Trump only making good on his promises
Ban on Muslims is not that bad after all.
Close to two weeks have passed since President Donald Trump passed his earth-shattering ban Muslims entering the US.
The question before everyone else is, is it really that bad? Most of the wisdom in the grapevine in Singapore and Malaysia can, on the lack of large-scale street protests and violent demonstrations that was originally expected.
Instead all of the expected animus has turned out to be mere whimpers on the back of a lack of any real interest in the US leader’s executive actions. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is noticeably silent as is Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo except for the rumpus his vice-president Jusuf Kalla caused who rather oddly, was unduly harsh to Singapore when the haze (smog) from his country’s peatlands began filtering over Singapore’s airspace in 2014 and 2015.
Therein therefore lies the rub and the very crucial attachment of what the dynamics of the ban actually now amounts to.
First up, as how Trump himself had said on the campaign trail of his desire to ban Muslims, a certain air of expectancy must have formed among Muslims of the man’s intended actions. That would have placed all Muslims across the world on notice and girded them psychologically. They knew about it and saw it coming thus explaining theirs’ somewhat mental preparedness toward what Trump said and did.
Noticeably, there has been no large-scale desertions of employees from the many Trump business enterprises even at the famous Trump International Golf Club in Dubai.
What is more the ban is only for 90 or more days and nothing less. It is not a permanent ban unlike Trump’s predecessor Chester Alan Arthur did in 1882 of permanently banning Chinese immigrants, or President Lyndon Johnson’s reluctance to permit Vietnamese refugees at the height of Vietnam War before he was forced by circumstances to do so, in 1965.
So the Trump Ban cannot quintessentially amount to a ban by any stretch. It is plainly a restriction order, something Trump as the commander in chief of the armed forces and the protector of the US constitution is entitled and obliged to do, for what US constitution demands that it is the duty of the American chief executive to provide for the safety and security of his people.
Trump therefore is only doing is constitutional duty just like what another US president did in 2015 when he authorised and signed into law the Visa Waiver Programme that limits travel to and between Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Somalia.
If all these sounds familiar it is time to visit the genesis of this baleful ban because it did not start with Trump.