Im-Politic: Gun Sense Urgently Needed in Chicago

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Chicago, crime, gun control, gun violence, guns, Illinois, Im-Politic, Lori Lightfoot, Ted Cruz

That was some Twitter exchange Monday between Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and new Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot! Not only was it scorching (especially on Lightfoot’s part), but it was crucially important for clarifying a major problem with how Americans have been debating the issue of gun violence and what to do about it.

The problem concerns how to classify the kind of gun violence that has plagued low-income neighborhoods in big cities like Chicago for so long, and therefore how best to reduce it, and here’s why Cruz emerges as a clear winner.

Right after a Labor Day weekend in the Windy City that saw 41 shootings that resulted in seven deaths, Cruz took to social media to tweet

“Gun control doesn’t work. Look at Chicago. Disarming law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer. Stopping violent criminals—prosecuting & getting them off the street—BEFORE they commit more violent crimes is the most effective way to reduce murder rates. Let’s protect our citizens.”

Lightfoot was incensed. Her response:

“60% of illegal firearms recovered in Chicago come from outside IL—mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact commonsense gun legislation. Keep our name out of your mouth.”

And she backed up her claim with a graphic.  (See this post for both tweets.)

But here‘s what Lightfoot overlooked: Let’s grant her apparent assumption that the share of these out-of-state guns that have been seized in the city roughly matches their share of Chicago’s total illegal gun supply. Let’s also grant her apparent assumption that better gun laws could actually reduce this supply meaningfully. Even so, it would still be a humongous stretch to conclude that Chicago would become significantly more peaceful.

Just look at these numbers: Chicago’s 2.71 million population came to just over 21 percent of the Illinois total as of last year. But according to the latest (2016) figures, Chicago’s homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 residents was 355 percent higher than Illinois’ homicide rate of 7.8 percent per 100,000 residents.

Even more striking: In 2016, 997 murders took place in Illinois that year. Of those, more than 76 percent (762) occurred in Chicago. That is, the number of murders in the city was nearly four times greater than what you’d expect if such violent crimes happened uniformly throughout the state. If out-of-state guns were the main problem, you’d expect their effects to be spread much more evenly, if not perfectly evenly.

What the Lightfoot-Cruz debate boils down to is the former’s claim that Chicago’s main gun violence-related problem has relatively little to do with Chicago, and the latter’s claim that something about Chicago matters critically – including in terms of attracting the out-of-state guns responsible for such an outsized share of Illinois murders. The data not only clearly vindicate Cruz. They powerfully remind that the term “gun violence” nowadays is too often used in America to describe a wide variety of behaviors, and that many of them aren’t remotely likely to be solved solely or mainly with tighter gun laws.

Im-Politic: The Adolescents’ Crusade

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Establishment Media, Florida school shooting, gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, mental health, National Rifle Association, NRA, opioids, Parkland, school security, school shootings

How to say this delicately, without coming off as a callous old fogey? Those stunningly eloquent and impassioned Parkland, Florida students who survived Valentine’s Day’s appalling massacre, and Americans of all ages flocking to the anti-gun violence movement they’re creating, are unintentionally giving their compatriots a reminder of why we don’t let high school-ers run the country.

Although my life has never been in danger from any source, and I have never had to attend burials of dozens of my peers within days, I have no difficulty understanding why anyone with these experiences, and especially impressionable young people (yes, a cliché, but no less true for it), would want to do everything possible to make sure that they and no one like them suffers this ordeal again. Further, who can blame them for trying to shame politicians and others into supporting their various favored policy responses (which appear to focus on tighter gun restrictions and to a lesser extent on improving mental health care), and threaten those office-holders who they believe oppose their desired gun curbs in order to keep their National Rifle Association (NRA) campaign contributions flowing?

Improvements on all fronts, including gun accessibility, obviously can and should be made. For example, I’m impressed with proposals to set 21 as the minimum age for any gun ownership. And closing the “Charleston loophole” in the national background check system? Absolutely. And these on top of the other measures I blogged about last Wednesday – including tighter school security along with longer-term measures to provide better and more comprehensive mental health care and, maybe most important of all, whatever changes are needed to transform a culture that has so slighted family and community, and has so glorified so many forms of instant gratification – including violence.

But the Parkland students whose tough demands and often strident statements have attracted the most attention are going to run into a big obstacle as they seek political and policy change – which of course they have every right to do. They’re going to find out that, as important as preventing or reducing the number of school and other mass shootings undeniably is, it’s not the only problem facing the nation. Arguably it’s not the gravest problem facing the nation. More important, that’s what the vast majority of Americans to date believe.

