Yes, Obama's Policies Helped Create ISIS, and Bush's Helped Too

The latest hard-hitting journalism from the campaign trail is once again related to Donald Trump. The happy news is that there's at least a kernel of truth in the latest remarks, and better still, it's about foreign policy. Unfortunately, the bad news is that, as usual with Donald Trump, he doesn't have many details to back it up, and the few details he does offer, are wrong.

First, here's what he said, at a campaign rally last week:

He is the founder of ISIS. He is the founder of ISIS, okay? He is the founder. He founded ISIS. And I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.

Since then, Trump has alternated between doubling down on this formulation and downplaying it by saying the obvious--namely that sarcasm is, in fact, a thing.

Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) "the founder" of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2016

As the tweet above suggests, the whole episode led to a series of apparently serious journalism explaining that Obama is not literally the co-founder of ISIS. For instance, CNN's self-styled terror expert Peter Bergen wrote this rebuttal. Among its winning lines were the following:

Like so much else that Trump has said, these claims are false. The founder of ISIS is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a shadowy Iraqi cleric who President Obama is doing everything in his power to kill.

Wait, so you're telling me that Obama doesn't moonlight as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Glad we got that cleared up, since I'm sure that's how most people interpreted Trump's remarks. After all, he's not prone to exaggeration.

Also, incidentally, the second part of Bergen's statement is wrong. In fact, President Obama is doing everything within his power and quite a few things that are beyond his power in an attempt to kill him--in particular, waging a war without Congressional authorization.

But I digress. While these various literal refutations seem merely inane at first glance, they actually serve an important purpose. By focusing the argument along the most narrow lines possible, the broader debate about America's interventionist foreign policy is avoided. The real question is whether America's interventions this century--in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere--have produced greater stability and security, or greater chaos. Any honest observer must conclude it is the latter.

In one sense, Trump is right: The blame for the ongoing, unquestioned disaster does rest on Barack Obama and on Hillary Clinton--who headed the State Department when the worst decisions were made. But it also rests on George W. Bush, and Trump was wrong to omit him.

With that framework in mind, let us briefly make note of the most salient policy disasters that helped lead to the creation of ISIS, which now has a presence in Iraq:

• Bush - Invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein in 2003 based on the false pretense of weapons of mass destruction.
• Bush - Occupying Iraq after the regime change, ultimately serving as a security force for a new Iraqi government, no matter how corrupt and authoritarian it became.
• Obama (and Clinton) - Overthrowing Ghadafi in Libya in 2011, based on a false pretense of an impending genocide in Benghazi.
• Obama - Backing the substantially non-moderate opposition in Syria starting around 2012, based largely in the east of country. This invariably strengthened the budding rebellion among radicals in neighboring Iraq.

Although all of these policies are awful, the last is particularly striking based on what we know now. An internal intelligence document from the Defense Intelligence Agency was recently declassified. Written in August 2012, it noted the following key things:

• That Al Qaeda in Iraq and similar extremist groups were dominant players in the Syrian rebellion
• That the Western powers, Turkey, and the Gulf States were supporting the rebellion anyway
• That the current trends could lead to the establishment of a "Salafist principality" in Syria and Iraq, but that could be useful for weakening Assad and, by extension, Iran.

In other words, Obama's own government intelligence predicted that backing the opposition in Syria risked strengthening extremist groups so much that they could eventually establish a de facto state. And in spite of this risk, he directed the CIA to do it anyway. 

Now, obviously that doesn't mean al-Baghdadi was hired by the CIA or that President Obama was trying to create a terror group that had far more power and influence than the ones that preceded it. So too, President Bush probably wasn't aspiring to light the entire Middle East on fire with the invasion of Iraq and inspire more terrorism for years to come.

But if we are going discuss foreign policy seriously, we must look beyond intentions and consider actual results.

Presidents Bush and Obama both overthrew secular dictators on false pretenses, in Iraq and Libya, apparently in the hopes that a better government would follow. Chaos followed instead. Similarly, whatever his precise intent, President Obama's policy of backing the opposition in Syria had the predictable result of strengthening extremist groups, ultimately culminating with ISIS holding substantial territory in Syria and Iraq, and Al Qaeda in Syria holding territory elsewhere in Syria.

There's no reason to think that Trump had all this history in mind when he suggested that Obama and Clinton "founded ISIS". In the remarks I've seen, the Trump camp has preferred to blame ISIS on Obama's decision to pull out of Iraq too soon. This is foolish, since the withdrawal timeline for Iraq was actually set by President Bush, and was not really the fundamental cause. One wonders what the media would do if Trump had the knowledge and guts to explain the real causes of ISIS's rise, but I doubt we'll get the chance.

Still, even if Trump himself doesn't know how America's foreign policy facilitated the rise of ISIS, it doesn't change the reality. And the reality is that we can draw a clear causal chain between the reckless decisions of the Bush Administration through to the reckless decisions of President Obama and Secretary Clinton, which ultimately helped create ISIS and the pervasive instability that reigns in the Greater Middle East.

DC Transit terror plot involved a $245 donation and... nothing else

DC Metro; Source: Wired

Earlier this week, Americans were alarmed and instantly relieved to learn that the FBI had uncovered and arrested a dangerous terrorism suspect who was a member of the DC Transit police. The suspect was accused of aiding ISIS, and the nature of his employment was particularly ominous, which probably explains why it was included in most headlines.

Unfortunately, initial reports were light on details, and we were all naturally anxious to learn more.

Specifically, what horrible tragedy had just been averted by the intrepid folks at the FBI? A bombing of the DC subway system perhaps? An attack on Capitol Hill or other iconic symbols of America?

