Americans Need to Focus on Far Right Violence, Not Immigrants

Since launching his campaign in 2015, Donald Trump has demonized racial and religious minorities and, of course, Hispanic immigrants and refugees.  This demagoguery has played well with aging whites and poorly educated whites terrified at the prospect of a loss of white privilege in a changing nation and global economy.  The reality, however, is that the largest threat to American lives comes from far right extremists who kill more Americans every year than any other group.  Looking past that, gun violence - thanks to America's insane gun laws - kill more Americans every year than auto accidents, yet Republicans and Trump oppose any meaningful gun reform.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the reality of the true source of terrorism in American and argues that Americans need to shift their focus and cease allowing themselves to be played by Trump and those like him.  The sad reality is that far right extremists are almost without exception white males. Here are highlights:

[T]here’s one spike in violence that [Trump] rarely acknowledges or even mentions, and it’s the rise in far-right terror that has accompanied his ascension to the White House.

On Wednesday, the Anti-Defamation League released a report finding that attackers with ties to right-wing extremist movements killed at least 50 people in 2018. That was close to the total number of Americans killed by domestic extremists, meaning that the far right had an almost absolute monopoly on lethal terrorism in the United States last year. That monopoly would be total if, in one case, the perpetrator had not “switched from white supremacist to radical Islamist beliefs prior to committing the murder.”

The number of fatalities is 35 percent higher than the previous year, and it marks the fourth-deadliest year for such attacks since 1970. In fact, according to the ADL, white supremacists are responsible for the majority of such attacks “almost every year.”

The 2018 attacks include the one at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue by a man who blamed Jews for the migrant caravan, the mass shooting at a yoga studio by an “incel” obsessed with interracial dating, and the school massacre in Parkland, Florida, carried out by a student who wished that “all the Jews were dead.”

From 2009 through 2018, right-wing extremists accounted for 73 percent of such killings, according to the ADL, compared with 23 percent for Islamists and 3 percent for left-wing extremists. In other words, most terrorist attacks in the United States, and most deaths from terrorist attacks, are caused by white extremists. But they do not cause the sort of nationwide panic that helped Trump win the 2016 election and helped the GOP expand its Senate majority in the midterms.

It would be immoral to collectively punish white people for the actions of a few extremists—and it would only raise the stature of those extremists, partially legitimize their grievances in the eyes of potential followers, and strengthen their ability to recruit future operatives for further attacks. But that’s not the reason none of those things happen. They don’t happen because, as America’s largest demographic group, white people have the political power and influence to prevent such proposals from even being contemplated. This is a form of political correctness so powerful that it shapes behavior without being mentioned or publicly acknowledged; it is simply the way things work.

By contrast, when religious or ethnic minorities commit such acts, they are seen not as individual extremists, but as representative of the groups to which they belong. As such, collective punishment is believed to be justified. This is, in a basic sense, how American bigotry works: White Christians are simply individuals, while everyone else is vulnerable to demonization by demagogues prepared to exploit the fear of those who are different in exchange for political power.

The correct response to the rise in right-wing terrorism is not a nationwide panic that mirrors those that accompany terrorist attacks by religious or ethnic minorities. It is to extend the same benefit of the doubt, the same proportionate, measured response with which Americans meet attacks from right-wing extremists, to attacks of all sorts. It is to recognize that the constitutional rights of minorities are no less inviolable than the constitutional rights of white Americans, and that anyone who would run on a platform of disregarding those rights is not fit to hold public office.

Terrorism Makes Foreign Travel an Imperative not a Luxury

Paris - 2015.

While more and more Americans are traveling abroad and per a relatively recent BBC article indicates that roughly 50% of Americans now have passports, the percentage is far lower than for many Europeans.  In the UK, for example, only 17% of British citizens do not have passports. The consequence, in my view, is that far too many Americans have less empathy for others than their European counterparts.  Indeed, in the age of Trump, his base doesn't even have empathy for broad segments of other Americans, which poisons both the social and political reality in America.  A piece in Salon  argues that today it is more important than ever for Americans and others to travel abroad.  It lessens the "us v. them" mindset so favored by the far right and, in my view, makes one understand that there are equally legitimate other perspectives.  In September, the husband and I will be in Paris - perhaps my favorite city in the world - for a week, followed by a week in London traveling with friends. Both are cities that have suffered terrorist attacks. We will be staying in apartments rather than hotels and will immerse ourselves in experiencing the people as well as the sights. Here are excerpts from Salon: 

As attacks destroy lives around the world in an endless loop it's easy to grow numb. Watching the aftermath of yet another bombing unfold on a little screen, maybe we'll change our Facebook profile photo or join a hashtag movement. But do we feel anything? Maybe sympathy, or, if it's particularly awful by the new and ever steeper scale of such things, we feel a little horror. It's surreal, far away, not related to us. Unless, that is, we've been there.

