Republican presidential candidates sound as if they’re declaring war on Muslims of every hue - and are in danger of play into jihadists’ hands

Here are two directly related thoughts about America in the wake of the ghastly Islamic State (Isis) attacks in Paris. First, Republican scaremongering about Syrian refugees is not only a disgrace to the US and everything the country likes to think it stands for, but actually plays into the hands of the terrorist proto-state. Second, steel yourself to the fact that Donald Trump may well be the party’s presidential nominee next year.

Why is it that the US can part company with sanity on such occasions? Remember how Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in the late 1930s were kept out on the grounds they might be communists. Or how Japanese-Americans were rounded up and interned during the Second World War; or how the country fell for McCarthyism and the Red Scare in the early Cold War. Here we go again.

Republicans, who control Congress, are the main culprits, but last week dozens of minority Democrats also backed a House of Representatives bill that would effectively halt immigration from Syria. The measure still has to pass the Senate, and then survive a promised presidential veto. But the message is clear. And, even if it wasn’t, then the words of sundry Republican presidential candidates have dispelled all remaining doubts.

Trump suggests a national database to track all Muslims in the US and mused about shutting down mosques. Ben Carson, his closest rival, likens jihadists among Muslims to rabid dogs in the canine population: “It doesn’t mean you hate all dogs… but you’re putting your intellect into motion.” Intellect? Meanwhile, Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey who passes as a grown-up in the Republican field, vows to let no Syrians in, not even “orphans under age five”.

In comparison, the much-reviled George W Bush comes across as a saint. Rightly, the younger Bush is criticised for the epic geostrategic blunder of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which he claimed had been made necessary by 9/11. We forget, however, that just six days after that deadliest terrorist plot of the modern era – with a death toll more than 20 times that of Paris – Bush went to the main mosque in Washington DC with a message of conciliation. His aim was to prevent a violent backlash against American Muslims. He quoted the Koran, and described Islam as a religion of peace that had been betrayed by the perpetrators of 9/11.

That now seems light years ago. The Republican candidates sound as if they’re declaring war on Muslims of every hue. Some talk of a struggle between Christians and Muslims; others propose that only Christians fleeing the Syrian inferno be admitted. All of this evokes the “clash of civilisations” that Isis, on the defensive on its own territory, seeks to foment elsewhere. The group would like nothing more than repression of Islam in countries such as the US, guaranteeing countless new recruits to the cause.

The hysteria overlooks the fact that the refugee vetting system already in place works pretty well. Since 9/11, around 785,000 refugees have been allowed into the US. Of these, just three have been arrested for terrorism-related offences, none of them involving plots on American soil. Yet we now have 27 of the country’s 50 governors, all but one of them Republican, promising not to let any Syrian refugees into their states.

Also overlooked is the vastly different situation of the US. Washington DC is far harder to reach from the Middle East than Paris, and America’s Arab and Muslim citizens are better integrated (and more prosperous) than their French or British counterparts. The real danger is not that Isis jihadists will hide among refugees, as purportedly did one of the Paris attackers, it is that jihadists who are already citizens of countries such as Britain and France will arrive in the US as tourists or students.

About the only thing to be said in the Republicans’ defence is that they are filling a vacuum. Paris has not brought out the best in Barack Obama. The President has come across as aloof and almost uninterested, reserving his greatest energy to score political points off the Republicans, barely disguising his irritation at those who have the temerity to disagree.

President Obama is right that America should not send a land army to Syria. But, for better or worse, America is expected to lead at such moments. Manifestly it is not leading. Instead the French, those “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” of yesteryear, are being showered with praise here for their forceful response. President François Hollande will doubtless receive a hero’s welcome when he visits Washington on Tuesday to drum up support for a grand “war” alliance against Isis.

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A more sinister beneficiary is Trump. No more can you dismiss him as a flash in the pan. For four straight months he has topped the polls. Were any mainstream candidate in his position, the pundits would already be declaring the nomination battle virtually over. Instead, they wait for a collapse that never comes. Outbursts, insults and untruths that would sink another candidate have no effect. The Republican great and good cling to a belief that voters will wake up to Trump before it’s too late. It hasn’t happened yet.

The carnage in Paris, coupled with the probability of more such attacks, is helping Trump. His lead if anything is increasing, while Carson, whose vacuous ignorance of foreign policy has been brutally exposed, appears to be fading. Trump may be no less ignorant. But, as with his diatribes against immigration, his vow to “bomb the s***” out of Isis and its oilfields is exactly what his audiences wants to hear.

Failure to do so, in the gospel according to Donald, is a sign of America’s global decline that he intends to reverse. The more measured plans of rivals are buried in the bombast. And so, a perverse community of interest is born. By stirring up visions of a civilisational war, Trump is arguably the best thing that’s happened to Isis in a while. And Isis may be the best thing that’s happened to Trump.