The proof, in this case, is in the polling. We’ve had a few surveys that gauged public opinion in the immediate aftermath of Parkland, and they do contain good news for the students and others pushing for more effective gun control. For example, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found 50 percent-46 percent support for a national assault weapons ban, and agreement by a 58 percent to 37 percent margin that the Florida high school shooting could “have been prevented by stricter gun laws.”

But the far more important results – and the ones that politicians will be zeroing in on – make clear that, even when memories of Parkland couldn’t have been fresher, Americans have recognized the importance of other priorities, too. Specifically, a CBS News sounding asked respondents the following question:

“In this year’s Congressional elections, how important will the issue of gun laws be to your vote – will it be the single most important issue, will be important but so will other issues, or will it not be important to you?”

The results? Only 18 percent described gun issues as their most important. Seventy percent said it was one of numerous priorities. Even 72 percent of Democrats, who most strongly favor tougher gun laws, agreed with this proposition.

A Quinnipiac University survey reported much the same. It asked respondent, “If you agreed with a political candidate on other issues, but not on the issue of gun laws, could you still vote for that candidate, or not?”

By a 54 percent to 34 percent, respondents said that they could support a candidate regardless of their gun laws stance. Forty-two percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents agreed.

And before you start throwing a fit, if you think about it, this perspective is entirely justified. Consider the following: According to an organization that runs a “Mass Shooting Tracker,” 590 Americans last year died in such incidents. And this database defines mass shootings relatively broadly – as incidents in which at least four people are shot (as opposed to at least four killed). Everyone of good faith should agree that that’s 590 too many.

But here’s the human toll of another national problem: opioid addiction. According to the federal Center for Disease Control, in 2016 (the latest figures available), 63,600 Americans died of overdoses from such drugs. Fatalities are growing fastest, moreover, among Americans in the 15-24 years age group.

To be completely and emphatically clear, I am not depicting any of these other national challenges as excuses for business-as-usual about school and other mass shootings. We rightly expect our elected leaders to walk and chew gum at the same time. Instead, I’m observing that, as the Parkland students seeking to concentrate Americans’ attention tightly on these issues wade into national politics, they’ll (continue to) discover not only that there are reasonable arguments on the other side that so far have convinced people who are not moral monsters and who do not have “blood on their hands,” but that there are plenty of other fish in that sea. And many are not only just as big. They’re just as virtuous.

P.S. – recognizing this perspective goes double for most of the Establishment Media members who have covered this story.  For unlike the Parkland students, they don’t deserve any slack. Because they’re supposed to be adults.     

 

Im-Politic: Gunsense

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Florida school shooting, gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mental health, open campuses, Parkland, school security, school shootings, Trump

Monday’s post on the Parkland, Florida high school shooting generated some vigorous debate both in RealityChek‘s comments section and on other social media platforms on which it was posted. And since for the foreseeable future, we’ll all rightly be discussing this tragedy and how to prevent or cut the number of repeats, here are some further thoughts, in no particular order.

First, I have no credentials as a moral or any other kind of philosopher, but it strikes me that President Trump’s characterization of the shooting as an “evil massacre” misses the point, and in fact clashes with his focus on dealing with the gun violence issue largely through improving the nation’s mental health system. For nothing could be more obvious to me, anyway, than that Nikolas Cruz is an example of a deeply disturbed, and probably broken, individual, not a villain. Of course, that’s not to excuse his actions, but can anyone seriously doubt that he fits the description made – and pretty compelling so, in my opinion – in the President’s initial post-Parkland remarks of children “who feel lost, alone, confused or even scared,” and who need to know that “You have people who care about you, who love you, and who will do anything at all to protect you”?

Second, despite the clear mental health dimension of the school shootings problem, no one should assume that even massive action on this front will solve or even ease it any time soon. After all, therapy is an imperfect science at best. When it succeeds, it tends to work slowly. It’s especially difficult with youth who don’t fully buy in – which young people in need almost by definition tend to resist, at least at first. (The same of course applies to adults.) Requiring suspects to submit to treatment necessarily entails curbs on their individual rights, and therefore a society that prizes such rights naturally sets relatively high bars. Incidentally, these rights considerations apparently greatly slowed the process of transferring Cruz from a regular public school to a special school for kids with serious psychological issues.

