So Donald Trump is going to f*** them all. No excuses for such filthy words today. I’m only quoting the man whose Pentagon offices he just used to disgrace himself — and America. For it was Secretary of Defence James “Mad Dog” Mattis who told Iraqis in 2003 that he came “in peace” — he even urged his Marines to be compassionate — but said of those who might dare to resist America’s illegal invasion of their country: “If you f*** with me, I’ll kill you all.”

There’s no getting round it. Call it Nazi, fascist, racist, vicious, illiberal, immoral, cruel. More dangerously, what Trump has done is a wicked precedent. If you can stop them coming, you can chuck them out. If you can demand “extreme vetting” of Muslims from seven countries, you can also demand a “values test” for those Muslims who have already made it to the USA. Those on visas. Those with residency only. Those — if they are American citizens — with dual citizenship. Or full US citizens of Muslim origin. Or just Americans who are Muslims. Or Hispanics. Or Jews? Refugees one day. Citizens the next. Then refugees again.

No, of course, Trump would never visit such obscene tests on Jewish immigrants — for they would be obscene, would they not? — and nor will he stop Christians from Muslim countries. America has always condemned sectarian states, but now Trump declares that he approves of sectarianism. Minorities will be welcome — the Alawites of Syria, to whom Bashar al-Assad belongs, will presumably not count, and I guess we can expect all US embassies to have three queues for visa applicants. One for Muslims, one for Christians, and a third marked “Other”. That’s where most of us will be standing in line. And by doing so, we will automatically give approval to this iniquitous system — and to Trump.

There’s no point in wasting time over the obvious: that America has bombed, directly or indirectly, five of the seven nations on Trump’s banned list. Sudan just escapes, but the US blew a packed Iranian passenger airliner out of the sky in 1988 and has raised no objections to Israel’s bombing of Iranian personnel in Syria. So that makes six. There’s nothing to be gained by reiterating that the four countries whose citizens participated in the international crimes against humanity of 9/11 — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Emirates and Lebanon — do not feature on the list. For the Saudis must be loved, cosseted, fawned over, approved, even when they chop off heads and when their citizens funnel cash to the murderers of the IS. Egypt is ruled by Trump’s “fantastic guy” anti-“terrorist” president al-Sisi. The glisteningly wealthy Emirates won’t be touched. Nor will Lebanon, although its tens of thousands of dual-national Syrians may have a tough time in the future.

But no, this vile piece of legislation is not aimed at nations. It’s targeting refugees, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The Muslim ones, that is, not the Christians. How can they ever withstand a “values test”? And what are America’s “values” anyway? It’s OK to attack sovereign states. It’s OK to use pilotless planes to assault men and women in other countries. It’s OK if your allies steal land from others for their own people, if you support Arab dictatorships that emasculate and execute and rape their prisoners, as long as they are “allies” of the USA. It’s OK to fast-track Saudi visas — as the Brits have been doing for years — even if they are members of the most inspirational Wahabi cult in the world: membership includes the Taliban, Al Qaeda, IS, you name it.

There’s even no value in touting our own participation in this charade. Wasn’t it Britain — and America, for heaven’s sake — that was weeping copious tears, buckets of the stuff, for the 250,000 (or 90,000) Muslim refugees of eastern Aleppo a couple of months ago? And now, so much do we care for them, that they are being well and truly f*****. They were almost all Muslims in eastern Aleppo, by the way. The Christians of Syria have, through no fault of their own, sought protection from Bashar. And what message did the Christian priests of northern Syria give when I interviewed them? They did not want their people to leave for the West, they said. Hard though it was, Christians should stay in the lands of their faith, the Middle East. In the West, they would merely be lost in a secular world. Trump is going to make sure they are.

Thus America is henceforth going to “protect” itself from “radical Islamic extremists” — “Islamic” note, not “Islamist” — and we’ll all be able to follow him. Is non-EU Britain not going to be able to march along the same awful path? If America is our economic lifeline, will it not also be our moral lifeline for the political buffoons of the United Kingdom? Sure, it’s a long time since World War Two. But then, what did the US do before — or after — Hitler’s evil? It prevented Jewish refugees from coming to America. Yes, even Anne Frank. And now they’re at it again.

By arrangement with The Independent

Published in Dawn January 30th, 2017