I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.
The Kite Runner (via bl-ossomed)
To stop terrorism against Americans, Donald Trump should ban Americans from America
- The Trump administration is considering banning visas from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
- Terrorism in the U.S. is a primarily homegrown phenomenon. Trump’s order does nothing to counter this.
- In 2015, the New York Times reviewed the backgrounds of 20 Islamic extremist attackers in the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, and found that half of the assailants were born in the United States.
- An additional five attackers were fully naturalized citizens, while just three were in the U.S. with green cards and one held a tourist visa.
- Since 2015, the trend hasn’t changed in high-profile attacks. Omar Mateen, Pulse nightclub shooter in Orlando, was born in New York.
- Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man who detonated bombs which wounded 29 in New York on Sept. 17, was born in Afghanistan in 1988 but was a naturalized citizen since 2011.
- Esteban Santiago Ruiz, the 26-year-old U.S. military veteran who killed five and wounded six others at Ft. Lauderdale Airport on Jan. 6, was a U.S. citizen.
- Of the high profile terror attacks in 2016, only 18-year-old Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the Ohio State University student who wounded 11 people on Nov. 28, might have been impeded by Trump’s order,
- But only by preventing him from entering the country while he was a child, long before he was radicalized. Artan was a Somali refugee.
- What about 9/11? Of the 19 total 9/11 attackers, 15 were from Saudi Arabia, two came from the United Arab Emirates, and one each from Egypt and Lebanon. None of which are included in Trump’s list.
- In June 2015, the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security reported, based on surveys of 382 law enforcement organizations, that:
- “Law enforcement agencies in the United States consider anti-government violent extremists, not radicalized Muslims, to be the most severe threat of political violence that they face.”
- Since most U.S. terror attacks are committed by homegrown extremists, not foreigners, and perceived persecution is a commonly cited motivation among terror suspects…
- Trump’s order could do little to prevent attacks but perpetuate the narrative of civilization-scale conflict that groups like the Islamic State, also know as ISIS, rely upon to radicalize new converts. Read more