“Came Off Like A Confused Former Governor”: Jeb Bungles Facts, Pronunciation In His Big National Security Speech
Likely presidential candidate Jeb Bush delivered a nervous, uncertain speech on national security Wednesday, full of errors and confusion.
Seeking to differentiate himself from his father and brother, both former presidents, the former governor of Florida asserted, “I am my own man.”
But the man who emerged on stage at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs did not sound well-versed in foreign policy.
Bush’s clunky, rushed delivery paled in comparison to the hazy facts in the speech and vague answers he gave during a Q&A session following his remarks.
Speaking of the extremist group based in Nigeria that has killed thousands of civilians, Bush referred to Boko Haram as “Beau-coup Haram.” Bush also referred to Iraq when he meant to refer to Iran.
Further, Bush misrepresented the strength of ISIS, saying it has some 200,000 men, which is far greater than the U.S. intelligence community’s estimates. Last week National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen pegged the fighting strength of ISIS at between 20,000 and 31,500.
“Governor Bush misspoke,” Bush aide Kristy Campbell told The Daily Beast after the speech. “He meant 20,000.”
Referring to the leader of the so-called Islamic State, Bush referred to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as “the guy that’s the supreme leader or whatever his new title is—head of the caliphate.”
Bush was also short on describing how he might combat the threat of ISIS. “Taking them out” in partnership with regional allies was about as specific as he got.
“We have to develop a strategy, that’s global, that takes them out,” Bush said. “First, the strategy, you know, needs to be restrain them, tighten the noose, and then taking them out is the strategy.”
Unlike senators who have more opportunities to delve into international affairs, governors tend to have a steeper learning curve on foreign policy ahead of a presidential run.
And for all his bluster about being different from his brother and father, Bush didn’t really espouse a particularly unique worldview.
The similarities in doctrine shouldn’t come as a surprise. A list of his advisers in The Washington Post reads like a who’s who of hawks from the George W. Bush and Reagan administrations.
Bush did coin a new term—“liberty diplomacy”—and spoke of the need for the United States to be engaged around the world. He also endorsed the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of Americans, which began under his brother following 9/11, as “hugely important.”
At times Bush veered into talk about trade and the economy—two topics he was obviously more comfortable speaking about than issues of national security. As Bloomberg noted Wednesday, Bush has exposure to foreign markets as an adviser to Barclays PLC, he lived in Venezuela, and led trade missions to dozens of countries as governor.
The best-received lines from Bush were the gauziest.
“We shouldn’t be as pessimistic as we are. We’re on the verge of the greatest time to be alive,” Bush said. “We’re in our ascendancy as a nation, we just have to start acting like it again.”
By: Tim Mak and Jackie Kucinich, The Daily Beast, February 18, 2015
“Racial Animus, Unconcealed And Unapologetic”: Rudy Giuliani Dives Into Dinesh D’Souza’s Anti-Obama Dumpster
Through a particularly nasty tweet sent Wednesday morning, Dinesh D’Souza once again proved that he excels at being a race-baiting political provocateur who hates President Obama. By Wednesday evening, Rudy Giuliani once again proved that D’Souza’s long-held and wrong-headed suspicions of the president are firmly rooted among right-wing Republicans.
With Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) in attendance at a dinner at the 21 Club in Manhattan, the former New York mayor baldly questioned Obama’s patriotism. “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said, according to a story in Politico. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.” This folderol is courtesy of D’Souza.
In a 2010 Forbes piece headlined “How Obama thinks,” the rumored philanderer currently serving five years of probation for campaign finance violations wrote that the president’s worldview was inherited from his father. “[T]o his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism,” D’Souza scribbled. “From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America’s military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation,” he later added. “Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America….For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West.”
So noxious was D’Souza’s argument that David Frum, the neoconservative commentator and senior editor at the Atlantic who served as a speechwriter to President George W. Bush, criticized the author and the magazine that published the screed when he ran his own blog.
Nothing more offends conservatives than liberal accusations of racial animus. Yet here is racial animus, unconcealed and unapologetic, and it is seized by savvy editors and an ambitious politician as just the material to please a conservative audience. That’s an insult to every conservative in America.