How about sending $245 in telecom gift cards? Turns out, that was it. That's the crime that justified national headlines this week.

As trifling as that sounds, however, it gets more farcical upon looking into the details.

The reason it was a crime at all was because the suspect believed he was sending the gift cards to a friend living in ISIS territory. In fact, his friend was an informant paid by the FBI and had nothing to do with ISIS. And at least at one point during the investigation, the suspect was found trying to console the informant and persuade him against joining ISIS. Nevertheless, the investigation continued until this dangerous suspect finally snapped and sent $245 to what he thought was a friend in need. It's not yet clear whether he even agreed with ISIS's broader worldview or tactics.

If that weren't bad enough, you should also know the investigation to entrap capture the suspect took roughly six years altogether, involving some 20 meetings between the informant and suspect and interviews with law enforcement. Needless to say, Americans probably would have been better off if these years' worth of resources were dedicated to just about anything else.

The suspect faces up to 20 years in prison for the gift card purchase.

Just another day in the War on Terror.

Read The Intercept's report on this story for the rest of the details.

Two Arguments to Dismiss After French Terror Attack

Source: Valery Hache - AFP/Getty

Europe suffered another tragic terrorist attack yesterday, as a white semi-truck deliberately ran over scores of pedestrians in Nice, France. Reports put the death toll at 80 while more than 100 were wounded. The truck driver was also armed and apparently opened fire on civilians before ultimately being killed by police. At this point, authorities believe there was only one attacker.

At the time of this writing, there have been no formal claims of responsibility by ISIS or any other group, but the New York Times reports that ISIS occasionally takes as reports as two days before taking credit. We also know relatively little about the attacker himself, though one report claimed he was Franco-Tunisian.

Given how little information has been publicly released so far, it's possible that this was simply a random act of extraordinary violence. It is far more likely that it was a politically-motivated terrorist attack like the ones in Paris and Brussels that have also occurred over the past two years. Indeed, French President Hollande's remarks in the wake of the attack mentioned stepping up military action in Iraq and Syria, so it seems reasonable to assume there's a plausible connection to radical groups in the Middle East.

As this appears to be yet another terrorist attack, a couple observations are worth making.

The False Trade-off
Typically, the debate following attacks like these proceeds along two dimensions. There is a proposed domestic response designed to reduce the probability of similar attacks taking place in the future. And there is a proposed foreign response to punish the ones responsible--or more realistically, to punish a lot of random people that have the misfortune of living in the general vicinity of wherever the attacker and his friends are from. But I digress.

The domestic discussion takes place along the familiar lines of the liberty vs. security axis. Authorities invariably promise more security if they have more power over individual citizens. Benjamin Franklin's famous quote is dutifully cited in defense. But a terrified and bewildered population is primed for the security argument, and this side typically wins out.

The problem with the liberty-security debate is that it assumes the trade-off is actually possible. Just as economists used to believe there was a reliable trade-off between inflation and unemployment, security experts of today presume that liberty and security have a straightforward inverse relationship. When economists tried to put their views into practice, the theory quickly broke down. In the US, the stagflation of the 1970s, characterized by simultaneously high inflation and unemployment, showed that the previous assumption did not hold. A dangerous and mistaken paradigm was largely scuttled.

The same thing needs to happen for liberty and security. France may provide the necessary evidence to finally make the case convincing.

Recall that France has been drifting ever further towards the security side of the spectrum ever since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015. And even prior to Charlie Hebdo, the country already had some of the strictest gun laws, far stricter than the ones that apply to Americans. (The guns used in that event were apparently procured on the black market.)

The most extreme shift towards security happened after the Paris Attacks in November of last year, which claimed well over 100 lives. After that tragic event, France declared a state of emergency on terrorism, suspending many civil liberties in the process. While originally intended to be temporary, it remains in effect today and failed to prevent this attack. Additionally, yesterday was Bastille Day, a French national holiday on par with the Fourth of July in the US. If anything, we would expect security to be particularly tight on such an occasion, and yet, the attack still wasn't prevented.

French security forces may simply be incompetent, but that shouldn't be our primary explanation of how this occurred. Rather, the mandate of preventing terrorism is an impossible one. The Nice Attack tragically illustrates this point. In this case, most of the damage appears to have been done by a truck, a tool which thousands of people in France no doubt have access to every day in their jobs. If we assume a similar, if scaled down, version of this massacre could have been done with any motor vehicle, then the number of people with access to such a weapon would be in the millions. And they have opportunities to commit some form of atrocity any time they pass a busy city street.

Of course, it's not just cars and trucks that are the problem. There is virtually no end to the possible vulnerabilities in a free society. In light of this, it is unreasonable to assume the French government could prevent terrorism if it just had a little more power. They cannot, and they will not, regardless of whatever new powers they try to acquire.

This is why the liberty-security debate needs to be dismissed. One side of the argument is taking the impossible as a given fact. No useful policies will come from that exercise.

Fighting Them Over There?
Another standard argument in the terrorism debate is the idea that "we must fight them over there or else we'll fight them over here". You've no doubt heard this one before. And like the alleged liberty-security trade-off, this concept could seem plausible on its face.

Recent history, however, proves it to be false.

Terrorist attacks are still thankfully rare, but successful high-profile attacks have become more common against Western targets in recent years. One could debate whether this is due to the new interventions unleashed by President Obama, or whether this is just delayed blowback from the belligerence of President George W. Bush. Most likely it's a combination, but it ultimately does not matter.

The reality is that the current interventions have not had the intended effect. If the goal was to prevent future terrorist attacks, they have failed. And thus, the primary justification for intervention is no longer valid.

