Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his unrelenting quest to be permanent dictator of his country and who knows where else, is accusing Dutch officials of Nazism for denying his proxies the ability to campaign for him among Holland’s sizable Turkish population Almost simultaneously, a group of Senate Democrats is proffering legislation to overturn President Trump’s temporary travel ban on six Muslim majority countries.
These two events seem unrelated — NATO member Turkey is not one of the six — but in actuality they are tied closely together because they highlight a growing dilemma that is approaching catastrophe. Trump’s travel ban may be of some use, even necessary, in the short run, but it is only a temporary bandaid for what confronts us.
The president’s intention is to stop the flow from these terror-ridden locales until we, in his parlance, “figure things out,” while giving himself a scant 90 days to accomplish this. How do we vet, “extremely” or otherwise, cultures that are so dissimilar to ours in such a time frame? How do we determine whether potential immigrants will participate willingly in America’s pluralistic democracy instead of adhering to Sharia law inculcated in them from birth that is antithetical to our way of life? How do we know if they are telling the truth when their religion countenances, even encourages, misleading unbelievers for the advancement of their faith?
Non-Arab Turkey was thought to be the most assimilable of Islamic societies, but what is transpiring now in Europe — Erdogan corralling eager pro-Islamist voters all over the Continent — shows how limited that view is. These people had something rather else in mind than liberal democracy when they headed to Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin in search of work.
Europe itself offers no hint of how this vetting can succeed, although it does offer a preview of what occurs when it is not in place. Anyone visiting the “old country” today is traveling to a different continent from twenty, even ten, years ago, with no-go zones surrounding almost every capital.
Meanwhile, the UN is reporting 20 million people on the brink of starvation in Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and northeast Nigeria. Even if the UN is exaggerating by half, that’s a frightening World War II-sized number. What do these four locations have in common? Any good “phobic” knows the answer. Three of the countries are also on the temporary ban list. Yemen by itself is caught in a murderous eighth century Islamic crossfire between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, with al-Qaeda waging its own war in the margins. The outflow of this disaster is now the next global horror.
The Senate Democrats (led by the predicable Schumer and Feinstein) for their part are doing the usual virtue-signaling cum Trump-bashing with their attempt to stop the ban, which seems largely symbolic at this point. But a true moral rot and pervasive dishonesty lurks just below the surface of their contempt for the president. They offer nothing in return for their criticism of Trump and never have. They have no idea how to deal with the problem and aren’t even talking about it, other than to again virtue-signal by saying we should open the door to yet more of these refugees — this although it was reported only last week that 300, roughly one-third of all domestic terror cases currently under investigation by the FBI, are indeed from those admitted to the U. S. as refugees.
It’s also more than arguable that by offering the good refugees (there are obviously many) sanctuary in Western countries, including ours, we are enabling the continued perpetual oppression of their home countries. If so many of the decent leave, who will be left to change them? Isn’t it better to improve seriously the conditions and safety of refugee camps in or near the countries themselves, so that those benighted nations just might have a future some day? It’s not going to happen if nobody’s home but Assad and his sadistic buddies from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Of course improved refugee camps are little more than a drop in a sulfurous bucket. But other suggestions are not being made, at least not publicly. (What’s going to happen once ISIS is destroyed? ISIS II?) Our politicians, per usual, are too busy attacking each other to examine the situation with any depth.
The Democrats especially, in their zeal to destroy Trump, hope no one notices what’s happening in Europe. Forget Erdogan and what he’s up to, it’s we who are bad, uncaring, Islamophobic or whatever. They applaud Angela Merkel who is coming here later this week to civilize the barbarian Trump, if we are to believe Der Spiegel, and politely straighten the boy out about the rules of the international game.
Many of us, however, including a growing number of Europeans, wish it were the other way around. It’s the hoity-toity Angela who has more to learn from the flashy, unmannered Tweet-aholic. The mess the continent that she has led for years is in attests to this. If this miracle of “education” were to take place, America would be saving Europe from itself yet again and we could all rejoice. At this precise moment, I think we could agree that’s unlikely. But in the long run I’m hopeful — for us, anyway.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already. You can find him on Twitter @rogelsimon.
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