“Obama Makes His Case; ‘Freedom Is More Powerful Than Fear’”: Our Success Won’t Depend On Tough Talk, Abandoning Our Values, Or Giving Into Fear
President Obama’s Oval Office address on the terrorist threat treated the American public like grown-ups. His critics hated it.
It’s true that for many of the most engaged observers, last night’s remarks broke little new policy ground, but Beltway pundits and Republican presidential candidates probably weren’t the intended audience. Rather, Obama was speaking to a broad American mainstream, which includes folks who may be asking questions like, “Why aren’t we going after ISIS?” and “Do we have a strategy to deal with the threat?”
You and I may know the answers to those questions, but the president directed his message to those who don’t necessarily follow public affairs closely.
“Here’s what I want you to know: The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us. Our success won’t depend on tough talk, or abandoning our values, or giving into fear. That’s what groups like ISIL are hoping for. Instead, we will prevail by being strong and smart, resilient and relentless, and by drawing upon every aspect of American power.”
The four-part plan includes familiar tenets: a continued military offensive against ISIS targets; training and equipment support to Iraqi and Syrian forces fighting on the ground; strengthening an international coalition; and pursuing a political resolution to the Syrian war.
It’s a detail that goes largely overlooked, but many of the leading Republican presidential candidates have sketched out their plans for U.S. policy towards ISIS – and they look awfully similar to what Obama presented last night. Change some of the rhetoric – add more chest-thumping bravado – and take out some of the president’s calls for preventing gun violence, and the simple truth is that the Obama administration’s plan is largely indistinguishable from many GOP plans.
But presenting this policy vision wasn’t the sole point of the Oval Office address.
The president challenged Congress to limit suspected terrorists’ access to guns and to authorize the military offensive against ISIS that began nearly a year and a half ago. He challenged Muslim leaders to “continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and al Qaeda promote; to speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity.”
And he challenged Americans of every stripe not to give into fear and embrace discriminatory attitudes. Obama made the appeal on principle, but just as importantly, he made clear that respect for diversity can be part of an effective counter-terrorism strategy. “It’s our responsibility to reject proposals that Muslim Americans should somehow be treated differently,” the president explained. “Because when we travel down that road, we lose. That kind of divisiveness, that betrayal of our values plays into the hands of groups like ISIL…. Let’s not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear.”
Broadly speaking, this apparently wasn’t what the right and many pundits wanted to hear. It seems Obama’s critics see a president with a steady hand, showing grace under fire, and it leaves them unsatisfied. The president’s detractors demand more righteous fury, and less calm, resilient leadership.
Slate’s Fred Kaplan added over night that the question is now “whether common sense and an awareness of limits still have a place in American politics.” If some of the initial reactions last night are any indication, the answer may prove to be discouraging.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 7, 2015
“The Terrorism We Tolerate”: Our Collective Denial Allows Anti-Government Domestic Extremists To Slip Under The Radar
As a nation, we’re loath to tackle uncomfortable conversations. It’s far easier to put our collective head in the sand and go-along to get along. So we didn’t see it coming when a perfect storm of extremism hit a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic the Friday after Thanksgiving.
A loner named Robert Dear Jr. is charged with the murder of three people after he allegedly opened fire on a Planned Parenthood facility. After a five-hour stand-off with police, his reported rampage left nine wounded and an Iraq War veteran, police officer and young mother dead. It’s both an outrage and a tragedy, and when you break it down, the story of this mass shooting reads like a field guide to Realities We’d Rather Not Talk About.
We’d rather paint Islam as the face of terrorism most imminently threatening the U.S. than talk about American-born, non-Muslim radicals.
Indeed, anti-government extremists pose a greater threat to the homeland than does the Islamic State group or al-Qaida, according to the Justice Department’s head of national security. The numbers are striking: Anti-government extremists caused the deaths of 254 people in the 10 years after 9/11; Islamic extremists were responsible for approximately 50 deaths. In other words, you’re seven times more likely to be killed by a homegrown, anti-government extremist than a Muslim terrorist.
Yet following the Islamic State group’s attack in Paris, the U.S. was awash with calls to block the entry of Syrian refugees in the name of national security – even though several of the Paris terrorists were French-born. In the wake of Friday’s mass shooting at Planned Parenthood, there’s been no similar national security outcry over European-born refugees who have already entered the U.S. nor fears of a threat from white, Christian men, despite the fact that Dear was Caucasian and reportedly professed to be a Christian.
Instead it’s considered offensive even to acknowledge the existence of domestic extremism: In 2009, then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano was forced to defend agency intelligence reports on the dangers posed by anti-government radicals after pundits and lawmakers from both parties blasted the report as an attack on Americans exercising free speech.
We’d rather not talk about how easy it is to acquire a gun in this country, either.
Dear allegedly used an AK-47 style, high-powered assault rifle to carry out the mass shooting and may have brought “duffel bags full of rifles and handguns” with him to the clinic – enough weaponry for the hours-long standoff with police.