If one wishes to continue to promote intervention abroad in spite of this setback, as the French President apparently does, they need a new pretext. It is not making anyone safer. And 15 years into this experiment, no serious person should believe the next intervention is the one that will actually work.

Summary
The problem of terrorism does not have any easy solutions at this point. But some proposed solutions are clearly worse than others. As we enter another round of political grandstanding on this issue, it's helpful to bear this in mind. Whatever the politicians may say, complete security against terrorism is not possible. No matter how much liberty we are willing to sacrifice domestically and no matter how many innocent bystanders we are willing to see bombed abroad in the name of prosecuting the failed War on Terror, this fact will not change.

Due Process Might Let Some Bad People Go Free, Use It Anyway

One aspect of the Orlando Shooting that has been widely reported is the fact that the FBI interviewed shooter multiple times and found insufficient evidence to prove criminality. Indeed, we noted this in our own coverage, and it is a very important fact.

However, it's a fact that's easy to be misused. On the one hand, it shows the apparent futility of mass surveillance--this guy was flagged for additional investigation and nothing got through. Given that successful mass surveillance would likely look a lot like this, with a future terror suspect being well before the actual attack, it should make the argument for additional mass surveillance or policing powers thoroughly absurd. Here, existing tools worked in the sense of identifying a potential threat. But because predicting a future terrorist or terror attack is very difficult, it did not actually prevent the atrocity in this case.

The problem is that this argument can also be spun in the other way. Here, the focus is not on the apparent futility of counterterror efforts, but on the question of why exactly the FBI let this man go? There are several interesting possible explanations for this, in addition to the obvious one that he wasn't a credible threat and had done nothing criminal. There's also the suggestion that the FBI's resources may have been distracted by some de facto terrorist entrapment jobs elsewhere in Florida, which have very little to do with keeping American safe. It has also been suggested that the FBI's policy of pursuing every lead prevents them from focusing resources on the real threats that may unfold over a longer period. And of course, there's the sentiment expressed by the reliably awful Senator Lindsey Graham, "The FBI closed this file because the Obama administration treats radical Islamic threats as common crimes." Because, of course, everyone knows that responsible people Call It Radical Islam (TM) and would use the military to bomb people in countries on the other side of the world to solve it once and for all. Just like we solved terrorism after 9/11 by bombing Afghanistan and ... wait, that didn't happen.

Morbid joking aside, the Senator's camp has emerged as a dominant one. Obviously, the argument goes, people like Mateen shouldn't be released into society because look what happened. Thus, we should get rid of whatever restrictions prevented the FBI from holding him.

It's not hard to follow the train of thoughts that gets you to the conclusion above. The issue is that those restrictions amount to basic due process, and they're kind of the foundation of the criminal justice system, at least in theory. The assumption here is that expanding police powers in this way, by effectively allowing the government to hold people on mere suspicion of wrongdoing rather than any actual proof, the government would be able to prevent these attacks. This is unlikely to be true, but in a time of intense anxiety and fear after a very public attack, many people are desperate for anything to help.

All of which makes Glenn Greenwald's recent article in The Washington Post a very timely and welcome defense of due process. The whole piece is exceptional and I'd encourage you to read it in full if you're remotely on the fence on this subject. This excerpt offers a look into his conclusion:

...based on what we know, the FBI acted properly [in this case]. Agents have the power they need, and they were right to close the case on Mateen. Just because someone successfully carried out a violent mass attack does not prove that police powers were inadequate or that existing powers were misapplied. No minimally free society can prevent all violence. In the United States, we do not hold suspects for crimes they have not committed.

In some ways, it's an old argument--there's a trade-off between liberty and security, and in the wake of terror attack, people only look at one side of the coin. But as Greenwald himself notes, this argument needs to be rehashed in the wake of every terror attack. Because there will also be politicians willing to promise the impossible by sacrificing rights that ought to be off the table.

And with that, here's the link to Greenwald's article:

The FBI was right not to arrest Omar Mateen before the shooting

Who Will Take the Worst Position on Orlando, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?

The ongoing competition to express the worst possible views--known to many observers simply as the US Presidential Election--escalated this week in the wake of the Orlando tragedy. Donald Trump predictably took an early lead in this episode by saying the following:

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2016

And of course, what Republican response to terrorism would be complete without an inane shout-out to the "call it radical Islam" brigade?

Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

Clearly, Donald Trump set a very high bar here. As Justin Raimondo predicted (and we mentioned) earlier this week, Trump doubled down on his calls for a ban on Muslim immigration (which obviously follows, since the shooter was born in New York). He also called for increased bombings of ISIS so we can "win", whatever that means these days. This is another logical policy, since no one thinks that ISIS directed this attack, and the shooter himself had previously expressed support or allegiance for radically different militant groups ranging from Hezbollah to ISIS, which are actually completely opposed to each other.

The question was how Hillary would respond. And in some ways, she had the perfect Democratic script totally laid out for her by President Obama. Her job was to push back against Trump's apocalyptic claims about Muslims in general, maybe say something vague about American values, and then pivot to that bread and butter Democratic issue of gun control. This sidesteps the tricky reality that Obama's current policy of bombing ISIS and arming some not-so-different rebel groups on the side has failed to stop attacks. It would also allow Democrats to portray themselves as the adults compared to Donald Trump's efforts to channel Dick Cheney on terrorism. And since there's no way Congress will actually pass meaningful gun control legislation, it also gives Democrats a kind of out if and when the next terrorist attack / mass shooting occurs--something like, "We told you we needed an assault weapons ban, but the Republicans cared more about hunting than innocent American lives, and now X more deaths are on their hands."

