[MisterWebz]

Bombing predominately Muslim countries, overthrowing governments and covert black sites where Muslims get tortured. These are things that are acceptable, but a 90-day ban on immigrants coming from war-torn countries, that's a step too far? Has everyone seriously lost their mind?

[noelwelsh]

Imagine you're a person who was strongly against "[b]ombing predominately Muslim countries, overthrowing governments[,] and covert black sites where Muslims get tortured". Now imagine that the US has just elected a president far more conservative (and volatile!) than his predecessor, and a result there is a widespread movement for progressive political change, in line with your beliefs, from people who are normally not engaged in the political process. Do you:

a) bitch and moan at the johnny-come-latelys climbing onto your bandwagon; or

b) accept that society reacts in a non-linear way and use the opportunity to actually achieve something meaningful.

[eeZah7Ux]

What you call "bitch and moan" can be a useful reminder of how people tent do overestimate what happens in proximity and overlook what happens in a remote location.

[marcosdumay]

c) bitch and moan at the candidate at your side that isn't listening to your ideals?

There's a deep level on hypocrisy here, and that people (against both bombing and closing) are really not trying to fix this, otherwise they would have started sooner.

This is the third time in a row that the US public votes against the candidate supported by the Pentagon. Yet, the non-warmonger is a complete asshole...

(By the way, I'm watching from a safe distance, not participating on this stuff.)

[rdtsc]

Why does it have to be a and b only. Why not both or add c and d to the list.

He brought a valid point it seems but it was "bitching and moaning". And gave him a binary choice to pick between.

[imgabe]

What is the outcome of accepting that point? "You didn't complain when the government did worse things, so now you can't complain ever about anything?" The implication of accepting that logic would seem to be that we just give up. How does that help?

[SBCRec]

It is possible that this situation would add frustration for on lookers who notice that a large group of people accepted (or did not SEEM to care) about the killing and torturing of people, but all of a sudden are taking the high ground against a 90 day ban on immigration.

For SOME people it would be hard to accept the opinion of such people?

I find myself falling into this sometime... Is it a cognitive bias?

edit: Its hard for me to think about these issues with large fear based reactions from both sides and the hysteria the media is putting out.

[rdtsc]

> The implication of accepting that logic would seem to be that we just give up. How does that help

Not necessarily it could be also "pay attention harder from now on not to make the same mistake", "this is jumping on the outrage bandwagon more than actual outrage", "let's see what happened before so we don't make the same mistakes", "let's hear what others think about this" (as this is a public discussion forum).

[pjc50]

Note that, due to the two-party system, complaining about bad Democrat policy on these issues was always somewhat muted at elections because the likely alternative wasn't some better Democrat but a Republican with a far worse policy. Which is pretty much exactly what's happened.

(The same applies to British politics: yes, the Labour party were wrong over the Iraq war, but does anyone think the Conservative party were in the right, or would have been less keen to support the US in that situation? Especially given the May-Trump summit.)

[_b8r0]

> The same applies to British politics

Your example is a poor one, and the British electorate have very different motivations when it comes to voting for very different parties with very different backgrounds, in very different elections with a very different governmental structure.

[pjc50]

I've seen people arguing that, since Clinton was the "pro-war" candidate (due to her work at the State Department), one should vote for Trump.

It's true that the governmental structure is different; the ability of an incoming administration to sweep away the civil service and security services is much less in the UK. However, the recent R (Miller) -v- Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union case has a useful parallel: to what extent is the executive able to deprive people of rights by simple order?

[_b8r0]

It's hard to say and would depend on the rights in question. Parliamentary sovereignty would mandate consulting parliament, but our parliament is representative, not direct. It would also be necessary to consult devolved kingdoms, but the extent to which required is not clear.

We don't really have the same segregation of powers. Primary legislation can come from various sources and apply in various ways to various parts of the UK. The judiciary is independent and is generally relied on to determine how those laws are to be interpreted.

In order for laws to come into force nationally, they need royal assent from the Queen. If memory serves correct this relies on the Queen literally saying the word "Approved" at a certain point in the reading of a law. It might've changed, but might still be in effect. As such we don't really have the same concept of Executive Orders. We do have written guidance on laws, but this can be overridden through the courts.

[varjag]

You are arguing strawman. Most people who are anti-ban were also against Iraq war and waterboarding.

[MisterWebz]

Yet people seemed to be awfully calm when Obama was droning weddings. I'm not saying we should've put so much hate towards Obama as well, I'm saying we should put things into perspective.

[sergiosgc]

Social response is rarely linear. Think of it as gaining critical mass. Think of it as the droplet that overflows the glass of water.

What happened before was wrong. What is happening now is worse, and it got more of the public's attention.

[hueving]

No, the sad part is that this is getting so much more attention because it's visible here and it's the result of a new party in charge.