This probably isn't unusual, but I've been to multiple places that were later attacked by terrorists. First was a restaurant overlooking Marrakech's Djemaa El Fna square. . . . Two years later I saw the news: A bomb attack destroyed the restaurant and killed 15 people, most of them tourists.

Bookending that trip we strolled Las Ramblas in Barcelona. Three years later, men with guns and bombs killed dozens and injured hundreds at the airport. Four years later (nearly to the day), terrorists plowed through crowds in the busy Barcelona promenade, killing more than a dozen people and injuring at least a hundred.

And in the fall of 2015 I sat down to a solo dinner at Le Petit Cambodge in Paris. Paris is the home of my heart, and days after my meal there the news broke: as part of their concerted attacks across the city, terrorists had transformed the bright and happy place into a bloodbath.

Unlike when I hear a news report of a faraway tragedy, these instances — but most especially the one in Paris — struck hard. . . . I could imagine — in vivid color — the men with assault rifles, and the people laughing and eating and loving life one moment and in a waking nightmare the next. Not only because it could have  been me, but because these were people I knew, no matter how fleetingly.

What did I learn? In short: Absolutely, those connections matter. And maybe far less interaction is needed  than we'd ever think. “About all you need is that minute where you're waiting for a bus,” Professor Goodman said.

He offered a brief primer. The foundations of a successful relationship according to social science, he explained, boil down to honesty, acceptance and empathy. And in some situations, those things can happen in moments.

When we travel, Goodman noted, the usual process of forming relationships is often sped up. (Think of the things you may have overshared with a stranger on a plane!) And when you're a “foreigner,” he pointed out, you give yourself permission to ask questions. So at a bus stop or in a restaurant far from home you can form what we could call a micro-relationship.

Why would that little bit of connection that has some of the elements of a long important relationship, why did that stick in your mind? Because it begins to touch on these basic human elements that we need to survive,” Goodman said. Where we don't have answers, he said, is why. “Science doesn't quite know why it's so important to us to have the experience to be understood.”

But the fact remains that it is crucial to us as humans. And while some may urge that we stay home where we're safe (as if that were true), I want to travel more than ever. For every micro-relationship two people from different parts of the globe can form, that's an added dimension to the bond holding all of us together. Maybe a bond as ephemeral as a spiderweb, but maybe as strong, as well. And the more that hate tears us apart, the more of those bonds we need if we're to keep surviving.

As for my horror-overlaid memories of Le Petit Cambodge, I had to rewrite them. In the aftermath of the attacks I vowed I wouldn't travel anywhere else until I could revisit the restaurant. And I didn't. A year and a half later an assignment took me to France, beginning with a night in Paris. . . . . I arrived at  Le Petit Cambodge first. Now, this trip, it was spring and daylight, not fall and dark. Every seat along the sidewalk was taken, every diner as unattainably chic as ever.

The horror didn't disappear, exactly. But it faded to something like the ghost of an imprint left on tracing paper as Agnès and I ate and talked of normal things — well, as normal as buying a castle, as she'd just done, can be. She asked for a to-go container, something I'd never have the nerve to do in Paris, but she wanted leftovers for the chickens at her new place in the country. Her exchange with the waitress was in French, and I don't remember it. I hope she doesn't have to.

It saddens me that so many Americans lack a shred of empathy for others and cannot see beyond the color of one's skin, one's country of origin, one's native language or one's sexual orientation.  In the age of Trump and his pandering to Christofascists, all of us must strive to oppose this toxicity. 

GOP/Christofascist Apocalyptic Fantasies Unleashed in Israel

One of the 1,500+ injured Palestinians. 

At times the only segment of the American population that Donald Trump seems to strive to please are the evangelical Christofascists (since many of them are racists, perhaps Trump seeks to please white supremacists).  A case in point is the lunatic decision to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem which was seized by Israeli force of arms without international law blessing.  As any sane person would have expected, Palestinians are not happy and, as seems to be always the case, the protests turned bloody and one-sided with Palestinian deaths and injuries while Israelis remained unharmed.  The Washington Post noted the casualties:

Israeli forces killed 58 Palestinians at the boundary fence with Gaza on Monday . . . No Israeli soldiers were injured, though, and Israel drew widespread condemnation for an excessive use of force.  More than 2,700 people were injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, including 1,359 from live ammunition. The dead included six children under the age of 18, among them a 15-year-old girl, and a medic, the ministry said.

