Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A New Phase for Global Terrorism?

Tags

Afghanistan, American Muslims, border security, Iraq, ISIS, Middle East, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, September 11, Syria, terrorism

Another day, another terrorist bombing – or three of them, as is the case with Saudi Arabia today. And oddly, they persist, and even multiply, at the same time that the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization, ISIS, continues to lose ground militarily in Iraq and Syria, where it had seized control over a scary amount of territory in recent years. I suspect that this seeming paradox both might become an appalling New Normal, and is telling both supporters and critics of America’s counter-terrorism strategy – including yours truly – that they need to question some of their major assumptions.

As I’ve written repeatedly, major U.S. leaders across the political spectrum have it backward in claiming that America’s top ISIS-related priority needs to be to defeat the group militarily on the battlefield. Though they often differ as to the mix of American, other free world, and local Middle Eastern forces that will be needed to accomplish this mission, they all insist that in this era of free global travel and nearly instantaneous global communication, it’s folly to believe that the United States can protect itself from ISIS and similar terrorism by tightening border control.

These voices add that neglecting ISIS’ self-styled caliphate would enable the group to consolidate a sizable, Afghanistan-type base for planning the launching big September 11-like attacks on U.S. and other targets; jeopardize other American interests in the Middle East, like ensuring access to oil; and keep ISIS’ main recruitment pitch intact – including for U.S. “lone wolves” – by reinforcing its claim to be successfully defying the infidel world and riding the wave of history.

I’ve responded that defeating ISIS would at best simply create a breathing spell until the utterly dysfunctional Middle East spawned a successor, and that however difficult it is to control visitors’ access to the United States, it’s much easier than shaping the evolution of the Middle East in more favorable, constructive ways.

At the same time, I’ve recognized that because better border security won’t happen overnight, military pressure needs to continue on the caliphate to impede its consolidation, and keep its leaders too busy defending themselves to be plotting future global strikes. My preferred instrument has been a combination of air strikes and special forces harassment. I’ve also emphasized that, because of the domestic U.S. energy production revolution, the Middle East has become much less strategically and economically important, and that Washington can now afford to focus narrowly on terrorist threats.

But the proliferation of foreign ISIS or ISIS-inspired attacks as the so-called caliphate shrinks – especially in Iraq – raises doubts about all these analyses. As I see it right now, here are the likeliest implications:

>ISIS’ prowess with internet-style recruiting is now so formidable that it can spark major terrorist threats to the United States even without a significant territorial base. So significant U.S. military involvement in the Middle East no longer matters much anymore.

>ISIS is lashing out globally precisely because it’s failing on the ground in the Middle East. (Contributor BJ Bethel made that argument on RealityChek in April.) So staying the current policy course makes the most sense.

>Territorial bases are no longer essential for fostering large-scale terrorism, but their potential to generate these attacks must still be minded. As a result, preventing their consolidation is a necessary but not sufficient response.

>Territorial control remains vital for ISIS’ power and global strike capabilities, and the United States and its allies simply haven’t undermined ISIS’ thoroughly enough.

Right now, I’m leaning toward Number Three – along with my ongoing conviction that better border security (including more monitoring of the U.S. Muslim community) will provide the most effective protection for Americans. But the latest twist in the struggle against terrorism should be reminding everyone that these forces remain impressively agile and adaptive. Consequently, both supporters and opponents of U.S. strategy need to display these characteristics, too.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Fearless Foolishness on Terrorism

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2016 election, chattering classes, Donald Trump, Immigration, ISIS, Michael Tomasky, Muslims, Orlando, Orlando attacks, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paris attacks, refugees, September 11, terrorism, The New York Times

Ever since the September 11 attacks, I’ve worried that a sizable share of the American public, and especially its chattering and media classes, has lost the instinct for self-preservation. Michael Tomasky’s column in the June 18 New York Times epitomizes this trend – and the extra oomph it’s acquired over the few months, thanks in part (but only in part) to presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s free-swinging presidential campaign.

Tomasky, editor of the “journal of ideas” Democracy, got off on a wildly wrong foot with his description of the politics of terrorism since September 11. In his view, it’s a story of successful “fear-mongering” that began with former President George W. Bush’s “talk of weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds” and launch of the second Iraq War, but that might be coming to an end with what he views as strong public push-back against Trump’s statements following the Orlando shooting.

No one should support fear-mongering. But has the post-September 11 American political and policy scene really an example of Republicans “whipping the electorate into a state of frenzy about this or that threat”? Here Tomasky’s resort to social-science-y jargon becomes even more exquisitely revealing than that jaw-dropping belittling of an event that killed nearly 3,000 people (from 93 countries) and injured thousands more.

As the author explains it, fifteen years ago, unscrupulous right wing demagogues exploited fear’s ability to lead voters to “embrace more conservative positions than they might otherwise have.” Even worse, in Tomasky’s view, they took advantage of the tendency of “people who start imagining their own death [to] begin to sanction extreme measures to prevent it from happening.”

Apparently, it’s unacceptable to Tomasky and to those Americans who consider their country’s reactions to terrorist violence to be excessive, that outbursts of mass murder spur widespread demands that U.S. leaders go beyond business-as-usual to save their compatriots’ lives and their own.

If you believe Tomasky et al don’t deserve this accusation, then tell me how you would explain his contention that the most sensible reaction to September, 11 nowadays – and one he’s pleased to report is spreading – is a shoulder-shrugging recognition that “we have joined the world, the weary and beleaguered world, and learned that anything can happen anywhere, anytime”?