All that firepower was in the hands of a man with a history of mental instability and run-ins with law enforcement. Dear was charged with rape in 1992. Years afterward, he was arrested for peeping tom accusations and later on animal cruelty charges. An ex-wife once made a domestic violence call to police after a fight with Dear. Stories from neighbors and online postings suggest he was a doomsday prepper who believed metal roofs would keep the government from spying on him.
Details are still emerging about Dear’s weapons and how he acquired them, and it’s unclear that a background check would have found him unfit to purchase a gun. But any attempt to discuss whether or not citizens should have the right to amass a military-grade weapons cache is shot down as an attack on the Second Amendment. It’s “politicizing” a mass shooting to bring up these questions, and even when 90 percent of Americans desire increased gun safety regulations or kindergarteners are slaughtered in their classroom, the National Rifle Association succeeds in silencing not only any legislation but national dialogue on guns as well. And meanwhile, we’ve had 351 mass shootings in the first 334 days of this year. That’s the latest count, anyway.
What’s more, we’d rather not correct the record on the fact that Planned Parenthood was not in the business of harvesting baby parts.
The investigation into Dear’s motives is still ongoing, but his reported declaration about “no more baby parts” to police is telling. It’s seemingly a reference to anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress’ videos on Planned Parenthood, heavily edited to concoct the impression that the organization is involved in the illegal sale of fetal tissue. The myth was repeated so often, and with so little pushback, that it’s now taken as a given in our national discussions about Planned Parenthood. Without batting an eye, Republicans cite it to rail against women’s health care in presidential debates, and governors use it to justify witch hunts into the organization and cuts to women’s health access. The videos have inspired their very own House select panel.
Imagine holding the sincere belief that a government-sanctioned organization was involved in the butchery and sale of baby parts. It’s an outrageous idea, and one Dear may have come to believe from hearing it so oft-repeated. He wouldn’t have been alone in this belief – threats against Planned Parenthood reportedly spiked after the videos were released.
It’s unfair, of course, to assume that a national dialogue on any of these issues would have stopped the Planned Parenthood shooter from carrying out his hideous plan. But ignoring them doesn’t help either. Our collective denial allows white, anti-government extremists to slip under the radar with their arms full of guns and their heads full of lies.
By: Emily Arrowood, Assistant Editor for Opinion, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog, U.S. News & World Report, December 1, 2015
“Hysteria About Refugees, But Blindness On Guns”: There’s An Unrelenting Average Of 92 Gun Deaths Every Day In America
For three weeks American politicians have been fulminating about the peril posed by Syrian refugees, even though in the last dozen years no refugee in America has killed a single person in a terror attack.
In the same three weeks as this hysteria about refugees, guns have claimed 2,000 lives in America. The terror attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs were the most dramatic, but there’s an unrelenting average of 92 gun deaths every day in America, including suicides, murders and accidents.
So if politicians want to tackle a threat, how about developing a serious policy to reduce gun deaths — yes, including counterterrorism measures, but not simply making scapegoats of the world’s most vulnerable people.
The caricatures of Syrian refugees as jihadis who “want to kill us,” as one reader named Josh tweeted me, are unrecognizable to anyone who spends time with these refugees. I think some of the harshness might melt if readers could stand with me on a beach here in Lesbos and meet the refugees as they arrive on overloaded rubber rafts after a perilous journey. The critics would see that Syrian refugees are people like us, only wet, cold, hungry and exhausted.
If you think me naïve, meet a 16-year-old Syrian boy here whom I’ll call Ahmed. He lived in a part of Syria controlled by the Islamic State and decided to flee to the West after, he says, he was flogged by ISIS bullies.
Ahmed had to leave his family behind, and he can’t contact them directly for fear of getting them in trouble. I’m not sharing his real name or hometown, to avoid harming his family, but his relatives who have also fled confirmed his account.
Schools have been suspended since ISIS moved into the area, so Ahmed found a job in a pharmacy. When he ran out of a medicine one day, he went to borrow some from another pharmacy — but that was run by a woman, allowed to serve female customers only. Ahmed was arrested.
“They wanted to chop my head off because I spoke to a woman,” Ahmed explained.
Eventually, he was released, but Ahmed has seen more beheadings then he can count. The executions take place every Friday in the town square, and all the people are summoned to watch the swordsman do his work. The bodies are left on public display, sometime in a crucifixion position.
“If someone didn’t fast during Ramadan, they put him in a cage in public to starve for up to three days,” Ahmed added. Ahmed himself was accused of skipping prayers and sentenced to 20 lashes. A Saudi man administered the flogging with a horsewhip.
After that, Ahmed’s family members gave their blessing to his flight because they feared that he might be forced into the ISIS army.
So what should I tell this 16-year-old boy who risked his life to flee extremism? That many Americans are now afraid of him? That the San Bernardino murders may only add to the suspicion of Syrian refugees? That in an election year, politicians pander and magnify voter fears?
Here in Lesbos, the fears seem way overdrawn. Some of the first aid workers Syrian refugees meet when they land on the beach are Israeli doctors, working for an Israeli medical organization called IsraAID. The refugees say they are surprised, but also kind of delighted.
