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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook) October 31, 2022

SILVER SPRING—Almost by happenstance, I ended up at one of those DC Insider Parties this past weekend, hosted by one prominent scholar and thinker, Shadi Hamid, at the invite of one Ani Chkhikvadze, a journalist.  While the details, shenanigans, and gossip of the conversations had at this private party shall remain sacredly private, I was delighted to have a moment of sheer serendipity when I was reviewing some of the work of the two en route to their party.  Ani had recently tweeted an article she had penned for the Spectator World during a recent sojourn to Kyiv, while Shadi had recently posted to his Twitter an article of his for The Atlantic from 2017.

Unbeknownst to either of the two friends, their two pieces, written half-a-decade apart, synergized on some key themes spectacularly, causing inspiration to erupt deep within me in an almost primal way.  Thus, I highly recommend you read both articles, first Ani’s, then Shadi’s, as together they amplify each other’s messages’ profundity beautifully, before continuing here.

Ani

Chkhikvadze is from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and works for the U.S.’s Voice of America (VOA) .  While in Kyiv, Ani was inspired to put together a piece for another publication, as mentioned.  The result is short, powerful, and struck me to my core.

Early in her article, she described the atmosphere in Kyiv:

Journalists and volunteers, fighters and chancers, people from all walks of life are drawn to a city in the spotlight of history.  Visiting grandees make stops in Irpin and Bucha to see with their own eyes the horrors of Russian occupation.  Foreign fighters mix with Ukrainian soldiers at the train station. Ukrainian flags fly on the balconies, murals of the war cover apartment buildings, barricades and sandbags block entrances to government buildings.  On the streets, you hear English, French, Polish and of course Georgian, my native language.

My immediate reaction (while reading on my small phone screen and unable to see text that came after until I scrolled down) was that this must have been what the spirit and atmosphere were like in Republican Spain, in the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War.  And lo and behold, Ani’s very next sentence made the same comparison: “There is, I imagine, something of the feel of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War.”  My heart raced as I came across a writer that, at least on this subject, was a true kindred spirit.

My next thought, naturally, turned to what Orwell might have made of the current situation in Kyiv, and I was certain that the same Orwell who flocked to the Spanish Republican banner would have just as enthusiastically—likely even more so—joined the cause of Ukraine today.  Chkhikvadze then upped the ante on my feeling a sense of connection to her as a fellow writer in her next sentence:

“It is the same in all wars,” George Orwell wrote in Homage to Catalonia.  “The soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours.”  Those lines ring true today.  Things are clearer cut in Ukraine, but as with Spain in 1936, Ukraine has become a magnet for believers in search of a cause.

I was so eager to read the article I didn’t even notice at first that the title was “Homage to Kyiv,” an obvious homage to Orwell’s work form his time in Spain.  As I kept reading it seemed almost like my writer’s spirit was communicating with Ani’s. 

The rest of Chkhikvadze’s short-but-sweet piece is really inspiring, particularly for those wary and weary of the excess cynicism of our age, even with her dispatch coming out of a Ukraine in the midst of a horrific war in which the Russian military’s killing of defenseless civilians and endless stream of war crimes are constant realities throughout the country.  Because, as Ani notes, something special in history and not felt for some time on this scale is happening there.

Ukrainians know full well this is not simply a defensive war for them against an archaically colonialist and imperialist Russia; it is, more than any major conflict for many years, a war of “freedom over slavery,” democracy against autocracy, good versus evil, fought for Europe and the West against genocidal Russian fascism.  Thus, Ukraine fights not for just itself, but proudly for Western civilization and for the whole world against the most reckless of the major powers of our era, one that is antithetical to notions of freedom and justice and that seeks to destroy the Western-democracy-led post-World War II international order.

Like Gondor against Mordor in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Ukraine is a buffer between us and Russia and its fight against Russia benefits and protects the rest of Europe, the West, the world.  Like Gondor fighting against Mordor, we see a Ukraine that prizes life and the lives of its people fighting against a Russia that is callously careless and barbarically cruel even to its own soldiers, called often by Ukrainians “orcs” in homage to Tolkien’s world (and, in perhaps the most Russian thing ever, two decades ago, a Russian scientist wrote a new version of The Lord of the Rings in which Mordor and its orcs are heroically fighting against the evil Western imperialists, led by a very different Gandalf).

And plenty outside Ukraine also realize this, hence, not only the tremendous international governmental support, but the support of thousands of non-Ukrainians coming to fight as volunteers within the Ukrainian military or to tend to Ukraine’s wounded.

Ani engages in a beautiful exploration of why: 

It’s easy to be cynical and dismiss these people as mere adventurers and war tourists, but there’s something honorable happening here too.

The war in Ukraine has given concepts of humanity, democracy, and freedom genuine meaning at a time when in the West many have become sarcastic about them.  We find it hard to still believe in the idea of inner honor, the sort that makes you die for your friend.

Orwell explained his decision to join the anti-fascist cause with a characteristically simple phrase: “common decency.”  This is what I encountered again and again in Kyiv. Common decency.  A desire to stand alongside these people as they face down the threat of oblivion.  Amid all the misery that Putin has unleashed on Ukraine, that is an encouraging thought.

When Chkhikvadze quoted Orwell—“common decency”—I teared up, overcome by emotion. And I did the same, again, when reviewing this section to write my piece you are reading now.  That Ukraine has brought out within much of the collective West a sense of “humanity, democracy, and freedom”—of the “common decency” in standing up for these things in the face of those who would trample them in pursuit of narrow ideas of imperialistic power exercised over others against their will—and has done so in a way we simply have not felt in any grand sense in a very long time—decades, even—cannot be denied, no matter what the cynics say.

It reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies: Gettysburg, when Lt. Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, commander of the 20^th Maine Volunteer Infantry, discusses the motivations of himself and his men in fighting the U.S. Civil War: “All of us volunteered to fight for the Union, just as you did.  Some came mainly because we were bored at home, thought this looked like it might be fun.  Some came because we were ashamed not to.  Many of us came because it was the right thing to do.”

It also reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in all of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, when a despairing Frodo asks Sam near the end of The Two Towers, “What are we holding onto, Sam?”  Sam replies: “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”

Shadi

While Shadi’s piece, though written five years before Putin’s current major escalation of the war in Ukraine, did not make me tear up, it is also deeply relevant to this aspect of the Ukraine war in ways similar to Ani’s even if his does not discuss Ukraine at all.

His piece is titled “The Political Thrill of Having an Enemy.”  Shadi—a scholar at The Brookings Institution—opens by writing: “I didn’t have a cause to die for.”  But many of the Egyptians he talked to during the Arab Spring and after, including to a Muslim Brotherhood member who had been imprisoned in Egypt, felt they had a transcendent cause in standing up to what they viewed as unjust governments supported by an unjust international system propping up those governments.  “I want to break the international order,” the man told Hamid. “No matter how hard it is, this is the goal I want.  That’s what I’m living for, even if I die in the process of fighting for it…Why am I entering this conflict?  Not because of this life but because of the next.”

Hamid notes that, when witnessing in person back in 2011 the initial joy in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in the early, heady days of the Arab Spring in Egypt, he was “almost feeling a certain envy” of their joy in this moment of history, which was theirs and apart from him; he writes: “I wondered what it would feel like to be part of a revolution, to be denied freedom your entire life and then to feel even a whiff of it.”  He considers that it is often in stable Western societies where “boredom” permeates politics: nothing too threatening, nothing too existential is coming from the government.  This is a boredom, he notes, that is foreign to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members suffering from or fleeing the murderous persecution of General Sisi’s Egyptian dictatorship.  Shadi deftly quotes Andrew Sullivan to note that an authoritarian dictatorship can seem like an omnipresence that overwhelms you on a daily basis, invading your very psyche.

For Americans, this means that, in the era of Trump, many were experiencing something akin (but obviously not fully) to the non-boredom the Egyptians talking to Hamid described; the oppression and anxiety felt generated a level of excitement and purpose to life—at least political life—that has been generally absent in large proportional quantities in the West in recent decades.  Some even wanted Trump to win for thrill of the chaos he would create, apart from his politics or agenda.  Channeling Fukuyama, Hamid asks us to consider if the end of ideological competition would always only be temporary because without such competition, public intellectual and political life seems far less interesting, and that people would foster some new ideological conflict just to make things exciting again.

Next, Shadi references the late, great Christopher Hitchens as one of the prolific romantics of our era, who clearly felt a constant desire to be connected to humanity through one great struggle or another, to stand up to some great evil, in a way that defined much of who he was in life as both a writer and a person.  Hamid quotes a reviewer of one of Hitchens’ last books published before his death from cancer at the end of 2011 to put out the idea that people like Hitchens replace God with themselves, but I’d like to think they replace God with a humanist cause.

Near the end of his piece, Hamid pens the following phrase that is also the article’s lede: “Knowing what you’re against has a way of clarifying the mind and sharpening the focus.”  He concludes his entire piece with the following: “Being in a constant state of alarm, wanting to be alarmed, can be unusually thrilling.”

While Shadi is right, Ani’s piece makes me think how much better it is to be feeling just as strong that you are for something, not just for destroying or stopping another thing, but really for something in a positive sense.  America fought two significant wars in recent decades against the brutal Taliban in Afghanistan and against Saddam Hussein’s brutal Iraqi regime, its remnants, and other brutal terrorists in Iraq, whether al-Qaeda, ISIS and its precursor, or other sectarian elements.  But for much of those sad conflicts, it was hard to feel much passion for a lot of what we were fighting for: an inept, terribly corrupt Afghan government, not much good at fighting without U.S. support?  A weak Iraqi government riven by sectarianism?

Like Shadi’s article, Ani’s piece certainly makes us aware than an enemy like Russia can inspire unity.  But what is the even more powerful takeaway from her eloquent discussion, what is exponentially more inspiring and unifying is a Ukraine fighting against an enemy like Russia.  Some say “Putin united the West.”  I prefer to think, even more so, that Ukraine did.

See all Brian’s Ukraine coverage here

Brian’s Ukraine journalism has been praised by: Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; the Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces; Scott Shane, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly of The New York Times & Baltimore Sun (and featured in HBO’s The Wire, playing himself); Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of the only Republicans to stand up to Trump and member of the January 6th Committee; and Orwell Prize-winning journalist Jenni Russell, among others.

© 2022 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse June 20, 2018

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) June 20th, 2018 (republished in slightly edited form on the English version of Al Bawaba News on June 20th, 2018, and by The Muslim Times on June 20th)

AFP/Getty Images

AMMAN — Recent protests have led some analysts to characterize Jordan as weak and going through destabilization. Instead, Jordan has pretty much schooled the entire Middle East (and, indeed, many other places) on protests, civic engagement, and how government can and should respond to both. Rather than produce fear and apprehension in the eyes of analysts and other observers, Jordan and Jordanians have rightfully earned a tremendous amount of respect, whether or not those that should show this respect realize this.