This stunningly blasé attitude clearly also lies behind Tomasky’s condemnation of Trump’s statement, following last November’s Paris attacks – and a mere two week before the San Bernardino, California murders – that “We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule.” And even though 49 more innocent Americans were killed by an ISIS follower in Orlando, Tomasky is still preaching (literal) fatalism.

Indeed, here, evidently is his greatest terrorism-related worry right now: that “a different kind of terrorist attack this fall — one actually orchestrated by the Islamic State, say, or spreading death more randomly — may produce a more traditional fallout than Orlando.” Translation: Americans may become even more insistent that their leaders figure out how to keep them safe. Thankfully, this school of thought wasn’t prevalent in Massachusetts in 1775 – unless Paul Revere was a fear-mongerer, too?

Tomasky’s article is not completely off the wall. He rightly notes that “You can’t stoke fear if you can’t also reassure. It won’t work. If you want to make people scared and force them to turn to you as their protector, you have to demonstrate that you are worthy of being that protector.” He just as rightly observes that Trump hasn’t passed that test of leadership beyond his base.

The author also makes the entirely legitimate point that some of the post-September 11 Bush policies – chiefly the second Iraq War – have backfired in major ways. (He would have placed himself on stronger ground, however, by acknowledging that under Bush, nothing remotely approaching a September 11 repeat took place, and that throughout his term, the 43d president urged Americans not to turn either on their fellow Muslim citizens or on Islam in general.)

But it’s impossible to read Tomasky’s piece objectively, add in its complete lack of alternative policy proposals, and not conclude that his top priority is to help foster the emergence of a “political golden age when inducing fear will never work.” (Yes, that phrase is a verbatim quote.) You needn’t be a Trump-ite, or support blanket Muslim immigration and refugee bans or other unworkable ideas, to recognize that in a still-dangerous world, a dose of fear is essential for survival itself – and that 63 Americans killed by Islamist-inspired attackers in the last six months alone is an unmistakable sign that current U.S. terrorism strategy urgently needs some more of it.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Holes in Obama’s Middle East “Doctrine”

Tags

Al Qaeda, border security, Democratic Party, foreign policy establishment, Iran, ISIS, Jeffrey Goldberg, Middle East, missile defense, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, September 11, terrorism, The Atlantic

If you have any interest in American foreign policy, international affairs, President Obama’s overarching strategy, or simply how he makes decisions generally, The Atlantic‘s current cover story based on a series of lengthy interviews with the chief executive is an absolute must-read. Kudos, incidentally, to author Jeffrey Goldberg for his skill at inducing Mr. Obama to open up so completely.

In fact, the only legitimate criticism – and clearly this wasn’t under Goldberg’s control – involves how late in the president’s term most of these thoughts came out. The public would have had a much better basis for judging Mr. Obama’s record and talent as a commander-in-chief and diplomat – and a much better chance of influencing his moves – had this window into his mindset appeared much earlier.

Any number of RealityChek posts can – and I hope will – come out of this material, but to me what deserves spotlighting right away is the completely incoherent approach the president has taken to the Middle East. Specifically, it could not be more obvious that he has concluded that the region is as utterly hopeless as I have contended repeatedly. Yet he still refuses to overhaul American policy, much less American objectives, in ways that logically follow. The result is what Goldberg calls an “Obama Doctrine” that still leaves gaping Middle East-related holes in America’s security.

Not that the president has always dismissed the notion that, within the foreseable future, the Middle East can even be minimally pacified or stabilized, much less modernized or democratized. As the author shows, “The story of Obama’s encounter with the Middle East follows an arc of disenchantment. In his first extended spree of fame, as a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama often spoke with hope about the region. In Berlin that summer, in a speech to 200,000 adoring Germans, he said, ‘This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East.’”

Two years in office didn’t change Mr. Obama’s outlook appreciably: “Through the first flush of the Arab Spring, in 2011, Obama continued to speak optimistically about the Middle East’s future, coming as close as he ever would to embracing the so-called freedom agenda of George W. Bush, which was characterized in part by the belief that democratic values could be implanted in the Middle East. He equated protesters in Tunisia and Tahrir Square with Rosa Parks and the ‘patriots of Boston.’”

According to Goldberg, what soured Mr. Obama on the region was a combination of growing pique with most of its leaders and then the failure of his Libyan intervention. That debacle “proved to him that the Middle East was best avoided. ‘There is no way we should commit to governing the Middle East and North Africa,’ he recently told a former colleague from the Senate. ‘That would be a basic, fundamental mistake.’” Added Goldberg, the president now believes that “thanks to America’s energy revolution [the Middle East] will soon be of negligible relevance to the U.S. economy.”

Goldberg’s explanation is something of a paradox: “The rise of the Islamic State deepened Obama’s conviction that the Middle East could not be fixed—not on his watch, and not for a generation to come.” Yet in the president’s own words, ISIS “has the capacity to set the whole region on fire. That’s why we have to fight it.”

In fact, these passages reveal one big internal contradiction of the Obama approach. On the one hand, he’s happy to talk endlessly in public about his genuine belief that the Middle East is little more than one big potential Vietnam-like quagmire for America. Indeed, he told Goldberg that the region’s tribalism is “a force no president can neutralize” and is a major source of his fatalism. On the other hand, Mr. Obama insists, as above, that the United States has no choice but to try preventing conflagration.

As a result, here’s the clearest way that the president can describe how he determines when and how to act: “We have to determine the best tools to roll back those kinds of attitudes. There are going to be times where either because it’s not a direct threat to us or because we just don’t have the tools in our toolkit to have a huge impact that, tragically, we have to refrain from jumping in with both feet.” But when Middle East threats are “direct” but the “toolkit” is wanting, the United States should just…what exactly? No wonder so few Americans have confidence in the president’s national security chops.