This is an ideal strategy politically, and it also offers a facially plausible rejoinder to Trump's claim that current leadership is weak and powerless to stop these attacks. Implicitly, it accepts this as true, but then passes the blame to Trump's party.

In short, the path for Hillary was obvious and it's already been largely carved out by President Obama. Given that, unlike Hillary, President Obama is actually still viewed somewhat favorably by Americans, this strategy should have been even easier to pursue. Politically, Hillary needs to position herself as running for President Obama's third term; it's really her only angle. So breaking with Obama on any issue, even when it could be warranted, has negative political implications.

So, with all these good reasons to follow in Obama's footsteps, did Hillary decide to take the logical path of least resistance? Of course not.

It started out well enough. Hillary led with the gun control narrative.

"We need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals." —Hillary on the FL attack

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

And paid lip service to diversity and defending the LGBT community from violence...

Our diversity isn’t a liability in the fight against terrorism. It’s an asset. It makes us stronger. pic.twitter.com/0cTpmfvA3c

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 13, 2016

"To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them.” —Hillary https://t.co/MmaGjrSufr

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

(In that last tweet, I assume the character limit caused her to omit the fact that "always" began around 2013, when Hillary discovered that supporting measures like marriage equality had become politically expedient. But I digress.)

To her credit, she also explained that declaring war on an entire religion is a bad idea.

"We cannot demonize, demagogue, and declare war on an entire religion...Hate is not the answer to hate." —Hillary

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 13, 2016

So far so good, right? And if this was all she said, she'd get reasonably high marks. In our view, there's good reason to be skeptical about the likely efficacy of proposed gun control measures in actually curbing either domestic terrorism or mass shootings. That said, the two mainstream responses to terrorism are increasingly either a) demonize Muslims and expand bombing in the Middle East or b) pursue gun control domestically. Given this limited menu, it seems straightforward that the second option is considerably less harmful.

Unfortunately, it appears that Hillary couldn't bear the thought of being the less belligerent candidate in the race. So she tried to catch up. In no particular order, here are the highlights (if you can call them that).

A New Surge?
Hillary called for an "intelligence surge"--the idea being that expanded powers and spending on surveillance might prevent future attacks. There are many issues with this. Perhaps the most important is the fact that, as the article above notes, lone wolf attacks are almost impossible to disrupt or predict by definition. If the attacker isn't coordinating plans with anyone else, there are no suspicious communications to intercept in order to sniff out the plan. That means you're left with trying to predict attacks based on something else--maybe Internet browsing habits or, more likely, demographic information. It's not hard to see how such a policy quickly devolves into a slightly dressed-up form of racial / religious profiling of Muslims--which doesn't sound all that different than what Trump would want.

Of course, the other problem here is that this attacker actually was flagged as a possible risk by existing intelligence operations, and he was interviewed multiple times by the FBI. They did not find sufficient cause for concern, however, which illustrates either the FBI's incompetence or just how difficult this problem is. Either way, it's not clear how throwing more resources at them would produce a viable solution.

The language here also seems to be telling. Hillary says horrible and appalling things on a regular basis, but they are almost never an accident. She's one of the most polished politicians out there. That shouldn't be viewed as praise; it's just an observation. It also means that, in general, when she uses unique language to describe a policy, it's almost certainly deliberate. In this case, the use of the word "surge" is not accidental. It's clearly designed to recall the public's mistaken understanding of the Iraq Surge. Don't you remember that "the Surge worked"? The only reason ISIS sprang up and Iraq is in complete disarray today is that we didn't stay long enough thanks to that hapless peace prize-winning president of ours. This is not true, but Hillary is betting that enough people think it is to find the idea of an intelligence surge compelling.*

Capitulating to the language of "Radical Islam"
Not so long ago, Hillary was commendably defending her decision not to describe the source of terrorism as "radical Islam" on the very logical grounds that it "sounds like we are declaring war against a religion.

Orlando apparently changed that. CNN reports that, for fear of being viewed as too politically correct, now she's happy to say it. And in announcing this position, she took the opportunity to spike the proverbial football on the crowning achievement that was the summary execution of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. We should all be relieved that getting Osama bin Laden solved that terrorism problem once and for all.

The Spirit of 9/12
You can't make this up. Hillary Clinton literally reminisced about the days after 9/11 and called for America to get back to the "spirit of 9/12". This is how Hillary recalls the national mood after that tragedy, from Gawker:

We did not attack each other. We worked with each other to protect our country and to rebuild. It is time to get back to the spirit those days—the spirit of 9/12.

The problem with the spirit of 9/12 is that it produced a series of unmitigated policy disasters (Afghanistan, Iraq, and the PATRIOT Act as the top three), the long-term consequences of which are still being felt today. Indeed, The Washington Post recently reported, based on a surviving witness, that the Orlando shooter apparently cited the US bombing of Afghanistan as part of his motivation. Thus, it's not far-fetched to suggest that the Orlando tragedy might actually be more blowback from the righteous and belligerent fervor that fell over the US after 9/11.

And yet, even with the catastrophic failures of Afghanistan and Iraq free for all to see, Hillary Clinton wants an encore.

As Gawker's headline aptly put it, "Hillary Clinton Wants You to Remember the Spirit of 9/12 and Forget What Happened Next".

More Bombing?

In addition to the above, Hillary Clinton also called directly for more bombing against ISIS as part of her response, just like Trump.

Final Tally
In the final analysis, it's a little hard to say which candidate won the heated contest to offer the worst positions in the wake of the Orlando Shooting. Trump's nonsensical immigration ban probably still puts him over the top, but Hillary certainly made him work for it.

