“There’s No Terrorist Shaolin Temple”: Why Are We Afraid Of The Returning Expat Terrorist?
One of the common refrains we hear in the reporting on ISIL is that officials are worried that Americans will go to Syria or Iraq, fight with ISIL, and then return here to launch terrorist attacks on the United States. As a discrete category of terrorist threat, this is something very odd to be afraid of.
It isn’t that such people might not have the motivation to carry out a terrorist attack. But if they went to fight with ISIL, they probably already had the motivation. Ah, but what about the things they learned there? This morning, I heard a reporter on NPR refer to such returnees employing their “newfound terrorist skills” against the United States. But what skills are we talking about? If you want to learn how to make a bomb, you don’t have to go to Syria to acquire the knowledge. There’s this thing called “the internet” where it can be found much easier.
The way these potential attackers are talked about, you might think that launching a terrorist attack is something you can only achieve after years of intensive training in an arcane discipline, the secrets of which are closely held by wise old masters who deign to impart them only to carefully chosen initiates. But there’s no terrorist Shaolin temple. If all you want to do is kill some Americans and sow chaos, it’s actually not that hard. A couple of knuckleheads like the Tsarnaev brothers could do it.
This is an entirely separate question from whether ISIL as an organization wants to carry out an attack within the United States, because if they do, they don’t need someone with an American passport to execute it. Anyone here on a tourist visa could do it (in 2013, just under 70 million international visitors came to the U.S.).
The point is that there are any number of reasons a person might decide to launch a terrorist attack against the United States. While it’s entirely possible that an American could fight with ISIL and then get sent back to plant a bomb somewhere, that eventuality is no more likely than an American who has never left his home town becoming angry over U.S. foreign policy and deciding to lash out in the same manner. There are no “terrorist skills” you can’t get here at home. So as a matter of policy, the returning expat terrorist is pretty far down the list of things we need to worry about.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 24, 2014
“Who Knew?”: Obamacare Is Such A Disaster That Even More Insurers Want To Be Part Of It
There are still plenty of days when Obamacare looks bad. Tuesday wasn’t one of them.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced that more insurers were joining the Affordable Care Act’s new marketplaces—you know, the places where people can buy coverage on their own and, depending on their incomes, qualify for subsidies. How many more insurers are participating? Quite a few, it turns out. According to HHS, the net increase is more than 25 percent. That should translate to more options for people buying coverage. The increased competition should also help keep premiums relatively low.
The data is preliminary, based on 44 states for which HHS had information. And of course the sheer number of insurers offering coverage is just one sign of how the law is doing. If you’re actually buying insurance, you don’t simply want choices. You want good choices. You want to know that the insurance will give you access to doctors and hospitals when you need them. You want to know that the coverage pays your bills adequately. And so on.
Still, Obamacare critics hadn’t predicted the markets would evolve this way. On the contrary, they expected that young and healthy people would stay far away from the new marketplaces, because the new coverage would be pricier than what they were paying before. Without enough business, the argument went, insurers would get skittish and withdraw. At best, the marketplaces would all become oligopolies and monopolies, with just a handful of insurers continuing to sell policies. At worst, the whole scheme would fall apart. That quite obviously isn’t happening.
Trouble could still arise. By design, Obamacare includes a series of provisions designed to insulate insurers from major losses in the first three years. I usually describe them as “shock absorbers.” Many other policy wonks refer to them as the three Rs, for reinsurance, risk corridors, and risk adjustment. Two of the three, risk corridors and reinsurance, are temporary measures set to expire in 2016. More knowledgeable critics of the law, like Bob Laszewski and Megan McArdle, have warned that more insurers could abandon the market or at least jack up their premiums once those measures expire.
I can’t tell you with certainty whether they are right or wrong. Always in motion is the future, as a famous prophet once said. But keep in mind that gloomy, even dire, predictions about Obamacare’s marketplaces are nothing new. One of my favorites was an op-ed that ran in the Wall Street Journal at the end of last year. The author was John Cochrane, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago. The headline was “What to Do When Obamacare Unravels”—not “if,” mind you, but “when.”
At the time, with unexpected plan cancellations and the website problems very much on people’s minds, betting against the program working probably seemed like a good idea. Who wants to make that kind of bet now?
By: Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic, September 24, 2014
“Backing Up President Obama”: It’s Foolhardy To Forsake What The President Has Accomplished
It is long overdue for someone, anyone, to back up President Barack Obama.
Yes, it is easy to kvetch about the shortcomings he’s faced on both domestic and international fronts, and who can argue with the most recent Gallup poll that equated his approval rating to that of President George W. Bush, but as an early supporter of the president, I must admit, I am prouder than ever to call Barack Obama my president.
He’s smart, he’s pragmatic, and he’s black. Yeah, I said it. I’m a white Jew from the San Fernando Valley who grew up in an all-white and Asian neighborhood. Never in my life did I have an opportunity to demonstrate my unflagging support for a black man who clearly deserved the nation’s top spot, not because he is black, but because voting for President Obama demonstrated to the world that America values competence over race.