Adding to the ugliness of the event was the presence and speeches of two Christofascist extremist preachers who, like their unwashed co-religionists, back the embassy move because in their delusional minds, it is helping to set the stage for the Apocalypse - when all but an small number of Jews survive and countless millions of humans perish.  A column in Esquire puts the idiocy in perspective:

More than 20 people in Gaza were dead on Monday before anyone in Washington had had their breakfast. This was pitched to the awakening nation as a series of “deadly clashes,” even though the deadly part only applied to one side. It was a great start to a day in which the president*, who doesn’t know anything about anything, prepared to toss a lighted match into a lagoon of gasoline in the Middle East.

The decision to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem is more unnecessary than it is stupid and dangerous, and it’s pretty stupid and dangerous. There was no overwhelming political support—and certainly no overwhelming political pressure—in this country for such a provocative development. It was solely the desire of that odd mixture of highly conservative Judaism and American splinter Protestantism, of the prolonged slow-dance between the apocalyptic factions of two major monotheisms that very likely will incite the apocalyptic faction of the third. It is religious extremism disguised as international diplomacy.

How do I know this? Well, Jared and Ivanka Trump already have met with a conservative rabbi who thinks black people are monkeys. The United States of America will be represented at the ceremony by Robert Jeffress and John Hagee, two completely batshit-insane TV preachers with long histories of supporting Israel because it allegedly will be largely set-decoration for the end times. . . . . From CNN:

Hagee, whose group is dedicated to organizing pro-Israel Christians in the United States into a unified voice, has had relationships with Israeli prime ministers dating back years. But he came under the national political spotlight in 2008 for comments that prompted then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain to reject his endorsement. During the campaign, audio from one of Hagee's sermons in the 1990s was leaked that seemed to suggest that Adolf Hitler had been fulfilling God's will by aiding the desire of Jews to return to Israel in accordance with biblical prophecy.

As for Jeffress, well, he’s been the chaplain on the Trump Train for a while now, and he also has a long record of interesting pronouncements on world religions.

Some might remember Jeffress for his frequent condemnations of Mormonism as a "cult" during the 2012 presidential campaign and his urging of Christians not to vote for Mitt Romney, a Mormon, during the Republican primary. But Jeffress has also called Islam and Mormonism heresies "from the pit of hell," suggested that the Catholic church was led astray by Satan, accused then-President Barack Obama of "paving the way" for the Antichrist, and spread false statistics about the prevalence of HIV among gays, who he said live a "miserable" and "filthy" lifestyle.
 Every American of every faith—to say nothing of Americans who have no religious faith at all—should be embarrassed to be represented by this collection of crackpots and thooleramawns, gone off to Israel to bless an unnecessary and perilous politico-religious gambit that owes more to fringe religion and domestic Israeli politics than to any American national interest. For the first time in its history, the United States has entered into what is at least partly an ancient religious war. This is exactly why our Constitution is as godless as it is.

The Palestinians, of course, are not the only ones outraged by Trump's move.  Countless millions will now be much more receptive to a message that America is their enemy.  Don't be surprised if more terror attacks take place on American soil.  Trump has just about guaranteed that they will through this self-prostitution to Christofascists.

France Struck By Another Apparent Terror Attack

While no one has yet claimed responsibility, holiday revelers in Nice, France were targeted in a mass attack involving a tractor trailer running over pedestrians on a main street closed to traffic following a fireworks displace in honor of Bastille Day, a national holiday.  Some estimates have as many as 77 dead and hundreds injured.  All indications are that the driver of the truck intentionally struck as many people as possible and some reports state that the driver also shot into the crowd before being shot and killed by police.   Other reports indicate that the trailer was filled with explosives and grenades.  If this does prove to be another Islamic terror attack, it again shows that France and other secular nations with guarantees of freedom of and from religion are the antithesis to what religious fundamentalists want (including, Christian fundamentalist in America) .  Here are some excerpts from the Washington Post:

A truck rammed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera city of Nice on Thursday night, killing at least 70 people in an apparent terrorist attack as the driver also opened fire on revelers, French officials said.

The truck struck the crowd on the Promenade des Anglais, a seaside walk in the center of the city in southern France, authorities said. More than 50 people were reported injured. The driver fired on the crowd before being shot to death by police, officials said.

Christian Estrosi, a former mayor of Nice and currently president of the Regional Council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, put the death toll at 75. He said in one of a series of Twitter messages that the truck was carrying arms and explosives when it struck the crowd at about 10:30 p.m. local time.

