I’m still highly unlikely to vote for Donald Trump.
But I gotta hand it to him, he’s turning things upside down and doing his country a service by exposing the true colors of candidates, both Republican and Democrat.
He’s also ripping away the masks of smug progressive newspeople.
Almost makes me wish I’d watched the debates… Almost.
I think I still prefer reading about them the day after. By that time the left has managed to spin themselves into a self righteous santorum froth.
One thing I can say is that even if Trump is a complete buffoon, (and I’m not saying he is, that jury is still out.) he’s got to be causing some consternation among the enemies of this country.
Lets look at some of the things he’s been taken to task over.
Close our borders to Middle Eastern refugees until we know what is happening and our vetting process works.
This seems to be a logical and reasonable approach, since it’s become obvious our vetting process isn’t weeding out jihadists even with the cooperation of so called “Friendly” Middle Eastern countries.
The media and other candidates practically lost their minds about this Trump suggestion.
Some called this plan unconstitutional, others called it racist. I call it neither.
Every Sovereign Nation on the planet has the right to protect itself and it’s people from threats. Our constitution conveys, codifies, and supposedly insures certain rights to the citizens of our country. International law, treaties, and agreements apply to non-citizens.
In many cases our constitution and international law parallel each other.
However, our constitution doesn’t guarantee that any foreign born person will be allowed to enter our country, or given citizenship.
The fact that a Saudi Prince, ISIS and CAIR all condemned Trump’s suggestion could indicate he’s on the right track.
Then Trump suggested shutting down part of the internet, particularly those parts of the internet that service the Middle East which are under control of ISIS or other radical well known groups that have stated directly that they want to destroy America specifically or the West in general.
This is WAR 101.
Deny your enemies command, communication, coordination, and supplies.
I personally ave never understood why we didn’t plant C-4 on every cell tower our troops encountered in Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Deny communication.
Thereby denying command and coordination.
Extending this philosophy to the internet makes damn good sense and it’s technically possible. But it’s better.
By killing internet connections into and out of Jihadi, ISIS, Terrorists areas.
You deny their ability to easily recruit, send money, (As Bitcoin or other e-currencies ) or communicate their agenda.
Wth the internet gone these groups lose their ability to brag about their successes in battle. You deprive folks like ISIS the grandstanding moments of executing their enemies or destroying monuments on worldwide tv.
Lets face it ISIS is a media whore. They want, and need the attention afforded them by distribution of shock videos. They need to romanticize themselves as the feisty righteous underdog on social media sites to attract young recruits.
If we were to cut those lines of communication, then we have a much easier time of controlling their message and we can follow their couriers back to bases of operation.
We know that the videos will still be made. We know that ISIS will try to distribute these videos. By narrowing the channels to Al Jezera, Satellite uplinks, or refugees, we make it really easy to identify sympathizers from whom we may get information. We can target the bases uplinks originate from, and easily vet refugees. (If a refugee is carrying a video, they don’t get refugee status, ever!)
So Trump’s suggestion about the internet is technically possible, easily implemented with changes to settings in routers, and no-one gets shot by doing it. Cheap & easy!
I like the minimum effort —> maximum result equation.
We own and control the technology, why let our self-declared enemies use it to potentially harm us?
Cutting ISIS off from the rest of the world is step one in containment.
Who cares if some people will call it censorship? Back in the bad ‘ol days reporters would send film or magnetic tape to their editors from Viet Nam.
Yeah, remember that? Without the instantaneous communication the internet provides, reporters turned in thoughtful well written articles. Their competition wasn’t confined solely to who could report an event the fastest, but also who reported an event correctly.
Trump’s suggestion simply takes the area back to the 1960’s. Messages written on paper, videos on physical media instead of youtube. If you think about it, It’s not actually censorship, it’s just slowing information down.
I’d bet President Putin would be agreeable to a little phone and internet silence.
After all, It’s a lot safer to fly your planes when you don’t have spotters sending info about the planes, to anti-aircraft guns all along the flight path.
I’d love to see the entire area cut off. I’d love to see what happened next.