I am grateful that I have an opportunity to tell my son that I am responsible for helping elect the country’s first black president. And I know what the pundits will say: There goes another self-righteous white liberal who thinks he’s saving the world by backing up a black president. And all I have to say to you is this: It’s foolhardy to forsake what the president has accomplished.
It’s foolhardy to forsake the man who brought the country’s most maligned terrorist to justice. It’s foolhardy to forsake the man who inherited a suck-wind economy that is a lot healthier now than it’s been in years. And it’s foolhardy to forsake the man who had the courage to fix a health care system that no other recent president dared to fix because they didn’t have the guts to do so.
And I know what the pundits will say: There goes another self-righteous white liberal whose naiveté about how the world works is what gets the country into trouble in the first place. And all I have to say to you is this: It’s foolhardy to forsake what the president has accomplished.
It’s foolhardy to forsake the man who is dealing with ISIS, Ukraine and Russia, fallout from Ferguson, and every other red-hot world crisis that is happening at the same time. It’s foolhardy to forsake the man who believes gay people should be treated like everyone else. And it’s foolhardy to forsake the man who cares about the environment.
And I know what the pundits will say: There goes another self-righteous white liberal who is making excuses for the president and lacks any sort of moral fortitude. And all I have to say to you is this: It’s foolhardy to forsake what the president has accomplished.
It’s foolhardy to forsake the man who improved the image of Americans when traveling in foreign countries, it’s foolhardy to forsake the man who decided to tackle the inequities of student lending programs, and it’s foolhardy to forsake the man whose family values serve as an important role model.
Measuring the president’s approval rating is riddled with pitfalls. The Gallup poll feels more like a barometer for people’s take on how messed up the world is at the moment, and boy, does the world feel messed up at the moment.
And I know what the pundits will say: It’s the president’s fault. And all I have to say to you is this: The scale of what Barack Obama has accomplished as president has done more for this country in the long run than any pollster can measure, and if you realize this, hardly a fool that you can be called.
By: Evan Pondel, The Huffington Post Blog, September 24, 2014
“Feed The Base’s Worst Fears”: When In Doubt, Run Against The Kenyan Muslim Socialist
Yesterday, Senator Pat Roberts — who has emerged as one of the most closely watched incumbents in the country, now that independent Greg Orman’s challenge to him could dictate who controls the Senate — raised a lot of eyebrows when he said this:
“We have to change course because our country is heading for national socialism. That’s not right. It’s changing our culture. It’s changing what we’re all about.”
National socialism? Philip Rucker, in a great piece on the Kansas race, asks Senator Roberts what he meant, and gets this:
When a reporter asked whether he truly thinks the president is a socialist, Roberts replied, “I believe that the direction he is heading the country is more like a European socialistic state, yes. You can’t tell me anything that he has not tried to nationalize.”
Interestingly, the Orman campaign is criticizing Roberts’ rhetoric. In a statement, the campaign said:
“This is exactly the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that dominates the partisan debate in Washington and that Kansans are tired of. Washington is broken because politicians like Senator Roberts are too busy using scare tactics and calling each other names instead of getting things done. Kansans know we’ve got to do things differently, and that’s why they’re supporting businessman Greg Orman’s independent campaign for Senate.”
This is noteworthy, given that you’d think calling Obama a socialist could not possibly be problematic in any way in deep red Kansas.
By the way, the claim that Obama is moving the country towards socialism has long been echoed by many leading Republicans. It’s a way to feed the base’s worst fears about Obama while not quite coming out and calling him a socialist, which sounds crazy. In accusing Obama of wanting to “nationalize,” well, the entire private sector, Senator Roberts has dispensed with such restraint.
This gets to something interesting about this race. Roberts and his allies in the national GOP, panicked about the Orman challenge and its implications for Senate control, are quickly gearing up an All-About-Obummer campaign. Roberts is up with an ad ripping Orman for donating to Obama and national Democrats, and for saying repeal of Obamacare is unrealistic. A GOP Super PAC is airing a similarly themed spot. (Republicans are also tarring Orman as a shady businessman, but tying him to Obama and national Democrats will figure heavily.)
But, judging by the Orman statement above, his camp is gambling that this approach won’t work and could even end up reinforcing the frame for the race they prefer. The premise of the Orman campaign is that voters are sick of both parties and of Washington, allowing them to cast any efforts to tie him to Obama and national Democrats as more of the same old partisan food fighting, all designed to distract from Roberts’ failure to produce concrete achievements despite all his time in the Capitol.
The backdrop for all of this is the abject failure of the experiment in conservative governance undertaken by Kansas governor Sam Brownback, which has alienated many moderate Republicans. But it seems unlikely that Orman will directly engage on that front. I’d expect him to seek to capitalize on the generalized unpopularity of the GOP that has resulted, to campaign against both parties — and against Roberts’ lack of accomplishments — in making the case for trying something new in the form of an independent businessman.
