If Jamie Fly thinks that what American presidents have done since 9/11 are “the worst impulses of the electorate”:
Americans look to their leaders, especially their presidents, to explain the challenges the United States faces on the world stage. Instead of providing this leadership, presidents of both parties have played to the worst impulses of the electorate, telling them that they were correct to believe that America needed to refocus on problems at home and dismissing the terrorist threat as minimal. When we did intervene militarily, Americans were told it would be quick, painless, and easy or they weren’t told at all because of the deniability of the military and intelligence tools used in an attempt to avoid public discussion of the fact that we were still at war.
as expressed in his Medium article, either he doesn’t get out much or his notions of good and evil are drastically different from mine. You don’t need to look too hard to find people who want to engage in an exterminatory, genocidal campaign against the people of the Middle East and North Africa. Overthrowing the government of Iraq or conniving at the overthrow of Qaddafi pale in comparison.
What has been done instead has been very bad but neither the worst nor the impulses of the electorate. I think the impulses of the electorate have been pulling to two contradictory directions. One has been in the direction of the use of overwhelming and largely indiscriminate force and the other has been in the direction of extricating ourselves from the Middle East and North Africa completely.
My explanation is different. Presidents have been responding to the median impulses of their donors and closest advisors. Those have resulted in ineffectual, futile, half-hearted feints in one direction or another but not an anti-terror strategy.
