Travel Ban: Why Trump (And Bannon) Mirror ISIS So Perfectly - By Joe Conason

Joe Conason

Travel Ban: Why Trump (And Bannon) Mirror ISIS So Perfectly

March 7, 2017 5:34 pm

What if the purpose of the Trump administration’s travel ban is not to protect America from terrorist infiltration, as the president and his top advisers insist? What if the true aim of their anti-Muslim rhetoric, articulated over and over again, is instead to offend Muslims and intensify their alienation from the West?

Those questions are salient because the newly revised restrictions, announced on Monday, are certain to accomplish only that: They will inflame resentment in the Muslim world, without improving security in this country at all. According to actual experts on terrorism, as distinct from the ideological amateurs in the White House, the ban is not just ineffectual but provocative.

And again, countries long implicated in Islamic extremism and terrorist activities remain exempt from restrictions (possibly because some of those same regimes also host Trump Organization enterprises).

Only days ago, the Trump flacks argued strenuously that Iraqi immigrants are dangerous, but now the revised travel ban exempts Iraq too, after protests from our military — whose officers were enraged by the White House betrayal of Iraqi translators and others who had aided them in battle.

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