The more fundamental flaw with the Obama doctrine, however, is its evident assumption that when “direct threats” to American security emerge in the Middle East, or show signs of stirring, extensive intervention in the region’s madhouse politics – whether with meaningful allied assistance or not – is America’s only option.

That’s certainly been the American Way for decades. But as I’ve pointed out, because of the nation’s favorable geography, two vastly superior alternatives have been available since the September 11 attacks so dramatically revealed that simple benign neglect of the region had become unacceptable. The first alternative measure is to establish genuine border security, to ensure that terrorists face much greater obstacles entering the United States and remaining in the country (the visa overstay problem). The second is to build the kind of missile defense that could protect America from the kind of small-scale nuclear strike that Iran could launch in the policy-relevant future if the worst fears about its military ambitions and the president’s de-nuclearization deal come to pass. (Such a system would help counter North Korean nuclear threats.)

Of course, because these programs will take years to complete, a bridging strategy is needed. That should focus on using special forces units and airstrikes to keep ISIS and Al Qaeda (which hasn’t disappeared) sufficiently off balance to prevent consolidation of a terrorist state that could be used as a training center and launchpad for September 11-like operations. Accordingly, talk of finally defeating ISIS et al should be eliminated – because even if the goal is achieved, successor groups will surely arise.

A final point worth making: One of the most important services performed by Goldberg is documenting beyond any reasonable doubt that most of the current Democratic Party foreign policy establishment – including presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama’s former Secretary of State – is much less ambivalent about interventionism than he is. And generally speaking, these attitudes are even more pronounced in Republican ranks. That’s why it’s hard to look at the politics of 2016 and feel much confidence that the United States will have the wit and wisdom to extricate itself safely from the looney-bin Middle East any time soon.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why the Latest World Trade Failure Should be Celebrated

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agriculture, Alan Greenspan, bubbles, China, Congress, developed countries, developing countries, Doha Round, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, George W. Bush, Global Imbalances, Information Technology Agreement, ITA, Obama, offshoring, poverty, Robert Zoellick, September 11, terrorism, TPP, Trade, trade law, Trans-Pacific Partnership, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Trade policymakers have just uncharacteristically – and perhaps unwittingly – given the world economy an important holiday gift: a virtual decision to kill the so-called Doha Development Round of world trade liberalization talks.

This outcome of the latest meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Nairobi won’t make an active contribution to solving global economic problems. But it greatly reduces the odds that additional multilateral trade expansion will keep worsening the kinds of international economic imbalances that helped trigger the last financial crisis and keep threatening to set the stage for a new meltdown.

The Doha round (named after the capitol of Qatar, where it was launched) was a product of the September 11 terror attacks, but was whoppingly misconceived both strategically and economically. Though intended to spur the prosperity needed in developing countries ostensibly needed to reduce terrorism’s appeal, its founders – notably President George W. Bush’s administration trade chief Robert Zoellick – seemed unaware that dangerous extremism had never taken hold in most world regions where poverty was most desperate, e.g., rural India and rural China. Moreover, the round’s explicit aim of channeling most of its trade liberalization benefits to developing countries completely violated the core principles of genuinely free trade.

But those mistakes and their impact paled next to the damage likely from a treaty reflecting the Doha goals – ever greater global financial instability stemming from trade flows that fostered the offshoring of production, and therefore income-earning opportunities, to countries that would still long remain too poor to consume adequately, and away from the rich-country populations (especially America’s) whose purchasing power was still crucial for adequate global growth.

By the time the Doha talks were inaugurated, in 2001, years of NAFTA-style, offshoring-centric U.S. trade liberalization decisions capped by China’s admission into the WTO had already recklessly placed the U.S. and world economies on a completely unstable course. The Bush administration and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan further greased the skids for crisis with two decisive moves. The former filled the resulting American income and growth shortfall with renewed, and record, federal budget deficits. The latter even more powerfully fueled consumption with prolonged (then) record low peacetime interest rates. For half a decade, the United States experienced an unprecedented burst of debt-led, bubble-ized growth. And then the entire global economy nearly collapsed.

Success at Doha was always bound to magnify world trade imbalances further and ensure even more badly lopsided growth by requiring the United States and other developed countries to open their markets much wider and faster than low-income countries. Particularly important were measures practically certain to gut the U.S. trade laws that shielded America’s domestic economy from foreign predatory trade practices like export subsidization and dumping. In fact, the inequities were so egregious that even America’s staunchly pro-trade liberalization agricultural sector, which has long wielded outsized influence in Congress, balked; its reservations began the Doha hold-up that eventually brought its demise.

Unfortunately, another recent international trade policy decision is likely to add to dangerously distorted global growth – the new Information Technology Agreement reached under WTO auspices, which eliminates tariffs on many tech products but does nothing about the non-tariff barriers and predatory commercial practices used so heavily by so many U.S. trade rivals. New financial pressures may also be fueled if Congress passes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal pursued so avidly by President Obama. As I’ve often explained, this agreement’s text does target non-tariff barriers, but creates no mechanisms even remotely capable of actually curbing their use. Therefore, it’s all but certain to create the trade deficit-boosting, finance destabilizing effects of the previous American trade agreements on which it’s modeled.

All the same, TPP ratification this year looks doubtful, given election-year opposition by major Republicans in Congress. Doha’s death would represent a second “do no harm” decision in a single year – certainly not enough progress on the trade policy front, but considerably better than nothing.

