Trump's Muslim Ban- Saving up to 2 lives since 1990

Donald Trump has managed to outrage much of the world yet again this week. He has introduced his much vaunted Muslim ban, which he promised on the campaign trail after a string of terror attacks in Europe and the USA in late 2015.

Of course, banning an entire religion from entry to the United States would have been a blatant breach of the Constitution, so instead the White House has announced that all nationals from 'terror-prone' countries will be denied entry for a certain period. The new 'Axis of Evil' is made up of:

Syria
Iran
Iraq
Sudan
Libya
Yemen
Somalia

Which got me wondering. How many people would still be alive today if previous US presidents had introduced such a measure?

I decided to start in 1990, purely because it was the year I was born. I will admit, I did use the Wikipedia list of terror attacks in the USA. However, like the good historian I try to be, I did check the footnotes. It appears to check out reasonably well.

There is no common definition of what constitutes a terror attack, so doubtless there are some incidents on the list that don't deserve to be there, and some missing that really should be included.

But, using what data I had, I discovered that:

• There have been 71 terrorist incidents in the United States since January 1990.

• They resulted in 3372 deaths (with 2996 of those deaths on September 11th 2001).

• Muslims carried out 24 of those attacks, killing 3118 people. Take 9/11 out of the picture (and I'll explain why below), that becomes 122 deaths.

• Muslims from the countries covered by the Trump ban carried out between 1 attack (on the strictest possible interpretation of the ban) to 3 attacks (broadest possible interpretation). These attacks killed 2 people under the broad definition, and 1 under the strict one (that being the attacker).

• The American far-right (which I have taken to include ultra-libertarians, Christian extremists and violent anti-abortion activists) committed 27 attacks and killed 227 people (168 of them being in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing).

• The remaining 20 incidents, which killed 30 people, were carried out by people whose motives were unknown, who have never been caught, or who don't really fit into any other category (the Earth Liberation Front featured heavily, as did the Unabomber).

Trump's Muslim ban would not have stopped many terror attacks that made headlines around the world:

• The person responsible for the 1993 CIA shooting was from Pakistan.
• The World Trade Centre bombers of 1993 were from Egypt, Pakistan, Kuwait, Jordan and the USA.
• The US Army officer who carried out the 2009 Fort Hood shootings in Texas was from West Virginia.
• The Boston Marathon bombers were from Chechnya, which is in Russia.
• The three men who attacked an art gallery in May 2015, claiming to be ISIS inspired, were all from the USA.
• The San Bernardino attackers were from the USA and Pakistan.

Most importantly of all, Trump's executive order names the events of 9/11 as the rationale behind his executive order. The 9/11 hijackers came from Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and the largest contingent came from Saudi Arabia. The masterminds behind the plot had met in Hamburg, in Germany, and travelled to Afghanistan to plan and prepare their attack. Had Trump's Muslim ban been in place in 2001, it would not have stopped a group of Middle Eastern students coming from Germany. The destruction of the World Trade Centre would still have gone ahead.

This all begs the question. What on Earth is Trump up to? He is inflaming world opinion against the United States, in a manner that makes George W Bush look like Mother Teresa. He is breaking a fundamental norm of liberal democracy, indeed one that is enshrined in the US constitution- that there is freedom of religion.

Instead, this is policy as determined by cable news and conspiracy theorists. Islam is the enemy, in the mind of Fox News, Alex Jones, and Donald Trump. So better ban it, quick. Even if it turns out what you're doing is totally illogical and nonsensical.

___________________________

My reluctance to include 9/11 in these statistics is because it was clearly such a one-off event, the mother of all 'spectaculars,' as Al-Quaeda used to refer to them. Yes, it was awful, painful, ugly, and has shaped the world since in ways we still do not really understand. But it is also incredibly atypical, an event that was more akin to an act of war than a terrorist attack. However, as it did happen, and there is no getting around that, I have included it, but also provided the non-9/11 figures for a slightly more nuanced comparison.

The Further Prophecies of Yes, Prime Minister

In a return of an irregular series, here are Prime Minister Jim Hacker and his Private Secretary Bernard Woolley, discussing Russian aggression, the effectiveness of NATO, and whether the UK's nuclear missiles actually work...

From Yes, Prime Minister, first broadcast in 1986.

