“A Week Of GOP Cowardice And Bigotry”: In Time Of Crisis, Too Many Politicians Feed Fear And Scapegoating”:
In the somber days since ISIS terrorists killed 130 people in coordinated attacks on Paris, elected leaders from around the world have been searching for solutions. But far too many American politicians have fallen back, instead, on that old standby in times of crisis: Stirring up fear and finding someone, anyone, to scapegoat, no matter how unconnected the scapegoated person is with the problem at hand.
Sadly, in Congress that took the form of a House vote to in essence stop the U.S. resettlement of refugees from Iraq and Syria by imposing nearly impossible bureaucratic requirements on what is already the toughest vetting system for anyone seeking entry into the U.S. This bill was scapegoating in its purest form, framing as terrorists people who are fleeing the very violence that this bill was supposedly trying to prevent.
The House vote — in which 47 Democrats joined nearly every Republican — was the culmination of a week of cowardice and bigotry sweeping the political landscape.
There was the Missouri state legislator who urged his governor to watch out for “all flavors” of Muslims and the mayor of Roanoke who invoked the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a positive model for how to treat American Muslims.
And there were the 31 governors who declared that their states would turn away Syrian refugees who go through the U.S. refugee resettlement program.
Not wanting to miss out on the action, of course, Republican presidential candidates have been tripping over themselves to outdo one another. Donald Trump has speculated that refugees from Syria “could be one of the great Trojan horses.” Mike Huckabee, in what can’t even be described as a dog-whistle, has told Americans to “wake up and smell the falafel” when it comes to Syrian refugees. Chris Christie said he’d get tough on Syrian orphans. Ted Cruz has suggested that the U.S. only admit Christian refugees from Syria, although how he plans on testing people’s religious faith is unclear. Jeb Bush has hinted at the same thing, saying he would back refugees who can “prove” that they’re Christian, which shows what this is all about. If you have a system that’s strong enough to “prove” someone’s true religion, don’t you think it could also properly vet people for national security purposes? Jeb Bush was supposed to be the mature establishment candidate. So much for that.
These politicians are feeding what a new Public Religion Research Institute poll reports is an “increased xenophobic streak in the American public.” It’s no coincidence that threats against American Muslims have been reported across the country in the days since the Paris attacks.
It is of course reasonable to ask that refugees be vetted — they already are — but if security were the real issue, our current debate wouldn’t be about refugees at all. In fact, if someone were intent on sneaking into America to cause harm, exploiting the refugee resettlement program with its intensive and lengthy screening processes would be the hardest way to do it. No, what is behind the anti-refugee campaign of the Right is not reasonable concerns about security, but something much uglier.
The candidates who are now spewing cynical anti-refugee rhetoric are often the same ones who claim that their opponents don’t believe in “American exceptionalism,” and the movement so willing to embrace explicit anti-Muslim bigotry is the same one constantly telling us that religious freedom is under attack. They seem to have forgotten the vibrant pluralism and commitment to shared values that make us exceptional, and a beacon of freedom to the persecuted, in the first place. Looking back on the history of our country, our best days have been when we opened ourselves to people facing persecution, not the times we turned them away and demonized them. Let’s not let this become the American Way.
By: Michael B. Keegan, President, People For the American Way; The Blog, The Huffington Post, November 24, 2015
“Leadership And The Politics Of Fear”: Obama Providing Exactly The Kind Of Leadership This Country Needs Right Now
Jeff Greenfield’s article titled: Getting the Politics of Fear Right got me thinking about what leadership means at a time like this. He acknowledges that following the Paris attacks, Donald Trump “went on a fear-mongering bender.” But then he finds President Obama’s response to be problematic as well.
Meanwhile President Obama has tacked sharply in the other direction, playing down the public’s anxiety, defiantly continuing to downgrade the possibility of an attack on the U.S. and the capabilities of Islamic State…Obama’s dismissiveness is no doubt one reason for Trump’s popularity; clearly many voters believe our current crop of leaders – starting with the president – have been too inattentive to their fears.
This is not an uncommon critique of President Obama. Way back in 2010 during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Maureen Dowd led a chorus of people complaining about the fact that the President didn’t seem to feel our panic.
President Spock’s behavior is illogical.
Once more, he has willfully and inexplicably resisted fulfilling a signal part of his job: being a prism in moments of fear and pride, reflecting what Americans feel so they know he gets it.
So this is nothing new. We heard the same thing during the Ebola scare and every other crises we’ve faced over the last 7 years. It all makes me think about what it is we want in a leader.
I was reminded of a powerful diary written years ago by a blogger named Hamden Rice about the leadership of Martin Luther King. The parallels with our current situation eventually break down, but Rice pointed out that King emerged to lead African Americans during a time that they were experiencing the terrorism of Jim Crow.
