Back from hiatus to his cozy column at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto makes a point that I think is too much ignored:
Then there was this much-discussed remark from inevitable presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during a little-watched Democratic debate 1½ weeks ago:
He is becoming ISIS’ best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists. So I want to explain why this is not in America’s interest to react with this kind of fear and respond to this sort of bigotry.
It’s not clear what she imagined Trump was saying in these videos, but it is clear she imagined the videos, as the Blaze reported on debate night. But Mrs. Clinton’s fabrication obscures the real, albeit rhetorical, question—to wit, who cares what ISIS wants, thinks or says?
To be fair to Mrs. Clinton, it’s possible she got confused and mistook Trump for another baby boomer politician who has appeared in an ISIS video. As the Daily Beast reported last month: “A new English-language video put out by ISIS calls Bill Clinton a ‘fornicator’ and George W. Bush a ‘liar.’ â€
Our purpose here is not to cast aspersions on President Clinton (or Bush), merely to underscore the silliness of Mrs. Clinton’s attack on Trump. If he were in an ISIS video, would that be to his discredit? Well, does knowing Mr. Clinton was in such a video change your opinion of him? Should it change anyone’s?
If anything, you’d think being cited in an ISIS video would be a point of pride. It is to Rick Santorum: “The only person that’s been listed in ISIS’ magazine as an enemy of ISIS is me,†BuzzFeed quotes Santorum as telling Breitbart radio.
but I don’t think he quite appreciates its logical conclusion. We should ban the phrases “terrorists have won” and “what terrorists want” from our political discourse entirely. Couching our discourse in those terms plays on turf on which they have the advantage. We can’t discern what they want and we actually don’t care what their objectives are. We only care about their tactics and strategy and stopping them.
For an example of what I’m talking about, consider the Christmas Day Texas mosque fire. As it turns out the arsonist appears to have been not just a Muslim but a member of that very mosque’s community. In the original reports it was widely portrayed as a hate crime. What is it now? It’s still a hate crime but the hate is directed against non-Muslims. We can’t control how the false story will be used. That’s the nature of media today. And if we can’t control it we mustn’t be concerned about it.
Regular readers of this blog must realize by now that I am extremely reluctant to wage war under any circumstances. What may not be as obvious is that I also believe that if you must go to war you are obligated to pursue your objectives. That’s the problem with our “War on Terror”. We insist on playing the enemy’s game.
If we insists on war in the Middle East (which I, hopelessly, continue to oppose) we should wage it to achieve our objectives which means that we should wage it on terms favorable to us which in turn means that we should wage a war of materiel, mass production, and mass destruction. Which in turn means ignoring what the terrorist want and also what potential terrorists want or what will turn potential terrorists into terrorists. The people who are the sea in which the terrrorists swim. Go big or go home.
Yet when ISIS announces they are trying to infiltrate the refugees we do exactly wha they want and stop accepting them. Go big hasn’t worked so well in Iraq or Afghanistan (depending upon what you mean by that). If your objective is to have the US occupy multiple ME countries at incredible expense for dozens of years in the hopes that they will become pro-Western democracies, then go big is probably a good option. 13 years in Afghanistan and hard to say we have made any progress. Surely another 14 (or 28) will make the difference.
If, OTOH, your objective is to diminish terror attacks in the US, another course might be better.
Steve
We should ban the phrases “terrorists have won†and “what terrorists want†from our political discourse entirely. Couching our discourse in those terms plays on turf on which they have the advantage.
When the above constructions are used in conversation for anything other than sarcasm, it isn’t about the terrorists. It is about the person using those phrases trying to signal to other parties involved in the conversation that they are asserting their moral supiority.
Steve, how, pray tell, do you know they want us to stop accepting refugees?
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Personally, I don’t care if the refugees are infiltrated or not. We don’t need any more people, and certainly not any that from a very alien culture and who will be difficult to assimilate.
“Steve, how, pray tell, do you know they want us to stop accepting refugees?”
They very loudly pronounced they are trying to infiltrate. This was not something we uncovered with our intel services. Either they were hoping of closer scrutiny so that the people they spend months or years preparing get caught, or they just want us to stop bringing in refugees.