The ambitious politician Frum refers to is Newt Gingrich, who also parroted D’Souza’s nonsense in a September 2010 interview with the National Journal that can no longer be found online. That Giuliani is spouting the same nonsense unchallenged nearly five years later says as much about him as it does about the Republican Party. Don’t dismiss Giuliani’s questioning the president’s patriotism because he is an unaccountable private citizen. Have a listen to what Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said about Obama’s request for authorization to use military force against the Islamic State during a panel discussion last week. Keep in mind that Perry is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and oversight chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.
The conundrum for people like you, people like me and people out in the homeland that feel the same way is that we feel duty bound to do something…..We have a commander in chief who seems not only not ready, not unwilling, but really working collaboratively with what I would say is the enemy of freedom and of individual freedom and liberty and Western civilization and modernity. And in that context, how do you vote to give this commander-in-chief the authority and power to take action when…you know in your heart that, if past performance is any indicator of future performance, that he won’t, and that he actually might use it to further their cause and what seems to be his cause and just drag you as a complicitor in it.
Perry later backed off his treasonous assertion against Obama, saying, “Of course he isn’t collaborating with our enemies.” Yeah, okay.
Perry, Giuliani, D’Souza and countless others are part of a larger problem in American political discourse: the constant questioning of whether Obama not only loves this country, but also whether he would do everything in his power to protect it. Those engaging in this destructive discussion are the ones who “don’t love America.”
By: Jonathan Capehart, Postpartisan Blog, The Washington Post, February 19, 2015
“Is This So Hard To Understand?”: Why Calling ISIS Islamic Only Plays Into Its Hands
If you want to help ISIS and Al Qaeda, then call them Islamic. That’s one of my big takeaways from this week’s White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), which I attended on Wednesday.
Speakers at the CVE summit, which featured counterterrorism experts, elected officials including the Mayor of Paris, law enforcement, and Muslim leaders, offered a few reasons for this proposition. First, it’s simply inaccurate. As President Obama said as the closing speaker of the day, ISIS and Al Qaeda “no more represent Islam than any madman who kills innocents in the name of God represents Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism.” Obama also offered a sentiment very similar to the NRA mantra: Religion doesn’t kill people, people kill people.
I understand that some will dismiss that as political correctness. Well, maybe then these reasons will move those people. As Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) put it at the summit, ISIS wants us to believe its actions are based in Islam because it frames the conflict as a religious war between the West and Islam. This then enables these terror groups to claim they are the defenders of Islam, thus, assisting them in raising funds and attracting recruits.
But there’s another point raised subtly by some, including Obama, and more explicitly by Jordanian counterterrorism expert Suleiman Bakhit, whom I spoke to one on one, that has received little to no coverage in our media. ISIS and Al Qaeda not only want people in the Muslim world to think their actions are based on Islam, but they want Westerners to as well. Why? Because they hope that people will retaliate against Muslims living in the West for Al Qaeda and ISIS’ actions. If these Muslims are then subject to demonization, hate crimes or worse, the terrorists can tell Muslims: “See, the West hates Islam! That is why you should join us to fight them.”
Bakhit, who was also a participant at the CVE summit, interestingly mentioned the film The Battle of Algiers as instructive in understanding Al Qaeda and ISIS. This is the second time an expert has mentioned this film in this context, the first being Rula Jabreal a few weeks ago.
For those unfamiliar with this classic 1967 film, it tells the story about Algeria’s fight for independence from France in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. The Algerian National Liberation front (FLN) engaged in terrorist activities against the French. While FLN leaders knew they could not defeat the French military, they hoped that the French authorities would respond in a brutal and barbaric way against the Algerian population as a whole. Why? Because it would likely stir up more support for the independence movement by the masses of Algerians who were not part of the FLN. And that’s exactly what happened, with Algeria wining its independence a few years later.
ISIS and Al Qaeda understand they can’t defeat the West militarily, but they can, with as few as two people as we saw with attack on Charlie Hebdo, increase anti-Muslim sentiment across the West. In turn the increased alienation of some in the Muslim community from mainstream society makes it easier to recruit and radicalize.
That ties into the most common theme heard at the summit, namely that the lure of ISIS and Al Qaeda is to offer people on the fringes of society an opportunity to be a part of something. They use social media and peer-to-peer recruiting effectively by preying on the economically disadvantaged and marginalized, offering them self worth, similar to gangs. That, not any promises connected to the principles of Islam, was the key to ISIS and Al Qaeda’s recruiting success.