I have no doubt that expanding the treatment system will solve some of these problems, and that it’s possible to somewhat ease the barriers to mandatory treatment, and to improve the communications among schools, law enforcement, and social service agencies tasked with identifying “red flag” situations. But I’m also impressed by the conclusion of this California mental health professional that “Even if all potential mass shooters did get psychiatric care, there is no reliable cure for angry young men who harbor violent fantasies.” (I disagree with her claim that “mental illness is rarely the cause” of mass shootings due to my aforementioned belief that committing violence on this scale, especially against the innocent victims of these attacks, is prima facie evidence of mental illness.)

Third, I strongly disagree with calls responding to the school shooting outbreak by arming teachers or school administrators. Even if these educators were experienced with firearms, the vast majority surely would have no experience conducting what could well wind up being protracted gunfights. Moreover, in order to succeed, schools would have to be harboring lots of guns. Even if virtually all were securely stored virtually all the time, the inevitability of exceptions creates the possibility of discharges, accidental or not, by students, along with serious injuries or fatalities.

There’s obviously a real school problem with school security, but it overwhelmingly entails overly easy access to campus by outsiders, and by enrolled students carrying guns. So the best response would seem to be ending the practice of open campuses, and monitoring and restricting access via limited numbers of entrances and exits and professional armed security guards who would be authorized to search any students or visitors. In principal, students could still be exposed to shooters during outdoor recess periods, but other armed guards could be regularly patrolling schools’ perimeters.

For those concerned that the nation’s private security services couldn’t be trusted to handle these responsibilities because their own profit motives would bring onto school grounds too many guards with threadbare training or dicey backgrounds, the National Guard could be made available. Alternatively, taxes could be raised to enable local police forces to get the job done adequately.

None of these insights or measures would address the social and cultural problems I emphasized Monday. But they do hold the promise of saving lives, and at an eminently reasonable cost – i.e., of making sure that the perfect isn’t made the enemy of the good.

Im-Politic: Listen Closely to the Florida Students

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adolescence, families, Florida school shooting, gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, mental health, Nikolas Cruz, Peggy Noonan, pop culture, Ron Powers, school shootings, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal

As I’ve written before, the upsurge in school shootings and other mass shootings in America must surely stem from multiple causes. Aspects of U.S. gun laws clearly are defective. But broader social and cultural trends are at work as well.

The student survivors of last week’s Florida school shootings who are demanding that their elders more effectively protect them and their generation – and of course all other potential victims – deserve major credit not only for the passion and eloquence with which they are pressing the case, but for recognizing that better mental health care is essential along with better ways of keeping guns from the other Nikolas Cruz’s in U.S. classrooms.

Nonetheless, there’s a gap between their clear prioritization of gun control on the policy level, evident in their anger at the National Rifle Association, and an emotion that seems much more elemental – and compelling. Moreover, it’s doubtful that any single new law or set of new laws will make a major difference on this particular front. Consider the following statements:

>From a student survivor: “We had been doing drills on this in the past month. In every single class period, my teachers had gone through safety protocols. We have safety zones, we have protocols for every single emergency….”

>From another student survivor: “If our legislators don’t take action, how can we ever feel safe?” (Same source.)

>From that same survivor: “…I will not feel safe going back to school myself until reasonable mental health care legislation and gun control legislation is passed. Because, at this point, it’s unacceptable. How many more students are going to have to die and have their blood spilt in American classrooms, trying to make the world a better place just because politicians refuse to take action?” (

>From a student at a neighboring school: “I’ve seen these shootings happen my whole life. I’ve grown up with them. I remember Sandy Hook. I remember every single one.” (Same source as the second quote.)

It’s painfully obvious, at least to me, that what we’re being told here is that these young people are literally terrified that the kid sitting next to them, or the one sitting alone at the far end of the lunchroom, or the one who was just expelled, or one of the aimless, surly slightly older kids or twenty-somethings hanging around the neighborhood or the mall, literally is a ticking time bomb capable of exploding at any times. Moreover, the adults who have raised them and teach them are alarmed by these threats, too.  And these (all too believable) fears reinforce can’t help but reenforce the contention that something terrible has happened in America in recent decades that has turned entirely too many adolescent boys in particular into actual or potential killing machines.

Columnist Peggy Noonan made this point with her characteristic common sense and eloquence in The Wall Street Journal last week. It’s definitely worth your while. (For the record, however, I’m not entirely convinced about the abortion point.) And if you think such claims are simply right-wing talking points, take a look at this 2002 piece in The Atlantic – no conservative stronghold.

