Travel Pause?

Last weekend President Trump issued an Executive Order banning travel to the United States from seven majority Muslim nations. The media and opponents have called it a Muslim ban. It's easy to understand why that is. Trump's own campaign rhetoric calling for a Muslim ban and his use of the word "ban" last weekend in his usual word salad speaking style have fed the notion. However, the order itself doesn't say this. It is a pause on refugees and citizens of those countries entering the United States until "we" evaluate the vetting process for those visitors. As a democratic Republic it was handled sloppily and incompetently, as an authoritarian state it would be considered business as usual and there is the problem, well, one of them.

Note carefully that because of the backlash in our country, the Trump Administration and key Republicans have gone out of their way to point out that the seven countries in question are the ones that were identified by the Obama Administration as being problematic, they of course did not take the action Trump did. Curious that a President who spent years accusing Barack Obama of being illegitimate because he wasn't an American citizen and by their silence the Republicans agreed with, would use him for their justifications.

Is it a ninety day pause leading to a more vigorous vetting process or step one of something more? We actually don't know yet, so we must watch carefully and be vigilant. If it is what Trump claims, in spite of Rudy Giuliani basically saying it's a Muslim ban under different language and he helped create it, then no problem. It seems prudent. There are some smell tests however, that it doesn't meet. Saudi Arabia is not on that list and it was nineteen of their citizens who slaughtered thousands of Americans on 9/11. It is Saudi Arabia that is the seat of Wahhabism, which is the most violent sect of Islam.
None of the wealthiest Muslim nations of the middle east are on that list, interesting?

As a sovereign nation we have every right to say, stop, let's review our process of how we evaluate who may enter the country and how to handle the vetting of refugees. But we have an obligation to do it in a rational and balanced manner that does not give aid to Islamic Jihadist terrorists like ISIS, who use it as a recruiting tool and say, look the U.S. hates Muslims, join us.

We must also own the fact that our invasion of Iraq began a catastrophic cascade of events that only further destablized an already chaotic middle east. We must guarantee that we take care of those, particularly Iraqis, who worked with us and now need us to grant them safe haven.

Take a breath, read for yourself and watch very carefully to see what is happening on this matter. Do not get lost in the noise. Do not accept jingoism and believe that the United States can stand alone in this modern age, we are five percent of the world's population, a wise people lead through example.