Another big take away was that while the summit was billed as a look at all violent extremism, in reality over 90 percent of the discussion focused on Muslims. But as the ADL’s Oren Seagal explained on one panel, in last 10 years, non-Muslim terrorism has killed far more Americans. I made that very point in my article earlier this week previewing the summit.
This approach can cause an inadvertent but tangible backlash to the Muslim community as Linda Sarsour, a Muslim American leader in New York City, correctly pointed out. Sarsour told me via email that by primarily focusing on Muslims, the summit “gives the green light to local and federal law enforcement agencies to subject us to unwarranted surveillance.”
Muslims clearly want to counter terrorism and overwhelmingly want to play a role with the government in preventing radicalization of anyone from our community—even though statistically we are talking maybe 150 people who have traveled to the Middle East from the United States to join ISIS, yet that is still uncertain. But trust is the key for this relationship to work. That very point was made by law enforcement and Muslim American leaders that had joined forces in three cities—Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Boston—as part of the federal government’s pilot program to counter radicalization.
Even President Obama noted “that engagement with communities can’t be a cover for surveillance” because “that makes it harder for us to build the trust that we need to work together.”
And Obama did his part to engender more trust with the Muslim community. He acknowledged that Muslims have been a part of the fabric of our nation since its inception and that many have served as police officers, first responders, and soldiers.
Obama also addressed anti-Muslim bigotry, mentioning the horrible murders of three Muslim American students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina last week. And in a particularly poignant moment, the President read a Valentine’s Day Card sent to him from a young Muslim girl named Sabrina who wrote, “I enjoy being an American. But I am worried about people hating Muslims…If some Muslims do bad things, that doesn’t mean all of them do…Please tell everyone that we are good people and we’re just like everyone else.”
Will the CVE Summit yield any results in countering radicalization? Will it cause a backlash against American Muslims? Time will tell. But the one thing I’m certain is that if you want to help ISIS and Al Qaeda, then by all means call them Islamic. If you want to defeat them, call them what they are: terrorists.
By: Dean Obeidallah, The Daily Beast, February 19, 2015
“A Regrettable Ignorance”: Don’t Know Much About History, Rick Perry Edition
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), still an unannounced presidential candidate, campaigned in New Hampshire last week and told a group of voters that he and Abraham Lincoln share an ideological bond.
“Lincoln read the Constitution, and he also read the Bill of Rights, and he got down to the Tenth Amendment, and he liked it,” Perry boasted. “That Tenth Amendment that talks about these states, these laboratories of democracy…. The Tenth Amendment that the federal government is limited, its powers are limited by the Constitution.”
It’s easy to understand how the Texan might be confused. Lincoln and Perry share a party label, so the former governor apparently assumes they share a political outlook, too. And given that Lincoln was arguably the nation’s greatest president, it stands to reason that the Texas Republican, like most candidates, would want to associate himself with the Lincoln legacy.
The problem, however, is that Perry has no idea what he’s talking about. Josh Zeitz, who taught American history and politics at Cambridge and Princeton, explained the other day that the former Texas governor “got Lincoln backwards” and Perry’s entire argument “betrays a regrettable ignorance of Lincoln’s political outlook.”
Before he reluctantly became a Republican, Abraham Lincoln was a lifelong Whig – a party founded in opposition to Andrew Jackson and in support of a strong and active central state…. A passionate supporter of Henry Clay’s “American System,” Lincoln believed that states should ultimately be subordinate to a strong federal government, and that Washington had a big role to play in matters as far and wide as internal improvements, currency, banking and taxation. […]
As president, Lincoln vastly expanded the federal government’s role…. Maybe Rick Perry spent too much time reading from those widely disputed history and government standards that the Texas Board of Education, in its infinite wisdom, foisted on textbook publishers. Whatever the cause, he’s confusing Abraham Lincoln – erstwhile Whig and promoter of a strong central government – for a strict Tenth Amendment devotee. That, he certainly was not.
As Jon Chait reminded me, Perry has also flirted openly with the idea of state secession, which probably wouldn’t have impressed the president who won the Civil War.
In 2009, the then-governor was so eager to show his contempt for President Obama that Perry denounced the United States government as “oppressive,” arguing that it was “time to draw the line in the sand and tell Washington that no longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in the state of Texas.” Soon after, he said he doesn’t want to “dissolve” the union of the United States, “But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.”