As I’ve written, it’s absolutely true that school and other mass shootings don’t happen in other high-income countries where young people are exposed to the same kind of toxic pop culture that prevails in the United States (although where the breakdown or family and community haven’t been nearly so advanced?) – which strongly supports the belief that tighter gun control is the key to stopping them or dramatically reducing the numbers. But it’s also true that these tragedies were much rarer earlier in American history, when guns were much more widespread.

So again, I strongly applaud the activism of the Florida students. I hope it doesn’t fade. I hope it helps shame American leaders into taking more productive action. But I also hope the students, their peers, and other Americans start asking more persistently not only why so many young people can so easily buy or otherwise access shockingly destructive weapons, but why they want to.

Im-Politic: First Thoughts on Orlando

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2016 election, Donald Trump, gun control, Hillary Clinton, homeland security, homophobia, Im-Politic, Islamic terrorism, LGBT, Muslims, Obama, Orlando, Orlando attacks, radical Islam, terrorism

We’re still learning about many of the specifics surrounding the horrific Orlando shootings early this morning, but some facts are now clear, and warrant some preliminary thoughts and observations.

First, we now have confirmation from the FBI of a link between killer Omar Mateen and Islamic terrorism. Until a press conference held in Orlando by Florida state and local officials and Bureau agents, the media had been filled with reports – some claiming to be from eyewitnesses – that Mateen had shouted “Allahu Akbar,” a phrase often heard during attacks and on other occasions from ISIS and other Islamic terrorists and extremists.  Other connections were mentioned in the press as well.

But these accounts were simply reports – and especially in the immediate aftermath of an event, reports can be completely inaccurate or misleading. Even ISIS’ claim of responsibility for this atrocity isn’t necessarily definitive proof of a radical Islam angle. Such announcements can be made simply for propaganda purposes.

At the press conference, though, at a little after 3:15 in the afternoon local time, FBI agent Ron Hopper stated that during his call to 9-11 before the attack, Mateen made comments that were “general to the Islamic State.”

Second, it’s now a little after 4 PM, EST, and there’s been nothing from President Obama or the White House on this now unmistakable Islamic terrorist connection. Yet just before 2 in the afternoon, Mr. Obama felt comfortable blaming inadequate gun control in part for the shooting. Based on what was known at the time, I don’t blame him for not rushing to judgment on ISIS et al. But in my view, he does deserve blame for seizing on the opportunity to advance a political view that is anything but obviously central to this incident.

He also deserves blame for waiting so long to go back before the nation and discussing the Islam issue – specially Orlando’s implications for his policy of open-arms welcomes for Middle East refugees, and for his determination (expressed most recently last week) to vilify Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s insistence that Islam and its adherents pose special problems for homeland security that require special approaches.

Third, ever since Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, it’s been clear to me that his rise to the presidency could be little more than one major domestic or Europe terrorist attack away. Now we have the attack. It will be fascinating to see what the polls tell us about its effect on his candidacy. (Keeping in mind of course how flawed they remain as measures of public opinion.)

Similarly, his likely Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has enthusiastically heaped Obama-like scorn on Trump’s emphasis on the extremist Muslim threat to homeland security. Today, she’s already beaten the president to the punch in linking the Orlando attack to “international terror groups.” But her failure to refer to Islam signals her continuing unwillingness to acknowledge its prominence in global terrorism and therefore a homeland security issue – now more than ever at least partly for fear of seeming to vindicate Trump.

Fourth, it’s a tragic fact of history that shocking violence against persecuted groups has often been needed to turn public opinion significantly towards greater tolerance. The Holocaust, for example, greatly weakened (but did not end) anti-Semitism around the world. Violence against black Americans in the Deep South during the 1960s powerfully advanced the cause of civil rights. We can only hope that the Orlando shootings help rid the United States, and the rest of the world, of homophobia. For denying or even downplaying this attack’s nature as an assault on gays and the broader LGBT community is as unacceptable as denying or downplaying the attack as an act of Islamic terrorism.  And that goes for Donald Trump, too.

Im-Politic: Would Less (Talk) be More (on Gun Control)?

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gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, Obama, Second Amendment, terrorism

Thanks largely to President Obama’s actions and words this week, it’s been impossible for anyone following the news not to think at least a little more about gun-related issues – even if they’re not your highest priority. Since I’m in that category, the following thoughts on a national debate that seems to keep getting more heated and less productive are presented in a spirit of humility.

First, I wonder if the president’s passion about the issue is blurring his focus and judgment. In his remarks announcing his new gun control measures, Mr. Obama made clear that his target (no pun intended) was the number of American lives (30,000) that each year are “cut short by guns….Suicides. Domestic violence. Gang shootouts. Accidents.” And don’t forget mass shootings, whether by the mentally ill or by terrorists (including domestic terrorists like Colorado Spring, Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic attacker Robert Dear).

