{"id":4518,"date":"2017-04-07T13:49:51","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T11:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4518"},"modified":"2017-04-07T13:50:15","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T11:50:15","slug":"war-preferable-to-immigration-controls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/4518\/","title":{"rendered":"War Preferable to Immigration Controls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Tracinski has some ideas<\/a> about how to deal with Syria:<\/p>\n

If Syria seems too far away, too brutal, too primitive, too wrapped up in its own internal strife between equally unappealing factions\u2014well, that\u2019s exactly what I thought about another conflict a few years back. It was the mid-1990s, and the conflict was in Afghanistan. And that part about how this was irrelevant to American interests? That didn\u2019t end well.<\/p>\n

It turned out that the chaos in Afghanistan was not so remote as to be none of our business, because it provided a breeding ground, safe haven, and international recruiting program for terrorists who wanted to attack the United States. We found that out on September 11. Well, actually, we found it out before then, when al-Qaeda staged big attacks on US citizens and assets in East Africa and Yemen. But it took September 11 to make the threat undeniable.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

So here we are, sixteen years later, sitting back and watching the Islamists recreate exactly the same conditions. There is a zone of constant warfare and chaos that allows terrorists to establish themselves. There is a new safe haven where a brutal terrorist group seizes state power, or quasi-state power, and puts themselves forward as a champion of Islam and a model of successful jihad. They call on supporters from around the world to rally to their banner, and then they support or incite terrorist attacks back home in the West\u2014in Paris, in Brussels, in Sydney, in San Bernardino and Orlando.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m just a dumb engineer, but wouldn’t stopping terrorists trained in Syria from carrying out attacks in the United States involve limiting the ability to travel from Syria to the US and enhancing the screening of those that do? In other words, doing that very thing that Trump tried to do and was struck down by regional courts citing the effects it would have on tourism?<\/p>\n

I’ll believe the US and European nations are taking the threat of Islamic terrorism being imported into their countries seriously when they put far greater controls on who comes in and what they do once they are there. But\u00a0Tracinski has a better plan:<\/p>\n

For example, when it comes to pushing the Russians out of Syria now that they\u2019re ensconced there, there\u2019s a straightforward model for that: Afghanistan. Of course we shouldn\u2019t challenge the Russkis directly, because that would risk escalation into a great power war. But we can give very substantial covert support to select groups of rebels\u2014far more than the half-hearted, going-through-the-motions efforts so far\u2014and make Syria a quagmire the Russians can\u2019t sustain. Russia is a shrunken shadow of the Soviet Union and in far less of a position to maintain a serious effort in Syria over the long term.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What could possibly go wrong?<\/p>\n

All of this to avoid having to admit that the immigration policies of the United States and Europe have failed and are endangering its citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Tracinski has some ideas about how to deal with Syria: If Syria seems too far away, too brutal, too primitive, too wrapped up in its own internal strife between equally unappealing factions\u2014well, that\u2019s exactly what I thought about another … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,15,40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4518"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4520,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518\/revisions\/4520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}