Im-Politic: What American Muslims Think of American Political Parties

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2016 elections, American Muslims, Democrats, demographics, Donald Trump, Electoral College, Gallup, George W. Bush, Im-Politic, Muslim ban, Muslims, polls, Republicans, September 11, The Atlantic

I hate to keep reporting on polls here at RealityChek because, as I keep noting, gauging public opinion sometimes doesn’t seem much more scientific than alchemy. But sometimes the results are so darned interesting – and focus on such neglected subjects – that they demand spotlighting.

So kudos to the Gallup organization for shedding light on a question that’s the mirror image of something that surveys have been obsessing about recently. Rather than (yet again), asking what Americans of different parties think of Islam and the nation’s Muslim population, Gallup asked American Muslims what they think of the two major political parties. Thanks to recent headlines, the results aren’t surprising.  But their ultimate political importance may be much less obvious.

Just as most polls have detected more concern about American Muslims and their religion in Republican than Democratic ranks – along with more Republican support for measures like Donald Trump-like bans or restrictions on Muslim travel to the United States – Gallup’s latest shows that American Muslims are the religious group most enthusiastic about the Democrats.

According to Gallup, fully two-thirds of American Muslims “identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.” American Jews are the only other significant religious group that comes close, at 60 percent. The figures for Catholics and Protestants, respectively, are 43 percent and 39 percent.

In addition, “Muslim Americans have the lowest percentage of any religious group who identify as or lean Republican.” And here the gap is even wider. This figure of 16 percent is much lower than that of the next least Republican identifiers – Jews, at 31 percent. Forty one percent of Catholics and 48 percent of Protestants identify with or lean Republican.

There’s of course a strong temptation to conclude that Republicans’ unpopularity with Muslims is all Trump’s fault. But this interesting recent Atlantic piece makes clear that the GOP’s standing with America’s Muslims has been weakening steadily since George W. Bush’s initial election as president in 2000. Moreover, it provides evidence that this decline began during Bush’s presidency, despite his high profile efforts to encourage toleration towards Muslims throughout the entire post September 11 period.

Perhaps most intriguing of all, election results presented in this article indicate that Muslim views of Republicans have actually improved somewhat since the mid-2000s, and that this trend has continued in the Obama years.

Will today’s Republican campaign drive even more Muslim voters into the Democratic camp? And how much will this matter, given the importance of individual states in the U.S. presidential election system and how the geographic distribution of the (voting age) Muslim population compares with various electoral college strategies all presidential candidates are developing right now? I sure don’t have any answers at this point. (Just FYI, here’s one U.S. government state- and county-level breakdown on where the nation’s Muslims live.)

What does seem clear is that what you hear about Islam and Muslims and related policy questions from the two major parties and their candidates will of course reflect genuine convictions about national security and public fears. But it will also reflect technical political calculations stemming from Gallup-like polls and Electoral College-related demographics.

Im-Politic: The New York Times Fails the Test of Media Bias on Refugees/Terrorism

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ABC News, Al Qaeda, Cato Institute, FBI, Im-Politic, ISIS, Jeff Sessions, jihadists, media, media bias, Middle East, New America Foundation, Obama, radical Islam, refugees, September 11, terrorism, The New York Times

The New York Times has long proclaimed itself to be the nation’s (and maybe the world’s) newspaper of record, dedicating to publishing “All the news that’s fit to print.” But when it comes to its coverage of the debate over admitting refugees from today’s war-torn Middle East, the paper’s approach seems to be “All the news that fits support for leniency.” For twice within the last week alone, The Times has put out features that completely ignore some of the most important facts that have complicated this controversy.

Last Friday, The Times ran an item emphasizing how long refugees from Syria must wait to enter the country, and how many background checks they face. That’s undoubtedly useful information. But did reporters Haeyoun Park and Larry Buchanan even mention the complete absence of independent corroborating information available to the federal or United Nations officials trying to vet them? No. Did their editors believe that such information was pertinent, and that Times readers deserved to know it? Apparently not.

In fact, there’s no evidence that the reporters consulted with specialists on refugee admissions and border security who harbor major doubts about screening’s sufficiency. Nor is there evidence that the editors requested more diverse sourcing. This conclusion seems justified because the only sources of information listed at the item’s end are agencies of an Obama administration that’s been vigorously, and often belligerently, insisting that the vetting situation is under control, and two non-profit organizations that strongly support this position. So the article unavoidably created the impression that not only are current Syria refugee procedures painstaking, but that they are painstaking enough.

Comparable lapses characterize today’s Times offering on “the origins of Jihadist-inspired attacks in the U.S.” According to this article, “All of the Sept. 11 attackers entered the United States using tourist, business or student visas. Since then, most of the attackers in the United States claiming or appearing to be motivated by extremist Islam were born in this country or were naturalized citizens. None were refugees.”

That’s important to know. But it’s at least as important to know that Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions has released a list of 12 vetted refugees who this year alone have been charged or implicated in federal courts of participation in Jihadist attacks in the United States.

In addition, two years ago, ABC News reported that “The discovery in 2009 of two al Qaeda-Iraq terrorists living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky — who later admitted in court that they’d attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq — prompted the [FBI] to assign hundreds of specialists to an around-the-clock effort aimed at checking its archive of 100,000 improvised explosive devices collected in the war zones, known as IEDs, for other suspected terrorists’ fingerprints.”

ABC then proceeded to quote by name the FBI agent in charge of the bureau’s Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center as stating that “We are currently supporting dozens of current counter-terrorism investigations like that.” Moreover, according to the report (which quotes numerous other FBI agents by name), “Several dozen suspected terrorist bombmakers, including some believed to have targeted American troops, may have mistakenly been allowed to move to the United States as war refugees….”