Yet all these types of incidents have almost nothing in common aside from the use of firearms. They’re not even all tragedies – acts of terrorism should be described as outrages. Small wonder it’s been difficult for the president to convince many of his critics that he’s not ultimately seeking to limit gun access even to law-abiding citizens. And small wonder that Mr. Obama has been unable to persuade the vast majority of Americans that gun violence deserves so much of his attention. It continues to rank so low as a national priority in the polls no doubt because the public views these disparate challenges at least largely as symptoms of other problems.

Second, I suspect that the critics’ suspicions are also animated by the president’s analysis of mass shootings. On the one hand, Mr. Obama has upbraided those who charge that he doesn’t believe in the Second Amendment and that his support for expanded background checks, for instance, is “the first step in some slippery slope to mass confiscation….” On the other hand, whenever he talks about genuine tragedies like the killings at Sandy Hook or Aurora, Colorado or Charleston, South Carolina, he bemoans the fact that “we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. It doesn’t happen in other advanced countries. It’s not even close.”

What he doesn’t mention, though, but what many gun owners surely know, is that there’s nothing like the Second Amendment in those other advanced countries. So it’s reasonable to suppose that when the president is holding up these countries’ public safety records as a model for America to emulate, he’s also implicitly endorsing their qualitatively different legal gun regimes.

Third, there’s a strong case that the Obama – and mainstream liberal and thus media – view on those mass shootings and how they can best be significantly reduced is fatally flawed. I’m not talking about the large number of specific proposals coming from any number of quarters for keeping guns out of the wrong hands. Any number make perfect sense. Instead, I’m talking about the deeper belief that a major increase in gun regulation would make a real difference.

Here’s the problem. When you look at the situation today internationally, Obama unquestionably is correct. There’s much less gun violence of all types in Western Europe and Japan than in the United States nowadays, including fewer mass shootings. And as Mr. Obama has noted, mental illness is evenly spread all around the world, and violence-saturated popular culture is being guzzled by young men (and others) in most high income countries. The big difference between America and the rest is, as indicated above, that their gun regimes are much more restrictive.

But if you look at American history, this faith in regulation – short of seriously compromising the Second Amendment – seems completely unjustified. For guns were much more widely available in the nation’s earlier days, and even once the population became much more urbanized and therefore more concentrated. But mass shootings were almost unknown even though the first federal gun control laws weren’t enacted until the 1930s, and even though the only state-level curbs were short-lived post-Civil War regulations passed by southern states to keep firearms away from newly freed blacks.

As I suggested above, many worthwhile measures can be taken to alleviate some of the gun-related aspects of the disparate forms of violence lamented by President Obama and all Americans of good will. But the more I think about how to advance them, the clearer it is to me that a lower-profile approach, and often a shift in focus from role of guns to the conditions so often ultimately responsible, would bring much faster and better results.

Im-Politic: The Times Goes Off the Deep End on Guns

Tags

gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, mental health, mental illness, Obama, Second Amendment, terrorism, The New York Times

Here’s my first attempt at crowd-sourcing: Can someone out there explain to me why this week’s New York Times editorial on gun control isn’t proof positive that the paper’s bottom line isn’t enhancing public safety but simply turning America into a gigantic fire-arms-free zone for its own sake?

First, let me make clear that guns aren’t atop my issue list. Partly that’s because although I’m sure that more useful steps can be taken to keep guns out of the wrong hands, I’m skeptical that public policy can make a decisive difference. Nonetheless, my jaw nearly dropped out of my head when I read The Times editorial board’s claim that mental illness shouldn’t be blamed for gun violence.

Of course, that’s true – in a debating-point sense. “Gun violence” encompasses a wide range of incidents, including crimes, suicides, and accidents. Nor does The Times totally absolve mental illness of any responsibility for these outrages and tragedies, or oppose addressing mental health “as part of a broader effort to reduce gun violence.” But its overarching point is dismissing the mental illness focus as a cynical gun-lobby ploy to convince Americans that mass shootings are the country’s main gun violence problem.  That should make clear that the paper’s anti-gun campaign mainly stems from emotion, not reason.