Obama's administration was quietly murdering people without trials in a country we aren't at war with from drones. I fail to see how a temporary immigration ban is "worse" other than the "out of sight, out of mind" effect that applies to those exterminated by drones.

[vacri]

The administration before Obama started a needless war with a country that was no threat to them, that resulted in the deaths of literally hundreds of thousands of people, the destruction of two sovereign countries, and set in motion a sequence of events that has Europe tearing itself apart. All to get an electoral boost for the 2004 election...

[hueving]

And this absolves the expansion of drone killings by Obama somehow?

[dredmorbius]

Democracy Now, "Drone Attacks", 152 results, all but two since 2009, overwhelmingly negative.

http://m.democracynow.org/tags/282

[ashark]

Not a lot of people listen to Democracy Now, or read The Nation, or whatever. Unlike the right, the left critiques of (even their own people in) power don't often make it to mainstream news commentary, or interview targets of the mainstream news, so it'd be easy to think there is none if one doesn't consume left news and opinion sources directly.

[devwastaken]

You're trying to generalize 350 Million individuals, it doesn't work that way. Outrage is rarely about the events, but about how much coverage those events get.

[imron]

The question then becomes why were the bombings not getting as much or more coverage than a temporary visa ban?

5 of the 7 countries on the visa list are currently being bombed by the US [0].

It's no surprise then that these countries made it on to the Obama administration's list of countries that are sources of terror, which was used as the basis for Trump's visa ban.

From a security perspective it's difficult to argue that countries you are currently bombing won't have people trying to enter the U.S. looking for payback.

0: https://qz.com/895516/which-countries-is-the-us-currently-bo...

[danso]

Maybe because the bombings were in faraway countries and had scant information about them? In a large enough city, people generally don't hear about murders that don't happen in their neighborhood nor receive outsized public coverage.

[imron]

I agree that this plays a large part.

People are angry at Trump for the visa ban, but it would never have come to that if not for the destabilizing actions of previous U.S. administrations.

[JBiserkov]

>droning weddings

I chuckled pretty hard at this one, imagining a DJI Phantom filming a wedding. Why not call it what it is, "bombing weddings" - the focus is on what the aircraft was doing, whether it was piloted remotely or locally shouldn't matter in the slightest.

[danso]

The platform used for bombings is not irrelevant. It's not as if the increase in drone bombings was because the U.S. Military got caught up in the popular consumer drone fad. The very design of drones make it easy to do these operations and to do them in quantity without angering people back home.

[Angostura]

> Yet people seemed to be awfully calm when Obama was droning weddings.

No, no they weren't. However it was always pretty apparent that the administration took death of civilians seriously and did all it could to minimise it. That doesn't mean that there weren't screw-ups.

[Ygg2]

There were never mass protests on this scale. Unless, I missed a huge protest.

What seems to me, like an outside observer, is that Obama's orders didn't ruin lives of Americans. Unlike these.

[danso]

What's your point? That Americans care more about Americans?

[3131s]

Did all they could to minimize them by classifying all males age 18-49 as militants automatically.

And what about Operation Haymaker [1], showing that the intended target consisted of only about ~10% of the total deaths from drone bombings? How can there be any certainty at all about civilian death tolls in massively war-torn, chaotic environments? I personally don't trust the Obama administration's numbers, which are not all that good in the first place.

https://theintercept.com/document/2015/10/15/operation-hayma...

[rdtsc]

Not even close. How many of the tech CEOs who wrote blogs about the ban lobbied previous administration to end the war and arming of rebels in that part of the world?

[ionised]

You were listening to wrong people.

[rdtsc]

Which people should we listen to?

[ionised]

> Yet people seemed to be awfully calm when Obama was droning weddings. I'm not saying we should've put so much hate towards Obama as well, I'm saying we should put things into perspective.

There were in fact people and organisations who spoke up when Obama was droning schools, hospitals, wedings and funerals.

They do exist. People just chose not to listen.

[rdtsc]

Yoy're right. Democracy Now reported We've bombed hospitals, weddings, even an American citizen. It also looks like we've been at least indirectly arming ISIS in the region. I watching to see if there will be more revelations about that.

[YarickR]

Where's 8 year long trail of posts shaming and blaming previous administration and personally pres. Obama for those actions ? I see hypocrisy reigning supreme since Jan 20, from both sides.

[dredmorbius]

Four pages of results right here on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query="drone%20strikes"&sort=byPopul...

[3131s]

13 pages in the last week for 'Trump':

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=trump&sort=byPopularity&prefix...

I do however think that Trump is an extreme problem, but also a foreseeable one. I think it's revisionist history to say that Obama's terrible presidency got due attention on HN or anywhere else. Democracy Now! was one of the few outlets that did though, so kudos for posting them.

[XzetaU8]

Four pages of mostly zero comment threads.