Estrosi told BFM TV that “the driver fired on the crowd, according to the police who killed him.”  He added that the driver’s behavior appeared to be “completely premeditated.”

There was no immediate information on the identity of the driver or what motivated his action.

Local authorities were treating the incident as a terrorist attack and urging people to stay home, the French television channel BFM TV reported. It occurred as a large crowd was watching a fireworks display celebrating the French national holiday.

In Washington, President Obama released a statement Thursday night condemning “what appears to be a horrific terrorist attack in Nice, France.” He said he has directed his team to get in touch with French officials to assist with the investigation into the attack.

"We stand in solidarity and partnership with France, our oldest ally, as they respond to and recover from this attack,” the statement said.

CNN quoted an American witness as saying he saw one person in the large white truck and heard gunfire, although it was not clear whether it came from the driver or was being fired at the vehicle.  The witness said the driver accelerated as he was mowing people down.

If this turns out to be a religious extremist attack by a lone wolf or otherwise underscores my belief that taken as a whole, religion is a a toxic force in the world that is best eliminated. 

Obama Visits False Ally, Saudi Arabia

Barack Obama traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with the ruler's of America's duplicitous and false ally.  There are a host of issues that are dividing the supposed allies, which range from Saudi Arabia's continued human rights abuses, differences over the Iran nuclear agreement, and, perhaps most potentially damaging, possible Saudi complicity in the 9-11 terror attacks and demands from the families of the 9-11 attacks that Saudi Arabia make monetary compensation to these families.  On the issue of human rights abuses, a recent state department report sums things up for women and gays in these two paragraphs:

The [Saudi] law prohibits discrimination based on race but not gender, sex, disability, language, sexual orientation and gender identity, or social status. The law and tradition discriminate based on gender. The law and the guardianship system restrict women to the status of legal dependents vis-a-vis their male guardians. This status is unchanged, even after women reach adulthood. Women and some men faced widespread and state-enforced segregation based on societal, cultural, and religious traditions. The government generally reinforced sharia-based traditional prohibitions on discrimination based on disability, language, social status, or race. Nevertheless, discrimination based on race, lineage, or social status were common. Under sharia as interpreted in the country, consensual same-sex sexual conduct is punishable by death or flogging, depending on the perceived seriousness of the case. It is illegal for men “to behave like women” or to wear women’s clothes and vice versa.  Due to social conventions and potential persecution, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) organizations did not operate openly, nor were there gay rights advocacy events of any kind. There were reports of official societal discrimination, physical violence, and harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, housing, statelessness, access to education, or health care. Stigma or intimidation acted to limit reports of incidents of abuse. Sexual orientation and gender identity could constitute the basis for harassment, blackmail, or other actions.

A piece in The Atlantic looks at the strained relations, including the suspicion that the 28 redacted pages from the 9-11 report show Saudi complicity in the terror attacks.  Here are article excerpts:

Almost exactly 11 years ago, in April 2005, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visited President George W. Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. It was a friendly occasion. The Bush family had long had good relations with the Saudi royal family. Though the war in Iraq was not going especially well, and the fallout concerned Riyadh, the Saudis were glad to see Saddam Hussein gone. The two men issued a statement hailing “our personal friendship and that between our nations.” They spoke about the need to “forge a new relationship between our two countries—a strengthened partnership that builds on our past partnership, meets today’s challenges, and embraces the opportunities our nations will face in the next sixty years.”

As President Obama heads to Saudi Arabia this week, that hope is unfulfilled, and relations between the two long-time allies are extremely strained. Bush is long out of office and mostly out of the political scene. Abdullah is dead, replaced by his half-brother Salman. The Saudi and American governments are at odds over a host of issues. The U.S. disapproves of the ongoing Saudi intervention in Yemen and was angry at Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr early this year. The Saudis want the U.S. to do more in Syria, and, in particular, remain upset about the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran.

But the most pressing issue at hand is much older: It’s the September 11 attacks. As Obama prepares to travel, Congress is considering a bill that would open the door for Saudi interests to be held liable in court for the attacks. And as The New York Times reported over the weekend, the Saudi government is threatening to sell off nearly a trillion dollars in assets held in the U.S. if the bill passes.

The families of 9/11 victims have attempted to sue Saudi Arabia for playing a role in those attacks, but under a 1976 law, foreign governments are immune from many types of lawsuits in American courts. The bill under consideration now would tweak current law, so that foreign governments could be held liable if they are found culpable for attacks on U.S. soil that kill Americans. That very narrow scope—carefully calibrated to apply to few situations—could allow lawsuits to move forward.

