The Truth about Trump’s Executive Order Restricting Entry into the US: Why It Is Good Policy

From: Eagle Rising

Written by Paul Dowling

“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.”  —Jonathan Swift

The Order

President Trump signed an executive order on Friday, January 27, 2017, that puts tight restrictions on immigration into the US from seven Mid-Eastern countries, suspends refugee admissions for 120 days, and places a ban on all Syrian refugees until further notice.  The order has been as highly praised as it has been widely criticized, and airport-based protests across the country have ensued.

Serious Matters

Allowing doctrinaire Muslims, who believe in the Jihad, to enter the United States is a serious matter.  And, yes, even those who are coming on student visas can be Jihadists.  It should be pointed out that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Bombers (along with his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev), was a student at the time of the Boston Bombing; in fact, he was a sophomore living at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth’s Pine Dale Hall dormitory.  And just how did the Tsarnaev brothers come to the United States?  Well, they were originally admitted on tourist visas.  To cite the Wikipedia, “He [Dzhokhar] and his family had traveled to the United States on a tourist visa and subsequently claimed asylum [refugee status] during their stay in 2002.  He became a naturalized U.S. citizen on September 11, 2012.”

Deaf Ears: The Absence of Vetting Proves Deadly

The Tsarnaev family, had it undergone the kind of extreme vetting Trump is now proposing, never would have been allowed to obtain refugee status, let alone American citizenship.  The Russians knew this family was bad news, and, at one point, even went out of their way to warn US authorities about them.  Needless to say, their warnings fell on the Obama Administration’s deaf ears.

So, the fact is that President Obama had been warned that these were dangerous people and potential Jihadists.  But Obama did nothing, even though his own administration had been warned about the Tsarnaevs by Russian intelligence.  Also, the American intelligence community knew, from Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s YouTube postings, that Tamerlan had become a radical Jihadist.  US intelligence was knowledgeable with regard to his dangerous beliefs and violent tendencies.  Tamerlan was even suspected in the murder of two Jews and their roommate (Erik Weissman, Raphael Teken, and roommate Brendan Mess) in Waltham, Massachusetts, on September 11, 2011, the ten-year anniversary of 9/11.  Yet, with this dark cloud hanging over the family, its members still received US citizenship a year later.

If Trump Had Been President . . .

If Donald Trump had been President of the United States four years ago, and had put out a similar executive order to the one he just recently issued, it is likely that the Tsarnaevs never would have been able to withstand the extreme vetting process Trump now intends to use to protect American lives in the future.  The problem with preventing future terrorist acts is that, since acts prevented never come to fruition, Trump will not receive full credit for the lives saved.  America’s unimaginative Democrat propaganda media will, instead, work tirelessly to criticize President Trump, by virtue of his being a Republican.  Indeed, it is interesting that the same media that are criticizing Trump for protecting human lives today also failed to criticize Obama for his unwillingness to protect the lives of the bombing victims of the Tsarnaevs.  If Trump had been the president back then, and the Boston Bombing had happened to due Trump’s failure to vet the Tsarnaevs, Trump would have been criticized without mercy for not doing exactly what he is doing right now.  By the same token, any executive action by Obama to do what Trump is now doing would never be criticized, simply because he is a Democrat.  Actually, there is proof of this.

Here Comes the Proof

Back on December 18, 2015, President Obama signed a law—as part of the Omnibus Appropriations Act of FY2016—targeting the Muslim countries chosen by Trump in his recent executive order.  (This is why Trump chose those specific countries.)  Trump, it turns out, just wanted to follow Obama’s law, rather than using an executive order to create new law, which would have been un-Constitutional.

So, Trump is just executing a law signed by Obama.  The reasons those particular countries were chosen is because six of them are failed states with tremendous terrorist activity sponsored by the Islamic State (aka ISIS), and Iran is a state-sponsor of terror and the sworn enemy of America.  Here is a list of seven countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

Remember Paris!

Obama’s 2015 law defines the seven countries at issue as “countries of concern,” probably due to the fact that the Islamic State has pledged to use Jihadists from those areas to infiltrate the refugees coming to America, the same way they infiltrated the refugees arriving in France, in order to perpetrate the Paris Attacks in November of 2015.  Six of the Jihadists that carried out the Paris Attacks were refugees.

The Unfair Propaganda Media

It is interesting that no one in the legacy media said anything negative about Obama, when his administration targeted those six countries.  But Trump, on the other hand, is being vilified for using exactly the same criteria Obama used. To quote William A. Jacobson, of Legal Insurrection, “What?  So there was a Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 two years before Trump? . . .  But almost no one critiqued it in 2015 because it was Obama’s administration overseeing it. . . .  But why didn’t CNN note that the seven countries were not named [by Trump] and that in fact they are only on the list because of Obama’s policy?  Because mainstream media have been purposely lying, either due to ignorance or because of unwillingness to read the document and ask questions and because they are too ready to accept ‘facts’ without investigating.  They want to blame Trump for a ‘Muslim ban’ because they were ready with that script since last year.”

A Good Policy Can Save Lives

Better vetting of the Tsarnaevs would have meant zero people maimed or killed in the Boston Marathon of 2013.  No Tsarnaev refugee family in America would have meant a much happier and safer America as a result.  The Russians told America, during the vetting process, about the Tsarnaevs’ jihadist family culture and other problems, but our government wanted to play nice and let the refugees stay.  Of course, the anti-Trump protesters care little about the families of those killed on April 15, 2013; the anti-Trump protesters are likely people who were not personally affected by the Tsarnaevs’ terrorist attack—or any terrorist attack, for that matter—and are, therefore, not mindful of, or sentimental about, the real risks involved in allowing bad people not to be properly vetted.  To these protesters, being nice to potential Jihadists is more important than saving lives, for they think, quite childishly, “It will never happen to me.”  And, by extension, they cannot quite conceive of death by Jihadist refugee happening to anyone else, either.

Mr. Nice Guy Risks Even More American Lives

At the time of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s arrest and incipient interrogation, Mr. Nice Guy, President Obama, sent in federal lawyers to stop the police from questioning the terrorist.  President Obama cared more about a Jihadist’s legal defense than he did about discovering whether there were more bombs set to go off that might harm more Americans (which was the point of the questioning Dzhokhar was undergoing).

No More Mr. Nice Guy

Trump’s belief, in contrast to Obama’s and the Democrats’, is that protecting human lives is important, even if doing so means “no more Mr. Nice Guy” and is, therefore, unpopular with Democrats and their propaganda media.  Since no Democrat will likely be killed, due to Trump’s protective order, Leftists are not likely to thank him for a job well-done.  Conservatives are grateful for a President of the United States who cares about their lives.  Conservatives love America and appreciate being protected by a president who puts Americans first.  America may not be perfect, but it is better than any other country out there.  If anyone can find a better place, I urge that person to vote with his feet and move there.

Trump’s Calculation

What Trump has figured out is that, as a Republican, he is damned if he does something and damned if he does not do anything: He can be criticized for extreme vetting now or be criticized for not doing a responsible job of vetting later, when a terrorist attack occurs on his watch.  President Trump seems to have decided that, if he must be blamed by the media for something, he would rather be blamed for being too safe than be blamed for the irresponsible deaths of innocents.


God bless,
JohnnyD