What is important to understand is that this is what our mainstream political debate on terrorism has come down to. No one offers solutions with any probability of success. No one contemplates a policy of nonintervention, which is dismissed out of hand even though it's the one foreign policy approach we haven't attempted since terrorism became a major issue in the US. And no one explains the simple truth that 100% security is an unattainable goal--that living in a free society necessarily entails some risk, and that, media attention notwithstanding, the risk posed by terrorism should be near the bottom of our concerns.

Instead, we're stuck with a useless competition to see who can take the worst position first. Donald Trump may have won this round. But we can rest unassured that, on the question of terrorism, Hillary Clinton will be right on his heels throughout this election season.

*Incidentally, if the Surge could only work if we stayed forever, shouldn't we call it something else? "Surge" connotes something that is temporary in nature--power surges, a river surges, etc. If your military policy requires sending a massive number of ground troops that need to stay forever, that's no longer a surge; it's a colony.

Orlando Shooting and What Not To Do

Over the weekend, the deadliest mass shooting in US history took place at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The perpetrator was Omar Mateen, a US citizen who was from Florida. Latest reports indicated that 50 people were killed and 53 were injured. The suspect was killed in a firefight with police.

The motivation for the attack depends on who you ask. Initially, it sounded like it was primarily a hate crime. The suspect's father indicated that his son had expressed outrage somewhat recently when he saw two men kissing in Miami. However, the suspect was Muslim, and reports later emerged that he pledged allegiance to ISIS when he called 911 after the shooting had already begun. ISIS has also reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack--though it's likely they would do so regardless of whether they knew about it in advance or not.

Whatever the precise motivations were, one thing is certain: this tragedy will be used to advance bad policy ideas, on gun control, the War on Terror, and likely on expanding the surveillance state as well. However, the details of this incident, at least as known so far, do not offer a compelling case for any of these ideas. In fact, they show exactly the opposite.

This latest event doesn't change anything.  Up is still up, down is still down, gun control is still a bad idea, and the War on Terror is still demonstrably futile (in addition to being morally indefensible).

To make these points, we're recommending two exceptional articles.

The Futility of the War on Terror
The first is from Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com. Raimondo makes the obvious, but sadly necessary, point that there's no conceivable way that being "tough on terror", could have prevented this tragedy. Here's Raimondo response to the inevitable policy proposals of expanding attacks against terrorist groups in the Middle East.

There is no doubt that the War Party is going to make the case that this incident means we have to launch new attacks in the Middle East in order to wipe out the terrorist base established by ISIS. And yet given what we know about Mateen, this make absolutely no sense – for even if we nuked ISIS tomorrow, and even if Mateen was motivated by their ideology, you can’t kill an ideology with bombs. As Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman put it: “Fighting the terrorists there so we don’t have to fight them here doesn’t seem to be working too well.”

Similarly, on the even more extreme proposals of banning Muslim immigrants, previously floated by Donald Trump, Raimondo's take couldn't be better.

Although Mateen’s parents came from Afghanistan, he was born here in 1986 and was an American citizen. Unless Trump and his followers are saying we have to deport all Muslims – a proposal that not even The Donald has floated – Trumpism appears to offer no solutions. The San Bernardino shooter was also an American citizen, born and raised here. And as I have pointed out before, there is no way to establish a religious test for entry into the US for the simple reason that there is no way to tell who is a Muslim: does it really need to be said that a potential terrorist isn’t going to answer truthfully? (emphasis added)

Raimondo also notes, as has been reported elsewhere, that the FBI actually interviewed the shooter three times before this shooting and found insufficient cause to pursue him further. This doesn't necessarily mean that the FBI is incompetent, though they may be. But it does suggest that additional surveillance powers wouldn't have helped. This individual was flagged for further scrutiny by the systems that already exist, multiple times, and authorities weren't able to predict or prevent what happened next. And it shouldn't be hard to see why this is the case. The FBI surely interviews thousands of people on such concerns all the time, and an infinitesimal portion of them actually end up doing something like terrible. So they're trying to find a needle in a haystack, and it doesn't work. The asymmetry here is too large to overcome. The FBI and company is charged with finding and preventing every possible threat; meanwhile any potential threat just has to find one weakness to succeed.

All of which is why Raimondo concludes with a sober but accurate reminder:

What this means is that we are going to have to live with this – the probability of future horrific attacks equal to if not worse than the Orlando incident – for the indefinite future. This is the new normal, and it will persist regardless of how many Muslim countries we level to the ground and no matter how high we build our walls. And it is sheer fantasy to imagine otherwise.

No, Gun Control Is Not The Answer
Obama appears to be pushing gun control as his proposed solution in response to this tragedy. This makes sense for him politically because then he doesn't have to acknowledge that the ongoing bombing in the Middle East, miraculously, doesn't seem to have worked. Meanwhile, if he blames it on gun control, he can implicitly blame Republican obstruction as the root evil. Frankly, this is good news. Expanding the War on Terror and expanding gun control are both terrible ideas. But the first idea would face almost no opposition while the second policy is likely to be dead on arrival in Congress. Whatever Obama's motives, this is a preferable outcome.

But this should not be confused with suggesting stronger gun control would be a real solution. And to make that case we recommend a new article out at FEE. The author, Daniel Mitchell, notes that this is another mass shooting in a long line that occurred in a gun-free zone since firearms are not allowed in alcohol-serving establishments in Florida.

It's an old argument, but a decidedly logical one. If you disarm law-abiding citizens, you just ensure that when someone tries to cause harm, no one has the means to stop them.

