Newt Gingrich has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he proposes that Congress should conduct a series of hearings. Here they are:
1. The current strength and growth rate of radical Islamists around the world. We need a detailed sense of the total picture. The scale of the threat from this nihilistic global movement, I suspect, will be stunning.
2. The country-by-country danger. Americans simply don’t realize how dire the situation is in specific areas. Boko Haram has killed thousands more people in Nigeria alone than Ebola has in all of Africa, according to data compiled by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Centers for Disease Control. One or more hearings should focus on each center of radical Islamism, including Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
3. The role of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group is vital to the global radical Islamist movement, yet so little understood by Washington elites that it deserves its own set of hearings.
4. The primary sources of radical Islamist funding, especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran.
5. The Arab countries—including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria—that have successfully contained and minimized radical Islamists. We must learn how this was accomplished and what aspects should be replicated.
6. Radicalization in mosques and on social media. How are young Muslims being drawn into terrorism? What can be done to counter a seductive message that has reached deep into Europe and the U.S. and inspired jihadists by the thousands to travel to the Middle East for terrorist training that can be exported back home?
7. The Islamist cyberthreat. The hacking of the U.S. Central Command’s social-media accounts this week apparently didn’t inflict serious damage, but the episode was evidence of a new front in the fight against terrorism.
and then conduct another hearing to review alternatives for “achieving victory”. He might think about a hearing to define victory first.
My objection to this process is the problem that has dogged our campaign against terrorism for the last fourteen years and can be summed up in two words: what then? You end the Taliban government in Afghanistan. What then? You bring down Saddam Hussein. What then? You bring down Moammar Qaddafi. What then? We removed the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Moammar Qaddafi. If anything there is more violent radical Islamist terrorism than there was fourteen years ago. The tactical moves we’ve engaged in have not resulted in strategic victory and I see little evidence that more of the same will have better results.
You kill one or one hundred or one thousand or one million violent radical Islamist terrorists. And that’s assuming you can distinguish among violent radical Islamist terrorists, non-violent radical Islamists, and garden variety Islamists (which probably includes a very high proportion of Muslims). What then?
Congressional hearings have become nothing but opportunities for grandstanding, so I oppose Gingrich’s suggestion on those grounds.
But I think he raises some valid questions, and to be fair, having the answers to some of those questions could help to answer “what then”?
If the answers are only used selectively to justify the same kind of tactics we’ve used to date, then the exercise is wasteful and potentially harmful. But if it is to form the basis for a revised approach then it makes sense (notwithstanding my blanket rejection of the hearing process- can’t Congressional members request reports on these items from our intel services, without convening a hearing?)
That’s basically my point.
A lot of these “answers” already exist. If Congress doesn’t know, it is because they don’t care or don’t want to know. A lot of his assumptions are incorrect. Anyway, as long as people continue to think invading Iraq was a good idea, and that it was a success, what is the point? Congress won’t come up with anything new, they will simply push for the solutions advocated by their own think tanks.
Mostly, I think, we just need to develop some modesty and humility. We can’t change everything. We certainly can’t change things and get the results we want. Not everything is about us. Protect our own interests. Assume that if we interfere in the internal conflicts of other countries we won understand them well and will probably muck things up.
Steve
While I agree with Dave and Steve’s comments, I feel that it’s a false dichotomy to say we should either choose to invade countries or do nothing. I think we need a great deal more discussion about other alternative strategies. Modesty and humility are definitely called for, but if there are opportunities that could mitigate risks then we should look for and act on them.
Let’s engage in a thought exercise. How will modesty and humility prevent attacks of the sort that occurred on 9/11/2001 or the Charlie Hebdo murders? I would suggest to you that they won’t. Even policies based on modesty and humility won’t.
The alternatives we have boil down to just a few:
1. We can all profess the forms of Islam that DAESH and al Qaeda prefer.
2. We can go to war against Islam (since we can’t separate the “good” Muslims from the “bad” ones).
3. We can lock the door and throw away the key.
4. We can take a cue from the Dutch Muslim politician who suggested that those of his co-religionists who didn’t like European (or American) laws and customs should go somewhere where they do like the laws and customs (he didn’t say it as politely as I have).
I don’t think we should “do nothing”. I think we should focus more of our attention on what we’re doing here rather than on what people are doing somewhere else.
The Arab countries—including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria—that have successfully contained and minimized radical Islamists. We must learn how this was accomplished and what aspects should be replicated.
THIS is funny! It also suggests the answers to Schuler’s series of “What thens?” For one thing, we should have left Mummar in place, and Saddam’s government largely intact, but with one of OUR bastards in charge.
And if we choose #4, but those who don’t like European and American laws and customs choose not to follow the advice of leaving?
Congressional hearings have become nothing but opportunities for grandstanding, so I oppose Gingrich’s suggestion on those grounds.
Yeah, but Congressional hearings have been mostly about grandstanding at LEAST since television deeply penetrated the American marketplace.
We can take a cue from the Dutch Muslim politician who suggested that those of his co-religionists who didn’t like European (or American) laws and customs should go somewhere where they do like the laws and customs (he didn’t say it as politely as I have).
