President Trump's travel bans are objectionable, but can we please calm down?

This is purely speculative; it remains to be seen if Trump simply renews the EO at the end of the 90-day period.


"he's still evil but at least he hasn't yet been as evil as he said he would be" - this is your argument?


But as you yourself note, this EO is a complete disaster if its aim is to prevent terrorism (due to none of the 4 countries implicated in the 9/11 attacks (Saudi Arabia; UAE; Lebanon and Egypt) being included in the ban, and the real threat of terrorism being from homegrown terrorism (again largely fuelled by Saudi's funding of Wahhabism)). So if this wasn't to prevent terrorism, what explains it other than prejudice?


Not strictly true - the ban applies against those who legally reside in the U.S. with valid green cards or visas, including many on the path to citizenship and who have called the U.S. their (only) home for virtually the entirety of their life.


I generally agree, I am a vociferous opponent of our ties and white-washing of Saudi Arabia's crimes. However, surely you recognise the difference in being outraged by the policies of the leader of the free world and the leader of a theocratic monarchy.

Like I say, I think suspending the refugee programme and imposing a travel ban was wrong and precisely for some of the reasons you've articulated here. It's not a secret that toddlers with guns kill more Americans than foreign born jihadists. I can distinguish between what Obama did in 2011 which was grounded in a specific threat and on request by the FBI, and was more orderly and narrow and still allowed Iraqi refugees to enter (albeit slower). I never said I was in favour of this ban so please don't treat me like I am. I fully recognise all the numerous and good reasons against it.

My objection, which I perhaps should have made clearer, is the way in which people have reacted to the ban (not necessarily the shows of public assembly and protest, but the language being used to describe it and Trump). I will have to disagree with you when you call it "appalling". As flawed and stupid as it is, I reiterate that this is a President of a sovereign state exercising his sovereign power to block the inflow of citizens from countries he doesn't want. While it's true that the Obama administration was culpable for exacerbating the Syrian Civil War by providing armaments to "moderate" rebels who haven't turned out to be very moderate at all, the Trump administration isn't and so if you wanted to assign moral culpability by President in charge then you really can't blame Trump for the ongoing mess in Syria, although that may change in the future. As with moral responsibility, yes, all civilised and rich nations have a moral responsibility to accept refugees, but how you achieve that moral responsibility is subjective. As I already said, I disagree with the suspension of taking in Syrian refugees, but during the ban on refugees Trump's stated he's still going to favour and accept refugees of "religious minority" (aka Christians). Which country ever fully meets its moral obligation with regards to refugees? There are 65 million people who are refugees cross the world, most of whom aren't being taken care of. If you want to be consistent and call out other nations for not taking in what you see as enough refugees, then I will agree to disagree with it being "appalling" and see where you're coming from.

People are being convulsively neurotic and making Trump out to be some sort of Hitler 2.0, THAT is my real objection. In a democracy it's fine to disagree and to disagree passionately, but it has to be done with logic and reason, resorting to lewd historical comparisons which actually demean the horrors of those said regimes and crimes committed by them isn't the way to go.

Well said OP, at least some people on this earth still have common sense.

The most major part of democracy is the freedom to criticise, and showing justified discontent at this policy is part of the democratic process. But at the same time, he was democratically elected with a mandate to do this, so it should hardly come as a surprise. And of course presidents should have the power to ban foreign nationals, it's been done before and no one was in a frenzy about it then. It's only because it's Trump who has instigated it that people are getting riled up about it. And in regards to the petition calling for him to be banned from the UK, don't be absurd. We don't have to like him, we just need to work with him. It's called political pragmatism.

I don't see why I can't be appalled just because it is an act of sovereign power.

Just answer me one thing. When America turned away the Jews fleeing Germany in 1939 and 250 of them were killed in the concentration camps - is that a shameful appalling thing, or would you say that is accepted within the purview of President's sovereign authority.

Because let me tell you, there is a pretty wide consensus that it was a shameful act despite being completely legal.

My argument is that the hysteria around the ban isn't conducive to constructive criticism.