The Times position flows from that claim that “mass shootings represent a small percentage of gun violence.” But this reality couldn’t be more irrelevant to the current debate on guns – which results from and which has intensified because of those mass shootings themselves. These events have certainly been what’s mainly motivating President Obama, at least judging by both his words and deeds. He’s addressed the nation no less than 15 times after mass shootings (not counting the San Bernardino, California attack, which he fairly quickly recognized was an act of terrorism). And one of his own leading arguments for more effective gun control is the assertion that such shootings happen much more often in the United States than in countries with tougher gun laws.

Even The Times itself has concentrated on mass shootings. Its front-page editorial on gun violence – the first of its kind since the 1920s – was sparked by San Bernardino, which it immediately linked to the horrific recent gun killings in “Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places.” Not all of these tragedies were triggered simply by individuals who were simply deranged. But even the perpetrators of the Colorado Springs assault on a Planned Parenthood clinic and the Charleston atrocity against black church-goers no doubt were seriously disturbed as well as avowed crusaders against abortion and racial integration, respectively.

Moreover, right after the paragraph listing these events, The Times targeted “weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency” and “spree killings.” Other than terrorists, who goes on spree killings? People with balanced, healthy outlooks on life?

From the opposite perspective, how often has The Times railed against all those other forms of gun violence plaguing the country, including the ongoing murder wave in inner cities like Chicago’s and Baltimore’s? Or about gun suicides? Or crimes of passion? All are no doubt made easier to contemplate and carry out with weapons that can kill at a distance, or with minimal physical effort. But they haven’t been in the gun control spotlight because they’re not marked by the combination of scale, suddenness, randomness, and irrationality of mass shootings by the mentally ill. And indeed, the complexity and variety of the causes strongly cautions against lumping all these incidents and trends under a single “gun violence” or “gun epidemic” label.

So although it’s undeniable that treating mental illness more effectively is no panacea for gun-related problems, a focus on psychological maladies can absolutely be justified by the distinctively terrible characteristics of mass shootings by the mentally ill, and because single causality means that solutions are within reach. That is, meaningful progress can be made on this score precisely because responses don’t need to deal with deep-rooted social and economic problems, or imagined or real Constitutional issues, or technical definitions of assault weapons.

At the same time, it’s high time for advocates of the mental health-centric strategy to come up with proposals that go far beyond establishing more and better enforced barriers to gun acquisition by this population. Requiring health insurers to handle mental illness on a par with physical diseases would be a great place to start, and the longer avowed Second Amendment champions delay in backing such measures, the more their own motives deserve to be questioned.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Signs that Obama is Getting It on Islam and Terrorism

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gun control, Iraq, ISIS, Islam, Middle East, Muslims, No-Fly List, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pakistan, profiling, radical Islam, Rand Paul, refugees, Republicans, Sunnis, Syria, terrorism

President Obama’s prime-time address on terrorism last night shows that he’s deeply conflicted about the role played by Islam in fostering these attacks. Which is good news, and not only because it’s a complicated issue. It’s good news because, as the president’s critics have been insisting, “words matter” in America’s efforts to counter this threat. That’s true whether you believe, like me, that the key to success versus ISIS and similar groups is securing the nation’s borders because they are eminently controllable. And it’s true whether you believe, like Mr. Obama and almost everyone else (including his critics), that the key is some form of improved intervention in the Middle East.

His most recent presidential statement on the terror threat shows that the president is still trafficking in the largely straw man argument that “We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam” and that “ISIL does not speak for Islam.” Of course, relatively few Americans believe that an entire religion and all of its adherents should be stigmatized.

More encouragingly, however, the president also specified that a refusal to condemn all Muslims and their faith “does not mean denying the fact that an extremist ideology has spread within some Muslim communities. This is a real problem that Muslims must confront, without excuse.” Moreover, it’s consistent with remarks he made in his otherwise petulant press conference following the G20 economic summit in Turkey last month. They’re worth quoting in full:

“…I do think that Muslims around the world — religious leaders, political leaders, ordinary people — have to ask very serious questions about how did these extremist ideologies take root, even if it’s only affecting a very small fraction of the population. It is real and it is dangerous. And it has built up over time, and with social media it has now accelerated.

“And so I think, on the one hand, non-Muslims cannot stereotype, but I also think the Muslim community has to think about how we make sure that children are not being infected with this twisted notion that somehow they can kill innocent people and that that is justified by religion. And to some degree, that is something that has to come from within the Muslim community itself. And I think there have been times where there has not been enough pushback against extremism. There’s been pushback — there are some who say, well, we don’t believe in violence, but are not as willing to challenge some of the extremist thoughts or rationales for why Muslims feel oppressed. And I think those ideas have to be challenged.”