Steve
What people say want and what they really want are often two different things.
ISIS may be saying they’re putting in plants because they think it will mess with our heads. And whether or not the ‘plants’ have been prepared for weeks & months is highly questionable. “Hey, Hassim, how would you like to go the America? When you get there, but a gun and shoot up some public place. Take Abdul with you!” That would require pretty much zero prep.
Dave:
As you probably recall, this has been my position as well: do or don’t do.
Instead of fighting a war we’ve established a marketplace: ISIS kills some people in the West, we charge them two dozen vehicles, five buildings and whichever “Number three guy” we can locate first. It’s a transaction, and for reasons that absolutely baffle me, we’ve set the price at a level they are willing to pay.
This is insane. If you want them to stop, you raise the price beyond what they can afford. Of course this obvious idea is met with howls of outrage from people who apparently prefer an interminable war to one with an ending.
We are not, we never have been, any damned good at small-bore war. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, one bloody stalemate or loss after another. We are also clearly lousy at training third world armies. And yet we insist on this transaction approach and insist as well at wasting billions on people who are a century away from being able to manage American military methods.
What we are good at is overwhelming force. George HW Bush and Colin Powell got it, which is why Gulf War 1 was quick and almost bloodless on our end.
To put it in Avengers terms, we are not Black Widow all stealthy and Kung Fu, we are Hulk. And as we all know, Hulk smash. Hulk not train, Hulk not pinprick, Hulk not trade tit-for-tat, Hulk smash.
“George HW Bush and Colin Powell got it, which is why Gulf War 1 was quick and almost bloodless on our end.”
Uhh, since I was there let me remind you that was a war against another army. That is what we are really good at. We trained for that battle at Fulda Gap forever, so we should be good at that kind of war. How would that help us against ISIS, and what exactly is your goal? Killing everyone in ISIS controlled territory means you mostly end up killing a lot of civilians who are being held and terrorized by ISIS. We also would probably get a lot of fighters, but the leadership would just melt away to Pakistan or wherever.
Nonetheless, there may be some value in taking away ISIS control of territory as it might undercut their claims to a caliphate. Maybe we do have to take that away, but if we do, where lies the harm in working with Russia, Iran and Syria and letting them do most of the work? Where lies the evidence that a massive campaign killing lots of Muslims will stop terror activity in the US?
Steve
Steve:
By coincidence I was just looking up convenient pie charts of civilian deaths in WW1 and WW2. Here’s the bottom line on that: WW1 roughly 42% of deaths were civilians (Turks and Russians mostly). By WW2 the number was up to 62% (Chinese, Russians and Jews.)
We have by dint of extraordinary investments created weapons capable of drastically cutting civilian deaths, but that number is never going to be zero. Civilians die in wars, and sometimes they die while outside powers stand and watch – that’s what’s happening right now in Syria and Iraq. How many more will ISIS kill? How many more will the Assad regime kill? How many more will die in ten or twenty more years of chaos? Is it less morally troubling if we get the Russians to do our killing for us? (Granted it worked in WW1 and WW2.)
What we have now is a recipe for perpetual warfare and perpetual terrorism. Why is it better to drag the slaughter out over the course of decades rather than ending it, even by seemingly brutal means? Why should we let our lives and countries be made progressively less free as we try to block terrorists from striking us here? When the hell did it become a good idea for American citizens to surrender liberty and even life for the squeamishness of the bien pensants?
I think it is obscene to play this tit-for-tat game. Why not just announce the price in advance so the terrorists know just what they’ll have to pay for a French or British or American life? What is the price now? Is it one ISIS convoy for a dead Frenchmen? Two convoys and a “headquarters” for a dead American?
Give the inhabitants of Raqqa 24 hours to evacuate – that’s a hell of a lot more than Mr. Churchill or Mr. Roosevelt would have offered. And then send in the heavies with cheap gravity bombs and burn the city to ashes. Obliterate it. That’s the price for killing Americans or our allies: one American equals one city. Set that price and see how anxious they are to pay it.
Now, I’m sure they’d make lots of brave noises about revenge, but ISIS recruitment would drop like a rock. It’s one thing to sign up for some of the old ultraviolence, some rape, some pillage, lots of strutting around with an AK. It’s a whole different thing to decide to join an organization that loses entire cities. No one enlists just to burn to death.
