The image of President Trump, flanked by Vice President Pence and Defense Secretary James Mattis, signing an executive order that (among other things) excludes Syrian refugees from the United States, is indelible. Three powerful American leaders, targeting and dehumanizing some of the most vulnerable people on Earth. A picture of bullying. A picture of cruelty. A picture of national shame.
It sits in my head beside images of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, bewildered by the loss of their old lives, assets depleted, living (in some cases) eight to a room, exploited by human traffickers. Many families feel compelled to put their boys to work and their girls into early, forced marriages. “My home is all broken in Syria,” a girl of 6 told me while coloring a picture of helicopters and bombs. Trump is a champion at punching down, but seldom this far.
This executive order is a security measure that very few actual security professionals would prioritize, given that refugees are some of the most carefully vetted people who enter the country. Meanwhile, the downside of (in effect) targeting foreigners by their religion is immediate and considerable — worrying American Muslims and embarrassing the United States’ Muslim friends and allies in the world. When some radical cleric in, say, Central Asia, says, “The new American president hates Islam,” he does not require a conspiracy theory to support his claim. And all of this may have been done with no security upside at all, given the utter incompetence with which the order was drafted and the likelihood that the courts will prevent its implementation.