Kevin Drum lays out his case that the executive order issued by President Trump last week was a ban on Muslims. With characteristic fairness he concludes:
I Am Not A Lawyerâ„¢, but I gather that courts don’t generally take account of arguments that rely on evidence of hidden intent unless there’s truly a smoking gun. The text of the executive order carries most of the weight, and the president has extremely broad authority in immigration law. Most likely, the bulk of Trump’s order will remain in effect.
In other words what drives his conclusion about the EO is his opinion of Trump rather than the text of the order itself. I won’t venture to speculate on its legality or illegality.
As of this writing most Democratic Congressmen have condemned the EO and most Republican Congressmen are still deciding which way to jump. I would hail Congress’s becoming involved and moving to limit the president’s authority in issues of immigration and for the courts to uphold that move.
If Republicans move to curtail the president’s power in this area, I would expect Democrats to join them and such bipartisan unity could withstand a presidential veto which might not even be forthcoming.
I would amend that to say that he derives his opinion from Trump’s own words and from Giuliani. What Drum concludes is that while the law likely stands since it does not explicitly single out Muslims, it is clear that its intent was to ban Muslims. Would anyone really dispute that? I predict that the GOP will do nothing.
Steve
Whatever Trump’s intentions in the past, currently or going forward, as a matter of actual facts on the ground, this EO is clearly not a Muslim ban.
For those who want to curtail Trump’s power via Congress or Judiciary; it would be wise to do so in specific ways that keeps them from getting blowback. The worse thing to happen is they stamp out Trump’s order, then there’s a successful terrorist attack that the order could have prevented, causes the public to blame Congress or Judiciary, and leaves Trump with more power then before. Now one has to take risks to get what one wants, but don’t take unnecessary risks.
Remember, I’m not arguing about the morality or legality of it. All I have to say the first week has shown Trump has all the bad traits of Andrew Jackson (short temper) without any of the good traits (political acumen).
which is why Congress has behaved as it has over the period of the last half century (or longer).
I once had a boss who defined every job in terms of two axes: impact and accountability. From his perspective the perfect job had maximum impact and minimum accountability. That’s what the Congress is aiming for—having a lot of influence but not getting blamed for anything.
But that’s not how our system was structured and the farther one moves in that direction the more deformed the system becomes. We’re supposed to have a strong Congress that isn’t pursuing lifetime tenure and a weak president. Right now we have a weak Congress with lifetime tenure and a strong president who’s a short termer—gone after a maximum of eight years.
No.
I’m not defending this EO but how can it simultaneously be criticized as a Muslim ban while also being selective for certain Muslim countries? If it was meant to discriminate based on religion that makes no sense.
Certainly this can be criticized for being useless and needlessly inflammatory, and of course the implementation of it was rushed and badly botched. But the discrimination and the ‘biased selection due to business interests’ critiques seem unsupported by evidence as well as contradictory (I guess Trump is so bad that he discriminates but then also makes exceptions to his discrimination when there’s profit involved?)
Anyway…IIRC the particular list of countries (the expansion from the original 4) came about after the Paris attacks, when the concern was about travel between EU and countries where former refugees were getting radicalized and recruited for terrorist cells. It was thought that the blanket Visa waiver shouldn’t apply to people who had traveled to those countries, and instead they should be individually vetted. The list of countries was probably relevant to that context (because of the makeup of the EU migrant population) but I suspect it may not be as relevant to the overall concerns of potential terrorist infiltration to the US. It also seems like there have been so many other areas of Visa oversight that need to be fixed first, so that this action is political theater (like all of the TSA stuff) rather than good policy.
A pretty fair summary of my view.
Military strategists see this list of 7 countries as continuing to be problematic, both under the Obama administration and now the Trump administration. At least 4 – Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya -are failed states without functioning governments, or maybe even existing documentation to properly vet incoming people. As ISIS suffers more defeats, they are likely to flee to failed states where they can blend in, regroup before targeting another Western country.
As for the other 3 – Iraq and Syria are war torn areas with continuing ISIS challenges, and Iran actively funds terrorist groups and publicly spews hate speech towards this country. Why then is a policy recalculation involving these areas not worthy of a temporary “pause?”
“Why then is a policy recalculation involving these areas not worthy of a temporary “pause?—
Because these aren’t the countries sending terrorists to the US. The countries doing that were left off of the list.
Steve
“A pretty fair summary of my view.”
Agreed!
Steve, these are the countries – failed governments and/or supporting terrorist activities – most vulnerable for terrorists to gather in, and from there scatter to places like the US. It’s called looking to the future where the most likely threats will be, rather than vegetating on the past.
jan- Somalia has been a failed govt forever. Sudan too I think. Yemen barely functional. Libya for quite a while now. Saudi Arabia? Was it just last year we had the San Bernardino killers? So no, the list doesnt make that much sense if your intent is to stop the entry of terrorists. (Makes great sense if you want political theater.)
Steve
Indeed, some in Somalia think a strong central government is blasphemous.
It’s important to mention that a few regions in what we call Somalia have fairly effective self-government, notably Somaliland and Puntland in the north. Somalia is also rebuilding a federated central government (with the help of Western countries) but I’m skeptical of its long-term success, particularly while a de-facto civil war is still ongoing and given the various tribal divisions.
By “fairly effective self-government” do you mean what might be thought of as fairly effective self-government or do you mean that it’s much like the rest of MENA and West Asia: loosely federated city-states that govern the area around them and not much else?
Somaliland and Puntland are mostly rural areas. There are pockets of al Shabaab in the central Bur Cal mountains, but overall governance extends throughout their territory. Unlike the south and the small pocket in the mountains, al Shabaab can’t operate openly here. Puntland has a constitution, conducts elections and has seen the peaceful transfer of power between governments. Like the entire region, however, this system depends on support from the clans and tribes and is therefore inherently fragile. Still it’s much different from the popular Mad Max view of Somalia in the west.
It’s also the primary region where the US has taken a different approach than the rest of the MENA. A lot less kinetic action and a lot more behind-the-scenes support and capacity building. This is a back-water as far as Washington policy is concerned, with a fraction of the money spent, so the imposition of dumb policies from beltway hacks has been minimal.
Thank you, Andy. I have very little knowledge of the Horn of Africa. I would say with some confidence that any area harboring pirates doesn’t have an effective government but that’s farther south.
You’re welcome! I had to learn about the region when I deployed there in 2014 and I still keep up on what’s going on there.