And I'm sorry, but I find the notion that we should try and conceal or quieten our outrage over things which happen in a theocratic monarchy (far worse than this ban) just because "it's the way things are there".

Yes, I do think the St Louis incident of 1939 was a major mistake and reflected the cruel limitations of America's refugee admissions system which existed at the time and to some extent has existed under the Obama administration and which has now been temporarily discontinued under the Trump administration. It wasn't however President FDR's fault himself, the ship wasn't allowed to dock in Cuba meaning the refugees couldn't get visas to go to America, and because the Americans already had strict quotas on refugees, they rejected them and subsequently many were forced to go back to Europe, some settled in Britain, some escaped to Palestine, and unfortunately some were killed in the Holocaust. Can you argue today retrospectively that the US should have flagged their refugee quota laws and let them in anyway? Yes. Would that have been evident at the time? No. The war still hadn't broken out, the Americans had a quota system in place and argued that it would have been unfair for these refugees to be prioritised over applicants first in line (of which there were many hundreds of thousands), and the Americans would have argued that these refugees had other options in non Nazi occupied Europe if they didn't want to go through with the system. Whether or not there should have been such a tight system is another argument, I certainly think there shouldn't have been and the US should have been more appreciative of the fact that they were fleeing an aggressor trying to violate their fundamental human rights. There's a lot we can learn from History, but we can't be cherry-picky with it. But in summary yes, the American refugee admissions system could have been a lot more compassionate and reasonable then, and it can be so now.

I dont want to divert the discussion but I think it was very clear that Jewish days in Germany were numbered in 1939. The pogroms had begun taking place and kristallnacht had already happened.

But as far as the middle-eastern country of today goes, we have both agreed there is no practical or moral justification for these bans. Only legal ones. If that's the case, is Trump's ban, which will cost lives morally appalling and outrageous? Because it is very clear they are fleeing aggressors who are trying to violate their fundamental rights.

I dont want to divert the discussion but I think it was very clear that Jewish days in Germany were numbered in 1939. The pogroms had begun taking place and kristallnacht had already happened.

But as far as the middle-eastern country of today goes, we have both agreed there is no practical or moral justification for these bans. Only legal ones. If that's the case, is Trump's ban, which will cost lives morally appalling and outrageous? Because it is very clear they are fleeing aggressors who are trying to violate their fundamental rights.

Firstly, let me say, I am unequivocally opposed to President Trump's travel restrictions against citizens from 7 Muslim majority nations. They are highly impractical, too one size fits all, ignorant of the fact that the real danger to American national security is home-grown (enhanced by very loose access to firearms), never even bothered to ban the countries which produced terrorists that did harm to the US (Saudi Arabia+UAE) and quite frankly nothing more of a symbolic strongman move aimed at trying to send a message of toughness. Sure, more vetting is always good, but it doesn't need to be accompanied by a confusion causing ban which has left the White House sending mixed messages about green-card holders and dual nationality citizens.

However

The level of frenzied hysteria in response to this ban has been quite simply astonishing and unnecessary. Firstly, and thank heavens for it, the travel restrictions are only temporary. Secondly, this shouldn't come as a major surprise to us. Trump spoke about doing things like this during his campaign, and arguably this ban doesn't come close to fulfilling his pledge to "shut down Muslims entering the United States". These are just 7 Muslim majority countries, a combined population of 211 million out of 1.6+ billion Muslims. So therefore we cannot say Trump's motivation was prejudiced or xenophobic, as flawed as it is from a national security standpoint, it was an act by a President genuinely concerned about overseas terrorists infiltrating the US. Third, Trump hasn't violated anybody's human rights or bullied smaller nations, he's simply exercised the power of a nation state to restrict travel against citizens of other countries. Call it democracy in action, he won and now he's implementing his agenda.

What I've noticed is that the left has lost their ability to make reasoned, rational and coherent criticisms of Trump. These massive protests which idiotically and uniformly chant "fascist" "racist" etc seem to indicate virtue signalling rather than opposition of substance. I mean come on, over a million signing a petition to rescind his invitation to the UK? We've rolled out the red carpet for far worse autocrats like Xi Jinping and royal families in the Gulf and there was no collective leftist outrage then. Be consistent.