These disclosures don’t invalidate the article’s claim about the great number and severity of the terrorist threats to Americans that have not come from refugees. But they completely invalidate the clear suggestion that tighter restrictions on refugee admissions, which President Obama has so far adamantly refused to consider, can not meaningfully enhance Americans’ security. Nor did either Times piece mention the live possibility that the refugee threat could grow significantly going forward, as the Middle East experiences ever heavier, bloodier conflict, and as the U.S. and other militaries keep failing to put the kind of pressure on ISIS that kept Al Qaeda on the run for much of the post-September 11 period.

Also revealing – and unacceptable: Similar to the first piece, none of the “security experts” quoted in the piece contradicted the Obama line. The only ones mentioned by name come from the New America Foundation, which has a long record of backing the president’s domestic and foreign policies, and the Cato Institute, which has long favored an Open Borders approach to American immigration policy. How difficult would it have been for Times reporters Sergio Pecanha and K.K. Rebecca Lai to find specialists who disagreed? And again, did their editors even make this request?

The point here isn’t that Mr. Obama and his supporters are indisputably wrong and that their opponents are indisputably right about refugee policy. The point is that the issue is complicated, that important evidence can be cited to support both of the groups of approaches that have recently emerged, and that a responsible newspaper would not have pretended that the case for the status quo is airtight. If the powers-that-be at The Times want to make that case (as is of course their right), they should use the editorial page.

Following Up: The Flood of Refugee Canards Rivals the Flood of Refugees

Tags

ABC News, Al Qaeda, border security, Following Up, ISIS, Mexico, Middle East, refugees, September 11, Syria, terrorism, The Atlantic

The inaccurate, ahistorical, illogical, and downright irrational canards about the wisdom of admitting significant numbers of Middle East refugees into the United States keep popping up as fast as refugees are being created. Earlier this week, I covered and debunked some of them. Here in no particular order are some more I’ve run across since then that simply have no role to play in a realistic, constructive policy debate:

> Those favoring an unusually cautious approach are confusing, or worse, equating refugees with terrorists. We can thank President Obama, among others, for this one. Who on earth is he thinking of? The fear that’s most widely expressed is not that those truly fleeing conflict, persecution, utter chaos, or some combination of the above, mean the United States and the rest of the world harm. The fear is that dangerous enemies taking advantage of the tumultuous situation both in the Middle East and at European and other foreign entry points to mingle in with the refugee flood and gain access to target countries.

> America’s vetting procedures are entirely adequate. This is a claim made by the president, as well as by many of his political appointees, and by politicians and others who favor either current U.S. admissions policies or more lenient approaches. According to Mr. Obama, refugees are subjected to “the most rigorous vetting process that we have for anybody who is admitted.” The trouble is, this process was put in place before Syrian and Iraqi leaders, and ISIS and similar groups, starting last year, sparked the latest – and by recent historical standards, the most widespread and politically destabilizing – round of armed conflict in the Middle East.

So it’s scarcely relevant, and even less comforting, to insist that current procedures are the most stringent in U.S. history. The standard that must be met is whether they are adequate given current circumstances – and this is the question that the President and his supporters apparently don’t want to address. And in this vein, it matters decisively that some of Mr. Obama’s leading national security aides don’t share his confidence, and just as important, have expressed these doubts on the record, for attribution.

> U.S. vetting procedures have already been succeeding for years. Similar to the above claims of adequacy, many leniency supporters contend that American screening has already proved its sterling effectiveness over many decades. In the words of The Atlantic’s Russell Berman:

“In the 14 years since September 11, 2001, the United States has resettled 784,000 refugees from around the world, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute, a D.C. think tank. And within that population, three people have been arrested for activities related to terrorism. None of them were close to executing an attack inside the U.S., and two of the men were caught trying to leave the country to join terrorist groups overseas.”

But as indicated above, current challenges potentially dwarf even those that emerged after September 11. After all, current Middle East conflicts have destabilized many more of its regions than 9/11, its aftermath, or even the second Iraq War. So the refugee outflow today is much bigger.

Moreover, Al Qaeda, the group responsible for those terror strikes, was effectively bottled up in and kept on the run and off balance in Afghanistan for many years afterwards by the U.S. military and its allies. Of course, subsequent terror attacks were attempted, their generally small scale and America’s ability to thwart them are compelling evidence that the organization’s capabilities had been – to use a current term of art – significantly degraded.

More important, the source Berman cites could well be inaccurate. In 2013, ABC News reported that “Several dozen suspected terrorist bombmakers, including some believed to have targeted American troops, may have mistakenly been allowed to move to the United States as war refugees, according to FBI agents investigating the remnants of roadside bombs recovered from Iraq and Afghanistan.” In addition, refugees from Syria are already showing up at America’s Mexican border. Although many will doubtless be genuine, even those who turn themselves into the authorities may be counting on the Obama administration’s poor record of monitoring such arrivals’ whereabouts over time. (In addition, Mexican smugglers have just been caught trying to sneak in individuals from Afghanistan and Pakistan).  

And here’s another big problem with claims of vetting’s successful record. As I wrote on Wednesday, the world saw that less than a dozen attackers armed with high power conventional weapons could turn a major Western capital into a war zone for hours, and kill and wound hundreds. But does anyone really suppose that future attackers will limit themselves to such humdrum armament? Even fewer terrorists could wreak far greater damage with chemical or biological weapons, or even a “dirty” nuclear bomb. Even today, therefore, “very good” isn’t nearly good enough. Going forward, it will be even less adequate.