The bill is unusually bipartisan, co-sponsored by members of both parties’ leadership teams: . . . the Obama administration has opposed the bill. The White House has lobbied Congress not to pass the bill, and Press Secretary Josh Earnest threatened a presidential veto on Monday, saying, “It's difficult to imagine a scenario in which the president would sign the bill as currently drafted.” In February, Secretary of State John Kerry told senators that the bill would “create a terrible precedent” that could lead to other countries opening up the U.S. government to lawsuits, despite the carefully tailored language.

[T]op State and Defense Department officials warned lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that the law could expose American soldiers and diplomats abroad.

The Saudi threat to withdraw investments has gotten more attention than those cautions, though. The assets in question include $750 billion in Treasury notes, plus some other investments, which the government fears could be frozen by U.S. courts in a lawsuit. . . . There’s a great deal of skepticism from economists and lawmakers about the threat, which could be damaging to the U.S. economy, but even worse for the Saudi economy, which has already been battered by the declining price of oil.

But wait, what role did Saudi Arabia play in the attacks? The 9/11 Commission report said this: “We have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.” Just like the proposed change to sovereign foreign immunity, it’s a narrowly tailored sentence.

“You can’t provide the money for terrorists and then say, “I don’t have anything to do with what they're doing,’” Bob Kerrey, the former senator and a member of the 9/11 Commission, told 60 Minutes recently. . . . [T]hen, there’s some information about Saudi involvement that has been gathered but is not yet public. A 2002 joint congressional investigation into intelligence failures ahead of 9/11 produced 28 pages that remain classified, and which are said to shed light on potential Saudi involvement in the attacks—perhaps by lower-level Saudi officials, or by elements of the government but not the government “as an institution.” Former Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who chaired the Senate side of the committee, has been pushing for years for the 28 pages to be released. 

The pages were classified at the request of the FBI when produced. Graham and then-Representative Porter Goss, who was the House chair of the committee (and later directed the CIA) suggest there’s been no good reason given for keeping the document secret. Since the documents are classified, Graham won’t say what’s in them, but he has promised “a real smoking gun.”

Between the increased tension with the Saudis, Obama’s upcoming trip, and immunity bill, there seems to be greater pressure and awareness to release the 28 pages now than ever before. Interestingly, the Saudis themselves have in the past backed those efforts.

While American officials have expressed ambivalence about the Saudi government before, noting the kingdom’s dismal record on human rights and involvement in exporting radical Islamism, there’s a new drumbeat of questions about the value of the relationship. The new mood suits both liberals who have always disliked Saudi Arabia and seen America’s ties to it as cynical, and conservatives who think the kingdom is doing too little to stop terrorism, and may in fact be fomenting it.

 

Obama has shown himself to be no fan of the Saudi government, and far more skeptical of the royal family than his predecessor. As Jeffrey Goldberg reported in his recent Atlanticcover story, the president complained to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about Saudi and Gulf influence producing stricter forms in Islam in places like Indonesia, where practice had been more liberal.

“Aren’t the Saudis your friends?,” Turnbull wondered, to which Obama replied: “It’s complicated.” Nor does it seem likely to get any simpler at the moment.

American taxpayers spend billions propping up the duplicitous Saudi royal family which allows the export and funding of Islamic extremism.  Between the Saudis and Iran, I would argue that long term America has more potential for alliance with Iran if the theocracy can be overthrown.  Meanwhile, the redacted 28 pages need to be released now.

ISIS' Cynical Use of Religious Extremism to Serve its Secular Objectives

Like many other groups throughout history the leadership of ISIS is using religious fervor - think of the Crusades and how the Catholic Church and European monarchs preyed on the religiosity of their respective subjects as but one example - and extremism to further totally secular goals of seizing power and controlling territory.  Yes, some may actually believe the poison they spew, but most likely use the guise of religion to recruit followers who can be used as canon fodder and/or recruited for suicide missions.  Normal, sane individuals are generally not inclined to blow themselves up with bombs, but religious zealots and those they have brainwashed are another matter. A piece in The Nation looks at this horrible cynicism and the secular goals ISIS is pursuing under the smoke screen of religion.  Here are highlights:

Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda are widely seen as being motivated by their radical theology. But according to Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, this view is too simplistic. Pape knows his subject; he and his colleagues have studied every suicide attack in the world since 1980, evaluating over 4,600 in all.

