Terrorists in Boats

 

The usual argument that Trump’s supporters make to try to justify the attacks on the boats is that the people on them are terrorists, and the president has a mandate to attack and destroy terrorists wherever they are found. That does not work. Terrorism is distinct from ordinary criminal or illegal behavior. It is the act of making or planning violent attacks against civilian targets for political, religious, or ideological reasons. (Some might want to narrow or broaden that definition a little, but it or something very similar to it is what reasonable people mean by the term.) A terrorist is someone who practices terrorism. Dope smugglers in boats do not fit that definition. The argument of Trump’s apologists reduces to the claim that the smugglers are terrorists because Trump says they are terrorists, not because of their actual behavior. Liberally minded people will be likely to disapprove of a president having the arbitrary power to designate people as terrorists when they have committed no acts of terrrorism. Conservatives and Trumpists should be bothered as well. They would not like it if a future Democrat president declared some people he did not like – say AR-15 owners or Southern Baptists or fans of Charlie Kirk – to be terrorists and started eliminating a few of them.

ISIS

The question of what the United States should  do about ISIS and other threats from the Middle East may be one of those where the so-called prudent, middle-of-the-road solution is worse than either extreme. The present policy on ISIS is a middle-of-the-road one of moderately funding and supporting its opponents, inflicting minor casualties on it with drone strikes and very limited bombing, and hoping it will be contained. (Until recently the administration even refused to attack the oil convoys which provided ISIS with much of its funding out of concerns for environmental damage  to the desert of Syria and Iraq.) 

One  “extreme” alternative would be to  bow out of policing Syria and Iraq  and let ISIS and its Shia and other opponents  fight it out. Proponents of this argue that we have no strategic interest in determining what factions rule Syria and Iraq, that random and infrequent attacks by terrorists are not a casus belli, and (sometimes) that our leaving ISIS alone might lead to their leaving us alone. 

Another approach would treat ISIS as a serious enemy which is making war on the United States and respond by giving ISIS a taste, not of George W. Bush’s war or Barack Obama’s war, but of Franklin Roosevelt’s war – hard, ruthless, unrelenting, and ending only with their unconditional capitulation or total destruction. Proponents of this argue that the war with Islamic fanatics has already begun, that the fanatics plan for a fight to the finish, and that we should wake up and give them one.

I do not know enough to decide which of the extreme alternatives is better. I prefer some version of the first one with our  obtaining our oil in North America and moving away from policing Syria and Iraq and eventually the rest of the Middle East. However I do not know if it is too late for that or not. If the enemy really is implacable and bent on conquest, it should be destroyed while it is still weak.  I do know that it makes no sense to hit a person, a group, or a country  just  hard enough to make him or them mad and vengeful, but not hard enough to put him or them down. Yet that seems to have been our government’s practice under both Bush and Obama. 

The Attacks in Paris and California

The attacks by Muslims in Paris and California have had strong effects  on politics and public opinion. Perhaps the most beneficial effect is that more people realize the absurdity of the claim that Islam is no different from any other present day  religion in terms of violent aggression toward nonbelievers  and are willing to say so and to question the desirability of admitting large numbers of lower class,  un-Westernized, fundamentalist Muslims into this country.   Liberal, civilized societies are better off without large, cohesive, anti-assimilationist   minorities of people who reject liberal and civilized values on principle.  It may be that enough Americans are starting to accept that fact to cause  changes in the policies and activities of the  government.

The worst effect of the attacks is the overreaction  to them, particularly among politicians. The actions of Muslim fanatics in this country are often brutal and terrible, but, except for the attacks on September 11, 2001, they are also statistically insignificant in relation to the totality of violent crimes or the routine risks of life.  It is often  unclear whether foreign Islamic groups or governments had anything to do with causing or organizing the attacks. Yet people are scared and jumpy, and some politicians are calling for an invasion of Syria and a third invasion of Iraq.

Besides the issue  of whether what happened in California is sufficient reason to go to war even if we could find some foreign enemy to pin it on, there are the practical questions of whether such a war would do much or anything to make such attacks less likely and of whether it would have beneficial or harmful geopolitical results for the United States.   The last such venture was a disaster. It seems to me we should not risk a repetition without better reasons than we have seen so far. 