> Mr. Obama has also criticized the focus on security threats from Middle East refugees by noting that the numbers he has decided to admit from Syria (about 10,000) are dwarfed by the flows of tourists into the country. Others similarly cite the ease with which radicalized Europeans carrying valid passports can arrive in America. I offered some rebuttals to these points yesterday. Here’s an elaboration on one:

Such leniency arguments also overlook a crucial difference when it comes to the vetting challenge. The great majority of foreign tourists and other visitors to the United States come from countries where serious population and law enforcement records are available. So reliable – though by no means perfect – cross-checking and other crucial screening activities are usually possible. These data, as I and so many others have noted – including the president’s own top advisers – either simply don’t exist in today’s war-torn Middle East regions, and/or American authorities have no access to them. So at the least, many fewer reliable cross-checking activities are possible.

>The United States has a moral duty to accept refugees. No quarrel here with a point championed emphatically by the president and so many others. But curiously, Mr. Obama and his allies on the issue seem certain that this national moral duty will be carried out by admitting the relatively small number of 10,000. Why should this figure, though, have any special significance? And where’s the evidence that the actual level isn’t 20,000? Or 24,652? Or 100,000?

Which brings up a related, too often neglected issue. The president – and others – unmistakably have a right to their opinions about America’s moral duties. And the president’s opinion should carry special weight since he has been elected (twice) as the nation’s top political leader. His fellow citizens have granted him considerable (though not absolute) power to make policy, and to use his office as a bully pulpit to convince them that his opinions are correct.

But on matters such as defining moral duties, it’s crucial to remember that the president’s opinions are just that. Simply opinions. Moreover, his opinions on moral issues carry no special weight, though they are by definition of special interest. For he was not elected to be preacher-in-chief, and nothing about his personal history or the history of his office indicates that he deserves any deference on matters of ethics. I’m as much of an expert as he is. So are you.

As a result, America’s (democratic) values point to majority opinion as a major determinant of policy in this sphere. And so far, all the evidence shows that the American people favor the restrictionist position.

> Americans have usually been hostile to refugees – thereby increasing their obligations today to admit more of them. Here’s where a major history lesson is in order. As made clear by this post on public opinion during previous refugee crises, Americans have rarely been enthusiastic about large-scale admissions proposals. And as I wrote Wednesday, much xenophobia and other forms of bigotry have greeted them. But the author also displays sophomoric judgment, simplistically suggesting that poll numbers reveal all. This is poor methodology even by the standards of public opinion analysis, for no effort is made to measure salience.

So although strong opposition was expressed, for example, even for admitting refugees from Europe after World War II, and from the communist bloc during the Cold War, strong opposition was never demonstrated in any other form. The typical American may have grumbled about these policies, but when all was said and done acquiesced in them with scarcely any resistance or even protracted protest. The charge of widespread – and effective – prejudice is often justified early in American history. But after the mid-20^th century in particular, sound historical analysis reveals that the U.S. record has been commendably humane.

There’s little doubt that constantly evolving circumstances (AKA “history”) could justify more welcoming U.S. refugee policies down the road.  But there’s also little doubt that until such a shift genuinely is warranted, the flood of specious calls for change will continue – if only because there are so many more ways to be wrong than to be right.

Following Up: Early Responses to Paris Look Discouraging

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Al Qaeda, border security, burden sharing, defense spending, Following Up, France, Francois Hollande, G20, Germany, ISIS, Middle East, migrants, NATO, Obama, Paris attacks, refugees, Schengen Zone, September 11, Syria, terrorism

Yesterday on Twitter, I asked folks whether they thought that last week’s Paris terrorist attacks would represent a turning point in global politics as big as September 11. I wasn’t too sure about the answer at that point; today I feel much more confident that Paris’ impact should – at least – be even greater, but that its impact will fade much sooner than it should.

There’s no question that the September 11 attacks were more spectacular, and killed many more people, than the Paris operation. But the latter worries me precisely because it was so low-tech, so un-spectacular – and therefore so much more easily repeatable. Clearly, there are many reasons that the use of hijacked civilian airliners as bombs hasn’t been repeated in the last 14 years. Air travel security has been greatly tightened all over the world – although the recent ISIS-claimed destruction of a Russian plane reminds us that gaps remain at various air nodes. But security – and intelligence – responses undeniably have been stepped up, and partly as a result, it’s likely that terrorists are much less interested in fighting “the last war.”

It’s also possible, however, that terrorists have concluded that the airliner bomb approach is simply too difficult, and that the risk-reward ratio is inadequate. First, think about the planning and equipment required for the Paris attacks: It’s not even close. Now think about the “reward”: The September 11 strikes were over in minutes. The handful of Paris attackers turned a major Western capital into a battlefield for hours. This tells me that repeats are much better bets.

Which brings up the likely effect on Western and global responses. It’s true that it’s been less than three days since Paris. But the early indications don’t point even to major shifts, much less wholesale changes. I don’t have the transcript yet, but I watched President Obama’s just-concluded press conference following the G20 summit in Turkey, and nothing could have been clearer than his conviction that he’s pursuing the right strategy, and that nothing more than a moderate escalation of anti-ISIS military operations is in store right now.

Certainly there was no mention of stepped up border security measures, which I have written are the keys to protecting the American homeland more effectively. In fact, Mr. Obama became most emotional when condemning (admittedly stupid) proposals to restrict admissions of Middle East refugees to Christians – despite his (reluctant) acknowledgment that security screening is required.

Not surprisingly, France’s reaction has been more substantial. French President Francois Hollande has just addressed a rare joint session of the country’s Parliament (itself a major departure from domestic political practice), is seeking to extend the state of emergency initially declared to three months, and has requested significantly new constitutional powers to deal with individuals deemed dangerous.