Longstanding Grievances Flowing Together

Something remarkable has happened—is happening—in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the past few weeks. The small but relatively very stable country has seen a confluence of several trends and grievances that have spilled over—erupted would be rather too strong—into a flowering of national protest.

One long-running trend in for Jordan is that it has been a dumping ground for refugees from various regional conflicts for years now (really decades, but especially of late). The majority of today’s Jordanians are Palestinian refugees from the wars with Israel and those refugees’ descendants. A decade ago, Jordan was hosting from around 700,000, perhaps as many as a million, Iraqi refugees. Today, there are some 1.4 million Syrian refugees in Jordan, including informal, unregistered refugees, comprising roughly 20 percent of the small Kingdom’s total population. The Syrian refugee influx, in particular, has had serious negative economic consequences for Jordan, especially in terms of soaring rent increases, food price increases, and increased youth unemployment, with Syrian refugees costing Jordan some six percent of its GDP, or about one-quarter of Jordan’s yearly governmental revenue, roughly $2.5 billion a year according to a 2016 World Bank report.

Many Jordanians see the conflicts driving these refugees to Jordan as being driven and orchestrated by the U.S. (conspiratorially, so much so that, after four years in Jordan, I have yet to hear a Jordanian that blames the American people, whom they usually see as pawns being manipulated by elites, and many do not even blame Trump, Obama, Bush, or other past presidents, seeing them as puppets of a mysterious international cabal) and Saudi Arabia.

With recent Saudi comments and moves indicating an informal alliance of common interests between Saudi Arabia and Israel, many in Jordan (especially Palestinian) see the Saudis as selling out to Israel, and feelings towards Saudi Arabia in Jordan are far from warm.

Indeed, there is a perception among many Arabs that there is an emerging U.S.-Israeli-Saudi axis that is throwing the Palestinians under the proverbial bus. And it was in this context that Donald Trump threw more gas onto the fire when he announced in early December, 2017, that he would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, breaking decades of official U.S. neutrality on the subject (both Israelis and Palestinians claims Jerusalem as their capital) and prejudicing the Israeli side in any future negotiations. After the first Friday noon prayers (the Muslim equivalent of Christian Sunday mass) at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (Islam’s third holiest site after Mecca and Medina) after Trump’s announcement, worshippers, of course, vented anger at Israel and the U.S., but were also very vocal in blaming Saudi Arabia, too, for seeming to at least tacitly support the U.S. decision behind the scenes. Saudi Arabia is also a driving force behind the rebellion against Assad, particularly in its support of Sunni rebel militias challenging his rule, and yet, Saudi Arabia has not taken in a single official Syrian refugee, content to let Jordan and others shoulder that burden despite the Saudis intense involvement in Syria.

That same Friday, this led to massive (but peaceful) protests in Amman, witnessed by yours truly. 

Protests were hardly limited to Jerusalem, Amman, or Jordan.

In particular, protests have been organized mainly by Hamas in Gaza—under an Israeli semi-siege for over a decade—since late March, protests in which many thousands of Palestinians have approached, and even rushed, Gaza’s militarized border manned by Israel. While the vast majority of these protesters, including women and children, have not been armed, many have still thrown rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli troops, as well as rolled burning tires towards them and sent kites with burning material attached over Gaza’s border with Israel in an attempt to start fires on the Israeli side. No Israeli soldiers have been killed or wounded by these actions, but Israeli gunfire against the protesters have killed over 120 Palestinians and wounded another 3,800 more in actions much of the rest of the world calls disproportionate.

Many Jordanians, even those not of Palestinian descent, feel an intense emotional connection to their fellow Arabs—often kin—living across the Jordan river under some form of Israeli control. Thus, is has been very difficult these past few months for them to accept Trump’s decision and to witness the violence from the Israeli army in Gaza meted out on the protesters.

The bloodiest day was the day of the official move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, a day in which at least 58 people were killed and several thousand more injured.

The move was officially made on May 14th of this year, on the Western calendar reckoning of Israeli’s Independence Day, in this case the 70th anniversary the end of the British Mandate and the declaration of Israel as a state, an event Palestinians remember as al-Nabka, the Catastrophe, in which some 700,000 Arab Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during a conflict in which the Jewish state of Israel was established on most of British Mandate Palestine, an area which had been majority Arab for many centuries. The embassy move in 2018 came just two days before the holy month of Ramadan began, a month of intense day-long fasting, reflection, and spirituality. But with this Ramadan coming right after U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the bloody Gaza protests, and the relocation of America’s embassy to disputed Jerusalem, from a Palestinian-centered standpoint (a view shared by an overwhelming majority of Jordanians, whether they have Palestinian blood in them or not), this was a Ramadan with all too much that was unpleasant left to linger in the minds of Jordanians as they engaged in deep reflection.

Tone-Deaf Policies Lead to a Chorus of Protests

In the months leading up to this, there was another form of violence occupying the minds of Jordanians besides the violence in Gaza: the assault of steady price increases throughout 2018. The year began in January with a series of tax increases in January, first increasing sales tax and taxes on a range of goods, including cigarettes (extremely popular in Jordan: Jordan has the 8th-highest smoking rate in the world), with the first major decrease in bread subsidies since 1996 announced shortly after, leading to the main staple bread in Jordan going up in price by 60%. The move sparked unrest back in 1996, and the deeply unpopular moves to start this year were also met with some protests. Early in 2018, Jordanians in general were estimated to have to increase spending by 10-15 percent just to maintain their current living standards after these changes.

A least a proposed tax increase on medicines that month was canceled after over half of the parliament voiced disapproval, though.

But more pain was to come.

While in February, Jordan raised the minimum wage, a tax increase was levied that month on non-essential goods and the government also raised taxes on cigarettes again and on widely-consumed soft drinks and telecom services, including mobile phone plans and credit used by virtually everyone. There were further increases in electricity in March (sparking some protests) and also in April, and in In May, it was more increases, a minor one in fuel and an over 13 percent increase in electricity costs.

While in these months, the increases in electricity excluded households that consumed lower amounts of electricity, that exemption was absent for an announced whopping 23.5 percent increase in electricity prices for June that was also accompanied by a smaller fuel price increase.

The series of price increases and proposed tax increases were in part a result of an agreement made between the International Monetary Foundation (IMF) and the Jordanian government. Despite a lot of ignorance and conspiracy theories about what the IMF is and what it does, it is not simply a tool of U.S. control and “neoliberal” “imperialism” designed to keep countries like Jordan poor and weak, though, as with so many things in this region, it is easy to understand why such misperceptions and conspiracy theories flourish. In reality, the IMF is a global financial institution that is part of the United Nations group of institutions and is somewhat economically proportionately dominated by the wealthiest nations with the biggest economies and that contribute the most to the IMF’s fund. The U.S., as the largest contributor and world’s largest economy, has by far the largest voting share (less than 17 percent) in the IMF, and, to be sure, it wields a lot of influence in the institution beyond that voting share, but the point to recognize here is that the IMF is a broad international financial institution that generally reflects the collective will of the world’s largest economies, and if they decide to provide financial assistance to other countries, like any loaner, they have a right to attach conditions to those nations who want their money. At the same time, the agreement for a $723 million IMF loan between Jordan and the IMF—reached back in 2016—seems to have clearly overestimated Jordan’s capability to enact reforms at the desired pace and significantly underestimated the continuing problems posed by the refugee crisis and other maladies plaguing Jordan, and that should have been clear to both sides when the agreement was made.

Even before June’s price increases were announced, on May 22nd, a major proposed income tax law overhaul designed to keep pace with agreed-to IMF reforms was approved by the Cabinet, to be sent to and debated by the parliament. This tax law would have greatly increased the corporate tax rates, empowered tax collection capabilities to deal with tax evasion, and doubled the income tax base (only 4 percent of Jordanians currently pay income tax).

By May 30th, Jordanian civil society had organized a massive general strike of the professional middle class: doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, pharmacists, journalists, and others, along with some of the key related professional organizations and unions. Other Jordanians, in particular youth, joined the protests. 

A tone-deaf government then announced the aforementioned June major price hikes the following day, the day before Friday prayers and during Ramadan, no less, when fasting and reflective moods would only contribute to the agitation felt by the new policy proposals after many months of steady increases. In fact, one could not think of a much worse time than on a Thursday during Ramadan, the day before main Friday noon prayers—the traditional time to go through with major protests in the Muslim world—and coming so soon after the Jerusalem-Gaza drama that affected so many Jordanians so deeply on an emotional level.

These Jordanians may not have been able to stop violence in Gaza or reverse Trump’s Jerusalem decision, but they were not going to look at these latest government tax increases and price hikes with the same spirit of frustrated (if rage-filled) resignation. Unlike Donald Trump and Israel, Jordanians would expect their government to listen, and they would be sure to make sure their government heard their voices loud and clear.

The same day as the announcement, and just one day after the civil-society-orchestrated general strike against the tax law, a far more spontaneous series of mass protests broke out throughout Jordan against the utility price increases specifically and in general against the overall price/tax increases. As noted, the timing all but guaranteed mass protests on Friday, after noon prayers. Seeing the mass public outcry, later that day King Abdullah II froze the just-announced price hikes, responding swiftly to what was clearly widespread public pushback against them.

Yet the protests did not diminish, not Friday night, not throughout the weekend. If anything, they grew and intensified around the country. No one-off temporary freeze on price hikes would suffice: the people were focused wanted an indication of deeper change, also taking up the cause of the earlier civil society protests against the changes to the income tax law; if anything, the two seemingly separate protests had clearly merged into one nation-wide movement.

These were the most intense protests in Jordan focused on domestic policy since the 2011-2012 “hirak” protests over a range of issues that were concurrent with the heyday of the Arab Spring, then fluctuating between price (especially gas) increases and tribal and Islamist issues, peaking in early 2011 and late 2012, with a few notable flare-ups in violence that were still ultimately minimal, especially considering the regional context.

Arab Spring 2.0?

Unlike the wider Arab Spring protests, despite some exceptions the overwhelming focus of the 2011-2012 protests were not overthrowing the government but on calling for action on specific policies. Those protests were more sporadic and less representative of the overall population that the recent protests that just took place, which had a very unified, mass-participatory character that transcended what happened before even as Jordanian protesters and civil society organizations built upon what happened back then.

