The Duck of Minerva

Donald Trump Is a Racist (Part 100)

US Foreign Policy

by Josh Busby

7 December 2015, 2128 EST

In the wake of the San Bernardino shooting and President Obama’s address to the nation, Donald Trump has called for banning Muslims from entering the United States.

This is counterproductive racist and awful. We need a credible candidate from the Republicans in 2016, not a reality television star who is a disgrace to the nation and its founding principles. Let’s leave aside the morality here, which on its face is terrible, but recall what ISIS wants us to do which is turn this a religious war between the West and Muslims.

ISIS wants us in our response to their provocations to eliminate the gray zone, making Muslims have to choose between their faith and where they live. A small fraction of Muslims have been radicalized, but ISIS wants us to treat the Muslims community with such disdain and hatred that the world they see — of Muslims being discriminated against — becomes a reality.

This is something George W. Bush resisted during his tenure as president, and Republicans and Americans of good will have to reject this cancer publicly and repeatedly, as Donald Trump’s populist xenophobia is a greater threat to the republic than ISIS.

Joshua Busby is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. His most recent book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge, 2023). He is also the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010) and the co-author, with Ethan Kapstein, of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (Cambridge, 2013). His main research interests include transnational advocacy and social movements, international security and climate change, global public health and HIV/ AIDS, energy and environmental policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

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