- The United States does not recognize a generalized right to immigration. Indeed, no country in the world does and no international accord to which the United States is a party recognizes such a right.
- The talking points about the robust nature of our vetting of those requesting visas and the moral imperative of accepting Syrian women and children refugees died with the victims in San Bernardino.
- What does the president have in mind in terms of gun control that would have reduced the likelihood of the killings in San Bernardino? Does he actually have anything in mind?
- What is the likelihood of any Democrat being inaugurated president in 2017 in the presence of a presidential firearms confiscation order?
- Do we really require no photo IDs from applicants for visas?
- Present law requires U. S. immigration and naturalization authorities to take information about the religions, races, and ethnicities of applicants into account in granting refugee status. Aren’t those decrying taking religion and ethnicity into account in such cases actually attacking their own position? How can you define “refugee” without recourse to such distinctions? Take the applicants’ word for it?
- Why do we continue to allow CAIR to violate the Foreign Agent Registration Act?
- Same question with respect to foreign-born imams (85% of the total) who receive much of their funding from unaudited overseas sources?
- One reasonably talented programmer could develop a spider that would monitor social networking sites for things like, oh, declaring allegiance to DAESH or its leader. Given the untold billions we’ve spent on monitoring, why has this not, apparently, been done? Or at least not exploited? Maybe we need a detailed auditing of our intelligence-related IT.
- Why do we accept immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Syria, Yemen, or Libya (you can probably name other countries) other than our translators and their immediate families?
- If Assad and his regime are ousted from Syria, who will run the country? Please be specific.
- What do you think will happen if a U. S. pilot operating in Syria or Iraq is shot down and captured by DAESH? How do you think Americans will react to that?
- (For Ted Cruz fans only) How would carpet bombing DAESH (presumably Raqqah) contribute to domestic U. S. security?
If you have other, similar discussion points, please feel free to add your own in comments.
Does anyone think The Powers That Be want effective policies? Why would intelligence agencies want low-cost and effective methods of monitoring extremist activities in media? Why would the defense industry or Pentagon want achievable goals in battling our enemies? Why would law enforcement and homeland security want to stop immigration of potential terrorist sympathizers?
Think of all that money not spent if we do things differently! Can we really ask the dudes up top to do their jobs and just walk away from the power they’ve accumulated? That doesn’t seem fair.
Obama is putting on a masterful display of being a complete parody of himself.
Muslims are our friends, neighbors & co-workers – just like in San Bernardino.
Muslims are our doctors & in uniform – like the guy at Ft. Hood.
And he smirked through the whole thing. Incredible.
Judging by the NYT’s article the president wasted his time. He didn’t have anything to say but he said it anyway.
Fortunately, nobody is paying attention any more.
It was a pathetic speech. Even MSNBC was glum. Worse than no speech at all.
I do think bombing Raqqa would help, but not pinpricks, serious bombing. There’s this notion that brute force never works because people are rebellious and so on. It’s historically bullshit. We live in a country we stole, largely by force of arms. So do most countries/regimes on earth. Two of our closest friends, Japan and Germany, were subdued by force of arms.
The truth is brute force works pretty well.
The U. S. bombing campaign has always had three problems:
1. Lack of targets.
2. Lack of intelligence on the ground.
3. Rules of engagement so extreme they almost preclude effectiveness.
I’ll just leave this here.
@Michael — You really had some stand-out arguments over at OTB regarding assimilation issues. It took guts to do that.
The three problems cited in the bombing campaign have been discussed frequently by the intelligence and military higher-ups. But, it’s to no avail because such assessments don’t fit into the Obama script of how he wants to work things in the ME. His way and the opinions of others (except in his bubble of same-minded advisers) are simply at an impasse. And, it is President Obama who ultimately calls the shots.
Andy, did Mike Judge put that video together? It had a definite Beavis & Butt-head feel to it. “AMERICA, we’ll be attacking you with bearded camel jockey suicide-bomber jihadis who just happen to be … INSANE!!!!!!!!” I know they’re psycho-killers, but how can anyone take these pig fuckers seriously?
1. Lack of targets.
Bunk. There are plenty of targets. There are plenty of GOOD targets. Hell, we’ve got plenty of good targets right here in America! Let’s start with the Saudi Embassies and CAIR headquarters, and then bomb the Arab princling sections of the gay bars of SoCal & Miami Beach. Then we can move on to places like Riyahd, Jeddah, Mecca & Medina.
I think it’s going to come to that, sooner or later, and it seems that a lot of people are starting to realize that the Saudis are our enemies. I realize why we needed to get in bed with them when we had to worry about Comintern, but those days are gone. Couldn’t we at least stop selling them weapons? It’s not like we’re getting any gratitude in return.
There was a data mining project (or pilot project) in place prior to 9/11, but it was disbanded shortly after. The disbanding was controversial, but I do not think the program’s existence was very widely known.
I do not remember the details exactly. I think it was using commercial software, but it could have had some customized code. They were getting the raw data from Google and the like, but I think they were paying for it or had an agreement.
One problem with these programs is a lot of false-positives.
Ice,
I know it seems like satire, but that video is totally serious. It’s what the core followers actually believe.
“The truth is brute force works pretty well.”
In wars against other nation states. Has a much more mixed record against other entities. Not like the Russians were squeamish in Afghanistan, just to give an example.
Steve
Steve