And what about the children of those that like it “here”? There’s no guarantee THEY won’t become radicalized. Hell, there’s no guarantee the children of the privileged natives won’t become radicalized in some fashion or another. (See the USA in the 1960s, for example, and at least half the people that have come out of the Ivy League schools since then.)
I can give one relatively easy example that would ease things along their way. We can prohibit contributions to American religious organizations from foreign governments and wealthy foreigners. That can effectively be done by requiring them to register as foreign agents.
And if we choose #4, but those who don’t like European and American laws and customs choose not to follow the advice of leaving?
Throw them out.
I can give one relatively easy example that would ease things along their way. We can prohibit contributions to American religious organizations from foreign governments and wealthy foreigners.
How’s that going to work with global churches, such as the Roman Catholic church, the various Orthodox churches, the Mormons? I imagine more money flows out of the country for most of these churches, but I would be surprised if their isn’t some flow inwards.
And that’s ignoring the problem of groups like the Scientologists.
THERE, THERE. Grrr.
It is funny. The way that Jordan handled its dissidents was to round up their relatives and start torturing and executing them until their relatives turned on them or they surrendered. I presume that’s not what he’s suggesting.
Algeria did just about the same thing.
The Vatican doesn’t send money here. It’s the other way around. Judging by my Greek and Russian friends I think that the odds of the American churches receiving money from Greece or Russia is vanishingly low. However, most radical mosques around the world are not self-supporting.
For that matter, what counts as an American religious institution? What about affiliated schools, or groups like CAIR or the Jewish Defense League?
My fellow members of the Watchers Council think that CAIR should be declared a terrorist organization.
The way that Jordan handled its dissidents was to round up their relatives and start torturing and executing them until their relatives turned on them or they surrendered. I presume that’s not what he’s suggesting.
If he doesn’t know this is going on, then he isn’t trying. I imagine he’s trying to think of ways for the US government to support these kinds of policies while pretending it doesn’t. Kind of like Clinton & the Dems were in favor of torture much worse than water-boarding as long as they could pretend they weren’t supporting it. (Rendition.) A good deal of governance is about saying one thing and doing the exact opposite, of course.
It’s too bad for Newty there isn’t an organization designed to inform Congress of various issues, which publishes reports on those issues.
“Let’s engage in a thought exercise. How will modesty and humility prevent attacks of the sort that occurred on 9/11/2001 or the Charlie Hebdo murders? I would suggest to you that they won’t.”
The horse is out of the barn. We can’t eliminate them, but we can hope to minimize them. Retrospectively, suppose we had had the humility to admit that we didn’t know the long range consequences of not overthrowing Mossadegh, so we didn’t. Suppose we had decided that if we mucked around in the internal politics of ME countries we might make things worse. Since it has been reported that the French killers signed on to the cause in response to Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, suppose we had admitted that we dont know that much about torture so maybe it wasn’t a good idea to pay $80 million to a couple of guys who had never interrogated anyone to develop a torture program?
Realistically, I think the best we can do is to maintain an active intel program and stop inspiring new killers. Also, lets mostly stay out of the war between the factions in Islam.
Steve
” Retrospectively, suppose we had had the humility to admit that we didn’t know the long range consequences of not overthrowing Mossadegh, so we didn’t.”
I doubt this new generation of (largely Sunni) Jihadis even knows who Mossadegh is and the only thing they’d be pissed about is that they didn’t get the chance to kill him first.
GITMO and Abu Ghraib? What does France (which opposed OIF), Charlie Hebdo and Belgium have to do with GITMO and Abu Ghraib? The killers were French nationals, 2nd generation immigrants born in France who killed other French nationals.
I don’t think the causality works as you suggest – men who commit acts of political violence always find a grievance to latch onto in order to justify their own actions. If it wasn’t X it would be Y. Israel is always a convenient excuse or our support for Saudi Arabia, two of several justifications that existed before GITMO and Abu Gharaib.
I think you are largely correct. Most of the killers are criminals w/o a real history of religious belief, especially among the singletons in non-Muslim countries. However, I think Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are a bit different. Our military interrogators reported it was the most common reason cited by foreign fighters for coming to Iraq. In the case of the 2 French guys, it was reported that they decided to commit to the jihadist cause several years ago after viewing pictures of those 2 places.
Steve
Certainly those are big catalysts and, were it up to me, we’d never have gone down that road. My point, though, is that wouldn’t be sufficient.
@steve
Criminals have nothing to do all day but f*ck with gullible people. They will tell you anything to f*ck with you, and they do not respect gullible people. They also do not respect weak people. They would put a foot in your ass if they could, and they are not going to cry like a bitch when you put a foot in theirs.
You have been watching too many episodes of Cops and Lockup. Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are resorts compared to many US jails and prisons, and I cannot begin to imagine the shithole prisons of these asshole’s home countries.
I wish I could have tossed you and a few of your criminal loving buddies down a tier and let you get to know 50 of these wonderful human beings up close and personal. I can guarantee you that your biggest problem with me would be that I did not put both feet up their asses, but most of them probably never got one foot because they know how the game works.