[hkailahi]

FYI most HN posts don't have comments

[hueving]

Because they didn't get enough votes to make it to the front page long enough for attention.

[rdtsc]

The level of outrage doesn't seem to make sense. If they are ready to donate to ACLU, drive to a protest at an airport, subscribe for more media, over a botched travel ban surely they protesting 10x harder when actual killing was talking place.

I even got an email from Lyft about it. A driving app on my phone is now telling about this travel ban too and how much they are donating to the ACLU.

[varjag]

We must be from parallel universes, because there were massive protests against Iraq war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003,_anti-war_pr...

[rdtsc]

Not parallel universe. That was more than a decade ago. Why go back in 2003. We just dropped more than 26k bombs just in 2016. Where were these CEOs and tech leaders then? Were they blocking the entrance to the Pentagon, or WH? With the resources of Brin and others, surely there is a track of heavy lobbying against such things if they indeed seem to deeply care about the fate of refugees

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/americ...

[varjag]

You realize that you are now shifting the context from original "protesting wars, black sites and torture" - which are Iraq war theme - to a tiny subset of military activity that was protested least, precisely because they were protested least?

Of course you do, and you are using it as rhetorical device only, you couldn't care less about people bombed. If I go and find protests and statements against droning, you'd switch to Delta raids, TOW shipments or whatelse. The purpose of exercise is to show that people opposing Muslim bans are not any better and are simply hypocrites, hence the scrupulous fact-combing.

[levlaz]

> Bombing predominately Muslim countries, overthrowing governments and covert black sites where Muslims get tortured.

Who is saying that this is acceptable?

> 90-day ban on immigrants coming from war-torn countries

I think the key issue here is that this ban includes valid Green Card holders and people who have Visas. This means that they have already spent up to two years being vetted. This policy makes no sense.

If the order was just "stop issuing visas", I don't think that there would have been such an uproar.

[SBCRec]

I believe he is referring to the global hate train (media hype?) being run on Trump, magnitudes higher than any directed at the previous administrations responsible for those actions.

edit: Are military actions against these countries targeting Muslim communities worse than removing immigration privileges of Muslim communities? I dunno how to approach this question...

[polymatter]

The media was waiting for anything to crucify Trump. He has done nothing but stoke them. He already has been demonized as a white supremisist. The narrative "Trump will ban all Muslims and turn the US into a fascist state" was already on the press, they just needed an excuse to print it.

And there are many who not only disagree with Trump, but are appalled at his persona. There was that big march and that whole "Not my president" thing. They are already primed to believe that Trump will attempt to turn the US into a fascist state. In that light they say this as Step 1 of the "US turns fascist" and they are reacting as though he is suggesting Step 10 Imprisoning political opponents. Because they "see" the path and are doing everything they can to stop it.

[masklinn]

> The media was waiting for anything to crucify Trump. He has done nothing but stoke them. He already has been demonized as a white supremisist. The narrative "Trump will ban all Muslims and turn the US into a fascist state" was already on the press, they just needed an excuse to print it.

Of course it helps that "a muslim ban" is quite literally what Trump asked for according to Rudy Giuliani:

> So when he first announced it he said “Muslim ban.” He called me up, he said, “Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.” I put a commission together with judge Mukasey [Michael Mukasey, a former federal judge], with congressman McCaul [Texas Rep. Michael McCaul], Pete King [New York Rep. Peter King], a whole group of other very expert lawyers on this, and what we did is we focused on, instead of religion, danger—areas of the world that create danger for us. Which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible. And that’s what the ban is based on. It’s not based on religion, it’s based on places where there are substantial evidence that people are sending terrorists into our country.

[SBCRec]

Yeah it is interesting, to me it seems like trump and the protesters are both coming from a place of fear and are trying to prevent something from happening, whether that is terrorist attack on US soil, or Trump turning the US into a fascist state.

Very interesting

[vidarh]

Obama got somewhat of a free pass for simply not being quite as bad as Bush. With Trump we're seeing indications of things getting substantially worse than Bush. That is why.

People outside the US are used to the US being far to our right, and it being relatively futile to do more than complain about these things. But Trump is seriously scaring people.

[ctack]

Well put. I wonder if this ban would have been as strongly challenged by the media if it was someone else proposing it.

[kevingadd]

Considering the huge parade of Republican and Democrat politicians that condemned the very idea over the last year, what do you think?

[levlaz]

Yeah that makes a lot of sense actually.

[moultano]

The people he's targeting now are Americans, which for better or worse people are much less willing to tolerate. Green card and visa holders are Americans.

[kranner]

I would have thought one is not American until one is a citizen.

[moultano]

That's not how Americans view it. The notion of belonging to a nation is very different in the New World, as best exemplified by this map. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jus_soli_world.svg...