He says that religious fervor is not a motive unto itself. Rather, it serves as a tool for recruitment and a potent means of getting people to overcome their fear of death and natural aversion to killing innocents. “Very often, suicide attackers realize they have instincts for self-preservation that they have to overcome,” and religious beliefs are often part of that process, said Pape in an appearance on my radio show, Politics and Reality Radio, last week.

According to Pape’s research, underlying the outward expressions of religious fervor, ISIS’s goals, like those of most terrorist groups, are distinctly earthly:

What 95 percent of all suicide attacks have in common, since 1980, is not religion, but a specific strategic motivation to respond to a military intervention, often specifically a military occupation, of territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly. From Lebanon and the West Bank in the 80s and 90s, to Iraq and Afghanistan, and up through the Paris suicide attacks we’ve just experienced in the last days, military intervention—and specifically when the military

This view differs from that of Hillary Clinton and others who believe that ISIS “has nothing whatsoever to do” with Islam, as well as the more common belief, articulated by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic, that ISIS can be reduced to “a religious group with carefully considered beliefs.” It’s a group whose outward expressions of religious fervor serve its secular objectives of controlling resources and territory. Virtually all of the group’s leaders were once high-ranking officers in Iraq’s secular military.

Pape’s analysis is consistent with what Lydia Wilson found when she interviewed captured ISIS fighters in Iraq. “They are woefully ignorant about Islam and have difficulty answering questions about Sharia law, militant jihad, and the caliphate,” she recently wrote in The Nation. “But a detailed, or even superficial, knowledge of Islam isn’t necessarily relevant to the ideal of fighting for an Islamic State, as we have seen from the Amazon order of Islam for Dummies by one British fighter bound for ISIS.”

Pape says that it’s important to distinguish between ISIS’s long-term goals and its shorter-term strategies to achieve them:

It’s about the timing. How are you going to get the United States, France and other major powers to truly abandon and withdraw from the Persian Gulf when they have such a large interest in oil? A single attack isn’t going to do it. Bin Laden did 9/11 hoping that it would suck a large American ground army into Afghanistan, which would help recruit a large number of suicide attackers to punish America for intervening. We didn’t do that – we used very limited military force in Afghanistan. But what Bin Laden didn’t count on was that we would send a large ground army into Iraq to knock Saddam out. And that turned out to be the most potent recruiting ground for anti-American terrorists that ever was, more so than Bin Laden had ever hoped for in his wildest dreams.

Another theory holds that ISIS—and Al Qaeda—set their sights on France in order to polarize mainstream French society against its Muslim community. As University of Michigan historian Juan Cole put it after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, “The problem for a terrorist group like Al Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam.” In Cole’s formulation, if violent Islamic fundamentalists “can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.”   Pape says this analysis is also consistent with his research.

In Pape’s view, most of the conventional wisdom about what terrorists want to achieve is wrong, and that disconnect has limited the effectiveness of the West’s response to terrorism.

While far more horrible and violent, what ISIS is doing is but a variation of what the GOP has done for years now: using religious extremism and zealotry to rally ignorant voters - especially in the Bible Belt - to support Republican candidates who profess to honor "Christian values."  Like the captured ISIS fighters mentioned in the article, most right wing Christians are woefully ignorant about the Bible and church history.  Like their Muslim counterparts, they are played as fools and manipulated and encouraged to define themselves by hate and bigotry - and sometimes violence.

"Christain" Pastor: Murdered Death Metal Concert Goers Had it Coming to Them

One thing that the aftermath of the horrific events in Paris has helped to clarify is that many of the "godly folk" are almost as hate-filled as the Islamic terrorists who killed at random.  But one example of the ugliness of far right Christianity in America is Pastor Steven Anderson who is best known for calling for the genocide of gay people and for openly praying for God to murder President Obama.  Anderson spent part of his sermon yesterday telling his congregation that the concertgoers at the Bataclan theater who were there to listen to the band Eagles of Death Metal were worthy of death because they were "worshiping Satan."  The only thing that separates Anderson and his fellow hate merchants from the ranks of ISIS is they level of violence they are willing to openly condone.  Patheos has details on Anderson's foul rant. Here are excerpts:

Pastor Steven Anderson spent part of his sermon yesterday telling his congregation that, while he doesn’t condone the actions of the Paris attackers, the concertgoers at the Bataclan theater who were there to listen to the band Eagles of Death Metal sorta had it coming:

When you go to a concert of death metal, somebody might get killed! You know, you’re worshiping death, and then, all of a sudden, people start dying!… Well, you love death so much, you bought the ticket, you love worshiping Satan! Well, let’s have some of Satan’s religion come in and shoot you!
I mean, that’s what these people should think about before they go into such a wicked concert…

Anderson, who rarely accept facts, has no idea that the group is more of a parody of death metal bands. They actually play “feelgood, bluesy boogie-rock.”