But this is what the great Dr. Martin Luther King accomplished. Not that he marched, nor that he gave speeches.
He ended the terror of living as a black person, especially in the south…
It wasn’t that black people had to use a separate drinking fountain or couldn’t sit at lunch counters, or had to sit in the back of the bus…
It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them. You all know about lynching. But you may forget or not know that white people also randomly beat black people, and the black people could not fight back, for fear of even worse punishment.
This constant low level dread of atavistic violence is what kept the system running. It made life miserable, stressful and terrifying for black people.
And what was King’s response to that terror?
They told us: Whatever you are most afraid of doing vis-a-vis white people, go do it. Go ahead down to city hall and try to register to vote, even if they say no, even if they take your name down.
Go ahead sit at that lunch counter. Sue the local school board. All things that most black people would have said back then, without exaggeration, were stark raving insane and would get you killed.
If we do it all together, we’ll be okay.
One has to wonder if folks like Greenfield and Dowd had been around back then, would they have complained that MLK was too inattentive to their fears?
When it comes to the current threat of terrorism, President Obama plays a very different role in this country than the one Dr. Martin Luther King did all those decades ago. But interestingly enough, yesterday his message sounded pretty similar.
What happened in Paris is truly horrific. I understand that people worry that something similar could happen here. I want you to know that we will continue to do everything in our power to defend our nation…
But it’s not just our security professionals who will defeat ISIL and other terrorist groups. As Americans, we all have a role to play in how we respond to threats. Groups like ISIL cannot defeat us on the battlefield, so they try to terrorize us at home – against soft targets, against civilians, against innocent people. Even as we’re vigilant, we cannot, and we will not, succumb to fear. Nor can we allow fear to divide us – for that’s how terrorists win. We cannot give them the victory of changing how we go about living our lives.
That is exactly the kind of leadership this country needs right now to combat the politics of fear.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, November 25, 2015
“Why Is The GOP So Silent Over Pollard?”: Normally, Republicans Fall All Over Themselves Trying To Show How Much They Love Israel
Though few topics have been off-limits for the Republican presidential field this cycle, there’s one glaring issue most of them prefer to keep totally mum about: the parole of former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.
Yesterday, former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was released from federal prison. When he served as a Navy intelligence analyst, the government of Israel paid him from $1,500 to $2,500 a month, per CNN, to covertly pass them classified information. After Pollard was convicted, he received a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years. He’s been called “one of the worst traitors of the 20th century.”
But he had many powerful and loyal advocates in Israel — including current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who lobbied unsuccessfully for a commutation of his sentence. And the country awarded him citizenship after his conviction. Republicans don’t often see any conflict between the goals of the Israeli government and the United States’ national security interests. But Pollard’s incarceration — and, now, the conditions of his parole — confront them with such a conundrum.
And some powerful Republicans were Team Pollard. Ted Olson, an attorney on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and then solicitor general during his first term, represented him before the D.C. Court of Appeals. And according to a Daily Beast report from 2012, Republican megadonor and king-maker Sheldon Adelson pushed for then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to call for the spy’s release. Romney didn’t.
Though Pollard is now free, his attorneys are challenging what they characterize as “onerous and oppressive conditions of parole.” Pollard — who “passed more secrets to a foreign power (360-plus cubic feet of paper), in the shortest amount of time, than any spy before or after him,” according to a retired Navy counterintelligence officer quoted at IntelNews.org — has to wear an ankle monitor and can’t move to Israel for at least five years.
The Daily Beast reached out to all the competitive Republican presidential campaigns (and the Democrats, too) about whether they supported Pollard’s release and thought he should be allowed to leave the U.S. for Israel. Only Ben Carson’s team provided an answer. His communications director, Doug Watts, emailed that the retired neurosurgeon is fine with what happened.
“Jonathan Pollard has done his time and therefore Dr Carson has no objection or concern with his release,” Watts said. “As for his travel restriction, Dr Carson defers to the judgement of the Parole Board.”
Huckabee’s team didn’t send an answer, but he told Israeli media outlet Arutz Sheva earlier this year that he was “delighted” by the prospect of Pollard’s release and had concerns about his health.
“[T]here’s no purpose being served by continuing to have him incarcerated and I’m delighted he’ll be finally freed and be able to go to Israel,” the former Arkansas governor added, erroneously assuming Pollard would immediately be able to leave the U.S.
Huckabee also told Arutz Sheva he hoped “that this is not sort of a bald attempt for this president to try to appease and win friends among the Israelis, believing that if he lets Jonathan Pollard go then the Israelis are bound and determined that they have to support the Iranian deal.”
