The man who was arrested for the Islamist terrorist attack on Halloween along a New York City bike and pedestrian lane that killed eight people and gravely wounded another dozen looks to be pretty darned guilty, and he’s an immigrant from the terror-prone country of Uzbekistan who got into the country via a convoluted “visa lottery” program, so the tragedy has unavoidable political implications. These days, though, it’s likely to become more complicated than it should be.
Some scrutiny of the convoluted “visa lottery” is surely warranted, as is a healthy skepticism about the left’s broader notion of awarding unscrutinized visas to people from countries where the people are prone to Islamist terrorism, and there’s no denying that the Republican party in general and President Donald Trump in particular now stand better in the ensuing argument. Trump’s been gleefully “tweeting” about it, and rightly noting New York’s Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer was a sponsor of that “visa lottery” that ushered the alleged terrorist who looks pretty darned guilty into the country, but he probably would have been better off focusing on the policy rather than the personalities. Trump’s very vigilant immigrant policies had previously excluded Uzbekistan and other Islamist-terrorism-prone countries from the former Soviet Union, this is the first time he’s “tweeted” about the “visa lottery,” and singling out Schumer for personal criticism hardly invites the senator from New York to join in a bipartisan fix.
Trump is also “tweeting” some tough talk about denying the suspect legal representation and summarily shipping him off to the Guantanamo Bay prison for unlawful combatants, but we think he’s overplaying a winning hand. Being old-fashioned law-and-order Republicans we’re forced to admit that no matter the convoluted system that let the suspect into the country did grant him a legal residence, the rule of constitutional law provides certain rights to legal residents charged with even the most outrageous crimes, and we’d hate to see rights denied innocent people might run afoul of Trump, and we’re confident we’re confident that the current judicial order will deal very harshly with a guy so clearly guilty. The established legal order has worked well enough so far, all things considered, and might well provide some useful information in this case, so we trust it more than we do Trump or any Republican or Democrat.
We’re hopeful Trump and the rest of the Republican party will achieve a less convoluted and more vigilant immigration policy, that there will be some Democratic support from the states where Islamist terrorism most often happens, and as a result we’ll someday annoyed by news that doesn’t involve a fatal Islamist terrorist attack which might have otherwise happened. We’d rather not give up on the constitution and the rest of that old fashioned Republican law-and-order, though, and we think it best that we not make it personal.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 