In fact, Jordanians in the past few weeks seemed largely committed to avoiding the mistakes of the larger Arab Spring with these latest protests, almost as if they had studied them in detail and took away specific lessons of what not to do, making clear their peaceful intentions and enthusiastically waving abundant Jordanian flags. The same could be said of both government leaders and security forces. If 2011-2012 could really be seen as a major emergence of civil society, even a birth (or rebirth?) of it in Jordan, then 2018 can be said to be Jordanian civil society’s coming of age, perhaps even an Arab Spring 2.0 that can avoid much of the tragedy of the first iteration.

As the 2018 protests continued into the following week, on Monday the King sacked Prime Minister Hani Mulki, who had stood by seeing the bill through to a parliamentary debate and had thus drawn the ire of protesters. But still the protests continued.  So the King appointed reform-minded, liberally-inclined Omar Razzaz as the new prime minister, who had been a supporter of civil society and had also held a significant position at the World Bank and was thus poised to be able to balance the competing interests in question. Yet still the protests continued, and for several days, until Razzaz promised to withdraw the income tax law. He promised dialogue and an unprecedented, robust engagement with civil society. The King himself directed that such an approach be undertaken, too, so it seems clear that Razzaz will have support from the highest levels of the Jordanian system.

It truly seems as if the people and civil society have won: by all indications since Razzaz took over, the government will take into account input from the people and civil society, especially on reforming the tax law, and it seems highly unlikely that the same attempted price hikes will be tried again to that degree anytime soon, as the people made clear they were able to organize quickly and sustain their pressure if only cosmetic adjustments were made. Thus, after the eighth day of what were almost entirely peaceful protests, after it was announced the tax law changes would be tabled, the protests basically ended on Thursday, June 7th, one of their epicenters in Amman’s Fourth Circle near the Prime Ministry with a far smaller group of young people celebrating their achievement that evening, replacing the protesting crowds of earlier, far tenser nights.

In fact, things seem to be coming together nicely for Jordan: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait just pledged some $2.5 billion in aid to Jordan, the EU has indicated that it will keep supporting Jordan economically, and Jordan has indicated it will push the IMF for a slowdown in the reform plan. Together, these three things could really alleviate the strain of the increasing economic burdens on Jordan’s weary population.

It is probably safe to say that, when the civil society-organized strike began on Wednesday, May 30th, that nobody imagined that things would be where they are now. In a region—heck, a world—starved of positive political developments and hope, this series of events in underappreciated Jordan is nothing short of remarkable.

*****

A Model the Cynics and Extremists Can’t Easily Dismiss

In the end, Jordan—its people, its civil society, its security forces, its government, and the King—all faced a series of challenges in the past week and then some; all overall conducted themselves in a deliberative, focused, organized, respectful, restrained way. The preceding adjectives are basically impossible use if you are trying to describe the angry hordes of protesters and activists, both right and left, that seem to monopolize protest scenes in the West and many other places of late, as well as both traditional and social media and can, therefore and unfortunately, be more effectively described as ineffective mobs content to do what satisfies their emotional needs as opposed to doing anything that might even be remotely described as helping to bring about effective change. 

This was not a group of radicals hijacking a disciplined civil society movement, as has happened far too often in history.

This was no amorphous Occupy rabble, no Tea Party mob, no Women’s March asserting their collective identity as a gender against a misogynistic president but not having any overwhelmingly clear aims.

This was not a Tahrir Square crowd vaguely demanding unspecified massive change or a whole new government, and this was certainly not a mass of Palestinians calling for a total reversal of the entire status quo.

No, this was a disciplined, focused, restrained coming together of civil society, the middle class, and the working class. 

It was the population of Jordan speaking out more or less in one clear voice, about clear specific desires on specific issues.

And this is a model the whole world can learn from, as much of it seems to have forgotten that this is how change happens: incrementally, with discipline, organization, patience, and non-violence.

Twitter/@AlghadNews

As opposed to weapons, Molotov cocktails, or rocks, protesters chanted peaceful slogans and even handed refreshments to security forces, and the security forces returned the favor. Only very small numbers on either side were looking for trouble: the rest were looking to make a difference and/or keep things peaceful. There was respect all around here in Jordan over the past few weeks, between protesters and security forces, between the people and government, between civil society and both the people and the government.

Twitter/@AlghadNews

That’s right: tiny little Jordan has just schooled the world as how to mount an effective protest movement that leverages civil society to bring about meaningful change, bringing the people and the government closer together in their positions on specific policies.

What is remarkable is that so few people either here in Jordan or in the international media seem to understand what has happened, and how urgently this needs to be celebrated and respected and—most importantly—copied.

In the end, a reformer who is perfect for this moment now leads Jordan’s parliament, the two major problems—the tax law amendments and the price hikes that were the focus of protesters—will not proceed as originally planned, civil society showed it is now truly a force to be reckoned with in Jordanian politics, the government showed its people and the world it is ready to listen and respond to the people, and the people showed all would-be protesters how to get the job done.

If you’re Jordanian, you can hold your head up high after a truly special week in Jordan’s history. And if you’re not Jordanian, swivel that head to pay attention to Jordan, and be sure to take notes.

See a related article by the same author in Venture Magzine: Relief and Development: Ending the Zero-Sum Myth

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg in an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area currently based in Amman, Jordan. The views expressed here necessarily represent only his own, not necessarily the views of any organization with which he has been, or is currently, associated. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 8, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) April 8th, 2017

Mohamed Al-Bakour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

AMMAN — I had originally titled this piece “Time to Put Up or Shut Up, Donald.” As I continued to write, though, reports that Trump was considering military strikes against Assad’s government for his horrific recent chemical weapons attack on civilians designed to terrorize his own people surfaced on Tuesday, April 4th; that ensuing Thursday, April 6th, it was time for your author here to (finally) have some fun and go to a party, and by the time I got home, when I had already thought the odds of Trump eventually hitting Assad were greater than those of him not hitting him, the strikes had already been launched, necessitating something of a reworking of my article.

There is a lot to digest here.

*****

Can Trump Succeed Where Obama Failed?

Full disclosure: I voted for Obama twice and enthusiastically but I would say the biggest mistake of his presidency was backing away from his “red line” on the use of chemical weapons after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used them to barbaric effect against his own people back in the fall of 2013. At that time, Assad and his forces were reeling and U.S. military action targeting his forces, especially the Syrian Arab Air Force, would have been decisive in changing the trajectory of the Syrian Civil War, especially since a robust Western entry and enforcement of no-fly zones would have prevented Russia’s subsequent robust entry in the fall of 2015.

Now, in the spring of 2017, the situation is quite different: Assad has obliterated many of the rebel strongholds, most notably (and most tragically) Aleppo, and ISIS, too, has been severely weakened, facing its final days in Mosul, Iraq, one of its two last major strongholds, and in the process of being encircled in its other stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, its “capital;” furthermore, not only does Assad’s government have the active of support of the Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah and of Iran’s military on the ground (among other Shiite militias), but it also enjoys the robust military support of Russia and its vaunted air force. And even though Assad’s military has been whittled to down a shell of its former self(even his Syrian Arab Air Force is running low on parts and serviceable craft and can ill afford aircraft losses), with his allies, he is in far stronger position now than he was when Obama backed away from striking Syrian forces in 2013, even if heavily dependent on these allies.

And still, the most powerful military force on the planet—that of the United States, which in 2015 spent more on its military than Russia and the other six largest military spenders in the world combined—can easily make a huge impact, and let those who employ the use of chemical weapons against civilians, or support those who do, know that there will be a costfor such actions. And it seems a warning shot has now been fired to that effect.

Before backing away from striking Assad, Obama spoke in the Rose Garden  on August 31st, 2013, asking a question:

Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?

Make no mistake — this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorist who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?

We cannot raise our children in a world where we will not follow through on the things we say, the accords we sign, the values that define us.

His words ring just as true today.

Obama sadly, and rather pathetically, did not put serious action behind his eloquent words about why we needed to support an international system where the use of such weapons of mass destruction as well as mass killing were not tolerated. The Republicans later skewered Obama for backing away—even as most of them hypocritically criticized his proposed military action at the time (many even signing a formal letter stating he needed authorization from Congress to act) before he backed away from it, a decision Obama made in part because they would not support him; Trump himself tweeted at Obama not to attack Syrian forces back then.

Since then, Republicans proceeded to criticize Obama for having a weak strategy even while offering precious few specifics that differed from Obama’s strategy, as did Trump, who, just as hypocritically as the others in his newly adopted Republican Party, also repeatedly asserted Obama’s weakness was responsible for the horrors in Syria up through his recent April 4th press conference with King Abdullah of Jordan that took place just hours after the recent Syrian government chemical attack in the Idlib area of Syria.

I figured that Trump, ever the narcissist, values his public perception as much as anything, and after beating up on Obama’s weakness for years, and given a chance to show himself to be the more “decisive” and “macho” “man” in a situation that had no choice but to be compared to Obama’s waffling in the fall of 2013 , would most certainly at least be tempted to reverse his pro-Russia and somewhat pro-Assad policy and to act to punish Assad where Obama declined to do so. As I watched him speak on the issue over the past few days, Trump even seemed genuinely moved by the horrific images of dying babies and other civilians coming out of Idlib.

And putting aside these considerations of personality here, there are very good reasons for Trump to have done what he did.

*****

Why Trump Was Right

Before Trump fired cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield, Assad and his Russian backers were clearly feeling they could do anything they want and get away with it and feared no U.S. intervention; impunity would be their modus operandi, there would be no political settlements, no “peace negotiations;” no, Assad and his backers were going to continue to systematically exterminate any whiff of opposition, city by city, town by town, corpse by corpse. Concessions? To rebels? To terrorists? To “terrorists?” One must simply ask: why would he need to comply with the demands of the international community? What pressures existed that would actually constrain Assad or extract any concessions, especially when Russia—one of the most powerful nations in the world and with the most centralized power structure at the top of any major world power—would just lie and claim “terrorists,” not at the Syrian military, were to blame for whatever atrocity Assad (or Russia) had perpetrated, or that the atrocity in question had not happened at all, as it has for years? Does anyone think rhetorical flourishes from the West, Turkey, and Arab League members would change anything? When Russia has vetoed seven different United Nations Security Council resolutions against the Assad regime, with Russia’s ground, naval, and air forces (along with Iran and Hezbollah and other Shiite militias) inside Syria energetically empowering Assad to operate knowing there would be no substantive consequences no matter what atrocity he committed—even if he killed hundreds of thousands of people with indiscriminate attacks and the deliberate targeting of civilians, even if used outlawed chemical weapons to kill his own people—what on earth is left to compel Assad to even feel the need to negotiate, let alone stop his mass slaughter of civilians?

