The executive order that bans nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for the next three months, and bans refugees from Syria indefinitely, is an abject failure of both principle and pragmatism for Donald Trump less than two weeks into his presidential term.
It is unprincipled, from a man whose principles are hard to discern. In the war against terror it is also, to borrow the mild language of the playing field, an own goal. It's a win for the jihadists. It gives ammunition to those who would do the US harm. It is much more likely to cost lives than save them.
Foremost, it is an abdication of a fundamental American value expressed in the famous poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty plaque: "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ..."
It is already a story of human trauma and tragedy, of dashed hopes and families divided – but hope resides in the groundswell of US opposition to it. The incompetence with which the discriminatory and inhumane order appears to have been drawn up, with apparently no input or advice from experts within the US state or justice departments, let alone thought for the consequences, beggars belief. It magnifies harm by sowing confusion and uncertainty as to who it affects. Its imprecise wording makes it susceptible to multiple court challenges that are duly being mounted. The US' top lawyer, acting Attorney-General Sally Yates, so doubted its legality that she told lawyers within her Justice Department not to defend it in court. President Trump has sacked her.
The order defies the facts. It is a disastrously disproportionate response to a threat that derives more from an irrational demonisation of "otherness" than reality. The large majority of terrorist attacks within the US have been committed by US citizens or permanent residents, contrary to the implication that the terror threat comes from foreign infiltrators. Among the 3.25 million refugees admitted by America in the past four decades, only 20 individuals have been convicted of attempting or committing terrorism on US soil.
President Trump claims to be motivated by the September 11 terrorist attacks but most of the 19 hijackers in those attacks came from countries not on the list – mainly Saudi Arabia but also the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon. No credible list of terrorist breeding grounds would exclude Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan, yet Trump's does. Can he really be so craven, as some commentary suggests, as to have deliberately excluded countries in which he has business interests?
The originators of this blatantly anti-Muslim order clearly reject the truth of Muslim extremism: that it is perpetrated by a radical minority wholly unrepresentative of the vast majority of the 1.6 billion law-abiding followers of Islam. There are no precise figures but it is likely that the overwhelming majority of victims of Muslim extremism are Muslims themselves; that is certainly true in Iraq at the hands of Islamic State.
The executive order gives credence to the claim by those seeking to incite Muslim moderates to extremism that Washington is at war with Islam. Yet it remains true that moderate Muslims are the most important allies in the fight against Muslim extremism. Why would US allies, the Iraqis who are the ground force against Islamic State, all the interpreters, fixers, diplomats, spies and others who risk their lives to assist US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, co-operate with a country that vilifies their faith and makes them unwelcome? Whatever the fate of the executive order, it will cripple attempts to recruit people to the US cause in the Middle East and aid terrorist recruitment.
Pragmatism trumped principle in Malcolm Turnbull's prevaricating response to the order, in contrast to the condemnation from the leaders of Britain, Germany, France and Canada. By traducing human rights in the method of operation of detention camps on Nauru and Manus Island, Australia has compromised its right to lecture other countries on matters of principle. The realpolitik is that Australia needs to stay on Trump's good side to preserve the deal to send people from the camps to the US agreed with the Obama administration. In the circumstances, reaffirming our commitment to multiculturalism and a non-discriminatory immigration policy is the best Turnbull could do. That is the pity of it.