The end of the first day

Now we're through the looking glass here, people. White is black. And black is white.

Jim Garrison, District Attorney for New Orleans, as imagined in the 1991 film JFK

Farewell to Obama

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Amidst my piles of teaching paperwork, I have some historical curiosities. One I am very proud of is the special supplement from The Times (it was a long time ago, ok?!) for Obama's first inauguration.

I was 18 and a half. I'd spent my formative political years watching the United States languish under George W Bush, a buffon of a man who had proved singularly inept as president. The goodwill and sympathy that America had received on an awful day in September 2001 had had been squandered, as the Bush Administration launched an unwinnable 'War on Terror.' It had also broken international law by invading and destroying a sovereign state, on a false pretext. Yes, a brutal dictatorship had been removed, but in its place was chaos and instability. Bush had also pulled the US out of the Kyoto Accords, and was well known as a climate change sceptic. 

To cap it all, years of laissez-faire economic mismanagement had created a debt-fuelled economic bubble. When it burst, it threatened to take down the global economic order with it. It is hard to remember now, but for a few weeks in late 2008, it looked as if capitalism itself was collapsing. We were staring into the abyss.

Into this mess strode Barack Obama. I can't remember when I first heard about him, but I'm guessing it was during his duel with Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, when he took the enormous gamble to oppose what many thought of as hers by right. I do remember when he visited Europe in the summer of 2008, after tying up the nomination. He was already being treated as a rock star politician. Gordon Brown was among the long list of European leaders who all but came out in support of Obama.

To those of us who were young, non-American, and vaguely progressive, he was the light to Bush's dark. He offered a different vision of America to that which Bush had pushed. One that, on the world stage, would work with others, rather than in the face of others. A USA where looking or being different wouldn't matter. A caring America, after years of anger and revenge.

He was just much cooler than Bush. Younger than McCain. More charismatic than our own Gordon Brown. More eloquent and intelligent than Sarah Palin.

And then they only went and elected him. As I have mentioned before, I clearly remember that day. It was as if the weight of the world had been lifted. Although not a phrase I'd heard of yet, it was morning again in America.

Of course, being US President means you are bound to disappoint. Obama has been no exception. His use of drones to carry out extra-judicial killings around the world is a flagrant violation of international law. He has failed to get much of his initial agenda through, in the face of legislative gridlock and administrative difficulties. Guantanamo Bay is still open. His use of executive orders to govern is looking very vulnerable, as they are easy to reverse. And what that Nobel Peace Prize is for is still a total mystery.

Why am I recording all this? In the grand scope of history, eight years ago is pretty much yesterday. I'm sure many of you reading this remember it too, and quite possibly remember it better than I do. To some people, Obama was simply the latest in a long line of US Presidents to come and go. And he has not managed to achieve everything he set out to, by a long shot.

But...

A long time ago, Mario Cuomo said that you campaigned in poetry, and governed in prose. Obama proved that wrong. He governed as he campaigned. With a single word; hope. Hope that the United States could become a better place. Hope that the world could become a little bit safer, a little bit more secure, a little bit fairer, for our times, and for the times to come. And that you could be calm, composed, funny, and frankly cool whilst doing it. For eight years, that was what Obama embodied, to millions of Americans, and millions more around the world. Millions like me.

Today is the inauguration of a man who is the polar opposite to Barack Obama. I am not going to waste my words on him today. We have plenty of time ahead in which I imagine I will spill many words about him.

Today instead I want to mark the exit from office of Barack Obama. I genuinely wish they could keep him. He was, is, and always shall be, my image of a US president, the mental benchmark against which I shall measure all of his successors.

And as we embark on this longest and darkest of nights, we should remember some slogans from 2008. They were relevant then. By God they are relevant now.

Hope?

Yes. We. Can.

Obama in 2008, at the Iowa Caucus, and in 2017, at his Farewell Address in Chicago

A Message For Us All

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night," 1951

And for good measure, here it is read in the unbeatable voice of Richard Burton.

Alan Partridge on... Martin McGuinness

Very clever men. Both very clever men, but I don’t trust them. Gerry Adams looks like a deputy headmaster and Martin McGuinness looks like a clown without make-up.

