Before President Trump (!) enacted a ban on travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, declaring that its purpose was to protect the United States from ISIS, critics suggested that an indiscriminate ban on Muslim travelers might be counterproductive, because it would alienate and inconvenience the U.S.’s many Middle Eastern allies. Indeed, shortly after the ban went into effect, a top Iraqi general told CBS from Baghdad that the ban had prevented him from making a trip to see family members in Florida. Now, via ace Times writer Rukmini Callimachi, we have reporting on the subject from the actual front lines of the American-backed Iraqi war against ISIS.* The so-called caliphate lost a quarter of its territory in 2016, and Callimachi is in Mosul, where Iraqi forces are engaged in a battle to retake the city:
Great! Sounds like things are going great.
Great.
*Correction, Feb. 8: This post originally misspelled Rukmini Callimachi’s name.
