On 7th December 2015, Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States until we “can figure out what is going on.” The San Bernadino attack by Muslims who had entered the United States was five days earlier. But since then, nothing. Everyone realizes that a Muslim attack on U.S. soil before the November election will boost Mr Trump’s chances. Perhaps even the Muslims who would like to keep up President Obama’s tolerable level of terrorism.
The corollary is that if Hillary Clinton is elected, the terrorists will be back and will make up for lost time. In the meantime, Mr Trump’s statement of intent with respect to Muslim travel to the U.S. is likely to have already saved lives, possibly a lot of lives.
But the bigger promise from Mr Trump’s statement of intent is that it would end the world order as we know it, the world order that has been imposed upon us by what Obama’s foreign policy advisor calls “the Blob” — the Washington foreign policy establishment. One of the smaller implications is that the UN would have to leave New York and find some other place to host it. In turn the U.S. funding of the UN will be reduced somewhat. Of course that would be a wonderful outcome considering that the institution is so morally bankrupt that Saudi Arabia is on the UN Human Rights Council.
The world order promoted by the Blob reached its apogee with the notion of Responsibility to Protect (R2P to the aficionados). This is the global political commitment “endorsed by all member states of the United Nations at the 2005 World Summit to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.” That sounds hilarious now but it is the philosophy that got us involved in Libya and Syria. In the latter case the U.S. is supporting forces that have been perpetrating some horrendous “crimes against humanity.” We know that because the perpetrators of those crimes against humanity are keen to document what they get up to. Every TOW missile that the U.S. gives to the Free Syrian Army and Al Nusra encourages this misanthropic behavior, even if the missiles are paid for by Qatar.
The premise of R2P, the basis of the world order envisioned by the Blob, is that we are all created equal and that we are our brother’s keeper. Failing that, like Han Solo’s father, we know that there is some good in everyone. The Blob and UN vision of the future world order is that we will become one seething mass of humanity, borderless and undifferentiated by nationality.
The events of recent years have dispelled that notion. There are people bad enough that we should not have anything to do with them. There are people who are bad enough that, if anything bad happens to them, we should not do anything to save them. I am referring to the entire Middle East region now. The torture and death of the little girl shown above is tragic but there would be no point in trying to save her or prevent similar atrocities. As per Stalin’s observation with respect to the tragedy of one death relative to the deaths of millions, there is a statistic coming along which will make our current little wars trivial by comparison.
Afghanistan provides some perspective. When the U.S. took over that country in 2001, there were 24 million Afghanis. Now there are 33 million, despite the sexual proclivities of the natives. Afghanistan started importing wheat in the early 1970s and all the population growth since then has been feed by imported grain. Even under the Russians with their landmines, the rate of population growth didn’t fall below 2 percent per annum. It is hard to do nation-building while people are starving to death, so the U.S. upped the food imports and the population growth rate bounded away to a high of 4.8 percent per annum.
To what end? Well, it is going to be a bitter end. The U.S. has stayed in Afghanistan these last seven years because of Obama’s election slogan in 2008 of “Iraq war bad, Afghanistan war good.” The prompt collapse of the Afghan government following U.S. withdrawal will make President Obama look foolish, so that will be put off until President Trump orders it. Nobody will have much interest in paying for grain to feed the ungrateful wretches of Afghanistan after that.
In short, the whole Middle East region is headed for a big starvation event. One day the ships carrying grain from the U.S., Europe and Russia to the Middle East will stop for some reason or another. The UN got conniptions when Russia banned exports of wheat due to a drought in 2010. The upshot of all this is that if a girl in Syria isn’t tortured and killed by Islamic purists at the age of four, the fate that awaits her is starving to death at the age of perhaps 34. Not all the people of the Middle East can be saved from that fate. There is no point in even saving a handful of them because the problem is inherent in their culture.
Mr Trump’s travel ban on Muslims is the beginning of the fencing-off of Western Civilisation from what is going to happen in the Middle East. As Abraham Lincoln observed in 1838:
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Mr. Trump’s travel ban on Muslims entering the U.S. is the first step in reversing the national suicide that Lincoln warned us of. The EU is consciously taking Europe down the path of collective suicide. They know that what they are doing to Europe is wrong and unpopular, and they are deathly afraid of civil war breaking out because of the forced import of Muslims. So the EU has proposed a draconian weapons ban.
Mr. Trump’s pronouncements have also improved other parts of the world. When he said that Japan should do more to pay for its defence and he would understand if they became nuclear-armed, Japan responded by stating that its constitution didn’t forbid nuclear weapons. What is not forbidden is allowed. China seethed in response. Trump as President might even sell Japan nuclear weapons. See – the narrative of how the world works promulgated by the Blob, the EU and the UN is being turned on its head. There is much cause to be hopeful for the future.
David Archibald is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery).