Critics of President Trump’s temporary travel ban on seven Muslim nations should remember the Chinese proverb, “Kill the chicken and let the monkey watch.”
The much-criticized measure was a warning to the governments of the Gulf States, Turkey and Pakistan, who walk a fine line between support for Western counter-terrorism efforts and concessions to jihadists. It has had precisely the result that the White House intended, as a Dubai security official indicated on January 29. As Reuters’ Zawya.com reported:
Dubai’s deputy chief of police and public security, Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, has praised US President Donald Trump’s recent decision to temporarily ban citizens from seven Muslim-majority states, saying in a series of tweets it was a ‘preventive measure’ to safeguard the country.
Kudos to President Trump for his brave decisions… they (these people) can only be dealt with through preventive measures,” he said in an Arabic-language tweet dated January 29 on his official Twitter account.
“Trump banned the citizens of countries in the embrace of Iran and prevented the Iranians from entering… sound decision,” he added in another tweet…. “It is not necessary for America to host backward people, it has received enough before,” he said in one tweet. “What would a Yemini, Iraqi, Iranian, Somali or a Syrian do in America? They have destroyed their countries, they should not destroy America.”
Counter-terrorism officials in Muslim countries contending with a jihadist minority view Trump as an ally against their domestic enemies.
More importantly, Trump has suddenly won admiration in Erdoganist circles in Turkey, who held the Obama administration in contempt. Writing in Al-Monitor, Hurriyet Daily News columnist Mustafa Aykol reports that Trump is the hero of the pro-government press, despite (or perhaps because of) the immigration halt.
Like the governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Aykol observes, Turkey is relieved by Trump’s election victory. “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the ultimate authority, has so far said nothing about the ‘Muslim ban.’ Moreover, his propaganda machine, consisting of at least 10 national newspapers, several TV channels and thousands of social media trolls, has also been unusually silent about the issue. Daily Sabah, the flagship of the pro-government empire, has been absolutely silent on the ban. Daily Star, another key newspaper, published only a small and neutral report. Daily Aksam did run a headline on the ban, but only with a subtitle: ‘He [Trump] must be given a chance.’”
“It is not necessary for America to host backward people, it has received enough before”
As cited by Aykol, Daily Sabah columnist Hilal Kaplan wrote in a Turkish-language commentary that “the American president who is responsible for destabilizing the seven banned Muslim nations was none other than former President Barack Obama. It was of course bad that American Muslims were in trouble, but what really mattered were ‘Muslims in our region.’”
Obama helped overthrow Libya’s leader Muamar Qadaffi and Egypt’s President Mubarak, and backed Syrian jihadists against the Assad government with just enough firepower to keep the civil war going without a hope of finishing it. The US allowed the Sunni extremists who formed ISIS to operate undisturbed in the hope of directing them against Assad – a point made forcefully by Gen. Michael Flynn, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama and now Trump’s National Security adviser.
The Obama administration’s dalliance with jihadists of various stripes helped throw the region into chaos, and contributed to the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria which has killed half a million civilians and displaced perhaps ten million. These problems turned up on Turkey’s doorstep, literally so in the case of the two million Syrian refugees now housed in Turkish refugee camps. The Syrian Civil War also raised the prospect of an independent Kurdish entity on Turkey’s border with Syria linking up with the Kurdish autonomous zone in Iraq. That is Erdogan’s nightmare: the Kurdish-majority provinces in Turkey’s southeast have a far higher fertility rate than ethnic Turks. Demographic pressures are a serious long-term threat to Turkey’s territorial integrity, as I reported in Asia Times last year.
Turkey also suspects that the Obama administration gave aid and comfort to the military coup plotters of July 2016, who appeared inspired by the rogue Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen. I doubt that Obama helped instigate the coup, but the Gülenists had some backing in the US intelligence community, as I reported here. Erdogan’s turn towards Moscow in the aftermath of the coup was motivated in part by his distrust of Washington, and Gen. Flynn has been at pains to return Turkey to the NATO fold.
Although Pakistan has said nothing about the immigration ban, its actions suggest that it got the message from the White House. After years of prevaricating, Pakistani authorities finally arrested the radical Muslim cleric Hafiz Saeed, accused of planning the 2008 Mumbai massacre carried out by Pakistani jihadists.
Through a combination of incompetence and weakness, the Obama administration contributed materially to violence in the Middle East, threatening the stability of traditional American allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In addition, it encouraged the Iranians to assert their military power in the region, which the Sunni states view with alarm. If the Obama administration did not create ISIS, it stood godfather to the birth of the movement, as Gen. Flynn observed and reported during his tenure at Defense Intelligence.
In that respect, Ms. Kaplan at the Daily Sabah is punctiliously correct to blame the Obama administration for the humanitarian and strategic catastrophe which has befallen her region during the past several years. Western pundits who protest the supposed inhumanity of Trump’s temporary immigration halt said not a word while the Obama administration steered the region towards disaster and half a million Syrians died in their country’s civil war. Their objections should be read as politically-motivated hypocrisy.