On Saturday, of course, Hollande had described the Paris attacks as an “act of war,” in contrast to President Obama’s continued tendency to view terrorism mainly as a law enforcement challenge. The French president also authorized a round of air strikes versus ISIS targets in the Middle East, and promised more resources for the country’s security forces. In addition, he’s urged the members of Europe’s visa-free travel zone – the so-called Schengen area – to tighten up their internal controls. (At the same time, the president of the European Commission has stated that he sees “no need for an overall review of the European policy on refugees.”)

But a New York Times op-ed this morning made clear how lax and paltry French – and other European – counter-terrorism efforts have been, and therefore how far they need to go to deserve the adjective “serious.” As reported by former senior Obama administration foreign policy aides Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, French and German spending on intelligence and counter-terrorism operations are the merest fractions of America’s. And these countries are located much closer to the Middle East breeding grounds of ISIS and similar groups.

Moreover, Hollande’s apparent decision to escalate French military efforts to defeat ISIS in the Middle East is reasonable, and budget figures are never perfect measures of military strength. But even though the Paris attacks have hardly been the first by the region’s extremists against European targets, the only European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to have met the alliance’s defense spending goals have been the United Kingdom, Greece, Poland, and Estonia. France and particularly Germany are among the foot-draggers. Will the Paris attacks spur much more energetic efforts? In the face of continued European economic weakness? Or will these countries ultimately continue their decades-long policies of relying mainly on the United States for protection?

Past isn’t always prologue. (If it was, we’d still be living in caves.) But the power of inertia and the temptations of free-riding should never be under-estimated. Nor should the determination of politicians – on either side of the Atlantic – to stick to failed policies. So the odds remain way too high that the Paris attacks will leave the United States and other major countries with the worst of both possible worlds – facing game-changing circumstances and more attached to the status quo than ever.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Preliminary Thoughts About and Lessons of Paris

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2016 elections, Al Qaeda, border security, borders, Charlie Hebdo, civil liberties, Constitution, Donald Trump, France, Immigration, intelligence, ISIS, jihadism, Middle East, migrants, Mumbai attack, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paris, Paris attacks, radical Islam, refugees, Robert Jackson, September 11, surveillance, terrorism

Because barely a day has passed since the news first broke of the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, caution is in order about commenting, especially about the identity of the attackers, and other crucial details of the strikes. Nonetheless, some observations can reasonably and usefully be drawn, and some important implications, including for a range of security and economic policies, can be identified.

> Except for the innocent victims and their families and friends, the Paris attacks weren’t a “tragedy,” as so many good-hearted folks have mistakenly supposed. Whether the aim is intentional or not, that term drains the event of moral content and inhibits clear thinking. In particular, it weakens the public’s determination to establish and enforce accountability – notably over the longer run, as the temptation grows to return psychologically to normality, along with shoulder-shrugging defeatist impulses. Instead, the attacks were an outrage and an atrocity. Making all efforts to prevent repeats are imperative both for self-defense and to create a better, safer world for future generations.

> Another term we need to excise from news coverage and discussion is “senseless.” The Paris attacks clearly were intended to further a political and policy agenda: sowing chaos among ISIS’ enemies the worldwide, including in the United States, and dissuading governments from joining military efforts against the group in the Middle East, or from continuing or strengthening existing efforts. Indeed, these agendas – which are sadly likely to achieve at least some degree of success – are what justify labeling the Paris attacks as acts of terror. As such, they are utterly incomparable to the kinds of mass shootings in America and elsewhere that are carried out by obviously deranged individuals whose heads are filled with heaven knows what delusional “ideas” with no chance of attracting significant support or even sympathy.

> ISIS has now credibly claimed responsibility, and both the French and U.S. (albeit with some apparent reluctance) governments agree. So there can’t be much doubt that the attacks represent the latest instance of Islamic terrorism.

> As widely noted, the Paris attacks could well mean that this Islamic terrorist challenge is entering a new phase even more dangerous than experienced so far. Its scale and intensity more closely resembled the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, India, than the more targeted strikes on the Charlie Hebdo staff and on a kosher grocery store in suburban Paris, both in January. Indeed, the City of Light was literally a war zone for several hours, as both the French military and police were called into battle.

> There’s no reason to think that ISIS – and similar groups – will stop, even for the time being, with Paris. No one should rule out equally deadly follow-on strikes elsewhere in Europe, and – though less likely due to geography – the United States.

> Mumbai, of course, was all too easy for Westerners to ignore, even though many of the victims were Westerners. But because so many were not, and because it took place in a very far away developing country that’s typically dismissed as violence-prone, it hardly amounts to wallowing in liberal guilt to acknowledge that Mumbai’s impact in Europe and North America was orders of magnitude weaker than mass killings in one of the former’s crown jewels.

> Meaning no disrespect to all the dedicated individuals in intelligence and security agencies in France, and all over Europe, but if only because attacks like those in Paris require so many accomplices and so much on-the-scene planning and related activity, it’s clear that anti-terror strategies need to be dramatically improved. For example, it’s already been confirmed that one of the attackers was a French national who had been on a French government terrorism watch list since 2010. No doubt other lapses will be revealed going forward.

> Similarly, there can’t be any reasonable doubt that border security policies in Europe and the United States will need to be strengthened. Near the body of one dead attacker at the Stade de France was found a Syrian passport showing that holder had been admitted as a refugee into Greece in early October. It’s not certain that the passport actually belonged to the attacker – as opposed to a victim – although at least one report says the document was found on the attacker’s person. Further, another report has appeared of a second such passport. And another passport found in the vicinity reportedly comes from Egypt.