He proceeded to call the group’s leader a “drug-pushing hillbilly faggot.”
Anderson also criticized France. As if the nation’s social “sins” deflect from the violence that took place on Friday. (8:45)

Now, let me tell you a little bit about this sinful nation of France. Did you know that France is the only country in the world where more than 50% of the population thinks that adultery is fine?

The survey he cited says only 12% of French people think adultery is fine. (About 40% just don’t see adultery as a moral issue.)

This is what passes in these Independent Baptist churches as a biblical response to tragedy. 

Personally, I'd like to ship Ted Cruz, Pastor Anderson, all of the professional Christian set,  and half of the GOP to the Middle East where they can live under ISIS's rule.  They want a theocracy, so let's let them experience one first hand.  Oh, and I'd make sure that they had one way tickets with no return.  These people are horrible and if anyone is Satanic, it's them.  I truly do not want to be called a Christian any longer - I want no association with the likes of Anderson and similar hate merchants who wrap themselves in the Bible while spewing hate and division.

Don't Criticize France When Bush and Cheney Ignored 9-11 Warnings

The death toll in Paris is not even final, yet many on the far right in America's chattering class and GOP politicians are already insanely laying blame on Barack Obama, french gun control laws, and any number of irrelevant things - liberals, college students, the list is nothing short of crazy.   Yet through all of this is a total failure to admit that the more serious failure to stop Islamic terrorism occurred on the watch of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who remain darlings of the far right.  Making all of this far worse is new information that makes it painfully clear that Bush and Cheney were warned and did nothing. A piece in Salon looks at the shocking failure of Bush/Cheney and they failure to hold them accountable (and let's not forget the war crimes they committed).  Here are column highlights:

Documentarian Chris Whipple has some new bombshell revelations about how the Bush administration ignored the advance warnings of 9/11 in story for Politico, “‘The Attacks Will Be Spectacular,’” a spin-off of his documentary, “The Spymasters,” set to air this month on Showtime, in which he interviews all 12 living former CIA directors.

Whipple’s most stunning revelations revolve around a July 10 meeting that’s been mentioned by others in books before—Bob Woodward, George Tenet, Condi Rice—but always in a manner that drastically underplays the urgency of CIA’s warnings, and how much they had to go on, according to Whipple’s new information:

By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, “it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die.” “There were real plots being manifested,” Cofer’s former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years. “The world felt like it was on the edge of eruption. In this time period of June and July, the threat continues to rise. Terrorists were disappearing [as if in hiding, in preparation for an attack]. Camps were closing. Threat reportings on the rise.”

Finally, things boiled over:

That morning of July 10, the head of the agency’s Al Qaeda unit, Richard Blee, burst into Black’s office. “And he says, ‘Chief, this is it. Roof’s fallen in,’” recounts Black. “The information that we had compiled was absolutely compelling. It was multiple-sourced. And it was sort of the last straw.”

Tenet called Rice for an immediate meeting with her and her team—Bush was out of town:

“Rich [Blee] started by saying, ‘There will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months. The attacks will be spectacular. They may be multiple. Al Qaeda’s intention is the destruction of the United States.’” [Condi said:] ‘What do you think we need to do?’ Black responded by slamming his fist on the table, and saying, ‘We need to go on a wartime footing now!’”

But nothing happened. “To me it remains incomprehensible still,” Black told Whipple. “I mean, how is it that you could warn senior people so many times and nothing actually happened? It’s kind of like The Twilight Zone.”

It was not just a failure to respond to warnings, however. There was a broader refusal to even consider thinking proactively. Along these lines, Whipple writes more broadly about Tenet and Black’s plan to “end the al Qaeda threat” with a combined military/CIA campaign “getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan.” They pitched the plan in spring of 2001, according to Whipple, “‘And the word back,’ says Tenet, ‘was “we’re not quite ready to consider this. We don’t want the clock to start ticking.”’ (Translation: they did not want a paper trail to show that they’d been warned.)”

Black chalks this up to the Bush team being stuck in the past, thinking of terrorists as “Euro-lefties,” but there was a deeper story, with more to the state of denial than Whipple discusses, since the Bush team was also actively fending off dealing with the recommendations of bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission (officially the “U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century”). It had warned that “Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers.”