A really hard blow would hurt ISIS recruitment, cut the legs out from under their hopes and dreams, and even more useful perhaps convince the god damned Saudis to get serious and bring this jihadist terror to an end. What happens in Raqqa can happen in Riyadh.
Bite my tongue, but Michael your philosophical reflections and general reasoning lately have made a lot of sense!
Most of that is pertinent when fighting other nation states. When we bombed Berlin it was full of Germans. Same thing with Tokyo (full of Japanese). Stalingrad was full of Russians. Raqqa is not full of ISIS. People are still trying to escape from there. Suppose ISIS took over a medium sized British city, and we responded by bombing and killing everyone in it. How does that go over in the long run?
There is not a whole lot of historical precedent for doing what you suggest. There have been some attempts during insurgencies to kill off lots of people accepting large scale civilian casualties, but I can’t think of an example where a whole city was eradicated with any positive effect. Even the Russians have not done that, or at least not with any success.
However, as I keep saying, ISIS may be a special case. Taking their land holdings, the caliphate, may decrease their recruiting. Perhaps we should expand our efforts, but I would bear in mind that we have seen pretty strong responses from other Muslim countries when we have committed clearly immoral acts like torture. I would just keep doing what we are doing, but work with the Russians and Iran. Expand our efforts a bit if needed. That should get rid of ISIS, but not breed the next round of volunteers looking to come here as suicide bombers.
Steve
Steve:
I can. Hamburg, Tokyo, Berlin, Hiroshima. Name the nation states with which we are closest: UK, France, Japan, Germany, Canada, Israel? Two of those we burned to the ground. And who has Germany or Japan invaded in the last 70 years? We’ve had what may be the longest peace in modern history, seven decades without a major war. We made the peace with ruthlessness, kept the peace with the ruthlessness of Mutual assured Destruction, and the world is a much better place for it.
As for ISIS, they made a major mistake trying to be both international terrorists and a nation with territory. They have an address and addresses can be hit. But that presupposes we have the will to do it.
Let’s jump in the way-back machine, back to 1979. Jimmy Carter got the hostages home, goody for him, and set the stage for thousands more hostage-takings and worldwide terrorism. He prioritized a handful of lives and doomed many, many more. Imagine how different the world would be if Carter had gone on TV and said, “We have no choice but to write off the hostages, and in 24 hours there’s going to be a great big fireball over Tehran.” (Presumably more eloquently.) We’d have gotten the hostages back, and Iran would by now be an ally. Jimmy Carter was a nice man, a moral man, a decent man, who by virtue of all that goodness and self-regard left the world more dangerous than he found it.
Our good thoughts and kind intentions are absolutely irrelevant. All that matters is power. The bad guys have a little power, and we have a hell of a lot, but because we think the game is about niceness and our own high opinions of ourselves, we lose the game, and we doom the world to endure endless rounds of this nonsense. How is this moral? How has this become the new normal? If the government does not defend the lives and freedom of its people, what the hell good is it? I didn’t vote for the Ayatollahs. I didn’t vote for Assad. I didn’t vote for Al-Baghdadi. I voted for presidents whose first job is to defend my life and my freedom and if that means raining bloody hell down on the assholes who want to deprive me of those rights, then bombs away. I don’t pay these kinds of taxes to have my government prioritize a Syrian or Iraqi over me.
Let me make this clear: I do not want to invade or occupy Syria or Iraq or even Saudi Arabia. I see no reason to risk American lives to accomplish what can be done from a console in Langley or a base in Diego Garcia. We don’t need to save Syria, or the larger middle east, we need to raise the price of an American life so high that very few will be willing to pay it. Instead we’re setting the price of American lives so low that a lot of folks see it as quite affordable.
One other quick thing: can we cut the bullshit about breeding new terrorists? No one is joining ISIS because of us. They’re joining because it’s a great little rape-and-murder day camp and most young males are essentially insane. We did not create Saudi jihadist ideology, we’re “friends” with the Saudis, after all.
The people running ISIS and Al Qaeda and Boko Haram and all the rest are after one thing: power. They at least know the goal of the game.