The sad answer in our real world as it exists today is clear: one thing, and one thing only…

Military force exerted by the United States of America. 

Especially with Russia operating in Syria supporting Assad, only the United States could lead any kind of military force to challenge the above status quo. Nothing else could give Assad pause or cause him to consider restraint. But the United States showed Assad that even with the Russian military there, his forces were not safe if President Trump, the U.S. Military’s Commander in Chief, decided to strike at him, which he did. And for all of Russia’s tough talk, its military and air force are far inferior in quality and numbers to their American counterparts, so the idea that Russia would risk a serious military confrontation with the United States over Syria is ludicrous because it would only result in devastating defeat at the hands of the United States with no chance of saving face and only a high cost as a result, much worse than any cost that could be inflicted on the U.S. After all, Putin is not stupid enough to engage in a nuclear war that would destroy both nations and likely the world over the likes of Bashar al-Assad. Thus, what was also demonstrated for the world to see how little Russian protection actually meant for Assad in the face of U.S. military might.

In this situation, there were two options: do nothing serious and allow a regime that has no interest, inclination, or reason in its mind to negotiate or concede anything to continue to kill anyone it pleases and destroy anything it wants anytime it pleases while facing no consequences, or the United States can hit back, send a message, and force Assad to bend to the will of the world by behaving less barbarically towards his own people or face serious consequences, from warning punitive strikes to major degradation of his armed forces to exile and/or the fall of his government.

And contrary to what you might hear, this can be good for mitigating the conflict overall. After all, as I wrote three years ago, the current dynamics are clear: with Assad and ISIS both waging war on the people of Syria, nothing will stop the flow of refugees that risk destabilizing Syria’s neighbors that include multiple major U.S. allies—a flow that has helped spur an explosion of right-wing insanity in both Europe (where Russia is “weaponizing” the refugee crisis to damage the EU) and America, a right wing insanity that feeds the rise of radical Islamic extremism even as the war in Syria does the same—unless the war stops and/or safe zones are established, as nothing will convince the more than five million Syrians who have fled Syria (and that number only counts those registered by the UN: Jordan alone is estimated to have around 800,000 unregistered Syrians, compared with only 633,000 registered ones; this doesn’t even get to the more than 6.3 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, inside Syria) to return home as long as an impudent Bashar al-Assad feels he can kill at whim and will while the world makes noise but ultimately shrugs its shoulders. These dynamics also feed the growth in violent Islamic extremism in a vicious feedback loop.

I hear and read too many “experts” present a false Sophie’s choice: either we let Assad win or ISIS wins/the war doesn’t end. Well, in case you’re missing it, ISIS is on the verge of having its “caliphate” destroyed—thanks to a slow but steady strategy of Obama’s that was clearly coming to penultimate fruition even before Trump was sworn in (a fact that won’t stop Trump from taking credit for it)—and history shows that non-intervention in brutal wars involving mass killings (e.g., Cambodia and Rwanda) can allow killing to continue unabated for a long time and can lead to genocide, while well-executed intervention (e.g., WWII, Bosnia, and Kosovo) stops or at least partially halts mass killing. 

Now, of course, there is a possibility that the intervention will fail or make things worse—a possibility exaggerated by the recent memory of Iraq, more of an aberration of Western intervention in its relative mass incompetence than the post-Cold War norm—but any attempt to solve any problem in life risks making that problem worse, so that possibility is, by itself, an illogical reason to not intervene, a total cop-out, and a path to inhuman nihilism.

As one man—Kassem Eid—who survived the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack that nearly prompted Obama to attack Assad noted yesterday:

If you really care about refugees, if you really care about helping us, please, help us stay in our country… we don’t want to become refugees, we want to stay in our country, help us establish safe zones…please take out Assad’s air forces so they won’t be able to commit more atrocities.

The United States and its allies are more than capable of doing just that, and if Trump’s action is not a one-off—and let’s be honest, this ego-driven narcissist with authoritarian, even fascistic tendencies has had his first real exercise of power and he will love it, not in the least because he has earned global praise for it (and only it), so it very likely will not be a one-off—the likelihood is more than not that this is all going to be mainly handled by professionals in the U.S. military, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis is no Donald Rumsfeld. As detestable and anti-refugee as Trump is, because of his decision, there is now a greater chance than at any time since 2013 for the much-needed establishment of safe-zones protected by the international community.

It will also teach Russia that its recent run giving the West the finger has not empowered it as much as it thinks actually and makes Russia even weaker, with Russia unable to prevent American intervention in Syria even with its military there and seeing its investment in expanding its power there destroyed, exposing its troops to risk while supporting a WMD-using thug and making it even more so one of the most hated countries in the world and especially hated by a Sunni Muslim population (most of Alawite/Shiite Assad’s victims are Sunni Muslims) with a tiny fringe more susceptible to violent radicalization than any other group at present, keeping in mind that Russia has an oppressed Sunni Muslim population that has produced a notable number of anti-Russian terrorists and terrorist incidents since Russia’s conflicts in the Russian republic of Chechnya, the Caucasus overall, and the country of Afghanistan before that). As I wrote before, Russia intervened from a position of desperation and weakness, and Russia’s weak hand has only improved marginally for all its efforts but has also saddled it with more responsibility.

Trump’s strike will certainly make Iran question the cost of its support of Assad along with helping to limit the expansion of Hezbollah’s power.

Also, as was I pointed out also back in 2013, there is still little risk to the U.S. and a high-probability of success in striking Assad’s air power, military bases, or heavy weapons, which are difficult or impossible to hide. Hezbollah, Assad, and ISIS have enough on their hands to devote much to any “response” to the U.S.

Finally—and again, I will repeat I thought Obama’s inaction (and the Republican-led Congress’s vocal lack of support) were a mistake in 2013—there is an important difference between now and 2013. Back then, as I noted above, Assad’s forces were being pushed back and U.S. intervention may have led to the toppling of his government, and this not long after the disillusionment of the experience of Libya’s post-NATO-intervention problems (although I still would say that the intervention was successful in saving many lives preventing a civil war from being prolonged, but more on that another time); no other major power had intervened in Syria and thus owned the conflict, to speak, and that was another solid argument Obama could have put out on the side of non-intervention, even if non-intervention was still the weaker overall argument. Today, Russia is heavily involved in Syria, far more than the U.S., and it is hard to imagine Putin simply pulling out and letting the situation devolve into chaos, a result that would be blamed in large part on Russia and that would hurt Putin’s prestige and his own credibility when it comes to Russia intervening anywhere. With another great power invested besides America, unlike in 2013, the idea that the toppling of Assad would result in anarchy and a terrorist safe haven is less of a likelihood, since now two great powers will be heavily invested in the outcome if the U.S. becomes more heavily involved and actions lead to Assad’s ouster or weakening.

If you let your justifiable hatred of Trump get in the way of your support of even someone like him doing more than anyone has yet to help the long-term situation of Syrian refugees—if you refuse to understand that these strikes may be the first step in creating paths for Syrians to safely return to Syrian soil—you care more about your personal feelings and personal politics than actually helping refugees at worse, or are incredibly myopic at best.

*****

Causes For Concern

Don’t get me wrong: there are things about this that worry me. 

I respect the U.S. military and Mattis and have faith in both of them, and it’s virtually impossible for a president to micromanage a major U.S. military operation without massive influence from his secretary of defense, and as awful as Trump is, at least in a situation like Syria today, I’d be more worried about a Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld combination than a Trump-Pence-Mattis combination (though unquestionably Bush is better individually than Trump), and I think Mattis will impress Trump with his competence as any operations unfold and will gain more influence in this way. 

Having said that, I’m also scared about a Trump that gets a taste of military success, and am especially terrified with a North Korea now acting up when military aggression as a U.S. response on the Korean Peninsula would initiate a bloodbath that would make Bush’s Iraq invasion look mild in comparison, and especially so if Trump feels military adventurism is a preferred course when he is having a miserable time in domestic politics, which could lead to who knows what down the road.

I also worry that Trump being seen as the savior of Syrian refugees would make people forget about how awful his refugee and immigration policies are. I’m further worried that this will make people lose interest in his Russian scandals and make the Republican Party feel it will have cover again to obstruct and distract from the investigation after such actions (see the drama of Devin Nunes) had cost them. And I’m worried that this action may partly legitimize Trump and his dangerous program when, apart from this action, he and his program are not worthy of legitimization, only opposition and resistance.

So I will continue to vigorously oppose Trump and his agenda overall. But because I care passionately about human rights, stopping mass killing and genocide, and seeking a long-term situation for refugees and the Syrian Civil War, I will support his efforts to to go against Assad.

Political Considerations

But the move made a tremendous amount of sense for Trump and his administration for political reasons, and the chance Assad gave him to act was also something of a political gift from heaven.

For one thing, Trump has had a miserable first few months on the domestic front, without a single major accomplishment he could take credit for thus far and nearing the end of his 100 days, with self-inflicted wound after self-inflicted wound resulting in likely the worst first 100 days of any president.

In other words, Trump might be looking at no chance of a major accomplishment whatsoever during his first 100 days; a domestic accomplishment still seems a remote possibility, leaving only the realm of something dramatic in foreign policy, which before Assad’s chemical attack, and during a week in which his team had signaled acceptance of Assad’s rule over Syria, there had seemed few openings of this type either. Acting against Assad would credibly give Trump a big “win” at a time he desperately needs one and might even be his only chance for one.

Speaking of desperate, Trump’s approval-rating average had dipped below 40%, a historic low for so early in a presidency; this opportunity was one of the only ways on the horizon for Trump to be able to bring his poll numbers up anytime soon.

He was also about to host Chinese President Xi Jinping at a time when his administration was a disgrace and after months of bashing China; Trump’s strike immediately allowed him to move from a position of humiliation to one where he could project power while hosting Xi, who expressed private empathy for Trump ordering the strikes even as China did not offer public support. It will be interesting to consider what effect if any this will have on North Korea and on America’s efforts to enlist Chinese aid in dealing with North Korea.

And, of course, the elephant in the room for the entirety of Trump’s presidency so far has been the Trump Campaign and Trump Administration’s deeply disturbing ties to Russia, Putin, Russian money, and Russian organized crime, including Russia’s obvious efforts to help Trump defeat Clinton in the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar. Striking the Assad regime, Russia’s only true in-power ally outside of the states of the former Soviet Union, while Russia’s forces are actively engaged in supporting Assad has provided Trump with an excellent opportunity to take some of the heat off of him and his people as well as to demonstrate he is not beholden to or being controlled by the Russians amid hardly-purely-speculative accusations and suspicions be might be. In other words, Trump could go on offense in his weakest area, deflecting attention away from his biggest scandal—and possibly the biggest scandal in American history—and acting in a way that could reassure some of his less strident critics and give his supporters some much needed-assistance and cover to be able to, in turn, provide cover for him (though, substantively, nothing he has done here does anything to address the possible realities of past issues with ties to Russia, but perception is very powerful in politics and this move certainly affects perception in Trump’s favor).

