I have to share with you all a really touching interaction that I had with a sincerely concerned mother/grandmother, I’ll call her Mildred, who was telling me that we should do our best to support Donald Trump in his efforts to make us safe. The Facebook conversation pertained to the recent ban of immigrants by Executive Order – an action that I, as many an American, was vocally opposed to this week. After a little back and forth, I had asked her what the ban was going to do to make her safe, and she did the noble thing (Hoorah!!) – she took some time to think it over and looked up the terrorist attacks on US soil in recent memory - and said that Trump’s actions would help to ensure that her and her family (including a son who is a 20 plus year veteran in the armed forces) would be more safe.

I will say seeing all of the terrorist attacks on US soil listed in one place (see list below) really made my heart sink. Quite sobering.

So now I’d like to think about these events with my policy analytic hat for a moment. Breaking it down a bit, I see some real problems with the ban – some that had not entirely occurred to me before. I’ll do my regular disclaimers: I’m not a national security expert. This is me writing on the weekend using the best information I can get my hands on quickly, so if there are experts out there that want to challenge these rough thoughts and estimations please fact-check and debunk me to the high heavens.

As I see it, those problems with Trump’s Immigration Ban and the incompatibilities of this tool to preventing the terror events that my new Facebook friend sent to me are:

1) It targets the wrong countries
2) The ban would not make your and your family (much) safer. It expends a large resource to prevent a very small amount of violence (albeit spectacular and psychologically debilitating violence)
3) It increases the recruit-ability of young men by radical terrorist organizations that proclaim that America marginalizes Muslims and unfairly attacks them.
4) It fixes a problem that is already being handled thoroughly and effectively.
5) This is a Muslim Ban. We just don’t ban people from our country based on religious beliefs.

In review, Trump’s Executive order was to ban immigrants and travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries. The seven countries are Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Somalia. The ban was put in place in the name of national security - a perfectly reasonable goal. After some digging around, the real headline for me was that all of the attackers minus one (the man who attacked people on the Ohio State campus this last year) were either American born or are nationals of countries that are not covered in this ban. Here is the rough detail:

BAN TARGETS WRONG COUNTRIES:
A list of the attacks on US soil since 1993, the perpetrators, and their country of origin:
* “C I A Headquarters in Virginia - January 25, 1993”: Perpetrated by a Pakistani national who entered on falsified papers. Pakistan is not on the list (2 killed, 3 wounded)
(Current ban would not have affected)
* “World Trade Center in N. Y. C”. - February 26, 1993: The planners were Kuwaitis trained in Afghanistan. Most of the group was traveling on fake passports. Note: Kuwait is a country with which we share friendly and cooperative relationship. (6 killed, 1,042 wounded)
(Current ban would not have affected)
* “Los Angeles International Airport - July 4, 2002”: This attack was perpetrated by an Egyptian national who had been in the US for 10 years. Egypt is an ally primarily as an ally necessary to the security on the Sinai Peninsula. (3 killed, 4 wounded)
(Current ban would not have affected)
*“Little Rock Recruiting Office - June 1, 2009”: this terrorist act was committed by a Tennessee Baptist who had later converted to Islam. (1 killed, 1 wounded)
(Current ban would not have affected)
* “Boston Marathon - April 15, 2013”: One brother was Soviet born, the other in Kyrgyzstan (both identified as Chechen). Had been in the US for over 10 years at the time of the attacks. (6 killed, 280 wounded)
(Current ban would not have affected)
* “4 Policeman, brutally attacked w/ hatchet on NYC subway - October 23, 2014”: this attack was homegrown by a US born man who was radicalized by ISIS social media. (3 wounded)
(Current ban would not have affected)
* “Curtis Culwell Center - May 3, 2015”: Perpetrators were Americans. One perpetrator born in Illinois and moved to Phoenix. Another perpetrator was born in Dallas. The third was born and raised in Philadelphia. (1 death, 1 wounded)
(Current ban would not have affected)
* “Chattanooga shootings - July 16, 2015”: Shooter was an American citizen who had been in the US for 25 years. From ally nation Kuwait. (6 deaths, 2 wounded)
(Current ban would not have affected)
* “San Bernadino attack -December 2, 2015”: Perpetrator (Farook) served in the US Navy in Iraq and was awarded medals for his service for the War on Terror. His wife was a Russian from near Moscow. (16 deaths, 24 wounded)
(Current ban would not have affected)
* “Orlando nightclub -June12, 2016”: This was committed by an American born in New York, raised as a Muslim. (50 deaths, 53 wounded)
(Current ban would not have affected)
* “Ohio State University - December 19, 2016” – Here is one individual who may have been caught in the current Trump Ban. He had left Somalia in 2007 and had lived in a refugee camp in Pakistan for seven years. (1 death, 15 wounded)
(CURRENT BAN MAY HAVE AFFECTED)
* “9 / 1 1”: 19 Al Quada terrorists. Fifteen of the 19 were citizens of Saudi Arabia, 2 from United Arab Emirates, 1 from Egypt, and 1 from Lebanon. (2,996 deaths, 6000 wounded).
(Current ban would not have affected)

