Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump delivered a major foreign policy speech yesterday (August 15) outlining the ways he plans to combat the threat of radical Islam – an ideology he calls hateful and oppressive of women, gays, children, and non-believers. “I call it extreme, extreme vetting”, Trump declared in laying out the new values-test proposal.
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While claiming that if elected, his administration would be a friend to all moderate Muslims, Trump reiterated his initiatives to temporarily suspend visas from Muslim-majority countries and countries with a history of exporting terrorism.
Trump said that the ideological tests would be aimed at people attempting to visit or live in the United States from “regions where adequate screening can not take place”.
Trump detailed a number of other “extreme vetting” requirements he’d impose as president. Trump did not clarify how US officials would assess the veracity of responses to the questionnaires or how much manpower it would require to complete such arduous vetting. “Foreign combatants will be tried in military commissions”, Trump said.
The new proposal will include a ban for citizens of countries affected by terrorism, but did not specify which ones; screening new arrivals to make sure their “ideologies” align with “American values”; keeping open the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison; launching a commission into Islamic terrorism; forming alliances with nations fighting IS; and working with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which he previously called “obsolete”.
Trump, giving a foreign policy speech in the mideastern state of OH on August 15 focused on fighting Islamic extremists, said “we can never choose our friends, but we can never fail to recognize our enemies”.
Now Trump would be on the lookout for people harboring “hostile attitudes toward our country or its principles or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law”, he said, as well as “screening out all members or the sympathizers of terrorist groups”.
Trump said one of his first acts as president will be to establish a commission on radical Islam which will include reformist voices in the Muslim community who will hopefully work with his administration. Since my comments, they have changed their policy and now have a new division focused on terror threats. We will work closely with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation on this new mission. “Very good. Very, very good”, Trump said. “Those are not the immigrants we want, and I think his speech today was fabulous”.
The State Department would be tasked with determining those areas, he said, adding that “there are many such regions”. The size of current immigrant flows are simply too large to perform adequate screening.
He enumerated the problem of radical Islamic terrorism: 13 murdered and 38 wounded at Fort Hood; 264 wounded and five killed in Boston Marathon bombing; five unarmed marines killed in Tennessee; 14 killed, 22 inured in San Bernardino, Calif; 49 executed, 53 injured, at Orlando LGBTQ nightclub; IS has attacked outside the Middle East every 84 hours this summer; and more. Beyond that, we admit hundreds of temporary workers and visitors from the same regions.
Although Trump’s remarks were stronger in tone than than those now heard from most American political leaders, he did not reveal many specific details of his plan to suggest how it would differ from the current administration’s. “The goal of the commission will be to identify and explain to the American public the core convictions and beliefs of radical Islam, to identify the warning signs of radicalisation, and to expose the networks in our society that support radicalisation”, he said. “And while I’m at it, we should give a hand to our great police officers and law enforcement officials”, he said.
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The Clinton campaign said the news was evidence of “more troubling connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine”.