Trump is going to do things which we will disagree with during his tenure as President. We have to respect the fact that he wasn't plucked out of thin air and put in charge, but rather he passed a democratic process. America's not a banana republic. I do hope President Trump sees the error of his ways on this, but you leftists need to chill with the hysteria. Constructive criticism is the best form of criticism.

Your use of the word "conducive" doesn't make sense in this context.

Regardless, your point seems to rest upon the assumption that Trump is open to 'constructive criticism' in the first place. What would you class as "constructive criticism" of this EO?


I didn't say anything about 'concealing' any outrage. It's just that we don't have to continuously state our opposition to the Islamic State or Saudi Arabia or North Korea, because nobody disputes that these States/groups are evil. The U.S., however, is seen as a paragon of Western liberalism - thus, if a State holds themselves out to be "the land of the free" it can't complain when it is held to a higher standard than States that do not even attempt to maintain a facade of civility/freedom/etc.

I don't think some additional protests outside the Saudi embassy in London would do any harm.

Constructive criticism being, it's a bad idea in terms of national security, it doesn't really prevent terrorist infiltration, Syrian refugees are already extremely unlikely to be terrorists (but if you want to strengthen vetting then fine, but don't stop taking them in), not chants of "TRUMP IS A FASCIST RACIST XENOPHOBE NAZI 2.0". I just think the narratives at the protests distract from any real criticism of substance against the ban.

Largely, I agree with you. But could we perhaps - in a very calm fashion of course - refuse a state visit (and spare our Queen Mr Trump's company) until the ban is lifted? Seeing as it is indeed temporary this doesn't seem all that objectionable to me. I would be all for a state visit if I was confident that our prime minister would use the opportunity to talk some sense into the POTUS rather than to put our public services on a platter for the sake of a post-Brexit trade deal.

If your best defence of Trump is "Saudi are worse" then that says it all.


I agree the focus should be on the substance of the issue, but there is no evidence that Trump would be receptive to this. You clearly overestimate his ability to listen to others or how much he cares about rationality or logic.

For the record, I made a thread about the ban outlining my criticisms of it (you can read it here). Not once did I describe him as a "racist" or a "Nazi" (though I would have some sympathy for the former as a description of Trump).

We should absolutely be focusing on the substance, including the strong criticisms you outlined, but also on how the ban excludes the countries he has business interests in and were implicated in the 9/11 attacks, whilst including the countries he doesn't have business interests in and weren't implicated in the 9/11 attacks (or any act of terrorism in the U.S.).

I don't think a state visit of the head of state of a major ally should be conditional upon the duration of this one policy.

I supported Brexit but I definitely would not support a TTIP style so called "free trade deal" which lets corporations sue our elected government at supranational courts and which gives big multinationals regulatory advantages in industry over their smaller competitors. Free trade agreements should be simple, negotiated publicly and transparently and not try to enforce crony capitalism. That being said, you would have to support a complete withdrawal of any private outsourcing in the public sector to prevent any American company from competing for contracts in a free trade agreement (because FTAs are meant to guarantee no discrimination against foreign companies in favour of domestic ones).

I think assembly has a place in criticism of Trump and so do loud protests, but I'd much rather see signs and placards saying "THIS BAN WILL NOT WORK" or "THIS BAN IS STUPID" or "WHY NOT BAN THE COUNTRIES WHICH ACTUALLY HAVE PRODUCED TERRORISTS THAT ATTACKED THE US" instead of signs and placards painting it all as racist.

Like I said, if the PM had guts I wouldn't mind in the slightest. But Mrs May is, frankly, being sycophantic. To quote Dumbledore, "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends." It is because of the special relationship that we should be able to say when we feel a decision is the wrong one and I don't think that my government is going to represent me or the great many Brits who'd agree that the ban is a bad policy when they greet Trump. I fear that this policy is only the first of many such objectionable policies.

I'm fine with private outsourcing (in moderation and where it is demonstrably more efficient). My objections to TTIP are the same as yours.