BAN WOULD NOT MAKE YOUR FAMILY MORE SAFE (statistically speaking):
I don’t want to be ghoulish or to minimize any terrorist act or the memory of any of the victims, but I want to bring up some raw numbers and put this in perspective. Assuming the 60,000 immigrants who would have been affected this year is typical - if we had a ban in place like the one President Trump enacted with his executive order over the last 24 years (since the 1993 attacks you referenced) – we would have restricted immigration from almost 1.5 million people. An expensive, isolationist, I would argue counterproductive task, but let’s say we did all that to prevent the Ohio State attack toll: 1 death and 15 injured. (the only attacker who would have been affected by this ban)
Alright let’s assume that you banned all people from all of the Muslim majority countries where the terrorists actually came from. Yes let’s add in all of the other attacks by Facebook friend mentioned, we are at a little over 3,000 deaths (mostly from 9-11) and 7,500 injured over 24 years.
In the US, a country of over 300,000,000 people, that translates to 0.04 deaths per 100,000 Americans or a 0.00004% chance of being a victim of a terrorist attack over that 24 years period. The chance of being struck by lightening in one’s lifetime is 0.0025%, so you are over 60 times more likely to be struck by lightening in your lifetime than to be a fatality in a terror attack.

In other words, the probability of you dying (or being injured) in a terrorist act on US soil is essentially zero.

Again I will say I am running these numbers to calculate risk of death and I mean no disrespect to anyone who has suffered a terrorist attack, just saying that they live in rarefied air.
* Compare this to a typical US murder rate of 4.5 per 100,000 which generates about 15,000 deaths per year or conservatively the equivalent of 360,000 over the last 24 years… or compare it to the 200 aggravated assaults per 100,000 Americans per year which generates hundreds of thousands of victims of violence year in and year out at the hands of naturalized and US born Americans.

THE BAN MAKES US LESS SAFE:
“So what – who cares about statistics?!” some would say. “Even one death by a terrorist is too much”, to which I honestly have no response. So let me move on to the part where I feel like a muscular response like this ban actually makes American’s less safe. I would argue, that this ban makes our military men and women abroad and Americans here in the US less safe and more prone to being attacked. The Islam-phobic rhetoric from Trump that is manifested in this Ban plays right into the terrorist recruiters hands. It props up a small group of young foreign and American Muslim men spoon feeding them a narrative that they are being marginalized, their culture is under attack, and that Western governments need to be taken down in order for them to survive. On a related front I feel that Trump could do well by supporting a general pluralism, tolerance, and celebration of our Abrahamic (monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) as well as our Hindu, Buddhist, Native American, other religions, atheistic, agnostic and other brothers and sister. It would go a long way to making our communities safe, resilient, independent, and less unnecessarily agitated.

On the tactical front, the Ban also reduces our ability to recruit and retain assets in the countries where we need them most. Human intelligence is very difficult to generate if the people who work with American intelligence and military (those that fought alongside the US in Iraq for example) are not given assurances of safe passage to the US in return for their help.

IT FIXES A PROBLEM THAT IS BEING ADDRESSED THOROUGHLY ALREADY:
Beyond this, there is already a very high level of vetting that goes into making the determination as to who gets to come into the US. For example, right now only 1 in 100 Syrian refugees makes it into the US, and this is after on average 18 months of interviews and vetting by the United Nations and the US Department of Homeland Security. And on a side note, these are typically people who are trying to escape the horrors of terrorism and war in their home countries. Being helpful, and welcoming to those in need is the underpinning of what has made America great for over 200 years.

THIS IS A RELIGOUS BAN, AND THEREFORE PROFOUNDLY UN-AMERICAN:
A week ago Rudy Giuliani bragged that Trump asked him how to pull off a Muslim ban and instruct him on the “right way to do it legally”
See three minute mark on the embedded Fox News video here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/trump-asked-for-a-muslim-ban-giuliani-says-and-ordered-a-commission-to-do-it-legally/?utm_term=.c480b6ecd5d0
Again we are looking at clear evidence of an attempt to do something in violation of the US constitution, with high level party individuals who are complicit in the plan. This delegitimizes this administration and potentially weakens our standing in the world.

CONCLUSION:
My point is that doing “something”, like this Ban is “something” but probably not the right thing.  Keeping the status quo would likely be a more constructive approach until the President can take the time to consult with experts and figure out a more thoughtful approach.

My overall suggestion would be that this administration take the next 86 days (nothing we can do about the last 14 days) to convene some real experts, study and learn about the issues they want to affect, and THEN go about it in a well considered, legal, appropriate way that is not going to leave middle America less safe than it was if they had done nothing.

I thank Mildred for prompting me to think about this and I look forward to more discussion on the topic.