Around the same time, Perry said of Texas, “[W]hen we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”
I won’t pretend to be a Lincoln scholar, but I’m comfortable describing the iconic American president as someone who wasn’t comfortable with the idea of state secession.
All of this must be terribly inconvenient for Republicans. Lincoln believed in a strong federal government, a progressive income tax, and considerable infrastructure investments, making him sound an awful lot like a Democrat by 21st-century standards. Indeed, some conservatives who’ve read up on Lincoln see him as something of an enemy – Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) co-wrote a book with a neo-Confederate who boasted that he raises “a personal toast every May 10 to celebrate John Wilkes Booth’s birthday.”
Perry may want to take Lincoln back as some kind of conservative hero, but he’ll have to ignore literally every historical detail to make the case to unsuspecting voters.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 17, 2015
“Most Glaring Drawback Is He’s A Bush”: Jeb Bush Cannot Escape His Brother’s Undeniably Disastrous Presidency
Earlier this year, Mitt Romney had a Galadriel moment. He appeared to be briefly seized by a vision of himself as an all-powerful, world-striding President Romney, before turning away from temptation and settling for the plain old Mitt Romney he has always been. It was political theater at its most bizarre, a flack-driven frenzy that doubled as a flashback to the self-delusion that blinded the Romney 2012 campaign in its final days.
With Romney now out of the way, Jeb Bush has consolidated the support of the GOP’s moneyed class with surprising alacrity. As Politico noted last week, the contest for the Republican nomination was previously seen as a “free-for-all among a half-dozen or so viable candidates” but has since shifted to a game of catch-up, with a clear leader way out front who has a “bull’s-eye on his back.” He may soon be out of sight: The Washington Post reported that Bush is amassing so much money so quickly that his potential rivals “do not even claim they can compete at his level.”
The Republican primary process is a fearsome thing for any establishment candidate, but history shows that he (and it is always a he) will win in the end. None of this is good news for Bush’s would-be competitors, whether they be on the fringe (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz), slow starting out of the gates (Chris Christie), or Pawlenty-esque (Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal).
The problem for the GOP is that a Bush running in 2016 is almost as eye-rubbingly bizarre as another Romney campaign.
I’m not talking about Jeb Bush’s policies or his abilities as a campaigner (though for the most part he has been deft in avoiding the usual pitfalls and has handled the media well). I’m talking about his most glaring drawback: the fact that he’s a Bush. It seems too obvious to mention, but as Republican elites rally around his flag, it appears they need a reminder. Just a few years ago, the idea of another Bush running for president would have been laughable. Today, the party is so desperate for a winner that it is willing to entirely overlook eight disastrous years in the White House.
In early February, Jeb Bush said his brother was a “great president.” Maybe that’s just what a younger brother has to say to avoid seeming like a heartless backstabber. Then again: Really?
George W. Bush’s Iraq War was a horrible blunder — the worst foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. There was a brief moment at the dawn of the Arab Spring when conservatives were crediting Bush’s pro-democracy agenda for a wave of anti-authoritarian protests across the region, but you don’t hear them saying that anymore. Iraq was a really, really bad idea, and nothing has changed that.
Then there’s the economy. There are not many modern presidents who enjoy the dubious honor of overseeing a recession so bad that it compares only to the Great Depression. In fact, there is only one: George W. Bush. While it would be unfair to lay the entire economic collapse at his feet, it’s clear that the financial crisis stemmed from a stew of GOP policies, from deregulation to crony capitalism to overly prizing homeownership. Again, not great. Not even good.
Next up: the budget. Bush entered office with a budget surplus, then gave a huge chunk of it away to the rich. That’s not good. That’s very, very bad.
Then there’s all the rest of it: Katrina, Scooter Libby, torture, wiretapping, Dick Cheney, and on and on and on.
George W. Bush’s approval rating has improved since its 2008 nadir, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it will plummet once the Bush years are relitigated in the context of a hypercompetitive presidential race in which another Bush is on the ballot.
To win a general election, Jeb Bush would have to come up with a way to disown his brother’s legacy — and so far he has only embraced it. That means that, should Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee, the 2016 election could very well come down to a contest between the 1990s and the 2000s.
Americans have fond memories of the 1990s. The 2000s? Not so much.
By: Ryu Spaeth, The Week, February 17, 2015
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