European Union and held EU passports that allowed them to travel freely. By the Trump administration’s logic, shouldn’t European nations also be included in the ban?
One of the more valid concerns with Mr. Trump’s executive order is that it may give Americans a false sense of security and further complicate our relationship with Muslim allies. Travel bans have their uses, and it’s common sense that some foreigners will be screened more rigorously than others because resources are limited. But the policy makers who spend their time thinking about how to safeguard the country express equal or greater concern about homegrown threats—the radicalization of people already living here, not just those trying to get in.
Here again, Mr. Trump is inheriting not only a bad situation but one that was allowed to fester on his predecessor’s watch. “The U.S. government lacks a national strategy for combating terrorist travel and has not produced one in nearly a decade,” according to a comprehensive 2015 analysis by the House Committee on Homeland Security. “The unprecedented speed at which Americans are being radicalized by violent extremists is straining federal law enforcement’s ability to monitor and intercept suspects.” The report concluded: “Ultimately, severing today’s foreign-fighter flows depends on eliminating the problem at the source in Syria and Iraq.”
Mr. Obama’s commitment to rooting out ISIS was little more than rhetorical. We’ll find out if Mr. Trump’s goes beyond issuing travel bans.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal
______________________
Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal