Data show some high-profile attacks were carried out by people born in the U.S.
President Donald Trump’s e xecutive order to temporarily ban entry from seven Middle Eastern and African countries states that it is intended to “protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States.”However, few of the dozens of plots in the U.S. during and after 2001 were attempted or carried out by suspects who came from the countries targeted under the ban... Of 180 people charged with jihadist terrorism-related crimes or who died before being charged, 11 were identified as being from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Sudan or Somalia, the countries specified in Mr. Trump’s order
.. None of the 11 were identified as coming from either Syria, Libya or Sudan, and none of the 11 were involved in any major U.S. plot resulting in the deaths of Americans, including the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
.. Approximately 85% of all suspects who took steps toward terrorist-related violence inside the U.S. since the Sept. 11 attacks were U.S. citizens or legal residents and about half were born U.S. citizens
.. None of the major U.S. terrorist attacks or plots on or since Sept. 11, 2001, appear to have been carried out by people from the seven countries. The 19 men involved in the Sept. 11 attacks were from Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. The same is true of other prominent incidents since the Sept. 11 attacks.
.. In fiscal year 2016, the U.S. admitted approximately 85,000 refugees, including approximately 12,500 Syrians. Mr. Trump said the U.S. will admit 50,000 in fiscal year 2017, with a permanent freeze on Syrians. The entire program will be suspended for four months, and Mr. Trump moved to prioritize Christian refugees.
More Republicans are speaking out against Trump’s refugee ban. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell aren’t among them.
Dent, who represents a large Syrian community in the Allentown area, said he was contacted Saturday by a constituent who had family members turned away early in the morning at Philadelphia International Airport. Six family members who had secured visas and even bought a house in Pennsylvania arrived on a Qatar Airways flight but were returned back within hours, he said.
Dent called on the Trump administration to halt immediately action on the order.“This family was sent home despite having all their paperwork in order,” Dent continued, “so this 90-day ban could imperil the lives of this family and potentially others, and it’s unacceptable ,and I urge the administration to halt enforcement of this order until a more thoughtful and deliberate policy can be reinstated.”.. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) credited Trump with properly focusing on protecting the country’s borders and said it is necessary to connect “jihadi terrorism” with Islam and particular countries. However, he also noted that the order is “too broad.”
If we send a signal to the Middle East that the U.S. sees all Muslims as jihadis, the terrorist recruiters win by telling kids that America is banning Muslims and that this is America versus one religion,” Sasse said. “Our generational fight against jihadism requires wisdom.”
.. Ryan told reporters following a closed-door morning meeting at the Republican National Committee in December of 2015. “This is not conservatism. What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for. And more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”
.. Several news outlets reported instances of travelers being detained in airports, including Hameed Khalid Darweesh, a 53 year old Iraqi man who spent several years acting as an interpreter for the U.S. Army in Iraw. Darweesh was released from detention in New York’s John F. Kennedy airport after two New York Democrats, Reps. Jerry Nadler and Nydia Valazquez, intervened on his behalf.
.. Aides also said it is not uncommon for an administration to prioritize refugee requests on the basis of religious persecution. However, since the beginning of the Syrian civil war and the rise of the Islamic State, many more Muslims than Christians have been killed or displaced because of the violence.
.. a 2015 Washington Post poll found that 78 percent of Americans favored equal consideration for refugees regardless of religion.
.. Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer and House GOP policy director who waged an independent presidential bid in 2016, was one of a small number of Republicans to publicly oppose the ban.
.. There is anti-Muslim bigotry at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and it fundamentally un-American and tangibly damaging to our national security and strength.”
.. Most Republicans, McMullin predicted, would decline to criticize the executive orders. “Those who are silent on this will be defined by that silence,” he said.
Yes, Donald Trump ‘lies.’ A lot. And news organizations should say so.
When Donald Trump lies, is he telling a lie? Not if we cannot prove an intentto mislead, apparently.
.. unlike Clinton, most of the time Trump’s campaign felt no obligation whatsoever to back up his claims when they were called out as false. And to a far greater degree, Trump would simply continue repeating those lies after they’d been exposed. It is the nature of Trump’s dishonesty — the volume, ostentatiousness, nonchalance, and imperviousness to correction at the hands of factual reality — that became the issue.