“We were happy to see them,” said Tamara, a 20-year-old Syrian woman in jeans with makeup and uncovered hair. The presence of Jews, Muslims and Christians side by side fit with the tolerance and moderation that she craved.
The Republicans are throwing mud against the wall, hoping that enough of it will stick to take the focus off of the common denominator in…
Iris Adler, an Israeli doctor volunteering with IsraAID, said the refugees were often excited to receive assistance from Israelis. “We are still in close touch with many of them,” she said, including a mother whose baby she delivered on the beach after landing. Hostility to Israeli aid workers, she said, came not from refugees but, rather, from some European volunteers.
Historically, we Americans have repeatedly misperceived outsiders as threats. In 1938 and again in 1941, one desperate Jewish family in Europe tried to gain refugee status in the United States but failed, along with countless thousands of others. That was Anne Frank’s family.
So while it was the Nazis who murdered Anne, we Americans were in some sense complicit.
“We’re facing a great threat from Islamic extremists like ISIS, and we need to be smart about how we confront it,” said Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch, who has focused on refugees. “By humiliating and rejecting those who are fleeing from ISIS, we create a sense of anger in much of the Middle East. The ultimate outcome of rejecting Syrian refugees is a propaganda victory for ISIS.”
If politicians want to tackle a threat to our safety, they might cast an eye not far off on desperate refugees but closer to home — on potential terrorists and also on guns. It’s absurd that the Senate refused to block people on the terror watch list from buying guns; suspected terrorists can’t easily board planes but can buy assault rifles? Presidential candidates and governors should stop fear-mongering about refugees: After all, 785,000 refugees have been admitted to the United States since 9/11 and not one has been convicted of killing a person in a terrorist act in America.
“We, too, are human, and we have a right to live,” an 18-year-old woman named Rahaf, who wants to be a lawyer, told me on a drizzly day in a camp here. “We’re not terrorists. We’re running away from war. I just want to have children who can grow up in peace.”
By: Nicholas Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, December 5, 2015
“I Wave My Lamp Beside The Bolted Door”: Give Me Your White, Your Rich… Yearning To Earn Fees
In honor of the shameful refusal to accept Syrian refugees, RD contributing editor Peter Laarman has rewritten Emma Lazarus’ sonnet, “Give Me Your White, Your Rich… Yearning to Earn Fees,” best known as the poem carved into Statue of Liberty:
Just like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land,
Here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand
A fearsome watcher with a torch whose flame
Sparks paranoid frightening, and her name
Purger of Exiles.
From her clenched hand
Flows world-wide warning; her cold eyes command
A guarded harbor that shows our shame.
“Keep in ancient lands, you filthy scum,” cries she
With savage lips. “Give me your white, your rich,
Your lads and lasses yearning to earn fees,
The choicest claimants we have known before.
Send just these, the vetted and well-glossed to me,
I wave my lamp beside the bolted door!”
By: Peter Laarman, United Church of Christ Minister and Activist, Retired Executive Director of Progressive Christians Uniting in Los Angeles; Religion Dispatches, November 19, 2015
“The Strategic Vision Of The Jihadist Leadership”: ISIS Assumes We’re Stupid — And Our Useful Idiots Keep Proving It
To the delight of ISIS propagandists, our homegrown useful idiots never stop being usefully idiotic. Today, the Center for American Progress posted a bracing column by Sally Steenland and Ken Gude that demonstrates politely but unmistakably how anti-Muslim and anti-refugee conduct by Western politicians fits into the strategic vision of the jihadist leadership.
The enemy has showed us quite clearly what not to do, expecting that we will continue to do it anyway because we’re bigoted and stupid. So far, they’ve been proved right.
Given the recent video threats by ISIS against New York City and Washington, the following is especially timely, especially concerning the foiled plot to detonate a car bomb in Times Square several years ago. But the entire column by Steenland and Gude is well worth reading — and sharing with your elected representatives:
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, is pursuing a strategy explicitly designed to provoke hostility toward innocent Muslims in Western society in order to radicalize these communities and recruit them to their cause. Listening to the American political debate in the wake of the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris, that strategy may be working. Islamophobic rants are both morally offensive and factually inaccurate and play right into the hands of our terrorist enemies.
ISIS is not hiding its objectives. In its publications, it talks of forcing the world into two camps by “destroy[ing] the grayzone” between itself and the forces aligned against it. For ISIS, the grayzone is inhabited by those who have yet to commit to one side in its clash of civilizations. In the February edition of its official magazine Dabiq, an ISIS writer outlined a plan to compel “the crusaders [the West] to actively destroy the grayzone themselves” by generating anti-Muslim hysteria in the wake of terrorism. Attacks such as those in Paris are designed to get Western governments to alienate their Muslim populations and push them toward ISIS….
Here is the truth: Rather than being a threat to national security, Muslim American communities have helped prevent more than one-third of Al Qaeda terrorist plots in the United States since 9/11. The most famous case is that of the 2010 plot to bomb Times Square in which Alioune Niass identified the car bomb and alerted police. In 2003, tips from the local Muslim community led the FBI to arrest a group that was conducting military-style training in northern Virginia.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Editor’s Blog, Featured Post, The National Memo, November 19, 2015
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