I started writing this article on terrorism when a terrorist attack occurred at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, but failed to complete the article. More recently, a new attack was perpetrated in Paris. This attack was perpetrated by a recognized Islamic extremist. As past attacks, this one too spurred calls for strict border control. But such border control would have been ineffective. This article explains why.
The original act of terrorism, in the west, that I was going to address was the one that occurred at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, which I believed would result in increased opposition to immigration from Muslim dominant countries. I was right. However, such bans are meaningless. Immigration is not the source of the problem. In fact, blanket restrictions are likely to just make things worse.
The attack in Paris, on April 20th, again would not have been prevented from strict immigration control. The perpetrator of the attack, Karim Cheurfi, was born in Livry-Gargan. He was therefore a natural born French citizen, not an immigrant, let alone an “illegal” immigrant. This scenario is not uncommon. People are looking for solutions which are simple, when the problem is far more complex and the solution is far more complex. It is also far more personal.
Regarding the original attack that I was going to address, a few months back, I happened to catch Michael Savage complaining about how he is barred from the UK, but that the suspect in the attack, who had been under investigation by MI5, was allowed to enter the country. He left something very important out. The suspect, like the suspect in the Paris bombing, was born in the country in which he committed the attack. He is therefore a citizen. Savage, on the other hand, is not a citizen of Britain, and therefore does not enjoy the same protections in the UK. Now, perhaps he should. Perhaps all people should be free to move from country to country, as they please, unless they have been convicted and found guilty of a valid crime. But right now, that is not the case, and so there really is no comparison between the two. Savage was simply crying over spilled milk.
However, the issue with Savage is a minor one. The real issue is that the suspect was not a foreign born individual, who came to the UK in order to commit a terror attack. And this is not unusual. Radicalization of youth, within the country that ends up being targeted, is the real concern. And no immigration controls are going to prevent that. We need to understand why radicalization is occurring, and to see that, we need to look at the US and Western military operations around the world.
I recently completed an initial draft of an article which points out that a lot of the impetus for terrorism in, which has emerged from the greater Middle East, is a direct consequence of American intervention in the region. To understand the specifics of that, read “Middle East Turmoil: Radical Islam or Reaction to Imperialism?” The basic idea is that radical Islam is an explanation rather than a cause. The cause is constant imperialist attacks in the region, by the US and its allies. This has continued in nations such as Syria, most recently with the attack on the Syrian air base. However, this is nothing new. In 2016 alone, over 26,000 bombs were dropped by the United States, of which over 12,000 were dropped on Syria (Council on Foreign Relations).
This sort of constant attack against foreign nations has created the energy required to radicalize people, both within the greater Middle East itself, and domestically. It is this policy of military extremism that needs to stop. That shift in policy, not changes in immigration policy, will vastly increase our own safety, as well as the lives of those in other parts of the world.
UK Bombing
Since originally writing this article, and even updating it with the Paris bombing incident, we now have another major bombing: the Manchester bombing. Like with the other two cases, the person was born in the target country. Yes; is parents were refugees. They had lived in the country for years. We cannot go back in time and retroactively block immigration from countries with which we are now at war. Once again, immigration control is not the answer. Only by cutting off the problem at the source can we do something about these terror attacks. And that means pushing back against the devastation of the greater Middle East by European powers.
Further Reading
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