So however reluctant he is to cast matters this way, the president has accused the world’s Muslim community of failing to counter extremist variants of Islam vigorously enough. And other than fear for their own lives (which would be understandable, if not praiseworthy) what else could explain this unwillingness, especially on the part of Muslim clerics and Muslim theocratic governments, than their conviction that the religious pitches being made by ISIS and similar groups contain important elements that they find neither entirely alien nor entirely repellent?

As just implied, acknowledging that Islam in particular, as opposed to violent extremism as such, presents special problems in the fight against terror means that America’s current anti-ISIS campaign will need at least one major change of emphasis. After all, today’s strategy relies heavily on the belief that the Sunni Arab world (including those theocracies) will (eventually) contribute the bulk of the ground forces needed to defeat ISIS militarily. If many of these putative allies, and the populations they rule, have mixed feelings about what the terrorists stand for, then something dramatic will need to be done to convince them that their stakes in the fight warrant assuming major commitments and risks. The only other option is to send into the fray enough U.S. ground troops to accomplish the mission, a step that even most of Mr. Obama’s hawkish critics are reluctant to endorse. (This explains much of their enthusiasm for the Sunni option).

Of course, a more realistic take on Islam’s responsibility for ISIS-style terrorism would involve recognizing how fatally it undermines the case for the Sunni option and other interventionist-centered approaches, and strengthens that for a borders-focused anti-ISIS strategy. But the importance of acknowledging Islam-related problems doesn’t stop there. Most important, it also militates for concentrating restrictions on entry into the United States on the Muslim world, or at least certain parts of it.

Which countries justify the most concern is legitimately debatable. But certainly it’s hard to understand why any American not affiliated with a legitimate international aid organization or the U.S. government should want to or be able travel to Syria nowadays (and come back), and similar questions need to be raised about Iraq and Pakistan (though commerce with those countries so far is much more extensive). Another possibility: tighter curbs on travel to theocracies.

Interestingly, the President and Congressional Republicans reportedly will both back legislation containing some such country-specific restrictions on travel – though not on refugees. Even Kentucky Republican Senator and presidential candidate Rand Paul, a libertarian stalwart, recently introduced a bill that would suspend the resettlement of refugees from 34 “high-risk” countries – mainly from the Muslim world.

And as I tweeted yesterday, it’s not too difficult to imagine a compromise that handles the refugee – and a related – matter: Mr. Obama and his party agree to suspending the admission of Middle East refugees until vetting and screening procedures have been acceptably tightened, in exchange for Republicans agreeing to bar anyone on a government No-Fly List from legally buying a gun once the process of creating these lists gets more precise.

No doubt these decisions and proposals will be greeted with cries of “profiling!” from both political fringes. But the country’s reasonable middle has clearly been roused and the above are signs that it is pulling a critical mass of Democrats and Republicans toward a common sense consensus on domestic security. As Winston Churchill reportedly said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.”

Im-Politic: How Bernie Can “Win”

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2016 elections, amnesty, Bernie Sanders, Buy American, carbon tariff, China, climate change, Democrats, Donald Trump, energy, environment, fossil fuels, fracking, greenhouse gases, gun control, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jobs, liberals, multinational corporations, natural gas, offshoring, Open Borders, Populism, progressives, third world, Trade, unions

Like Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders is doing such a good job of influencing the agenda of other 2016 presidential candidates (namely Hillary Clinton) that there’s no useful advice I can offer on that score. Yet the Vermont Senator still has a ways to go if he wants to generate more lasting change in American politics, and the recipe, not too surprisingly, is the inverse of that for Trump.

First, some background. I’ve had the privilege of working with Sanders firsthand on trade and jobs issues, and greatly admire his dedication to getting America’s international economic policies right. He’s not only been a longtime champion of this cause – he’s been a tireless worker as well. Sanders has also kept his focus squarely on the most important victims of offshoring-friendly and otherwise flawed trade policies – the American worker and the productive segments of the U.S. economy. That’s a refreshing change from most others on the leftward end of the political spectrum, who have consistently muddied both the politics and economics of trade issues by (wrongly) emphasizing the harm allegedly inflicted on developing countries by American and American-supported policies.

Even better, it’s already clear that Sanders recognizes the importance of generating crossover appeal. In addition to noting that many of his positions – like Wall Street reform – resemble those of real conservative populists, he has walked this walk on an important social/cultural issue: gun control. But if he genuinely wants to shake up American politics and not simply worry Clinton through next November, the Democratic contender needs to understand the game-changing potential of more realistic immigration and climate change policies.