In other worse, Trump personally had so much to gain and so little to lose with competently executed, limited strikes at this stage. 

In addition, at least some of Trump’s people must realize that the Democratic Party is still far less extreme that the Republican Party; unlike the Democrats, who said no to a takeover by the Bernie Sanders wing, the Republican Party has been hijacked by extremists for years, and, as I have noted, Democrats have been far more bi-partisan in their support of presidential foreign policy and national security than Republicans, so there was a good chance many Democrats would support this move in addition to Republicans and it seems that this is the case thus far.

Thus, politically, it was the best move Trump could have made with no other good options in sight. In some ways, it could even be called a no-brainer. If I were one of Trump’s political advisors, I would definitely have recommended this action.

*****

Apart from the political considerations, the far more important considerations involve the actual policy and substantive non-domestic-political considerations and the human lives affected by this strike. And as someone who truly hates Trump and sees him as the threat to democracy and the world order that he is, it is here that as a student of policy and a person who cares about saving lives and preserving international norms that it is easy for me to support this action enthusiastically, despite my misgivings for the man calling the shots behind it.

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse January 27, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter: @bfry1981) January 27th, 2017; original interview conducted December 24th-26th, 2017; here is the English version of the interview published by ISNA on January 24th, and here is the Farsi (Persian) version

Carolyn Kaster/AP

Iranian Student News Agency (interviewer: Atefeh Moradi): The US election has passed, but we can truly see the polarized atmosphere in American society; how do you anticipate the political and social situation after 20 Jan.?

Brian Frydenborg: To be honest, it will be pretty awful. 53.9% of voters chose a candidate other than Trump, including 48.2% for Secretary Clinton, to Trump’s 46.1% (f this seems strange, just look up Electoral College on the Internet, and you will see that American elections are based on voting majorities divided into specific regions, not an absolute national majority). Yet Trump and his party will control the White House and both houses of Congress (with a large majority in the House and a small majority in the Senate), as well as the federal judiciary once Trump starts making judicial appointments and getting them confirmed, including filling that all-important vacant Supreme Court seat. For at least the next two years and likely even a longer period, this means almost 54% of Americans who voted will have no real power to check President Trump and his Republican Party from enacting an agenda they very forcefully do not support.

The one real exception to this is the filibuster, a Senate rule that, on most issues, allows the minority to prevent passage of something that cannot get at least 60 of 100 senators to support it; however, each new Congress can make its own rules, and Republicans will have the power to get rid of the filibuster if they choose to do so, which would become increasingly likely if Democrats use it block Trump’s and the Republicans’ agenda. If this happens, the Democrats lose their one way to check Trump independent of any help from Republicans, and, thus, will be powerless if Republicans stay united. Yes, in some ways, the Republican Party has not been this divided since the 1960s, but if one looks closer, this is not the case: while conservative public intellectuals and publications, many former Republicans officials (including both living former Republican presidents), and numbers of important major Republican political donors and fundraisers either privately or publicly oppose Trump, this is a tiny elite within the scope of the party as a whole; only a handful of senators and a small portion of Republican representatives in Congress consistently and publicly opposed Trump; nearly the entire Republican membership of Congress either supported Trump or dared not opposed him, and with the megaphone of the presidency on top of his Twitter-following of nearly 18 million people, Trump will be seeking to loudly intimidate any opposition, whether within his own party or not, and those within his own party will be highly vulnerable to this pressure as Trump can easily use it to rouse his followers. The political stalemate of the last six years will end as one party, led by Trump more than anyone else, will control the highest levels of the entire federal government.

What this means is that the nearly-54% will certainly see many of their hopes dashed and their fears realized, in particular women and minorities like African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans who have been subject to abuse of power by the private sector and the government at the local, state, and federal level. A Trump Administration seems poised to either stop actively protecting these groups from abuses with any vigor at the least, or to actively undermine some of the protections and gains they have enjoyed in civil rights that have been enacted in recent years. Either way, racial, ethnic, and religious tensions that have been simmering and occasionally exploding into riots and violent attacks over the past few years in America are likely to get dramatically worse under Trump and serious civil unrest is a real possibility; this will especially be the case if Trump keeps acting the way he has been, which is to say, in ways that do nothing to assure groups fearful of a Trump presidency that they will be respected and have their needs and concerns addressed seriously.

ISNA:Some analysts believe Trump campaign’s rhetoric is not the cornerstone of his policies, what would be your stance toward this?

BF: I would call this out as wishful thinking. While Trump’s stated positions have shifted so many times it’s been easy to lose count, his rhetoric and his style have stayed fairly consistent, and the overall content of his rhetoric makes it clear that many of his harsher policies are going to be pursued with vigor; any doubt about this should have been erased by his cabinet picks announced thus far. Even if he ends up enacting a milder form of some of what he has discussed, such policies will still be game-changers and move the country sharply to the right policy-wise. But as a practical matter, his supporters—and, within the Republican Party’s group of elected officials, a strong core of the Republican House members—will insist that he carries out his promises, and Trump, ever so needful of admiration and validation, won’t want to disappoint his biggest fans. So his constituents and counterparts in Congress will make it hard for him to backtrack, even if he wants to, which on most issues he probably does not. 

ISNA: In regard with Trump’s cabinet nominees, can you anticipate the upcoming Washington policies?

BF: The best sign that Trump might move into a “governing mode” and power down his “campaign mode” would have been putting moderate people who could unite the country into key positions of power, most notably selecting either Mitt Romney or David Petraeus as Secretary of State. By picking big-oil CEO Rex Tillerson (a Putin ally) as Secretary of State, but also along with virtually all of his other choices, Trump made it clear he has no intention of generally pursuing a more moderate course. Instead, he has assembled the most extreme and most right-wing cabinet and White House in American presidential history. A simple look at his choices and their records make this beyond dispute, so there should be no confusion as to what to expect from them. In several agencies—the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, and the Environmental Protection Agency—Trump even appointed people who don’t believe in the agencies core missions or are downright hostile to them. Others, like Dr. Ben Carson for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Nikki Haley for Ambassador to the United Nations, are supremely unqualified; still others like Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Ambassador to Israel David Friedman are outright extremists. And those who will be running the economy hail from the billionaire class. So those who are saying “Let’s wait and see…” are deluding themselves if they mean in any way to imply that a moderate course is a possibility and that moderates and liberals should not jump to conclusions: Trump’s behavior, actions, and selections are sending a clear message that would be foolish not to acknowledge.

ISNA: The US nuclear suitcase is in Trump’s hands now, do you think there should be any doubt about it?

BF: Let’s put it this way: should we think Trump would use nuclear weapons for fun or just on a whim? No. But the man’s character and temperament are so vastly different from every single president before him, and unsuited to the responsibility of the decision to use or not use nuclear weapons, that if a crisis with a major power like China erupted, I would be worried to have Trump as a Commander in Chief. If one recalls the Cuban Missile Crisis, WWIII and nuclear war were avoided because the cooler heads of both Kennedy and Khrushchev prevailed; the only way the phrase “cooler head” and the word “Trump” can fit into the same sentence is with satire. So if a truly grave situation did emerge, yes, we should be worried that Trump would be more likely to both threaten and use nuclear weapons than any previous American president in a similar situation. As it is, Trump is already calling for America to expand its nuclear arsenal, and the last thing that is good for the world now is a new nuclear arms race.  

This, in particular, concerns Iran, and Iran is in a tough position. Should Iran resume uranium enrichment because Trump follows through on his pledge to end the nuclear agreement from the U.S. side between the great powers and Iran, this would likely cause two things to occur: 1.) an attempt by Saudi Arabia to develop a nuclear program of its own, and perhaps Turkey, maybe even others, and 2.) an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities that would likely be supported or joined by a Trump Administration, sparking a wider war in the Middle East, likely between the U.S. and Sunni-led powers on one side and Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon in one form or another on the other. Yemen and Bahrain could easily become battlegrounds, and there is reason to consider as a serious possibility Russia joining or at least supporting the Shiite side, as Russia now already has something of an alliance with Iran, Hezbollah, and the Syrian Government through Syria’s Civil War.

ISNA: Trump repeatedly said that he is not for JCPOA [the Iran nuclear deal], although EU senior officials say it is beyond Trump’s authority to make any changes to this agreement; what would be your explanation on this issue?

BF: Trump can definitely end U.S. participation in the agreement, and can get Congress reapply the sanctions that were removed as part of it (these are separate from the current sanctions regarding military and terrorism issues). Would it be fair if Trump broke the agreement with Iran? No. Would it be understandable, even justified, for Iran to resume uranium enrichment under those circumstances? Of course. Yet sometimes, what you have the right and ability to do isn’t always the right choice, and the question Iran’s leaders will have to really ask themselves is this: is it really in Iranian interests to do so? Because if it does, the possibility of an Israeli strike—however unjustified or justified, leaving that question out it—supported or even joined by the U.S. becomes highly likely, and that is a situation that will be no good for Iran and Shiites all around the Middle East, especially those who are living under oppressive Sunni governments, or for the Middle East in general, not good at all. It will result in large losses of life and perhaps catastrophic economic and physical destruction.

Sometimes, leadership is about swallowing pride and being able to absorb verbal and diplomatic abuse (in this case, coming from a Trump Administration) than it is about confrontation and conflict, even if one feels one’s cause is just. Peace is its own reward and there are a number of outcomes that can be good for Iran that do not involve uranium enrichment. For one thing, after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and watching the Arab Spring churn largely into chaos, destruction, and death, there is virtually no appetite in the U.S. for a war that would involve overthrowing Iran’s government and occupying Iran with American troops; thus, should Iran seek nuclear weapons capability as a way to prevent a U.S. invasion and the overthrow of Iran’s own government, it is trying to prevent something that in all likelihood will not be happening, yet the pursuit of such a goal would be ruinous for Iran, as plenty of military options for the Israel and the U.S. exist, with their superior air forces, that do not involve an invasion or overthrowing the Iranian government.

