[NOTE: Part I can be found here.]
I ended Part I with the idea that I would write a Part II that offered some suggestions on how to deal with the problem posed by moderate Muslims vs. jihadis.
It’s not only not an easy problem to solve (that may be the understatement of the year), but it’s not an easy one to state and describe, because it has so many parts. For example, there’s the problem of telling the difference between the two, compounded by concepts such as taqiya. There’s the distinction between native-born and/or citizen Muslims, and those who are immigrating. There’s also the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, and between different kinds of legal immigrants (those who flee for political reasons and are refugees or who seek asylum, those who come to work, those who come for jobs, those who come on legal visas but who overstay, etc.).
So believe me when I say that this will not be the definitive word on the subject, and will only just scratch the surface.
Let’s start with citizens. There are millions of Muslims already in this country, and Part I described the fact that many really are “moderate” and good citizens. Unfortunately, a very significant and yet unknown percentage are not. To deal with those people, I’m with Ted Cruz, whose idea (which has been very widely criticized, of course) concerns increased patrolling and securing Muslim of neighborhoods. It seems he had in mind (and I definitely have in mind) something akin to what this NYPD unit did in a program that used to be in place under Mayor Bloomberg but is no more (the program was also described in this 2009 book). It was an aggressive approach that did this sort of thing, for example:
…[T]he department dispatched officers to Pakistani neighborhoods and “instructed them to look for reasons to stop cars: speeding, broken tail lights, running stop signs, whatever. The traffic stop gave police an opportunity to search for outstanding warrants or look for suspicious behavior. An arrest could be the leverage the police needed to persuade someone to become an informant.” It established the Terrorist Interdiction Unit to handle these informants, who included “mosque crawlers,” “café crawlers,” shopkeepers, and nosy neighbors.
The fact that programs like that have been stopped is the sort of thing that has led to what I consider the over-correction represented by the “deport all Muslims, including citizens” advocates. Such an approach does not consider the distinctions between the innocent and the guilty, the citizens and the non-citizens, those who mean to harm and those who do not, or to distinguish the religious triumphalists (see Part I) from the rest. It also eliminates the very people who could become informants.
What’s more, it’s unworkable. How do you define “Muslim”? Is it by birth, for example? If the Muslim is a citizen, where on earth would that person be deported to? How much of a government presence will this require? Does it matter if Muslim citizens have been born in this country? What about converts? Meanwhile, there are other approaches that don’t require such Draconian measures.
People often have made analogies to World War II and the fact that in that war we bombed all Germans whether they were Nazis or anti-Nazis. But such analogies are inappropriate. We were at war with the country of Germany, and therefore all German residents living in Germany (including those who hated Nazism) were at risk.
A much better analogy is to those people of German extraction who resided in the US during WWII. Here’s the scoop on what happened to both the non-citizen German nationals residing in this country and the German-American citizens of this country during WWII:
The [US] government examined the cases of German nationals individually, and detained relatively few in internment camps run by the Department of Justice, as related to its responsibilities under the Alien and Sedition Acts. To a much lesser extent, some ethnic German US citizens were classified as suspect after due process and also detained. Similarly, a small proportion of Italian nationals and Italian Americans were interned in relation to their total population in the US.
In other words, such people were investigated as needed and dealt with on a case-by-case basis, even during the war, with only the worst people meriting action. I’m not sure how the evaluation was done, and I’m not suggesting internment camps for Muslims, but I’m pointing out that even during WWII the vast vast majority of Germans and German-Americans in this country, both non-citizens and citizens, were left alone. And those were very hard-nosed times, before PC-thought had made many inroads.
The history of the Japanese in this country (both citizens and non-citizens) during WWII is more well-known, but even that history has been very distorted. We certainly did not deport all Japanese, and we also did not intern them all. For example:
…more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, nearly all who lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps, but in Hawaii, where the 150,000-plus Japanese Americans comprised over one-third of the population, 1,200 to 1,800 were interned.
Some of the Japanese on the West Coast chose to relocate further east (it was only the West Coast that was affected), but most were interned, although in recent years the US has admitted it was unnecessary and has apologized and paid reparations.
In terms of comparison, though, another point is that the scope of the thing was much smaller. Leaving out Hawaii, where there were a large number of Japanese-Americans but few were interned, there were only about 127,000 Japanese-Americans on the US continent, and almost all lived on the west coast. That is certainly not the case now with Muslims in America, who are far more numerous and more widespread, so that even if there were no ethical drawbacks (and there are) there would be extremely formidable practical ones in comparison with WWII.
In summary, I am suggesting a program much like the one that was in place in NYC until a few years ago, which is essentially a stepped-up intelligence approach. Now, as far as immigrants (non-citizens) go, I would suggest strictly curtailing the arrival of new immigrants from Muslim countries, except for those members of minority groups there (Christians, for example) who are fleeing persecution there. Here’s a bill that’s at least a start on this; it has already passed the House but doesn’t have a good chance of getting past the Senate. But a Republican president and a Republican Congress would go some way towards helping that situation.
In the short term, I’m with Cruz on this one, a series of steps he suggested back in December:
…tonight, I challenge President Obama to finally acknowledge the enemy that the United States and our allies face. It is radical Islamic terrorism.
Second, after naming our enemy, the President should lay out a bold strategy to defeat ISIS, not to try to change the subject to gun control or the compliant media headline to global warming, but rather lay out a plan for decisive action for victory over evil.
Third, Americans want to know how this administration intends to keep them safe here at home. Border security is national security. We can no longer accept a border that is not secure and the President should announce the immediate steps he will take to ensure that it is.
…We also know that ISIS has made it clear that they intend to infiltrate the refugees in order to get to the United States. That can’t happen.
The President should place an immediate moratorium on refugees from countries with a significant al Qaeda or ISIS presence, such as Syria. I’ve introduced legislation to make this happen; it is not a desired step, but a necessary step for the security of the United States.
That’s what we should do. It doesn’t work as a sound bite, and it’s not simple to either state or implement, but I believe it’s the best solution at this point.