Lessons to Learn

There is a controversy at present over whether an obscure video/amateurish movie that presented Mohammed in a bad light was the cause of the recent murderous attacks on American embassies in Libya, Egypt, and other Muslim countries.  Conservatives point to evidence that the attack in Libya in particular was apparently  carefully planned and executed to commemorate the anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and are skeptical of claims the other attacks were spontaneous.  Leftists say that, whatever the case in Libya, the other attacks were spontaneous and driven by religious sentiments inflamed by a couple of video clips on YouTube. The interesting thing is that in most respects it doesn’t matter which side is right. If the attacks were planned, terrorists’ assaults timed for the anniversary of the attacks of 2001, they were  the work of vicious savages who cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner. If the attacks were spontaneous outbursts of violent religious fanaticism, they were   the work of vicious savages who cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner.

This does not mean that all Muslims are savages or untrustworthy. It does provide additional evidence that that from Pakistan  to North Africa the savages and fanatics are on the march in one way or another, and it illustrates how violent that savagery and fanaticism can be.

I think it is fairly clear that the United States should never have fought the war with Iraq and should have left Afghanistan after completing its punitive expedition in early 2002. This country never needed  to be involved in nation building, colonization, or futile attempts to civilize the un-civilizable in the Middle East. The United States has a vested interest in preventing dangerous fanatics from getting nuclear weapons and a commitment to help Israel avoid  destruction. Beyond that, activities for the present should be limited to keeping the sea lanes open and the oil flowing. American policy for the future should be to develop energy resources and production of all sorts in North America with a goal of fully self-sufficient energy production on the continent as soon as possible. Once this goal is reached, America should leave the Middle East to the Middle Easterners (and such  European and Asian nations as may still need the oil). These places are far from home and should not be our problem to solve or burden to bear.

McVeigh, Moslems, and the Infatuated Left

Some leftists in their present infatuation with Islam continually point to Timothy McVeigh - saying that since he was a Christian terrorist, this somehow proves that there is no particular connection between Islam and terrorism and that those seeing such a connection are simply bigots. Such claims are not made as logical arguments, since whatever McVeigh may have been is quite clearly irrelevant to the other question (claiming such connections in no way asserts that only Moslems can be terrorists), but more in the manner of talking points. Even there they come up short even if we ignore the fact that there is some ambiguity about what McVeigh’s actual religious opinions were and accept that he was the Catholic he sometimes professed to be. There is no evidence or suggestion that he committed his crime because of or in support of his Catholicism. Neither is there a record of his shouting a Catholic prayer or slogan as his bomb went off. He did not belong to an international organization of Catholics dedicated to committing similar acts against heathens and heretics on behalf of their church. His act did not set off wild celebratory riots in Catholic countries. No Catholic government funded or shielded his co-conspirators. There were no influential Catholic clergymen announcing that his crime was justified and his deed glorious martyrdom. The parallels just aren’t there.

This silly business is symptomatic of something that can have serious consequences. Many on the left and in the administration defend Islam with a false dichotomy asserting in effect that one must either believe Islam and terrorism are not connected or join the bigots in deciding all Moslems are terrorists. They then point to the existence of nonviolent Moslems to show that the bigots are wrong and claim that they must be right, ignoring that their two alternatives are far from exhaustive. One can see that there are moderate Moslems, secular, humane Moslems, indifferent Moslems, pacifist Moslems, Moslems who just want to tend their gardens, and various sorts of other nonviolent Moslems, and still also see that on average followers of Islam are far more likely to commit, support or celebrate acts of violence against nonbelievers on behalf of their faith than are followers of any other major religion. No one should deny that there are moderate Moslems. There are also nice-guy Marxists and very intelligent people who believe in astrology. This does not change the fact that Marxism is an inhumane doctrine or that astrology is nonsense. Neither does the fact that millions of Moslems are not interested in jihad change the fact that at the present time Islam is much more a religion of the sword than is Christianity or any other major religion. This does not mean one should hate Moslems, but it is a relevant datum in dealing with the world situation, and denying or ignoring it is dangerous.