For another thing, if Trump cancels the agreement and Iran does not resume enrichment, the moral high ground on this issue (apart from other considerations) will be incredibly strong for Iran, and the pressure on Trump and the U.S. from the rest of the world powers will be considerable, so great that the pressure the U.S. faces could be severe and beyond verbal, and if Trump initiates major trade wars with countries like China and Mexico, sanctions against the U.S. for violating the agreement would be even greater possibility that they would otherwise, though not necessarily likely. If Iran can resist the temptation and behave more responsibly than American leadership, the support from Europe, Russia, and China would be that much greater. And, ultimately, those nations are doing far more business with Iran than the U.S. In the end, the temptation to resume enrichment would be great, and nobody likes to undergo that level of pressure, but the longer-term interests of Iran, and the lives of the Iranian people, will be much better served by not pursuing such a course. If Trump behaves poorly and Iran conducts itself with restraint, the stature of Iran in worldwide diplomatic circles will only increase, with a deeper level of respect than it currently enjoys. It Iran tried to match Trump taunt for taunt, insult for insult, threat for threat—as some of his former Republican rivals tried to do—Iran will only be seen as more like Trump than as conducting itself in a more dignified manner, and Trump’s Republican rivals show there is no out-Trumping Trump: if there is one thing the Republican primaries taught us, it is that Trump always wins when his opponents sink to his level. Finally, Iran can know that many American people will appreciate this restraint, and should politics shift and Democrats make a comeback, new people who noted Iran’s praise-worthy restraint would be empowered by such restraint to improve U.S.-Iranian relations and support Iran should it pursue policies that defuse tensions and further peace.

ISNA: And finally, do you believe amid tensions which still are in the two countries’ relationship, especially regarding US sanctions and Iran’s nuclear program, and that so far have not vanished as was predicted after JCPOA, that it would be possible that Iran and US could be better friends rather than enemies?

BF: Well, the relevant nuclear-related sanctions have been removed by the Obama Administration; other sanctions related to other matters are separate issues. But to whether Iran and the U.S. make better friends than enemies, of course we make better friends. It just becomes much harder with Trump and the Republican Party running America’s foreign policy, and especially if the sanctions that have been removed by Obama are reimposed by Trump. Clinton would have been tough, but fair, with Iran: she would have honored the JCPOA, and have used that a basis to work for breakthroughs with Iran on Syria, Iraq, Israel, and other regional issues; such work might have led to the lifting of other non-nuclear sanctions. I have always believed that Iran and the U.S. have plenty of issues with which they can find enthusiastic agreement. And I think it’s overdue for a grand ayatollah to come to Washington and for a president to go to Tehran.

And yet, the biggest obstacle to having the JCPOA become a springboard for further cooperation thus far has been Syria. I’ve personally been disappointed in Iran’s actions when it comes to Syria. As old as the concept and word “terrorism” has been around, it has been used by oppressive leaders as an excuse to crush opposition and impose iron-fisted rule. This can be the case if there is no actual terrorism or, in the case of Syria, if there is very real terrorism, even the worst in the world. Iran has good reason to fear Sunni extremist terrorism from the likes of ISIS and al-Qaeda, but one can stand against terrorism while also condemning the slaughter of Syria’s people on a massive scale by the Assad government. I understand and respect that Assad is an Alawite and that Alawites are religious cousins of Iran’s Shiites, but history will judge Iran for its support of Assad and Russia’s assault on large segments of Syria’s civilian population, not just terrorists. Even with ISIS in charge of Mosul, with the Iraqi Army having the U.S. as an ally and behaving in a relatively restrained way towards civilians, look at how much worse the civilian killings and refugee situation is for Aleppo with the Syrian forces’ assault backed by Russia (it is interesting that Iran has advisors, forces, and/or militias involved in both operations, and can easily tell the differences in the conduct and brutality of the operations for themselves even if it does not acknowledge these differences publicly). In particular, I was saddened that Iran did not forcefully condemn Assad’s relatively larger-scale use of chemical weapons against his own people back in the fall of 2013, because I know how horribly Iranians and suffered when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons in an even more massive way against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, with the support and cover-up of the Reagan Administration, one of America’s most shameful acts.

Thus, I was hoping that Iran could be the conscience of the Assad regime since it is clear that Assad and Putin have almost none when it comes to Syria’s people. Imagine if Iran was seen not only to be a protector of Shiites, but also of Sunnis in Syria? I still believe that Iran can act within Syria as a force to reduce the brutality and killing of the civil war, something very clearly in line with more mainstream Islamic teachings since the time of the Prophet Muhammed himself, who during war generally urged humane treatment over brutality (after all, the very first verse of the Quran refers to Allah by the title of “the Merciful,”) and to act to push against Assad’s government’s and Russia’s military’s acts of indiscriminate killing.  

If Iran were to ensure that Assad, if(?)/when(?) victorious, shows mercy and takes great care to protect civilians, Iran can play the most constructive role of any power in Syria given the present realities, eclipsing Russia, Turkey, the Gulf, and the West (including the U.S.) in helping to make a humanitarian difference and saves lives. It is beneath the dignity of Iran to be an accomplice in the abuses of Assad against his own people, and Iran can be more than just a no-questions-asked ally like Russia, which is even taking part in the mass killings with its air force and heavy weapons. While Iran’s own government has its issues with human rights, it has never done anything to its own people that rises to Assad’s level of brutality, even in the suppressions that followed the end of the 1979 Iranian Revolution; during the run-up the Revolution, the Shah, too, did not even come close to Assad’s current levels of mass murder. 

Part of the spirit of the Iranian Revolution was originally one of standing up to oppression; for Iran to be true to itself and its ideals, it must work to help alleviate the suffering of Syria’s people, not just Alawite, but Sunnis, too, Kurds, and all of Syria’s people, especially to protect civilians at the mercy of Assad’s government and Russia’s air force who have been shown no mercy or next to none. With its troops on the ground and its close ally Hezbollah heavily involved in fighting in Syria on Assad’s behalf, and with Assad’s own official forces so heavily depleted, Iran is in the best position to do something about human rights and saving lives in Syria. If it does so clearly, visibly, and verifiably under international observers, it will win hearts and minds all over the West and the Sunni world, in addition to the Shiite world. 

If it helps Assad kill genocidal or near-genocidal-numbers of Syrians and turns a blind eye to this reality, it will be behaving just like Russia is now and like Saddam Hussein behaved in Iraq, and far crueler than the Shah. I believe Iran can be better than this, and if that happens, maybe not under Trump, but eventually the American government will show substantive appreciation for such actions of protection and mercy, along with the rest of the world community. But right now, with the world horrified not just by ISIS (and rightfully so) but also by the Assad government’s actions in Syria and especially Aleppo (and rightfully so), Iran is associated with this killing in Syria and it makes it harder for the West to proceed on negotiating with Iran when it comes to other issues, negotiations that may lead to the removal of non-nuclear sanctions. In fact, Iran turning a blind eye to mass killing in Syria makes it that much harder for other regional partners to trust it in working to find common ground on and resolutions to other important Middle Eastern issues.

Any who doubt that Iran and the U.S. can find common ground should look only to the crisis with former-Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki from 2014, when the Obama Administration, Iran, Iraq’s Shiite political establishment, and Shiite religious leaders in both Iran and Iraq came together to insist the divisive Maliki step aside to give new, less divisive leadership a chance, giving eventual rise to the far more accommodating team of Dr. Haider al-Abadi (more on that in my article here). Iraqi, Iranian, and American interests are all better-off as a result, and especially the Iraqi people, thus proving American-Iranian cooperation can bring about positive change to the region. 

Ironically, the Trump Administration will be far less concerned about human rights than other recent American administrations and is seeking to come together with Russia, which makes Iran’s respect for human rights all the more important when it comes to Syria. I can say one thing: to be seen coming together with Putin and Trump in working against human rights and ganging up against Sunnis will not raise Iran’s standing globally, nor will it make things better for the people of the Middle East, whether they are Shiite, Sunni, or of other faiths; the last thing that is in Iran’s and the region’s interests is a worsening of the Sunni-Shiite conflict already playing out across the region. With the rise of Trump, Iran has a unique chance to be a champion of human rights, peace, and mercy in a region where now even fewer powers are acting towards those ends. I hope Iran’s leaders and people together see that this is a great opportunity for them, even in spite of the many challenges, some unfair, Iran may face in choosing such a course. But the right course is often not the easiest, as the lives of the Prophet Muhammad and the major Shiite Imams Ali and Hussain, so revered by Iranians, amply demonstrate.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 15, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 15th, 2016

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

AMMAN — I’ve written repeatedly about 9/11 before: what it meant for me, what it should mean for Americans, how we have failed to properly honor the memory of the victims, how our nation has become worse, not better, since that fateful day, about all the missed opportunities. I think today it’s pretty clear that we as a nation still have not honored the memory of the victims through proper action, but what I could write about that now would be nothing new that I and others have not written before.

I’m not sure if it would make me feel better or worse to be able to write an article saying “9/11 helped to ruin us by starting a new style of politics that is ruining us.” In any case, I can’t, for while in many ways 9/11 must still clearly be regarded as a watershed, cataclysmic event in world history, let alone American politics and history, that sad truth is that the disgusting political gamesmanship of sucking in foreign policy and national security issues into the partisan maelstrom in the same manner as any other issue is not something that began (or ended) with 9/11, with the politics of 9/11 marking more continuity than change, just a larger example of growing partisanship amidst a rising tide of partisanship in post-Cold War America.

The big move towards consistent politicization in any significant way started almost exclusively with the Republican Party just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR, beginning with its withering partisan criticism of Bill Clinton’s efforts in Somalia in 1993, criticism that was wildly inconsistent and undermined U.S. policy.  When Republicans began using 9/11 as a partisan wedge issue in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003 and in the 2004 presidential election, this was merely a continuation of the post-Cold War modus operandi of the Republican Party, which is only more extreme today. It is worth going through some of this history to better understand this dynamic besetting America today.

Bipartisanship During the Cold War, But Not For Bill Clinton

Somalia

In 1991, Somalia’s longstanding dictator, short of international support when he was no longer “needed” after the Cold War had drawn to a close, was overthrown, and the country fell into anarchy and warlordism. The political and security situation combined with a famine into one of the first great humanitarian disasters of the post-Cold War era. With the UN Security Council supporting a relief mission, and the Democratic-led U.S. Congress, including Republicans, urging support for such a mission, Republican President George H. W. Bush, though he had just lost re-election nearly two months earlier, announced on Dec. 4th, 1992, that he would send 28,000 U.S. troops as part of a peacekeeping force intended to ensure the distribution of food to hundreds of thousands of Somalis on the verge of starvation, a move supported by President-Elect Clinton. 

