The Trump Backlash.

In recent weeks US Presidential candidate Donald Trump has faced an international backlash over comments he is alleged to have made calling for Muslims to be banned from the US.

In the UK alone a Parliamentary petition calling for Trump to be banned from the UK has received 564,529 signatures. This is more then five times the number it requires for the issue to be discussed in Parliament and for the UK government to issue a formal response.

I do not like Donald Trump. As a close friend of fellow Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and member of the Democrat Party since 2001 I think it is obvious to all that his attempts to seek the Republican nomination are simply a ruse to get Hillary Clinton elected in 2016.

The idea being that every time Trump says something ridiculous it makes the Republicans look bad which allows Hillary to present herself as the reasonable option rather then simply a Saudi shill. Then when Trump fails to win the Republican nomination he will run as an independent candidate. So even if most Americans vote against Hillary she'll still end up being President.

So I've actually disliked Trump long before it became fashionable.

However it must be said that at no point did he actually say what he is being condemned for. Trump didn't suggest banning Muslims from visiting the US nor did he say that Muslim Americans should be kicked out. Instead he said that the US should stop issuing visas to Muslims and other high risk visitors until the US has sorted out the problems in its visa system.

This is a rather reasonable point.

It's emerged that the US born San Bernardino attacker - Syed Rizwan Farook - had been planning to carry out terror attacks as far back as 2012. During this time he contacted various terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) over the Internet in the hope of travelling to join them. However he kept getting the brush off.

Then suddenly he was introduced to his co-attacker - Tashfeen Malik - on an Internet dating site. The two soon married and Malik was granted permission to live and work in the US.

To people in intelligence circles this looks as though the marriage was false and Malik was an AQAP sleeper agent who'd exploited a gap in the visa system to enter the US specifically to carry out terrorist attacks. It is something that visa controls are supposed to pick up on.

Then there is the issue of visa-free travel between the European Union (EU) and the US. These means that any one of the attackers in the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres or any other terrorist with an EU passport could fly into the US no questions asked.

When governments identify gaps this big in their security measures it is expected that they will suspend normal operations until those gaps are plugged.

We saw this after the October 31st (31/10/15) bombing of Kogalymavia flight 7K9268 over Egypt. This exposed gaps in Egyptian airport security so the UK and others responded by suspending all flights to and from Egypt - effectively banning their citizens from Egypt.

It's testament to how sensible Trump's recommendation is that while Trump is being widely criticised for saying it US President Obama is very quietly taking Trump's advice and putting the policy into effect.

Today the lead story in the UK has been of the British Muslim Mahmood family. They arrived at Gatwick airport last Tuesday (15/12/15) expecting to fly to California for a family holiday to Disneyland. At the airport they were informed that their visa to travel to the US had been revoked at the last minute with no explanation.

This is only one of several such stories I've heard about in the 20 days since the San Bernardino attack.

However I've not heard any liberals complaining about it.

That's because to do so would force them to admit that their heroes - Obama and Clinton's - undying love for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is making life extremely difficult for Muslims across the world.

17:45 on 23/12/15 (UK date).