America is not a Country

So other than my usual “I digress” quote, I try to stay away from as many cliches as possible, but today I digress. America is not a land, not a border, and it is certainly not a government. America is a people. A people of multiple ethnic, religious, social, moral and racial backgrounds. We come from the Middle East, Africa, South America, Mexico, Asia, Australia and Europe. We formed a country specifically for the opressed, the scared, the... well lets see if I can find the right words... “huddled masses yearning to be free”.

We have in our past rejected the rights of others through slavery, through conquest of the indigenous peoples, through refusing refugees in need of safety, through internment of Americans illegally, and through a myriad of ideals that we overlooked for the sake of convenience or safety. Ideals in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, which we assert are truths for all humanity. Why then do we think the present case will not be judged as harshly by history? Are we naïve? No, just scared.

Fear, by all accounts, is one of the only emotions that gets us to overreact and abandon thought. We know that Trumps ban would not have prevented 9/11, San Bernardino, or any other terror attack in the U.S. It doesn’t even include Saudi Arabia, the home of Osama Bin Laden. Why then ban anyone? Well aside from the spectacle caused on TV the ban will accomplish little in the way of security. Law already asserts that a President cannot ban access based on country of origin alone, so mostly it will get overturned or toned down. The result may even be a swing in the opposite direction which may be more dangerous. Its mission seems incoherent anyway since refugees and green card holders are on opposite extremes of the security spectrum, but I digress... again.

What has been accomplished is the goal of once again pitting “us vs. them.” For a long time Al Qaeda, and now the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have lied to the Arab world. Asserting that the West cares not for their well-being. That we want to kill them and destroy Islam, and that Islam must be at war with the western world if it is to survive. These assertions used to be extremist ideology, but 16 years of war and now a “Muslim ban” have all but proven their lies to be true. The result will not be more safety, but worse. It will alienate the young boy in need of refuge, or the father of the girl who drowned attempting to make it to safety, it will show the confused Islamic boy who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago that America is not an open and free place. It will make America the enemy, and we will have proven it to them.

We have changed our purpose, our ideals and our way of life to account for Al Qaeda and ISIL. In my opinion, this means they have gained a victory, and we ned to halt their momentum and turn the tide so that America, all of us, can prevail.