Excluding Iraq From Muslim Ban Lays Bare the Lie
The travel ban offers nothing for national security, rather it threatens it. Sure there is a fig leaf of verbiage concealing the naked truth ("Iraq will work with us on screening criteria"
but that provides about as effective a cover up as fig leaves offer for nudity. Essentially none. If any nation fits the description of a likely source for terrorists attempting to enter the U.S. (aside from Saudi Arabia of course which actually was), Iraq fits the bill perfectly.
To quote our current President: "Isis started in Iraq". ISIS controls territory in Iraq. Terrorist infiltrated Iraqi members of security forces have murdered Senior American military officials inside of Iraq. Car bombs blow up inside Iraq every day, even in the tightly secured Green Zone. Iran supported militia's operate openly inside Iraq, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Generals train them. But Iraq is now exempted from the travel ban.
Good, it should be. Along with the other six nations also. Including Iraq in the travel ban in the first place literally threatened our national security. Had Trump not removed it we might have alienated a key U.S. ally active in the fight against ISIS. The current Iraq government whose soldiers are fighting and dying to defeat ISIS was put in a very difficult place by the original order, as were our soldiers stationed there. It turned public opinion against America inside of Iraq as it did throughout the entire Muslim world. The new travel ban, like the old one, emboldens our enemies and weakens our friends.
If national security reasons required Iraq to be removed from the ban (which they did) than national security argues against the wisdom of an entire policy based on fabricated fear. The Trump Administration has twisted itself into a knot in an effort to justify keeping a campaign promise to its xenophobic base, at the very real expense of weakening our national security against terrorism in order to do so.
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