REPUBLICAN presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday, August 15 proposed a “new screening test” for immigrants seeking to enter the United States.
Advertisement
The message from Trump, however, was that Obama and Clinton have tiptoed around the threat because they are unwilling to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” and are too afraid of offending those who would do harm to effectively target them.
Trump said a newly adopted approach is needed in fighting terrorism by the organization which led him to change his mind and he no longer considered North Atlantic Treaty Organisation obsolete.
“We will be tough, and we will be even extreme”, said Trump at a campaign rally in Youngstown, Ohio, casting the fight against “Radical Islamic Terrorism” as this generation’s Cold War. “I said don’t go in, OK, to Iraq”, Trump said, citing his frequent and false claim that he always opposed the Iraq War.
“Our current strategy of nation-building and regime change have been a total disaster – it’s time to chart a new course”, Trump said.
Trump more broadly criticized the Obama administration – and his Democratic rival, Clinton – saying their policies created a power vacuum in the Middle East that allowed ISIS to flourish.
Trump proposed temporarily suspending immigration “from some of the most risky and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism”.
Donald Trump oddly admitted on Monday he called for US troops to be withdrawn from Iraq – just one day after slamming President Obama for the same.
Trump said he will also work closely with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation on this new mission.
Conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt gave Trump the opportunity to ease his way out of this nonsense by suggesting that Trump was referring to a notion that Obama’s Iraq policy somehow led to the formation of ISIS.
Trump modified his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., saying instead that the United States should commit to barring anyone from a part of the world where terrorism breeds.
“Our new approach – which must be shared by both parties in America, by our allies overseas and by our friends in the Middle East – must be to halt the spread of radical Islam”, Trump said in a major policy speech on defeating radical Islam in Ohio.
“The common thread linking the major Islamic terrorist attacks that have recently occurred on our soil.is that they have involved immigrants or the children of immigrants”, the NY billionaire argued.
I asked Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former USA ambassador to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, about Trump’s assertions regarding North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and terrorism.
Thus the idea that Muslims are the biggest threat to the United States, advocated for by Trump and many Republicans, seems to fall apart when confronted by a cursory analysis.
“The fact of the matter is we have very sophisticated vetting programs in place”, she said, noting that the country has invested billions in improving systems and information sharing since the 9/11 attacks. “A neighbor saw suspicious behavior, bombs on the floor and other things, but didn’t warn authorities because they said they didn’t want to be accused of racial profiling”.
Noting media reports that the Islamic State has made substantial profits selling oil in land that it occupies to fund terrorism, Trump said that “we could have prevented the rise of ISIS in Iraq” by claiming control of its oil.
Apparently, in a Trump administration, the legal immigrant parents of adults who commit illegal acts would be on the hook for the actions of their grown children.
The senior campaign official declined to say exactly what such a test would look like, but said it could include a questionnaire to get potential immigrants on record about their views.
Advertisement
TRUMP: The Islamic State “has a new base of operations” in Libya.