Earlier in this year’s campaign, Sanders was chided by numerous progressives for being too quiet on immigration issues. Unfortunately, he responded with a June speech to Latino-American elected officials by appearing to pander to this Open Borders crowd. His trade policy position, however, makes clear how substantively mistaken these views are. In particular, as suggested above, he has recognized that failed U.S. trade policies have betrayed America’s “working people” by sending “their jobs…to China and Mexico….” (Although he’s also made some nods to “third world victimhood-mongering.”) Unlike Trump, moreover, he correctly targets multinational companies – not foreign governments – for most of the blame.

But why, in this case, does Sanders (along with most other liberal and Democratic party trade critics) now favor immigration policies that also will take more jobs from Americans, and drive wages down? If trade deals that, among other failures, make many more very low-paid workers in the third world much more available to U.S.-based businesses have these effects, why would immigration policies that literally encourage such workers to come to America produce different results?

In fairness, Sanders and other liberal immigration supporters have an answer: Foreign workers who come to the United States will be much easier to union-ize, and thus will earn higher wages, than their counterparts who remain abroad. But given the labor movement’s major and chronic failure to stem dramatic shrinkage – especially in the private sector – that clearly belongs in the wishful thinking category. Moreover, labor’s recent organizing successes have come almost entirely in service sectors that don’t face any foreign competition. As for parts of the economy that are heavily traded, like manufacturing, continuing new legal or illegal immigration influxes, along with amnesty, will surely intensify the competition for remaining domestic jobs and drive wages even lower.  

Further, as I’ve written, liberals’ claims that mass immigration can produce a new mass middle class overlook that their conception of mass immigration has no logical stopping point – and therefore is likeliest to furnish American businesses with not only huge, wage-killing labor gluts, but with huge, never-ending labor gluts.   

More important, in an election year, populist-minded voters on the Right are bound to reject this reasoning. For any hope of recruiting them to his ranks, Sanders’ immigration approach will need a thorough overhaul. And of course, by extension, this goes for any Democratic candidate.

Sanders has been one of Washington’s leading champion of high priority efforts to fight climate change, which means that re-positioning on this issue to broaden his base will be even more difficult than on immigration. But it could also pay some political dividends, and could be engineered in a way to satisfy at least some environmentally minded Democrats. In three related ways, moreover, the kinds of trade policies Sanders favors are very helpful.

First, Sanders should start emphasizing that one of the best ways to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce China’s emissions – and that this objective in turns requires slowing down the Chinese export machine. I’ve long emphasized that, given the huge market for Chinese goods represented by the United States, American trade curbs would be a big environmental plus – whether put in place unilaterally, through sanctions on currency manipulation, or possibly better, through the kind of multilateral carbon tariff that even prominent economists are starting to favor.

Second, Sanders could win some business support for this approach by pointing out that, the less competition American businesses face from countries where environmental (and other) regulations are non-existent or not enforced, the more environmentally friendly regulation they could bear.

Third, as a strong opponent of trade decisions that have gutted the nation’s ability to administer strong Buy American regulations governing government purchases, Sanders will have no problem insisting that federal support for green manufacturing and technology be restricted to operations and facilities in the United States that employ American workers.

At the same time, Sanders will have to take much more seriously the inevitably dominant role fossil fuels will play in the country’s energy future for the foreseeable future, and his energy approach will need to make much more room for greenhouse-friendly natural gas in particular. As a result, he’ll need to view whatever pollution issues are posed by fracking not as an excuse to reject or neglect gas, but as a problem to be solved technologically.

The good news, in contrast to Trump, is that Sanders does seem to take advice from outside his ideological comfort zone and political base – his dealings with me and colleagues, when I worked at a small manufacturers’ organization, represent just one body of evidence. And representing even a small state like Vermont inevitably has exposed Sanders to the kinds of voters and their direct feedback that a one-percenter like Trump probably rarely encounters. For these reasons alone, he seems to be a more plausible candidate to help create an enduring populist alternative to the two major parties.

Just with my treatment of Trump, this analysis of Sanders’ chances doesn’t mean that I view him as an ideal candidate or, similarly, that I’m with him on most or even many issues other than those mentioned here. What it does signal is my belief that these two figures boast the potential to rework American politics by identifying crucial areas of overlap on the core pocketbook issues that are vital both to voters and to the nation’s future. Will they? Leaving aside their personal traits, recent history doesn’t provide many reasons for hope. But of course it’s precisely because meaningful change sometimes happens that we’ve had history in the first place.