Kuhner: Damning Trump’s leadership on the top global threat of our timehttp://www.worldtribune.com/damning-trump-for-providing-leadership-on-the-top-global-threat-of-our-time/by Jeffrey T. Kuhner
The establishment has become unhinged. Donald Trump’s call to impose a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration and travel into the United States has caused the political and media class to completely melt down.
Liberals openly refer to him as a new “Hitler” or neo-fascist strongman. All of his fellow Republican presidential candidates — with the notable exceptions of Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul — have claimed his proposal is bigoted, Islamophobic or “un-American.” Sen. Lindsey Graham has gone so far as to demand that Mr. Trump be kicked “the Hell out of my party.”
Yet, there is one seminal problem with the establishment’s hysteria: They are wrong, while Trump is right.
Even The New York Times had to concede that the billionaire’s proposal is perfectly constitutional. Of course, it is. Trump’s temporary ban would only apply to Muslims who are not U.S. citizens. Foreigners of the Muslim faith — Saudis, Somalis, Syrians — do not have a constitutional right to come and enter the United States. The Constitution does not enshrine the right to universal migration. If it did, then America wouldn’t be able to control its borders or national sovereignty; instead, the country would be overrun with migrants from every corner of the world.
Moreover, Trump is simply following the example of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During World War II, FDR passed several executive actions — Proclamation 2525, Proclamation 2526 and Proclamation 2527 — that not only prevented German, Japanese and Italian citizens from immigrating or traveling to America. They authorized the constant surveillance of those that were allowed to remain in the U.S.
For liberals and moderate Republicans, FDR was a great president — maybe the greatest after Abraham Lincoln — and wartime leader. Trump, however, is demonized as a crypto-fascist and xenophobic demagogue.
The establishment’s hatred and loathing of Trump is based upon a deep-seated, dangerous truth — one that is plunging America into a moral and political crisis: Our elites have become disconnected from reality. Wedded to an ideology of multiculturalism, egalitarianism, open borders and globalism, they are unable — or unwilling — to recognize the existential threats confronting us. Our porous southern border is a bleeding sore; we are being invaded by millions of Third World illegal aliens; and our nearly $20 trillion national debt has pushed America to the edge of bankruptcy.
But radical Islam may pose the greatest threat. Trump understands something that President Obama, House Speaker Paul Ryan and the mainstream media do not: We are in a war. Militant Muslims are determined to impose a global caliphate. The recent terrorist atrocities in Paris and San Bernardino were not simply random acts of violence by a few deranged individuals. Rather, they represent a larger Islamic Holy War against the West.
One of the San Bernardino Jihadists, Tashfeen Malik, the wife of American-born Syed Farook, was a Pakistani Muslim who entered our country on a K-1 “fiancée” visa. She was supposedly “vetted” by several government agencies — the FBI, Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She had been radicalized years before, as was Farook. Still, Malik was allowed to come.
They were part of a terrorist cell inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL or ISIS).
The FBI admits that there are ISIL Jihadist suspects operating in all 50 states; the agency says there are at least 900 active ongoing investigations of ISIL terrorist plots. More ominously, the Islamic State has vowed to infiltrate the ranks of Syrian refugees being resettled in America — and across Western Europe and Canada.
The simple fact is that, liberal claims to the contrary, it is impossible to distinguish moderate, “peace-loving” Muslims from violent extremists. The nature and goal of Jihad is to blend in, pretend to be innocuous and then strike.
In World War II, the U.S. government was unable to tell the difference between good Germans or Italians and those who were fascist sympathizers. This is why FDR ordered a comprehensive ban until the end of hostilities. This was not bigotry, but common sense. The same applies today.
The incontrovertible truth is this: Had something similar to Trump’s proposal been implemented when Osama bin Laden and the forces of Islamofascism declared war on America in the 1990s none of the major Islamist terror attacks on U.S. soil would have happened — 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombings or San Bernardino.
All of the 9/11 hijackers were Middle Eastern Muslims who came on visas. The Tsarnaevs were refugees, who also were “vetted,” from Chechnya. And there was Malik. She met her eventual husband, Farook, in Saudi Arabia before making their terrorist journey to the United States. In short, by refusing to impose a temporary ban on Muslims, our elites are willing to sacrifice innocent American lives on the altar of political correctness. This is not “compassion.” It is recklessness bordering on treason.
From its inception, Islam has been a violent faith. Besides having multiple wives—including child brides as young as 12 — the Prophet Muhammad was a fierce warrior, who spread Muslim civilization through the sword. He engaged in the slaughter of Infidels, including beheadings, through several military campaigns seeking to cleanse Christians and Jews from Arab lands. Non-Muslims who were not driven out were subjugated, many of whom forced to convert. During the Middle Ages, Muslim armies swept into North Africa and Europe, conquering Spain, Portugal, the Balkans, and swathes of Italy, France and Central Europe — eventually reaching the gates of Vienna. It took centuries before Christian Europe was able to finally repel the Islamic invasion.
What is happening today is nothing more than a continuation of history. Radical Islam has been at war with Christian and Western civilization for nearly 1,400 years.
Unlike Christianity and Judaism, however, Islam has never undergone a profound reformation. Christians no longer burn heretics at the stake or engage in barbaric religious inquisitions. Jews no longer stone female adulterers. That ended a long time ago. For militant Muslims, the story is very different. Honor killings, stoning homosexuals and lesbians, slavery, brutally oppressing women, massacring and crucifying Christians, virulent anti-Semitism and basing society on the Medieval principles of Sharia Law — these are common in many Islamic countries and supported by millions of Muslims.
No one want reform more than the majority of Muslims worldwide, but they are terrified to act.
This is not some kind of “Islamophobia” (as our blind and cowardly elites insist), but reality. That Trump is one of the few political leaders in America courageous and perceptive enough to recognize this is a damning indictment of our corrupt ruling class. Our war with radical Islam will go on for years, if not decades.
Ultimately, moderate Muslims must confront the sickness, the malevolent cancer of Holy War, Sharia and violent expansionism within Islam itself. The choice is clear: Reform the Muslim faith and bring it — kicking and screaming — into modernity or allow it to remain mired in the 7th century.
Yet, until this reformation takes place, America must assume a defensive posture and protect our homeland from barbaric Jihadists, who despise everything we stand for. Political correctness is the road to national suicide. It guarantees only one thing: more innocent blood will be shed — American blood.
Trump is not the problem. Muslim extremism is. The Islamic world actually understands this. It’s about time our political and media establishment did as well.
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at WorldTribune.com and the host of “The Kuhner Report” weekdays 12-3 pm EST on WRKO AM-680 in Boston.