Even Republicans are worried about this prospect, as one Republican rather colorfully put it to Rucker:
“He’s basically furniture in the Senate, and the people in Kansas know that,” said national GOP strategist John Weaver, a former McCain adviser. “You could give the average Kansan 24 hours to come up with something Pat Roberts has done in the Senate, and after 24 hours, even the crickets would be standing there befuddled.”
Well, okay, that does sound pretty problematic, but there’s still a way out: Run against the Kenyan Muslim Socialist!
By: Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, September 24, 2014
“Obama’s Iraq Is Not Bush’s Iraq”: Plainly And Simply, Obama Didn’t Lie Us Into This War
Last week, a Politico reporter phoned me to ascertain my thoughts on the new war. Among the questions: Was there concern among liberals that Barack Obama was in some sense now becoming George Bush, and did I see similarities between the current war and Bush’s Iraq war that, come on, be honest, made me squirm in my seat ever so slightly? My answer ended up on the cutting-room floor, as many answers given to reporters do.
But since I’m fortunate enough to have a column, I’d like to broadcast it now, because the answer is a reverberating no. In fact it’s hard for me to imagine how the differences between the two actions could be starker. This is not to say that they might not end up in the same place—creating more problems than they solve. But in moral terms, this war is nothing like that war, and if this war doesn’t end up like Bush’s and somehow actually solves more problems than it creates, that will happen precisely because of the moral differences.
The first and most important difference, plainly and simply: Obama didn’t lie us into this war. It’s worth emphasizing this point, I think, during this week when Obama is at the United Nations trying to redouble international support to fight ISIS, and as we think back on Colin Powell’s infamous February 2003 snow job to Security Council. Obama didn’t tell us any nightmarish fairy tales about weapons of mass destruction that had already been destroyed or never existed. He didn’t trot his loyalists out there to tell fantastical stories about smoking guns and mushroom clouds.
The evidence for the nature of the threat posed by the Islamic State is, in contrast, as non-fabricated as evidence can be and was handed right to us by ISIS itself: the beheading videos, and spokesmen’s own statements from recruitment videos about the group’s goal being the establishment of a reactionary fundamentalist state over Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. That’s all quite real.
Difference number two: This war doesn’t involve 140,000 ground troops. That’s not just a debating point. It’s a massive, real-world difference. I know some of you are saying, well, not yet, anyway. Time could prove you right. But if this works more or less as planned, it establishes a new model for fighting terrorism in the Middle East—the United States and Arab nations and fighting forces working together to do battle against terrorism. That’s kind of a huge deal.
Which leads us to difference number three: This coalition, while still in its infancy, could in the end be a far more meaningful coalition than Bush’s. The Bush coalition was an ad hoc assemblage bribed or browbeaten into backing the United States’ immediate geopolitical aims. It was brought together pretty much so Bush could deflect the essentially true unilateralist charge and stand up there and say “41 countries have joined together” blah blah blah.
This coalition is smaller, but the important point is that it’s not built around a goal that is in the interest only of the United States. Defeating the Islamic State is a genuine priority for the region, and the idea that these gulf states that have been winking at or backing violent extremism for years might actually work with the United States of America (!) to fight it is little short of amazing. I’m not saying Obama deserves the credit here, although it seems clear he and others in the administration have worked hard on this point. Rather, the fact is that the Saudis and the Emiratis and others are now doing, however reluctantly, what it’s in their self-interest to do.
Whatever their motivation, the mere fact that they’re signing up for the fight is striking. One should never be optimistic about the Middle East, but if we look at the situation with a little more historical sweep, we can hope that this could be the moment when, after many years of letting these cancers spread, some key players in the Arab world start to try to get their own house in order a little bit with respect to extremism. And if they do that, maybe in the near future some of these regimes will start to see that the darkness in which they make their subjects live has to be lifted.
The irony is not lost on me that Saudi Arabia, our most crucial partner here, may well have beheaded more humans this year (46 so far) than ISIS has. But if these autarkies really do work to arrest the Islamic State, maybe they’ll eventually see that the only real way to make extremism seem unappealing is to make moderation—well-functioning economies, a little free speech, maybe an unrigged election now and again—seem appealing.
There are many ways that what started in Syria Monday night can go wrong. I really don’t think Bashar al-Assad shooting down a U.S. plane is one of them; I suspect Assad knows exactly how long it would take for the United States to decimate his entire air-defense system, and I bet the answer is “not very long.” However, ISIS could shoot one down. What happens to public opinion when there’s an American death, or two? When the Iraq army, even with the benefit of 200 U.S. airstrikes, can’t retake any ground, as appears to be happening now? And what would Congress do in the event of such realities? At the very least Obama does have to get congressional assent in the near future.
So this war could end up being the disaster critics are predicting. But already, it’s not some other things. It’s not a morally dubious hegemonic enterprise built on a pile of lies. That may or may not give it a better chance of success, but at least it means we don’t have to be ashamed of what our country is doing.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, September 24, 2014
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