Donald Trump proposed an ideological test for immigrants, one that would allow in “only those who we expect to flourish in our country – and to embrace a tolerant American society.” Is it possible to implement a test like that
.. The practical reality is that you are dealing with people who, if they’re fairly sophisticated, are going to almost immediately learn what to say. So unless you intend to tie them to a polygraph, which is a notoriously uncertain device, you’re assuming that you are basically only going to catch the inexperienced or the stupid.
.. more and more extremist organizations are shifting to people who don’t come from a suspect country.
.. What you’re essentially saying is that if somebody is already sophisticated, educated, understands Western values, has money and comes from a country where they have no urgent reason to enter the U.S., they’re probably going to easily slip through. That is very odd criteria for a nation of immigrants. What do we do, change that plaque on the side of the Statue of Liberty?
.. in this campaign people keep using ISIS as a term for virtually all terrorism.
.. ISIS is actually a fairly small percentage of global terrorism, and it’s a fairly limited percentage of even Islamist extremist terrorism.
.. It then exploited the fact that Nouri al-Maliki, who came to office during the Bush administration, basically chose to promote both himself and Shiites at the expense of Sunnis in western Iraq and alienated so many of them that when what became ISIS invaded, there was very little resistance.
.. None of this had anything to do with the Obama administration. I think it is unfair to say that it somehow was a product of the Bush administration. The fact is that Saddam Hussein created the divided Iraq where the moment you remove the dictator, all of the divisions became critical.
.. Mr. Trump said that “we should have kept the oil in Iraq.” Could the United States have done that?
Under international law that would’ve been illegal by every possible standard.
You can’t go in to liberate a country and then somehow steal its most important resource. That frankly is not simply illegal under international law, it directly contradicts virtually every value we have as a country.
Trump tests his limits
But this protracted battle, now entering a fourth day, is testing the limits of his bullying, no-apologies political approach in a way no other self-inflicted wound or crisis has.
.. “I understand they challenged him, but there’s some things you just can’t win and you shouldn’t engage in. [Trump] wanted to change the subject to radical Islamic terrorism — which is what this guy died fighting. He just can’t win the argument and needs to shut up about it, but his personality won’t allow him to do that.
.. Over the weekend, longtime Trump ally Roger Stone suggested that a link between the Khans and the Muslim Brotherhood. (In a later Tweet, Stone issued a “correction” to instead accused Khizr Khan of being linked to a Saudi financier of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.)
.. But by doing this, he’s really hurting himself in his efforts to woo undecided voters.”
.. Trump’s chorus of prominent Republican critics includes few leaders who are ready to rescind their endorsements of him altogether. And they may hold firm until Trump begins to hurt their own reelection chances or standing with constituents.
.. “But if they flat-out reject him, they risk alienating a significant portion of their base.”
.. His pivot, however, was not to attacking Clinton, but rather to a lengthy riff in which he bragged about winning the GOP primary, slammed CNN and spoke angrily about his supposed mistreatment by the media.
He also suggested, for the first time, that November’s election will be “rigged” against him.
Nice attacker was ‘a salsa-dancing bodybuilder,’ not a jihadi
Gacem said the two had recently had a “heated discussion” about Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim calendar. “He told me that he had tried to observe Ramadan but didn’t want to continue because he had recently fallen asleep while driving and caused a car accident,” Gacem said.
.. Taoufik Bouhlel, who heads the Muslim “Association culturelle de Nice,” a few steps away from the home of Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s wife on Boulevard Henri Sappia, said he had never met him nor seen him at Friday prayers. “He never came to the praying room,” Bouhlel said. “His act has nothing to do with religion.”
.. A second senior security source said that investigators found the attacker had posted a “Hezbollah flag” on his Facebook page days before the attacks.
.. Gacem described Lahouaiej Bouhlel as a tall and robust man, who wore flowery shorts and tank tops “because he liked to show off his muscles.”
“I never saw him wearing a jellabah,” Gacem added. He went regularly to “Fitlane,” a nearby fitness club, and to salsa dance clubs.
Can We Stop Terror-by-Truck?
Life for millions of young men in the Islamic world — and in Muslim enclaves in the West — is characterized by chronic unemployment, abysmal educational opportunities, social dislocation and widespread governmental corruption or indifference. In its well-produced propaganda, the Islamic State promises the opposite: a life of camaraderie, consequence, adventure, spiritual fulfillment and a chance to create an Islamic utopia. Further marginalizing vulnerable communities — say, by subjecting them to loyalty tests, as some politicians have suggested — would only exacerbate the problem