Incidentally, I was reminded of this argument in a general way when I flew home over the weekend. We had a corkscrew wine-opener in one of our carry-on bags, and it was confiscated as a potential weapon during the X-ray process. It was a minor inconvenience for us--the tool probably cost all of $9. But it was also amazing because it meant that the TSA believed the dull one-inch blade that comes on a corkscrew was now a lethal threat on the airplane. If somebody threatened you with a corkscrew in virtually any other context, you probably would just laugh, since almost anything else you could randomly grab would be equally effective as a weapon. But on a commercial airline, after law-abiding citizens have been systematically deprived of any means of self-defense, the one person with bad intentions that manages to sneak any weapon past security, becomes a mortal threat to everyone else.

The same dynamic is at work with gun control regulation, except it might actually be worse. In an airport, there's a major security effort trying to prevent bad people from getting weapons on--it's at least conceivable this could work. When you extend that principle to society at large, it becomes impossible. The left understands that banning marijuana didn't stop people from accessing and using marijuana. Why would banning assault rifles work any differently?

Ultimately, there's only one gun control policy that would work: uninvent guns. But since we can't do that, it stands to reason that we shouldn't only want bad people to be armed.

In the wake of a political tragedy, there is always a big demand to "do something". But, it goes without saying that that "something" needs to have at least a chance of improving the situation. When it comes to mass shootings, expanding gun control or the War on Terror are still nonstarters. So you can still think of the victims and offer condolences or prayers; just don't advocate policies that are likely to create more victims in the future, in America or elsewhere.

Syrian Islamists Fight for Practical Reasons, Not Ideological Ones

Our main story today is a new study which involved personal interviews with over 300 Syrians to understand why so many have joined the ongoing civil war. Interviews were conducted with people who have already participated in the war and those actively considering it, as well as family and community members.

The study found that an overwhelming majority of Syrians were motivated to join the civil war (against President Assad) based on pragmatic and political reasons, not religious ones. Even those Syrians who have joined the radical Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, Jabhat Al-Nusra, still cited very practical reasons for their decisions. Some of them join because all other economic opportunities have been decimated as a result of war. Others joined out of desire for revenge, gravitating toward extreme groups like Al-Nusra because they've proven to be among the most effective fighting forces against the Syrian government.

All of this matters because it goes against the prevailing understanding that is taken for granted in the West. It's true that the situation in Syria is somewhat different than the one that currently prevails in Afghanistan or Iraq. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Islamic movements that rise up against the central government (which is backed by the US in both countries) are automatically considered militants and/or terrorists by default. But in Syria, many in the West look favorably upon the rebellion, as a kind of grassroots push for democracy or self-governance. And initially, that may have been the dominant drive. But today in Syria, the most extreme groups, like Al-Nusra, Ahrar Al-Sham, and ISIS, are also the most significant forces combating the Syrian government. If these same forces were fighting against the government of Saudi Arabia or Qatar, they would be uniformly denounced as terrorists. But since they're fighting a government we oppose, members and allies of Al-Nusra and Ahrar Al-Sham often get referred by the more favorable term of "rebels" instead. It's more a function of semantics than any meaningful difference between the prevailing ideology of each group's leadership. All these groups, from ISIS to Ahrar Al-Sham share a fundamentalist version of Sunni Islam, use suicide terrorism as a tactic, and have no qualms about attacking civilians.

Thus, this new study is really telling us what causes people to join extreme militant or terrorist groups. And the  answer is not religion. For many Syrians, even the path to joining Al-Nusra (again, a group that celebrates 9/11), is not about religion. It's about practical desperation, survival, and, in some cases, vengeance. Islam is the banner these groups often fall under, but it is not the main source for its members.

This in turn, should have major implications for US policy. If the source of terrorism / extremism is primarily about practical and political considerations (economic desperation, family members killed, etc.) rather than ideological ones (they hate us because we're free, seriously?), obviously the solution required is rather different. Expanded bombing campaigns is unlikely to do the trick, and neither is funding moderate Islamic preachers. Instead, we should simply try to stop the actions that helped cause these grievances in the first place--stop supporting brutal dictatorships in the Middle East, stop constant drone attacks and their inevitable collateral damage, and stop engaging in regime change operations, that almost always produce a more desperate and dire situation in their wake. It won't solve the problem of terrorism overnight, but it could stop a lot of the recruiting in the future. It's certainly better than our current approach, which amounts to trying to put out a fire with gasoline.

For more, check out The Intercept's write-up on this study. And note that the piece is so critical of the Syrian government that it almost seems to be calling for the US to do more to overthrow the government. (I don't think the author actually holds that view, but it'd be easy to interpret that from this piece.) While it's unquestionable that President Assad is a terrible human being, it's not at all clear how regime change would be helpful for the people of Syria. Obviously, Libya was not improved by the overthrow of Qaddafi, even though he was a similarly brutal dictator. Anyways, with that disclaimer, here's the link:

Trauma and Deprivation Lead Syrian Youths to Extremist Groups, Says New Report

Other News of Note
Hillary Email Scandal Update
A new inspector general report from the State Department has concluded that Hillary did indeed violate department procedures and guidelines with her private email set up. However, the report also indicated prior Secretaries of State also violated the rules, if in less severe ways. Naturally, the Hillary camp is emphasizing that she just did what everyone else did. It's unclear whether the new report will actually lead to any legal proceedings--but given that Hillary is still an incredibly powerful politician, the smart money says it will not.

Immunity or Accountability for Saudi Arabia

Interesting and positive news broke out on the foreign policy front last week as new legislation has been proposed in the Congress. That may sound unlikely, but it's actually true. In particular, the new legislation proposes to eliminate sovereign immunity for foreign governments in cases that involve attacks that kill US civilians on US soil.

For those that may not be aware, sovereign immunity is the legal principle that makes foreign governments, and their agents, immune from prosecution when they violate local laws. These arrangements are often reciprocal in nature--for example, the US and its agents / diplomats have local immunity from Saudi Arabian law, and the Saudis are afforded the same privilege.

