Letters: How would ban make us safer?

I am sure South Carolinians felt much safer, at least briefly, after the president tried to ban entry into the United States for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The order said the ban was designed to “protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States.” The president added that action was important because, “There are a lot of bad dudes out there.”

Think of all the American lives that would have been saved in domestic terrorist attacks had a ban like this been instituted 17 years ago. Or not.

None of the terrorist attacks in the past 17 years (9/11, 2009 Arkansas recruiting office shooting, 2009 Fort Hood shooting, 2013 Boston marathon bombing, 2015 Chattanooga shooting, 2015 San Bernardino attack, 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, 2016 New York and New Jersey bombings, 2017 Fort Lauderdale Airport attack) was perpetrated by a resident of any of the banned countries. To actually ban the “bad dudes” would mean banning entrants from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Russia or the United States — all countries with business ties to the president.

As usual, this act was just Washington political theater delivered by a new actor. To quote the Bard, “It is a tale … full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.”