Jeb Bush’s team didn’t get back to us about the former Florida governor’s stance on Pollard. His brother, though, resisted Israeli efforts to secure a commutation of the spy’s sentence. IntelNews noted that a “massive campaign was conducted behind the scenes,” including tens of thousands of phone calls to the White House from his supporters, to get him out of prison.
“Hopeful writers at Israel National News even prepared an article celebrating his release under a would-be headline ‘Jonathan Pollard is Coming Home!’” wrote Arutz Sheva on Jan. 9, 2009, on their misplaced optimism that Bush would release the spy in the final days of his presidency.
They weren’t the only ones long holding out for his release. After Pollard left prison, Netanyahu took to Twitter to celebrate.
“As someone who raised his case before successive U.S. presidents many times, I longed for this day,” the prime minister said in a video the account tweeted out. “And now after three long and difficult decades, Jonathan is being released. I wish him on this first Sabbath that he’s going to spend with his family a lot of joy, a lot of happiness, a lot of peace. May these be the hallmarks of the rest of his life.”
One Israeli paper has reported that Netanyahu is lobbying for Pollard to be allowed to travel to the country before five years of parole are up. Netanyahu’s office wouldn’t confirm that report to the AP.
Though the PM is unequivocal about Pollard, one of Netanyahu’s most vocal supporters in the Senate has stayed mum. Marco Rubio, a hawkish foe of the Iran deal and long-time critic of Obama’s handling of U.S./Israeli relations, has yet to say anything about the spy’s release. A spokeswoman for his campaign told The Daily Beast that she would let us know if they have a comment.
The Conservative Solutions Project, a pro-Rubio outside group, used video of Netanyahu in an ad touting the senator that aired in cable news networks, including Fox News.
Sen. Ted Cruz’s team also didn’t reply to a query about his views on Pollard’s release and the conditions of his parole. But this past April at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Las Vegas, he expressed openness to pardoning Pollard if elected.
“Cruz said he’d keep an ‘open mind’ about the situation, but wanted to hear from U.S. intelligence agencies before deciding,” wrote Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Steve Sebelius.
It seems highly unlikely that intelligence agencies would have told President Cruz it was a good call to pardon Pollard. As IntelNews noted, then-CIA director George Tenet threatened to resign if then-President Bill Clinton had pardoned the spy. Clinton didn’t.
And conservative Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach told The Hill in July that Cruz gave him a heads-up on Pollard’s upcoming parole.
“I was told that Sen. Cruz had met with the Justice Department and other representatives from other branches of government and they said that he was going to be paroled in November,” he told the paper.
So Pollard makes life complicated for Republican candidates. No wonder then, for the most part, they’d rather talk about anything else.
By: Betsy Woodruff, The Daily Beast, November 21, 2015
“Where’s The Cool-Down Switch On This Thing?”: The Apocalyptic Mind-Set That Has Developed Among Republicans
Krugman is, as usual, right: the hysteria level among Republicans at present is just out of control. You imagine them examining their own bodies for a cool-down switch or maybe plunging themselves into cold bathwater periodically.
[W]e shouldn’t really be surprised, because we’ve seen this movie before (unless we were too scared to go to the theater). Remember the great Ebola scare of 2014? The threat of a pandemic, like the threat of a terrorist attack, was real. But it was greatly exaggerated, thanks in large part to hype from the same people now hyping the terrorist danger.
What’s more, the supposed “solutions” were similar, too, in their combination of cruelty and stupidity. Does anyone remember Mr. Trump declaring that “the plague will start and spread” in America unless we immediately stopped all plane flights from infected countries? Or the fact that Mitt Romney took a similar position? As it turned out, public health officials knew what they were doing, and Ebola quickly came under control — but it’s unlikely that anyone on the right learned from the experience.
What explains the modern right’s propensity for panic? Part of it, no doubt, is the familiar point that many bullies are also cowards. But I think it’s also linked to the apocalyptic mind-set that has developed among Republicans during the Obama years.
Think about it. From the day Mr. Obama took office, his political foes have warned about imminent catastrophe. Fiscal crisis! Hyperinflation! Economic collapse, brought on by the scourge of health insurance! And nobody on the right dares point out the failure of the promised disasters to materialize, or suggest a more nuanced approach.
Given this context, it’s only natural that the right would seize on a terrorist attack in France as proof that Mr. Obama has left America undefended and vulnerable. Ted Cruz, who has a real chance of becoming the Republican nominee, goes so far as to declare that the president “does not wish to defend this country.”
The context also explains why Beltway insiders were so foolish when they imagined that the Paris attacks would deflate Donald Trump’s candidacy, that Republican voters would turn to establishment candidates who are serious about national security.
Who, exactly, are these serious candidates? And why would the establishment, which has spent years encouraging the base to indulge its fears and reject nuance, now expect that base to understand the difference between tough talk and actual effectiveness?