On its face, this idea probably sounds like a common sense way to avoid needless diplomatic incidents. That is, if a diplomat were to get prosecuted for some minor infraction, it could create a controversial incident between the parent countries of the diplomat and the prosecutors. However, it seems equally clear that such laws need very clear limits. At the very least, murder and terrorism seem like they ought to be over the line. Amazingly, they are not--or at least not overtly so.

That's what the new legislation seeks to change. The New York Times characterized the bill as follows:

The Senate bill is intended to make clear that the immunity given to foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on United States soil. If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the Sept. 11 lawsuits.

Indeed, 9/11 is what this new legislation is all about. Family members of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, believe that influential Saudis, possibly including the Saudi government itself, may have been involved in financing the 9/11 attacks. This may sound like a conspiracy theory. Surely, the US government--which has initiated 15 years of continuous war, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, in response to those terrorist attacks--would not knowingly shield people who were actually involved from prosecution. That sounds crazy. And yet, there's actually some compelling reasons to believe this is a possibility.

For starters, 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. This fact alone makes it at least possible that their backers might have been Saudi as well. Second, the official US investigation of the 9/11 attacks culminated in what is commonly known as the 9/11 Commission Report, which sought to identify the perpetrators and motivations behind the attacks, among other things. While most of the report followed the standard Washington script and downplayed the influence of US foreign policy in inspiring the attacks, 28 pages of this report relating specifically to Saudi involvement were made classified and remain so to this day. Only high-ranking government officials and members of Congress are allowed to read these pages, and they must do so under oddly extreme circumstances--reportedly, for instance, they are not allowed to take notes and are observed while reading the documents. So either, there's something really worth hiding in these pages, or the US Government has decided to troll would-be conspiracy theorists (and the 9/11 victims' families) in an unprecedented fashion. Personally, my money is on the former. On the plus side, there's recently been new attention placed on the issue of declassifying these 28 pages, including a 60 Minutes segment on the topic last week.

Perhaps what is even more interesting than what this bill is about, is how it's being opposed. The two groups lobbying most strongly against suspending sovereign immunity for terrorist attacks are the Obama Administration and the Saudi Government itself. We'll unpack each of these in turn.

Obama Administration Opposition
The Obama Administration opposes this legislation for two main reasons: that it would jeopardize US relations with Saudi Arabia and that it could put Americans overseas in legal risk if other countries retaliate with similar legislation that weakens sovereign immunity.

The first objection is the standard establishment foreign policy view. This holds that the alliance with Saudi Arabia is critical for stability in the region, and a valuable partner as such. However, this rationale readily breaks down upon closer scrutiny. Saudi Arabia remains one of the few actual monarchies in existence today, and it's complicit in quite a bit of instability in the region right now. At the top of that list is the ongoing catastrophic War in Yemen, which the US is supporting. Additionally, the Saudis are highly implicated in directly arming some of the hardcore jihadist elements of the rebellion in Syria. Given that both of these policies have been disastrous, it's not at all clear why the US would be harmed by dissociating itself from the Kingdom.

And for the record, oil is in no way a valid excuse for this relationship. The Saudis are a major oil producer, but that oil is sold on a global market. The US does not need an alliance to gain access to it. The Saudis can't afford not to sell the oil, and even if they could, the world's oil production is much more diverse now than it was decades ago when a Saudi embargo might have been a threat.

The other reason the Obama Administration is opposing this legislation is similarly invalid. It is of course possible that other countries will retaliate by promising to hold Americans accountable if they kill their civilians on a given country's soil. Okay, but is this really such a bad thing? If there really are Americans killing civilians on another country's soil, should we really demand that they are immune to prosecution? This is an especially good question given that countries where the US is actively engaged in supporting the government militarily (like Afghanistan) typically have separately negotiated deals that explicitly limit soldiers' liability. So given that this would be outside of the major war zones, what possible moral or legal framework could justify a demand that Americans be immune to prosecution.Call me crazy, but that seems unlikely to either give the US a positive image around the world or make us safer.

Saudi Arabia Opposition
If the Obama Administration sounds absurd, somehow the Saudi position is actually worse. Saudi Arabia has taken to threatening economic backlash. The specific threat is that the Saudi Government claims it would be forced to immediately sell off its US assets, including $750 billion in US Treasury Bonds. Their reasoning is that if legislation gets passed that allows Saudi officials to be sued for involvement in 9/11 financing, then they probably will get sued and their US assets would be frozen accordingly.

They're probably right about this. If they get sued, their assets would be frozen. But what's incredible about this, is that it's almost an admission of guilt. Apparently, the Saudis believe that an immunity clause and/or the continued classification of the 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report, is all that stands between them and a very expensive lawsuit or outright prosecution. If this is really true, it seems like an even better reason to allow the lawsuits to proceed.

Moreover, it's possible that a fire sale of US Bonds would have deleterious consequences on US financial stability. But it would be equally harmful for the Saudi bondholders. If they really tried to dump those assets all at once, they would likely spark a panic sell-off from other investors. This, in turn, means that many of the bonds will be sold at a fraction of their initial value. So yes, the Saudis could possibly bring some instability to the US, but only by significantly hurting their own financial position in the process.

Summing Up
On questions of foreign policy, there are some issues that seem so complicated that they offer no good solutions. This isn't one of them. If the Saudis really were involved in financing 9/11, they should be held accountable. If they weren't, then it's beneficial for the American people to know that as well. It's possible that other countries will retaliate in kind by suspending immunity for American agents on foreign soil. But if American agents are involved in murdering civilians, as the Saudis are accused, should we really demand that they be immune from prosecution? Similarly, the Saudi relationship is often seen as invaluable in conventional foreign policy circles. But if the Saudis are now attempting financial blackmail to avoid an airing of the facts, in addition to their ongoing misdeeds in the Middle East, now seems like as good of a time as any to start reconsidering.