Not long after Clinton became president, though, Republicans especially began voicing strong criticism of Clinton’s efforts to sustain the mission, contradicting their earlier support for the mission under George H. W. Bush; while criticism was by no means coming from Republicans alone, they were generally particularly vocal and harsh in their criticism, exaggerating and distorting what was going on and using hyperbolic language to criticize a mission they were perfectly happy to support when commanded by a Republican president only a few months earlier. The mixed support of WWII veteran (and soon-to-be-Republican presidential nominee in 1996) Bob Dole was more the exception, rather than the rule, as Republicans were generally unified in opposing Clinton and succeeded in undermining public support and confidence in the mission, calling for an end to the mission and constantly threatening to cut off funding for the mission even while U.S. troops in the field were carrying it out, a mission that was far from a disaster and hardly a failure. Even when President Clinton announced a withdrawal date after the unfortunate October 1993 “black hawk down” incident, in which U.S. forces tangled with warlord forces and incurred relatively substantial casualties, many Republicans, rather than accept the withdrawal announcement as a sufficient political victory, pushed for a faster withdrawal than the one Clinton had called for; whatever Clinton did, these Republicans were sure to meet it with scorn and criticism. 

In the end, hundreds of thousands of Somali lives were saved by the mission, for all its faults. But Republicans seemed to be in lock-step with Osama bin Laden as viewing the mission as an American failure (even before the “black hawk down” incident), and sure helped to move public opinion in that direction despite the significant achievements of the mission. Perhaps even more hauntingly, the experience was a major influence on Clinton’s decision not to intervene during the Rwandan genocide that occurred only months later, in the spring of 1994.

Bosnia

Clinton was already clashing with Congress over the war in the disintegrating Yugoslavia in 1993, as well, as more and more reports of Serbs committing atrocities against Bosnian Muslims dominated the headlines. It was an odd mixture of Republicans and Democrats who said the Clinton Administration was doing too little, and Republicans and Democrats who argued the Administration was doing too much. Such wide-ranging bi-partisan criticism reflected how complex and difficult the situation was in the Balkans as Europe’s first real test of the post-Cold War era unfolded; against a backdrop of confused and divided U.S. lawmakers, European governments were nervous that any aggressive U.S. action would endanger their peacekeeping forces, already on the ground in the Balkans. In other words, there were no easy solutions and no single plan had widespread, bipartisan support or even strong agreement within one party. As president, Bill Clinton was in an unwelcome and lonely position in trying to craft a position on the conflict. This situation more or less continued through 1994, though after the November midterm elections, at least the leadership of the victorious Republicans signaled a desire for more forceful action.

But somewhat conflictingly, even as Republicans seemed to want to end the arms embargo to help arm the Bosnians (unwise for multiple reasons, e.g., that escalation could have prompted Russia to arm their Serbian friends, could have weakened the NATO alliance and prompted the UK and France to withdraw their forces from the region and force America’s hand in filling the void, measures that nonetheless also had some significant support from some Democrats; still, Clinton correctly noted that “…unilaterally lifting the arms embargo will have the opposite effects of what its supporters intend. It would intensify the fighting, jeopardize diplomacy and make the outcome of the war in Bosnia an American responsibility” and increased air strikes against the Serbs. But Republicans mostly balked when Clinton publicly weighed the idea of U.S. ground forces either assisting beleaguered UN peacekeepers or helping to enforce an eventual peace; thus, Republicans slammed him for not doing enough even while slamming him for raising the possibility of what would likely help the most. They also later balked at Clinton’s efforts to help support a new UN plan to create a rapid-reaction force of European troops to help the thinly-spread peacekeeping forces already on the ground.

When a cease-fire was finally negotiated in October 1995, and the U.S. held talks in November, a more partisan nature to opposing the president came into being, just when it was most crucial to achieve peace in the Balkans for Congress to support a long-term peace plan. Nearly every Republicans in the Senate but only one Democrat sent a letter to Clinton asking him to ask Congress for approval before committing any U.S. troops to a peacekeeping force; this was done just days before formal peace talks were to begin in the U.S., undercutting the president’s team’s negotiating authority at a crucial moment. Next, nearly the entire House Republican caucus voted on a successfully-passed (non-binding) resolution that spurned and disavowed Clinton’s promise to provide 20,000 troops as part of an eventual peacekeeping force, undermining the prospects of an agreement and an end to the war, but a majority of Democrats opposed this resolution even as a substantial minority voted with the Republicans. 

With negotiations between the warring parties underway on U.S. soil, House Republicans voted to prevent the deployment of U.S. troops without Congress specifically authorizing money to do so in what was largely a partisan vote, and even after the peace treaty was signed, House Republicans only narrowly failed in a bid to cut off funding for the mission (210-218) and Senate Republicans barely failed to pass a vote condemning the mission but “supporting” the troops (47-52). Another partisan vote passed just before the peace treaty was signed condemned Clinton’s decision to deploy troops, and another vote that would have offered language supporting the troops but not criticizing Clinton’s plan failed to pass pretty much along party lines the very day the treaty was signed. And in 1996, many Republicans rather myopically criticized both Clinton’s decision to provide substantial reconstruction aid for Bosnia and an extension of the peacekeeping mission. Despite Republican opposition, U.S. forces in Bosnia undoubtedly played a key and decisive role in forging and maintaining peace and stability in Bosnia and, in a larger sense, the Balkans and southeastern Europe.

Kosovo

Just a few years later, Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was again threatening massive numbers of civilians, this time the mainly Muslim Kosovar Albanians in Serbia’s province of Kosovo. In response to a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing, NATO launched airstrikes against Serb forces threatening Kosovar Albanians. House Republicans, in particular, engaged in behavior that could reasonably (certainly) be said to have undermined the Clinton Administration’s efforts during the crisis. Not long before NATO began its airstrikes, a substantially large majority of Republicans in the Republican-dominated House voted to bar the use of American ground troops: “American soldiers have been trained to be warriors, not baby sitters,” was how House Majority Whip and Republican Tom DeLay put it. The measure was defeated by nearly every Democrat and a minority of Republicans teaming up to vote down the amendment. Even after the airstrikes began, a tie vote in the House failed to give public backing to the airstrikes. While Republican leaders tended to prevent direct challenges to the president in these cases, especially in the Senate, it was clear that many rank-and-file congressional Republicans, including a clear majority in the House, felt differently. Thus, when George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 and campaigned on pulling out of the peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans—making it clear how much value he placed on the missions in Bosnia and Kosovo—that position was not terribly surprising.

Of course, after 9/11, the Balkans receded greatly in importance in America…

9/11: More Continuity Than Change

Most people would have missed the fact that The 9/11 Commission Report, while produced ostensibly at a time when the nation was trying to heal and explicitly avoiding leveling particular blame with one administration or political party, nevertheless does make it clear how lax, unmotivated, and ill-prepared George W. Bush and his Administration were to deal with the crisis, and a careful reading (one which the general public did not even attempt or would even have been capable of attempting) showed that, while the Clinton Administration had not done everything it possibly could have done to go after bin Laden (after years of partisan Republican criticism whenever it had tried to act forcefully elsewhere!), it had increasingly focused on bin Laden as a threat over time and stridently recommended to Bush’s team during the 2000-2001 presidential transition to make bin Laden a top priority, advice which Bush’s people just as stridently refused to accept. Here is just one glaring example that exemplified both the Commission’s unwillingness to point fingers but willingness to still lay the clear picture there for those intelligent enough to follow the evidence:

“In May, President Bush announced that Vice President Cheney would himself lead an effort looking at preparations for managing a possible attack by weapons of mass destruction and at more general problems of national preparedness. The next few months were mainly spent organizing the effort and bringing an admiral from the Sixth Fleet back to Washington to manage it. The Vice President’s task force was just getting under way when the 9/11 attack occurred.” (6.5 The New Administration’s Approach)

Specifically, President Bush’s announcement that Cheney’s task force would be coming came May 8th, but presumably some thought and groundwork had occurred prior to this date. Then from May 8th until September 11th—more than four full months after Bush’s announcement—Cheney’s group had, famously, not met once; “The Vice President’s task force was just getting under way when the 9/11 attack occurred” is about as polite and diplomatic a way as possible to say that next-to-nothing had been done in those four months. One finds such an understated approach throughout the report, and an ability to look past it makes it clear a partisan gap, not in favor of senior Republican officials, in regards to the attention paid to bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Much like after the terrorist attacks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, that killed 258 Americans (among others), after 9/11 Democrats supported the Republican president—tending to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, including then-Sen. Hillary Clinton—and conspicuously avoided playing a partisan political blame-game in the wake of a major attack against Americans even though the way both Presidents Reagan and his administration and Bush and his administration handled the events leading up to and surrounding the respective attacks in 1983 and 2001 were objectively ripe for criticism.

Of course, none of this mattered to Republicans in general, who were quick to blame 9/11 on Bill Clinton, continued to do so for years and still do so today, and who were also quick to politically weaponize foreign policy and national security as a partisan club with which to beat down Democrats into submission and defeat.  Especially as debate on potential and then actual war in Iraq intensified, those who raised questions, doubts, or criticism about the decision to go to war or even how the war was being prosecuted were loudly shouted down as “unpatriotic” and/or “not supporting the troops” (I had a reputation as one of the few liberals on my small conservative college campus back in the day, and late one night at a party in 2003 one drunken Republican angrily asked me “Why do you hate the troops?”). This happened in spite of the fact that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and the prosecution of the Iraq war were far more deficient and problematic than the H. W. Bush/Clinton Somalia intervention and Clinton’s two Balkan interventions. Democrats also did not really intensify their opposition until it was quite clear that Iraq was going from bad to worse and the promised WMDs that were the main ostensible pretext for the invasion never materialized.

The rancor of the debate in 2002 and 2003 was just a warmup for the 2004 general election campaign between Democratic Senator John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran who was wounded twice in action, and incumbent President George W. Bush, whose stateside service in the Texas Air National Guard was largely understood as a way to keep him out of having to serve in Vietnam. A group calling itself “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” attacked Kerry on his very Vietnam record, disputing his heroism, his accounts of what happened during his service, and his worthiness of receiving any of the medals he did receive with a bevy of shamefully false and misleading accusations, most notably displayed on prominent television ads and myopic media coverage that damaged Kerry’s candidacy greatly with various segments of the public and maybe was the greatest single factor contributing to his defeat at the hands of Bush that November. Lies, not truth, prevailed in 2004. Some of the impetus behind those attacks on Kerry had to do with the fact that Kerry, then as a recently decorated combat veteran, famously and prominently came out against the Vietnam War just after he had served in it and while that war was still very much ongoing. Even years after the election, Kerry found that he was still having to defend his reputation against those 2004 lies about his service in Vietnam. The attacks were so damaging that the term “swift boat” came to be a phrase commonly used to describe extreme and false political attacks.