Alan Partridge, I'm Alan Partridge, 'To Kill a Mocking Alan,' 1997

Martin McGuinness, IRA commander, Sinn Fein politician, negotiator at the Good Friday Agreement, British MP, and Northern Irish deputy First Minister. He is retiring from politics, severing a link to one of Britain and Ireland's darkest chapters.

As an IRA commander in Derry's Bogside, 1971

Completely unexpectedly, his partnership and friendship with ardent Unionist Ian Paisley enabled power sharing in Northern Ireland, finally ushering in the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement in 2007.

The Wit and Wisdom of... Denethor

"Why, why do the fools fly?" said Denethor. "Better to burn sooner than late, for burn we must. Go back to your bonfire! And I? I will go now to my pyre. To my pyre! No tomb for Denethor and Faramir. No tomb! No long slow sleep of death embalmed. We shall burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West.

The West has failed. Go back and burn!"

Denethor II, Steward of Gondor, on the fate of Minas Tirith and Gondor. From J.R.R. Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings, Book Five, 'The Siege of Gondor.'

The Wit and Wisdom of... MLK, Mk II

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! 

And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Martin Luther King, April 3rd 1968. Within 24 hours, he had been assassinated.

King's entire speech, in support of the Memphis sanitation strike, challenging the USA to live up to it's ideals, is well worth a read:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm

Trump/Nixon: Both the Presidential Men

We're going to [put] more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family—let people like Pat Moynihan ... believe in all that crap. But I don’t believe in it. Work, work—throw 'em off the rolls. That's the key ... I have the greatest affection for [blacks], but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.

This could be something from a Donald Trump stump speech, or his first press conference.

It isn't.

Instead, these are the words of Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States.

I've been thinking a lot recently about Trump and Nixon. There are a lot of parallels. Both came to power in very close elections. Both were known for their strident political views on the threats facing America. Both were convinced that there were enemies out to get them. Both railed against the media. Both inspired terror on the left. Both have/had foreign policies apparently based on the 'madman' theory, whereby your opponents have no idea what you will do. Both campaigned on the idea of a broken, lawless America, defeated at home and abroad, and promised they alone could solve the problems.

The parallels between Nixon and Trump are so scary it seems to be obvious. Indeed, there are even stories that Nixon wrote to Trump in the late 1980s, encouraging him to make a bid for the Presidency.

What's more worrying is that Nixon was more than happy to use and abuse his power. State agencies were employed to pursue political opponents. The law was broken, firstly to get Nixon elected (he sabotaged peace talks between America and North Vietnam, to prevent the Democrats from taking advantage of an end to the Vietnam War), and then many other times after, as Nixon's attacks on his opponents crossed the line that divides robust debate from intimidation. Ultimately, this zeal to win, and defeat his 'enemies,' was to be his undoing. A group of men were caught trying to break into the Democratic Party headquarters, and the ensuing paper trail eventually drove Nixon from office.

But it is the main difference between Nixon and Trump that is perhaps the scariest. Nixon won two elections, the second a massive landslide, in which his opponent was crushed. But both these victories came before his darker side was known to the American public. When it was eventually uncovered, laid bare in Nixon's fight to the death with the Washington Post, the outcry was too much. He became the only US President to resign from the office.

But Trump's flaws are already out in the open. The reason I know he is like Nixon is because he has made no attempt to hide his dark side. It did nothing to hinder his election, may even have been the reason he was elected.

In a week's time, a man singularly unfit to hold the office of President of the United States will become the leader of the free world. Unlike with Nixon, America knew beforehand, and did not stop him. They can't now be surprised if it turns out he is the monster many fear him to be. It was all there, from the start.

I'm going to end on a note of optimism. Nixon got away with being President for six long years. But, ultimately, he was brought down. A man who won over 60% of the American electorate to his cause in 1972 had been forced to resign by 1974. Let's hope the USA doesn't let us down in the end this time either.

Some more Nixon gems are below. The bottom is particularly amusing, in light of the storm over Trump's private life that has erupted this week.

"I want to be sure he [the next head of the IRS] is a ruthless son of a bitch, that he will do what he's told, that every income tax return I want to see I see, that he will go after our enemies and not go after our friends."

"You see: homosexuality, dope, immorality in general—these are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff; they're trying to destroy us."

"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."

"Look, people get drunk ... People chase girls. And the point is, it's a hell of a lot better for them to get drunk than to take drugs. It's better to chase girls than boys."