Brussels Attacks and The Continuing Failure of the "War on Terror"

As most people have probably heard, Brussels, Belgium was hit by a string of terrorist attacks yesterday. The most recent reports put the death toll at a minimum of 36 people with over 200 wounded through a combination of bombings and shootings at multiple locations.

But as the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The specifics of the most recent attacks are different, but the broad contours are very similar to the Paris Attacks that occurred last fall. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the latest atrocity. The targeted city is highly involved in the Western intervention in Syria; Belgium is the seat of both NATO and the EU. The Belgian authorities responded by launching widespread raids--which are likely to impact innocent people. Prior to the attacks, Belgian authorities had already significantly expanded policing powers in the name of preventing a terrorist attacks. And as with Paris, the attacks in Belgium come after a spate of human tragedies in more exotic countries that inspire considerably less sympathy--such as Turkey and Yemen.

Given all these similarities, it's worth recapitulating much of the analysis we offered in the wake of the Paris Attacks. The motivation and targets were similar; unfortunately, the response looks like it will be as well.

Unequal Suffering
It goes without saying that tragedies in Western countries tend to inspire more sympathy and attention than suffering in other places. Many observers pointed this disparity out in the last major terrorist attack in Europe, and now it appears many outlets have become conscious of it. Today, you could choose from a host of articles that highlighted other recent terrorist attacks in less prominent countries. Many emphasize the recent bombings in Ankara, Turkey, though this piece at US Uncut takes a broader view to discuss the places that have been most affected terrorist attacks in recent years, with Kenya and Lebanon registering near the top.

What is less common, however, is emphasizing civilian casualties caused by Western nations and their allies. Just this past week in Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition, which is backed and supplied by the US, killed upwards of 120 civilians. A UN official commendably made a few headlines about this incident being a "possible" war crime, but that was about it.

The slew of various violent attacks over the past several months, and the reactions they generated, allow us to see the de facto media prioritization of violence. It appears to look roughly like this, from most to least important:

• Western victims of terrorist violence
• Western victims of Western violence (for example, the US attack on the Doctors Without Borders facility in Kunduz)
• Non-Western victims of terrorist violence
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• Non-Western victims of Western (and allied) violence

There's no particular reason things ought to be this way, but it's how they tend to line up. And when you think of all the posturing and saber-rattling endemic of the current Presidential campaign--and all that will be prompted by the Brussels Attacks--it's worth wondering about the last time you heard anyone talk about Yemen.

The Purpose Is To Spark a Reaction

A few sensational terrorist attacks in France, Belgium, or the US is not an existential threat to any of these countries. One has to think about this topic for all of three seconds to know this truth. And it's almost certain that the leaders of ISIS know this as well.

That's because these attacks are not launched on the premise that, by themselves, they'll have any meaningful effect. On the contrary, the purpose to spark an overreaction by Belgian and EU authorities and everyday citizens. That is the only way these attacks succeed.

If Belgium responds by further cracking down on Muslim residents out of fear or launching an expanded bombing campaign in Syria for retribution, then it will bolster ISIS's narrative. Similarly, if Islamophobia rises in earnest from these attacks and leads to discrimination against Muslims, that too increases ISIS's chances of recruiting sympathizers. That's precisely their strategy, because it's their only hope.

The details of the attackers were not fully known at the time of this writing, but it's a relatively safe bet that they were European residents of some stripe. The refugee screening process is likely too time-consuming to get through, and non-Western, non-EU citizens would face heightened scrutiny after the attacks occurred already. Thus, radicalizing people that are already Western residents is ISIS's only chance. And it's why the response to this tragedy is what really matters. If Paris is any guide, Belgium is likely to play right in ISIS's strategy.

The False Trade-off between Liberty and Security

In the aftermath of the Paris Attacks, it was widely reported that France dramatically expanded its emergency policing powers and, presumably, swept up numerous innocent people in the process. France also continuously extended those powers until they appear to have become something like the new normal.

We must not forget, however, that France's neighbor Belgium also dramatically stepped up its own policing powers in the wake of those attacks. This was justified in part the fact that some of the suspects in the Paris Attacks were Belgian citizens. Predictably, the moves were framed as attempting to balance the competing priorities of liberty and security. And of course, in the wake of a vivid terrorist attack, most people are perfectly willing to trade liberty for security.

But this is a mistake. Not chiefly because liberty matters more than security, but because there's no way to make the trade. The idea of trading liberty for security implies that something like total security is attainable--a world where nothing like the Brussels Attacks can happen. Unfortunately, this is all but impossible. It's a problem of asymmetry. Would-be attackers need to find only one vulnerability in the public security in order to be successful--basically just any crowded place without an overwhelming police presence. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies are tasked with trying to prevent every vulnerability imaginable. Even with vastly expanded resources and assuming the highest level of confidence in the law enforcement personnel, this is an impossible task. That the Brussels Attacks just happened even after such powers were expanded offers the latest evidence of this reality.

Ultimately, when thinking about the response to these terrorist attacks, we need to consider which is more likely to produce a better outcome: charging law enforcement with the power and duty to think of and thwart every every conceivable terrorist plan in advance, or ending the aggressive actions that enrage people enough to try to kill Western civilians and themselves in the first place. On pragmatic grounds alone, that should not be a hard question.

Let's hope political leaders find the right answer. Somehow, I'm not optimistic.