Although some analysts believe these documents to be counterfeit, and carried by the attackers to boost European opposition to admitting large numbers of Middle East refugees, properly screening these migrants is clearly a major challenge because terrorist infiltrators could easily exploit the chaos surrounding many entry points. And once in a country belonging to Europe’s visa-free zone (and Greece is one of these), visitors are free to travel passport-free among 25 others (including France).

It’s also important to note that America’s own borders, especially with Mexico, aren’t exactly hermetically sealed, and that serious mistakes by its own immigration authorities made the September 11, 2001 attacks that much easier to carry out. Indeed, six of the 19 September 11 hijackers had violated various American immigration laws, but were still in the country, including two who had overstayed their visas. As a result, supporters of lenient U.S. and European immigration and refugee policies clearly don’t want to hear this, but tighter restrictions are nothing less than essential.

> In this vein, these policies are bound to become far more controversial throughout the West, and it’s hard to imagine that supporters of stronger immigration controls – especially Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump – won’t benefit politically.

> Further, since many Islamic terrorists are nationals of victim countries, more aggressive surveillance and related counter-measures are simply unavoidable. For all the vital importance of preserving civil liberties, their preservation, as always, needs to be balanced against national security considerations that clearly have again grown in importance. No freedoms are ever absolute, and in times of emergency like this, it’s crucial to remember Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson’s warning in a 1949 dissent that “if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

> Calls for escalating the West’s military operations against ISIS have naturally proliferated over the last 24 hours, but the goal of decisively defeating this terrorist group is no more realistic than it was before the Paris attacks. As made clear by the decisive defeat of Al Qaeda following 9/11, the Middle East remains so terminally ill on so many fronts that it will remain a breeding ground for terrorism for the foreseeable future. And since, as I have written repeatedly, America’s allies in the region are too internally weak to “step up” and provide meaningful assistance to a coalition dominated by non-Muslim outsiders, the nation’s best hope for greater security is focusing on what it can plausibly hope to control – access to its own territory.

Im-Politic: The New York Times Loses It on Trump and Immigration

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2016 elections, deportation, Donald Trump, E-Verify, H1B, ICE, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jobs, Republicans, September 11, tech workers, The New York Times, visa overstays, visas, wages

The New York Times‘ recent editorial trashing of Donald Trump’s immigration proposals was so over the top and intellectually dishonest that you’d think the paper’s editorial board members and owners’ main worry was losing access to the super-cheap illegal nannies and gardeners that support their one percent-er lifestyles. Certainly nothing else about Trump’s policies can possibly justify the vehemence with which The Times attacked him.

Predictably, the editorial focused on Trump’s position on deporting America’s huge illegal immigrant population, and the related issue of birthright citizenship. Trump does deserve some criticism on this score. As I’ve argued, aside from criminal aliens, he should be focusing not on active deportation but on a policy of attrition – discouraging illegals from remaining in the country by denying them both employment opportunities and government benefits. And although I agree with Trump (and many others) that the anchor babies problem is unacceptable, it does seem that Constitutional issues will prevent any solution for many years.

But as I’ve also pointed out, mass deportation wasn’t even a part of Trump’s plan, although he did endorse the idea in a media interview. Completely indefensible, by contrast, is the paper’s charge that every plank of Trump immigration platform is “despicable,” “cruel,” “racist,” and “xenophobic.” If anything’s despicable, its much of The Times’ own tendentious analysis.

Take the editorial’s treatment of Trump’s call to make mandatory the E-Verify system that was developed to enable employers to check the legal status of job-seekers. It’s currently a crime for businesses to hire applicants residing illegally in the country, but many illegals find work anyway largely because the documents needed to prove legal status are so easy for forge, and because so many businesses simply don’t care and believe that the government really doesn’t, either.

E-Verify is a federally created “internet-based system that compares information from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility.” The good news is that it’s free to use, it produces results quickly, and its accuracy rates are not only astronomically high, but improving, according to independent auditors of this program. Moreover, E-Verify enjoys overwhelming bipartisan Congressional support. The only significant problem associated with it is that in most of the country, its use is voluntary.

So here’s how The Times characterizes Trump’s view that every U.S. employer should be brought into E-Verify to ensure that a law that’s on the books, and that the paper apparently does not oppose, is effectively enforced: It would “impose a national job-verification system so that everyone, citizens too, would need federal permission to work.”

Only somewhat less inane is The Times‘ description of Trump’s plan to “triple the number of [immigration enforcement] officers”: It would “flood the country with immigration agents….” What the paper doesn’t tell readers is that this “flood” would amount to 10,000 new employees for the Enforcement and Removal Operations branch of the Homeland Security Department’s bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Talk about crying wolf.

Also falling into The Times‘ category of “despicable” Trump proposals:

>ending the phony “catch-and-release” practice applied to illegals crossing the border and detaining them until they are sent home;

>establishing criminal penalties for legal visitors to the United States who overstay any of the wide variety of visas offered by Washington (a group that has included at least two of the September 11 hijackers);

>stepping up ICE’s cooperation with local law enforcement authorities to increase the chances that illegals belonging to criminal gangs will be deported;

>and addressing employer violations and other abuses of the H-1B visa system for workers supposedly possessing special skills in technology or other areas, practices which needlessly cost American workers both jobs and wages;

The Times of course wasn’t content to savage Trump. It castigated other GOP presidential hopefuls who haven’t repudiated all of his proposals for “racing to the bottom” on immigration. But if the paper’s editorial writers are looking for demagogues on immigration, they should try a mirror instead.