Not only did Hart-Rudman see terrorist attacks as a possibility, it highlighted five key areas for reform, the first of which was “ensuring the security of the American homeland.” It regarded a 9/11-style attack as so likely that defending against it should be a top priority in rethinking our entire approach to national security.

" . . . EIGHT Benghazi investigations yet Bush WH sat on its hands while bin Laden got ready to kill 3K Americans,” Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert tweeted. “if this story were abt Benghazi, GOP would introduce Obama impeachment proceedings today,” he followed up. Boehlert’s point is obviously valid, but even more troubling is how the lack of accountability has made things so much worse, actually crippling our ability to win the war on terror.

The failure to hold anyone accountable for 9/11 is inextricably intertwined with the broader failure to go back and rethink fundamental questions on all aspects of national security—something that was obviously needed at the time, and that remains imperative still.

Hollande Blames ISIS for ‘Act of War’ on Paris

With ISIS now claiming responsibility for the horrific attacks in Paris yesterday that so far have taken 127 lives, in my view, it is time to treat the foul members of ISIS for what they are: savage rabid animals that need to be exterminated just like a rabid dog.  It is also time to admit that religion - and I mean ALL religion - is ultimately a great evil and that the "deeply religious" no matter their faith tradition suffer from deep and often dangerous psychological issues.  Nothing else other than psychological illness explains clinging to religious traditions that trace back to ignorant unknown authors or, in the case of "The Prophet" a likely psychotic.  It will be easy for many on the far right to attempt to single out Islam as the problem, yet just last weekend we had GOP presidential nominees, including Ted Cruz, attending a hate fest where the execution of gays was promoted repeatedly.  ISIS is an evil, but so is fundamentalist Christianity and both religious factions are rebelling against modernity itself which threatens their increasingly unsustainable fairy tale belief systems.   The New York Times looks at the horrible events in Paris.  Here are excerpts:

President François Hollande called the terrorist attacks that killed 127 people in Paris on Friday night an “act of war,” and blamed the slaughter on the Islamic State.

“It is an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, Daesh, against France,” Mr. Hollande said from the Élysée Palace, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “It is an act of war that was prepared, organized and planned from abroad, with complicity from the inside, which the investigation will help establish.”

The Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attacks, calling them “miracles” in a statement released by one of its publications and distributed on Twitter — a claim that could not be independently verified.

The authorities continued to look for possible accomplices of the eight attackers known so far, all of whom died on Friday: seven by detonating suicide bombs and one in a shootout with the police at a concert hall, the Bataclan, where gunmen methodically killed at least 80 people.

Dozens of others died in apparently coordinated attacks outside the Stade de France, where the French and German soccer teams were playing an exhibition match, and four other restaurants and bars in the city. Nearly 200 others were wounded, at least 80 of them in critical condition, French television reported.

Witnesses on French television said the scene at the concert hall, which can seat as many as 1,500 people, was a massacre, describing how gunmen with automatic weapons shot bursts of bullets into the crowd.  “What you are doing in Syria, you are going to pay for it now,” one of the gunmen shouted, a witness said.

The main shooting broke out at around 9 p.m. at the Bataclan, where the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal was among those playing.  A witness told BFM television that he heard rounds of automatic rifle fire and someone shouting “Allahu akbar!” at the Bataclan.

Unlike the attacks against Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in January, terrorism experts said, the attacks on the targets on Friday had no apparent rationale. Instead, assailants appeared to strike at random in hip neighborhoods on a Friday night when many people would be starting to enjoy the weekend.

“It’s a Friday night, and there’s a lot of people out, a lot of tourists out,” said a senior European counterterrorism official. “If you want maximum exposure, you do it like this, in the dark, when it’s scarier and more difficult for police to act.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in my view, summed up what this is really all about:

“Those who we mourn were murdered in front of cafes, in restaurants, in a concert hall or on the open street. They wanted to live the life of free people in a city that celebrates life,” . . . . . “And they met with murderers who hate this life of freedom.”

Contrast Merkel's statement with that in the purported ISIS statement:

“Today brothers from all across the world set foot in Gaul and remind the kaffir (disbelievers) in dur Al Kuffr (the land of disbelievers) that we live beside you,”

Why Paris?   Because it symbolizes everything that fundamentalist Islam (and Christianity) is not and that terrifies the fundamentalist religious extremists of both religions.  Paris is an educated, secular, multi-racial city where logic and enlightenment are respected and the ignorance of religion is increasingly disregarded and headed toward the trash heap of history where it belongs.  It is the antithesis of everything ISIS stands for, including the embrace of Medieval religious fundamentalism.  P.S. I am part French, so this is personal to me for that reason as well.