.. This gets at why Baker’s response is so worrying: It suggests an unwillingness or an inability to entertain the possibility that we may be looking at something new and different here.
.. Take the example that Baker himself chose: Trump’s claim that “thousands and thousands” of American Muslims celebrated 9/11. This was not some casual falsehood — this lie was key to a months-long campaign of vilification and scapegoating of Muslims that in turn was central to his broader appeal.
.. Trump repeatedly refused to entertain any evidence to the contrary even when it was directly presented to him. Indeed, his campaign team responded to media efforts to present that contrary evidence by accusing the media of covering up the truth.
.. In this and many other instances, Trump barely even tried to make a fact-based case for his version of reality. Rather, he seemed to be trying to obliterate any possibility of shared agreement on what constitutes an authoritative source, and even on reality itself.
.. Take Trump’s biggest lie of all — his racist birther claim.
.. In these cases, was Trump lying? The standard that Baker adopts — that there must be a provable intent to mislead
.. If we don’t call that “lying,” or if we don’t squarely and prominently label these claims as “false,” don’t we risk enabling Trump’s apparent efforts to obliterate the possibility of agreement on shared reality? We’re already seeing a preview of how this will work in practice when Trump is president. On multiple occasions, Trump has dubiously claimed credit for jobs he has supposedly “saved,” and the headlines have tended to reflect his claims without also informing readers that those claims are unverified or open to doubt.
.. Trump’s approach to information — or disinformation — looks like a hallmark of Putinesque autocratic rule, in which the autocrat is trying to “assert power over truth itself,” and convey the message that his “power lies in being able to say what he wants.”
In Translation: Trum and the Arabs
Much of the Egyptian media – indeed, the Egyptian regime – sees in Trump hope that of a leader who will develop closer ties to Abdefattah al-SIsi, ending the funk in Egypt-US relations and declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group on a par with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
.. First, Trump’s foreign policy ideas are basically non-existent. He will draw in advisors with radical and biased views, to be sure, but this happened before under George W. Bush and other administrations haven’t exactly been impartial mediators on many issues (see Israel-Palestine).
.. Indeed the thing to fear the most is geopolitical uncertainty, amateurism and military adventurism.
.. It is hard to imagine how a millionaire who travels by private plane and luxury yacht could present himself as the representative and defender of the rights and demands of the poor and marginalized. However, the frustrated of America believed him and entrusted him with their votes, perhaps because he is candid and spontaneous, unlike the ruling establishment’s professionals and politicians.
.. And is Mrs. Clinton really full of love for Muslims? Did she not threaten to intervene militarily in Syria, enthusiastically back the invasion and occupation of Iraq, urge the murder of an Arab leader (Qadhafi) and fail to show any basic human respect towards him once he died?
.. There may have been differences between candidates in the presidential elections when it comes to many matters of domestic and foreign policy, but they were united in their contempt for Arabs and therefore Islam. The only difference was the manner in which they expressed it.
.. We disagree with the many who bought into the stereotype sold by the powerful media and political establishment, which described him as an unpredictable madman unqualified to lead any state. If that were the case, he would not have received a majority[^1] of the votes of approximately 300 million US citizens in free and fair elections.
.. Another point that many people are stuck on is Trump’s threat to ban Muslims from entering America. This behavior is racist, detestable and fascist. However, we should ask, have Arab countries, and especially Gulf countries, opened their borders to Syrian refugees or Iraqi refugees before them? They are the countries that bear the greatest responsibility, having spent billions of dollars trying to topple the Syrian government and supported the invasion, embargo and regime change in Iraq.
.. Why should Muslims go to America at all? There are many other alternatives, and we don’t think that Muslims will die of grief if they can’t go to America as visitors and immigrants. They should turn their attention to corrupt Arab leaders who waste their resources, steal the fruits of their labor and place the proceeds in American banks, and instead work towards good governance, social justice and political and economic reform.
.. We do not support President Trump, nor do we support any American president, because we absolutely believe that most of our troubles have been caused by America and the Arab leaders allied to it.