[kranner]

This map doesn't say anything about visa holders and green card holders. It is only relevant for persons born in the country, which I'm assuming most visa/green card holders aren't.

[dingaling]

Visa holders are not necessarily "Americans". For example holders of G-{1-4} Visas from the proscribed countries are not affected by the ban and remain foreign nationals.

[coldtea]

>Who is saying that this is acceptable?

A few, but this is irrelevant to the parent's point.

Which is that whether people say it is acceptable or not, much fewer numbers complained about it when other administrations where doing it, and much less visibly than people do today .

Which gives one the impression that if in 2 or 4 years some democrat or another republican gets into office and does the same or worse, things will be silent again (except for few consistent protestors), and hence that it's all about ousting Trump rather than justice in general.

Case in point: Obama halted people coming in from Iran in 2011 (for 6 months) and nobody said much of anything. Or how about this: Trump said he'll get rid of 3 million illegal immigrants and all went crazy. Well, Obama has the record thus far with 2.5 million deportations, but nobody seemed to care back then.

[geff82]

Stopping issuing visas in itself would be bad for US reputation. I know many Iranians who really work hard to get a visa for the USA to visit the country they long for at least once in their life. As there is no US embassy in Iran (for good reasons, by the way), they usually have to travel to Turkey at least twice. One couple I know came to Germany for two weeks just to get their visa from the American consulate here. They were so freaking happy to visit the USA for two weeks (they just got home a week before inauguration).

[hueving]

>As there is no US embassy in Iran (for good reasons, by the way),

Yeah, the Iranian government tends to get a little "clingy" with US citizens that have good leverage power for bargaining.

[levlaz]

Totally agree that it is not the right move. But that policy at least would not have been so strongly contended.

[verbify]

Iran is not a war-torn country.

And this doesn't just ban immigrants, it bans green-card and visa holders too.

[coldtea]

So just like Obama did back in 2011 for 6 months and nobody batted an eyelid?

[pwinnski]

This claim is untrue.[0]

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/...

[coldtea]

>“Immigration authorities soon began rechecking all Iraqi refugees in America, reportedly comparing fingerprints and other records with military and intelligence documents in dusty archives. About 1,000 soon-to-be immigrants in Iraq were told that they would not be allowed to board flights already booked. Some were removed from planes. Thousands more Iraqi applicants had to restart the immigration process, because their security clearances expired when the program stalled. Men must now pass five separate checks, women four, and children three.”

Sounds pretty similar to me, including a 60% drop in incoming immigrants from Iraq the year that took place compared to the previous and next year.

Let's see how WP differentiates the two cases:

First, they say that Obama "responded to an actual threat" whereas Trump "issued his executive order without any known triggering threat".

So being pro-active in this case is bad? Isn't that the whole idea behind threat prevention? It's not like Trump invented a threat in a new domain where there is known to be none -- we called for potential threats in the same domain (immigration from certain regions) where actual threats have been discovered previously, including under Obama. And ISIS wasn't even a thing back then, nor several big attacks have happened yet in France and Germany.

2) Second, they say that "Obama did not announce a ban on visa applications". And then they excuse that the effective result was similar anyway: "There was certainly a lot of news reporting that visa applications had slowed to a trickle. But the Obama administration never said it had a policy to halt all applications".

3) Third, they say that "Obama’s policy did not prevent all citizens of that country, including green-card holders, from traveling to the United States".

Which is probably the main point they get that can stand on its legs -- though government spokespersons deny that this is the case (even if that was the intention or unintended consequence of the command as issued).

That said, the people accepted as immigrants into the US, either under Obama (and even less now with Trump's order) the last 3 years from Iraq and Syria are an insignificant amount. And that from a region where millions fled to escape, and have been asking for asylum all over Europe etc.

[coldtea]

Not to mention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXwnlsNFXIY

[imron]

They do however have that whole 'Death to America' thing going on:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-marks-revolution-deat...

[Patient0]

It's not just "a 90-day ban on immigrants coming from war-torn countries" - the fact that Christians from those countries are exempt makes it explicitly a "muslim ban".

[dingaling]

> makes it explicitly a "muslim ban".

No, 'explicitly a Muslim ban' would say 'this is a ban on Muslims'.

Do consider that the list of proscribed countries is compiled between the Departments of Homeland Security and State, not by the President, and is published in the Federal Register. The fact that the majority on that list currently coincide with dominant Muslim populations might have been useful for Mr Trump's intent but is not guaranteed to persist.

The list was last updated in February 2016.

[imron]

It's also worth pointing out that none of the top 5 most populous Muslim countries in the world are on the list.

In fact, you could argue it's just as much a ban on countries the US is currently bombing, as it is on Muslim countries.

[eli_gottlieb]

They've actually inadvertently included a bunch of Mizrahi Jews in the ban, too.