Sure enough, polling since the Paris attack suggests that Mr. Trump has actually gained ground.
And why shouldn’t he? The entire GOP field has been moving in his direction on this inflammable “Issue” of immigration linked to terrorism. The Republican Establishment types who have regarded the Trump candidacy as summer entertainment for the hoi polloi before they settle down to do their duty to the party by nominating Jeb have never really understood Trump’s appeal. All they can do now is mimic his rhetoric.
By: Ed Kilgore, Senior Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, November 20, 2015
“Jeb Bush & Ted Cruz Only Want To Save Christians”: Advocating For The U.S. To Officially Discriminate Based On Religion
The terror attacks in Paris on Friday were a starting pistol for the Republican presidential candidates’ race to the far right on the Syrian refugee crisis, amid concerns that ISIS-trained terrorists could trickle into the United States as easily as they seem to have entered France, resulting in similar carnage.
The lurch to the right has gone so far that two of the major candidates are advocating for the U.S. to officially discriminate based on religion.
Ben Carson said that allowing any refugees into the United States at all “under these circumstances is a suspension of intellect”; Donald Trump said, “We cannot let them into this country, period”; Marco Rubio switched his position from being “open” to the idea of taking refugees to saying, “It’s not that we don’t want to. It’s that we can’t.” Rand Paul cautioned the U.S. to be “very careful” to not admit refugees “that might attack us” and, on Monday, announced to reporters that he was preparing a bill to halt refugees from countries with jihadist activity; Chris Christie said that not even “3-year-old orphan” refugees should be allowed to enter the country.
But Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush devised a compromise: The U.S. could admit Syrian refugees so long as the refugees are Christians.
“There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror,” Cruz said Sunday in South Carolina.
“If there were a group of radical Christians pledging to murder anyone who had a different religious view than they, we would have a different national security situation,” Cruz reasoned. “But it is precisely the Obama administration’s unwillingness to recognize that or ask those questions that makes them so unable to fight this enemy. Because they pretend as if there is no religious aspect to this.”
On Monday, Cruz announced that he will introduce legislation to ban Muslim Syrian refugees from entering the country.
Jeb Bush, who urged a “really tough screening” process for refugees, said Monday, “I do think there is a special important need to make sure that Christians from Syria are being protected, because they are being slaughtered in the country and but for us who? Who would take care of the number of Christians that right now are completely displaced?”
President Obama responded to Cruz and Bush’s proposal with audible frustration on Monday, at the G-20 summit in Antalya, Turkey.
“Many of these refugees are the victims of terrorism themselves, that’s what they’re fleeing,” he said.
And then he seemed to take a direct swipe at Cruz, who has long claimed that his father fled communist Cuba: “When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution? That’s shameful. That’s not American. It’s not who we are.
“I think it’s very important for us right now, particularly those who are in leadership, particularly those who have a platform and can be heard, not to fall into that trap, not to feed that dark impulse inside of us.”
The campaigns of Cruz and Bush did not respond to requests for comment on the matter.
The process by which refugees can gain entry to the U.S. is not a simple one.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the program responsible for refugees, requires applicants to submit to a rigorous screening process which requires all sorts of personal information, from their fingerprints to details about their families and relationships, according to a spokesman.
And if those refugees claim to be fleeing from religious persecution, there is already a system in place to vet their claims.
An official familiar with the process said the DHS uses all “biographic and biometric information” and vets that information against law enforcement, intelligence sources, and other databases in order to check the refugees identity. The refugees are also checked for any criminal history or other “derogatory information, and identify information” during the process.
The refugee cannot travel to the U.S. until all the checks are complete.
The U.S. has been accepting refugees since World War II, when 250,000 of them entered. The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 welcomed 400,000 more people.
In 1979, 110,000 Vietnamese refugees came into the country, and 97,000 followed in 1980. During the same period, 120,000 came from Cuba.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the number of refugees entering the U.S. declined. The New York Times notes that in 2002, only 27,131 came. The system for gaining entry to the U.S. is so complex that, as the Times wrote, “most refugees need at least a year and sometimes two to navigate” it.
Sarah Demant, the senior director of the Identity and Discrimination Unit at Amnesty International, told me that the group was “concerned” by the presidential candidates “politicizing” a human-rights issue.
“Human beings who are most vulnerable—refugees and asylum seekers—shouldn’t be used as political maneuvering,” she said. “Human rights are not political.”
“People of all religions are at risk… particularly in Syria with the Syrian refugee crisis. Christians and Muslims and people of all faiths are at risk,” she added. “The U.S. policy should be that all asylum seekers are allowed to seek asylum, no matter what their religion. The value of nondiscrimination is not just a human-rights value, it’s an American value.”
By: Olivia Nuzzi, The Daily Beast, November 20, 2015
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