The governments who have to deal with the consequences of American fecklessness, by contrast, want the United States to be strong and assertive. They are engaged in an existential war against jihadist elements who threaten to reduce them to chaos, and look to the United States to show determination. That is why Trump is suddenly so popular in the Middle East.
please! the military love gen mattis.
Okay Mr. Goldman. I saw on the BBC this morning that most of the people emigrating from these countries to live and work in the US are highly skilled people including scientists and physisists. One question? Who is going to replace these critical people? They are and have been the engine behind US innovation and leading technology in the US for the last fifty or sixty years. I once saw a documentary on the development of micro processors in the USA. The only white and native born American was the guy managing the program. Every other scientist was from outside the US, either from India, Pakistan, or various countries in Asia.
With the third world education system that the US has allowed to fester in it´s country just where are these highly skilled people going to come from. The US is shooting itself in the foot bigtime with that decision.
Another note, all of the Nobel laureats that the US had in 2016 were born outside the USA. That alone should tell you something. The US only succeeds because it scours the world for the best brains. Without them it is a very steep and slippery slope the US is on in it´s race to the bottom of the heap-
One of the best articles I have read in a long time sir. Well spoken!!
Paul Ashley
Calling ‘muslims termites’ is where it starts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untermensch
"On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" by Dave Grossman
That’s why I hope we can ban or extremely vet the hell out of them. Keep em out, let em kill each other over there and we give weapons to Assad, to Hussein and Al Sisi, so that they can handle these dudes. Keep our boys here, in USA, stateside. No wars unless the homeland is threatened, no need for our boys and girls to die. No need for funerals and tears.
"live and let live" goes well with the silly "Coexist" bumper sticker. It takes two to tango and Islamic supremacists are not interested in live and let live. The Quran doesn’t support live and let live. We may not be interestted in war, but our enemies are. When push comes to shove, the West needs to be ready to shove.
Exactly why we want the ban.
Viewing Islam as a curse does not "dehumanize" anyone.
Trump brilliantly strategizes:
Explicate the controvery,
then allow events
to make the advocacy:
Art of the Deal.
Hyperbole.
It’s possible to criticize a culture that oppresses women, gays and other religions without deciding to nuke them. Islam should stay in Islamic countries. It is badly in need of reform and not compatible with a free society. I hope they find a way to ban Islam completely.
It’s easy to criticize when you completely mischaracterize what they actually believe. Neither Trump or Bannon "view all of Islam as a curse." They know we have Islamic allies and they respect them and will work with them to reduce the threat, your fatuous hyperbole nothwithstanding.
"The director of the FBI said that we cannot properly vet people coming from the Middle East."
Comey, while talking specifically about Syrian refugees and not all of the Middle East, has repeatedly said that admitting refugees has its challenges and that information gaps do exist. But he also has expressed confidence in the admission procedure and says it continues to improve. That makes it hard to argue Comey feels like the government’s process "cannot properly vet people."
The people who are targeted by Trump are not jehadis.
That is the small thing Spengler forgets.
They had already been intensely vetted. They are people who had valid visas to the US, in many cases were permanent residents of it. To suddenly have the right of entry to be arbitrarily taken away because they come from a certain country or have dual nationality is an act of wanton cruelty which ruins many lives.
The standards and values that enabled life since 1945 to be a bit more civilised than before are under drastic assault and all you do is suggest that nothing is happening.
There is such a thing as human decency, and you and your like will not get rid of it by such cheap and shabby methods.
When governments act with wickedness and calculated cruelty, it is time to shout. Keeping quiet will only encourage the criminal.
And believe me, sir, shouting against evil works. Lyndon Johnson and Nixon thought metropolitan anger over their crimes in Vietnam did not matter. They gloated about the majority on their side. They lived to learn different. So will Trump.
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
David, you and the Chinese may want to rethink the monkey proverb,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2548414/posts
What a shock, Sunni states applaud a ban on Shites from Iraq, Iran, Yeman and Syria.
Settle down, fella.
Gen. Flynn has sometimes been contradictory in his views. He can be reality-oriented enough to be concerned with good relations with NATO allies like Turkey, for example.
On the other hand, he has stated that he is "at war with Islam," a remarkably broad position to take, and he has Tweeted links to videos that basically demonize all of Islam. He also is fond of quoting Frank Gaffney, a former DoD official and conspiracy theorist. Gaffney’s ideas include the following:
Saddam Hussein was behind the Oklahoma City bombing.
Grover Norquist is a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The logo of the US Missile Defense Agency is a coded indicator of "official U.S. submission to Islam."
Gen. David Petraeus has "submitted to Sharia."
Steve Bannon is also a big fan of Gaffney, and hosted him on his Breitbart radio program 34 times. And we know how close Bannon is to Trump. A man is known by the company he keeps, and Gaffney is obviously a deranged conspiracy theorist.
Liberals don’t want a ban on any Muslim countries be cause they want to be sexually dominated by Musllims; like ISIS keeps sex slaves. Islam is a sexual political system; rape is a weapon of war to them to spread Islam across the globe; raping infidel women is part of jihad.