This was just another chapter in the right’s attempts to both “own” national security as an issue to the exclusion of Democrats and serving up caricatures of liberals as haters-of-the-military and extremist hippies, caricatures that served as straw-man phantoms and that bore little resemblance to reality. Other recent chapters had been 1992’s and 1996’s attempts by the Republicans to portray Bill Clinton as a raging antiwar pot-smoking draft-dodging hippie unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.

Recently, It’s Just Getting Worse

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

While the rise of Obama occurring hand-in-hand with an increasing, newly dominant anti-war feeling in America meant such fault-lines, concerns, and lines of attack would recede as they became increasingly ineffective (especially after the Obama Administration successfully took out Osama bin Laden; Mitt Romney barely mentioned, or challenged Obama on, foreign policy during the campaign homestretch in 2012), when the Arab Spring really turned for the dramatically worse and ISIS burst into view, Republicans, once again, found effective returns from investing in familiar tactics.

Yes, back were the days of Republicans using national security and foreign policy in hyperpartisan politicized attacks during Obama’s second term. The baseless, repeatedly-proven-to-be-false accusations trying to pin the blame on Hillary Clinton for the Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya—including our then-Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens—is perhaps the best example of this shameful disgrace of abuse of the concepts of oversight and political discourse (especially when contrasted with how Democrats responded to the 1983 Beirut and 2001 9/11 attacks, as discussed above). Other great recent examples of Republican weaponization of foreign policy and national security politics include trying to blame Obama for both the rise and success of ISIS, both accusations being quite factually incorrect, as well as pretty much the entire Republican/Trumpian critique on immigration and the despicable demonization of Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s refugee policies (and refugees, for that matter; the previous five links are to my own detailed rebuttals of each criticism). The irony is lost on Republicans, too, as they criticize Obama both for being feckless on Syria but for doing too much on Libya, when criticism of one of those policies begs the very response of the one they are criticizing in the other, take your pick; the same can be said when they try to blame Obama for Ukraine’s crisis, even though Russia’s Putin also invaded and annexed parts of Georgia under W. Bush’s watch. The irony in their criticism is also lost on Republicans because they themselves either have terrible alternative “policies,” if they have any at all, a reality simply augmented terribly by their terrible candidate for the presidency but a reality that is very much the status quo in today’s Republican Party even without Trump.

Conclusion

Linda Davidson/The Washington Post

One thing that is certain is that the trend of Republicans hyperpartisanizing and politicizing national security issues as a party began under Clinton in the 1990s with Somalia, not with 9/11. To a very large extent, national security and foreign policy were bipartisan issues during the Cold War, but that did practice not survive after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ancient republican (small “R!”) Roman historian Sallust hits the nail right on the head with the hammer describing this dynamic some 2,000 years ago in his Roman Republic:

“…the pattern of routine partisanship and factionalism, and, as a result, of all other vicious practices had arisen in Rome… It was the result of peace and an abundance of those things that mortals consider most important. I say this, because, before the destruction of Carthage, mutual consideration and restraint between the people and the Roman Senate characterized the government. Among the citizens, there was no struggle for glory or domination. Fear of a foreign enemy preserved good political practices. But when that fear was no longer on their minds, self-indulgence and arrogance, attitudes that prosperity loves, took over. As a result the tranquility they had longed for in difficult times proved, when they got it, to be more cruel and bitter than adversity…In this way all political life was torn apart between two parties, and the Republic, which had been our common ground, was mutilated.” ( The Jurgurthine War 41.1-5)

With the U.S., we can simply replace Rome with ourselves and Carthage with the Soviet Union, and that’s pretty much where we are today. While we faced the more-or-less existential threat of the Soviet Union, bipartisanship governed much (though hardly all) of our politics when it came to foreign policy and national security, and American victory in the Cold War was largely the result of decades of bipartisan policy and internal Soviet dynamics, hardly just because of the efforts of one man named Reagan, as many conservatives would have you believe.   Since then, largely because of the Republican Party (at least until the rise of the Bernie Sanders crowd), good practices are very much on the decline, not least of all in terms of how politics and issues of both foreign policy and national security have become toxically mixed, and we can’t blame this on 9/11, for it was a disease already growing in our body politic years before.

Today, there is hardly anybody left in a Republican leadership position who is someone like Bob Dole, who, though often opposing Clinton, put American interests and productive outcomes in foreign affairs ahead of partisanship and political gain, often acting to reign in his unruly Party members. There does not seem to be any new blood among Republicans who are capable of leading and cooperating like Dole, which means this untenable status quo of today is something with which we will be stuck for some time to come.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse June 26-27, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) June 26-27th, 2016

The Economist

AMMAN — Apart from the many negative and potentially-and-likely disastrous series of effects on England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland—what is now but perhaps not for long known as the United Kingdom—there are far greater things at stake in the wake of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, popularly termed “Brexit.” 

This vote result—which The Economist termed a “senseless, self-inflicted blow”—occurred even after British Prime Minister David Cameron secured a number of important and unprecedented concessions from the EU; it clearly wasn’t enough for the majority of Britons who voted to leave, 51.9% over the 48.1% of voters who wanted to stay and by a margin of nearly 1,270,000 votes out of over 33,550,000 total cast, or 72% of eligible voters.

The New York Times

Brexit: A Bookend on the Post-WWII Era?

Over three months ago, I wrote how between trends in the EU and Trump’s rise in America, Western democracy was not looking so good.  Now, with the Brexit vote beginning the process of the UK’s severance from the EU, and possibly-and-likely the fracturing of the UK itself to the degree that possibly only England and Wales will remain, 2016 may very well be remembered as the year the post-WWII international system—at least in Europe—began to unravel.  This was a world order based on coming together, and on a political and economic union in Europe supporting a military union that would make the division, strife, conflict and wars that had devastated the continent since ancient Rome’s fall a thing of the past.  After WWII, Western, Northern, and much of Southern Europe eastward through Greece slowly came together over decades; after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the iron curtain, this process of integration proceeded much more rapidly and included much of Eastern Europe.  Since WWII, the trend has been one of coming together.

A few days ago, with the Brexit vote, that trend, which had already been slowing considerably in Europe, seems to have come to an irrevocable, screeching halt, and the gear seems to have been switched to reverse. 

As an American who cares deeply about the international world order, I know that a strengthening European Union that could be a true partner in promoting peace, security, and justice around the world would be most welcome, as the U.S. acting to shoulder most of the burden has not seemed the best, let alone the most sustainable, model.  Recent crises in Syria, Libya, and Ukraine beg questions about what a more unified, determined, and enthusiastic Europe could have achieved, working as a true partner with the U.S., not just a junior one.  As bad experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, and paranoia over immigration and terrorism, drive a mentality of far lower engagement in the collective mind of the U.S. public, the Brexit could not have come at a worse time in recent memory for those looking to see another center of gravity besides the United States emerge to put their money where their mouth is in terms of promoting a just world stability.

The Brexit, then, basically signals to a weary American public to not count on Europe to increase its role on the world stage, or in any way help to shift the global leadership burden away from a United States whose public seems increasingly unwilling to shoulder that responsibility.  This bodes ill for the world’s ability to tackle its greatest collective challenges.

Dark Days for Europe

Beyond the aforementioned, Brexit signals that Europe is now ripe for new divisions and quarrels that could, over time, undo much of the progress made since WWII.  In my piece where I discussed how Western Democracy is on trial, I noted that Russia is actively “poking and prodding” Europe from Europe’s edge, orchestrating war in Ukraine, menacing parts of Eastern Europe, fomenting unrest, and both forming relationships with and funding right-wing extremist parties.  Make no mistake about it, Putin is ecstatic over the Brexit result; anything that weakens European unity and sees the rise of the right plays directly into his hands and there is no doubt that Putin is mightily pleased at the prospect of a weaker and more divided Europe; such divisions provide opportunities for Russian influence and meddling as Putin seeks to peel away parts of Europe into his ideological, economic, political, and perhaps eventually military camps.  We see in Eastern Europe, specifically in Ukraine, the chance of open, armed conflict to occur; Kosovo (which Russia is still very upset about) is also ripe for mischief, as is Northern Ireland currently, especially after the Brexit vote.

Bad Signs for America

In the U.S., this emphatically anti-establishment, populist decision by UK voters has also caused alarm for Hillary Clinton and her supporters and given comfort to Trump (who called the vote to leave “a great thing”) and his supporters in the U.S., even if the result hardly makes a Trump victory in November a foregone conclusion.  If anything, this vote makes even more painfully obvious what should already have been obvious: what we think of as “Trumpism” is a global phenomenon of anti-“Establishment” rage, from the Tea party to the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement, and now to the Brexit vote; there are clearly both liberal and conservative versions of this, exemplified in the U.S. by Bernie Sanders’ “Sandernistas” on the left and the Tea Party/Trump supporters on the right.  The low turnout of youth voters in the Brexit vote—who overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU—should also cause Clinton concern as questions remain as to how young Bernie Sanders supporters will behave come November, when not voting for Clinton will help Trump and youth turnout could become the deciding factor in who sits in the White House’s Oval Office.

Something else that makes me nervous after this vote and which generally hasn’t yet gotten much mainstream scrutiny is what I regard as the very real possibility of secessionist movements arising in the United States to a serious level, with the Brexit vote as a major part of the inspiration; many of the left simply can’t stomach the idea of a Trump presidency, and many on the right feel the same about Hillary Clinton, and I imagine large numbers of people will be receptive to secessionist arguments in certain locations of the country, depending on who wins; even one state in America seriously moving to secede would create an internal national crisis not seen in America since 1860, when secession precipitated the American Civil War(1861-1865).  It may not happen, but I would put the chances of a serious secessionist movement emerging in the very-near-future at it highest since the Civil War.

Sadly, Americans—least of all young Americans—cannot take it for granted that love will trump hate…

A Rotten and Backwards Mentality

Perhaps most disturbingly, the UK leave vote is just the latest in a pervasive Western trend of voters irrationally favoring xenophobia and nationalism to their own personal and national detriment.

As Fareed Zakaria noted on his CNN show this week, “The new politics of our age will not be left vs. right, but open vs. closed.”  The last time the world lurched in the direction a closed mentality favoring nationalism, ethno-centrism, and insulation, the world was propelled into WWII.  It seems the Brexit vote to leave the EU was fueled more by angst over immigration (all part of ethno-centric identity politics) than anything else, just as is the case with the rise of Trump in America; Brexit was a vote to be a less diverse, more closed society.

Not least of all to note among all the issues surrounding the Brexit is that one of its strongest opponents, Member of Parliament and passionate supporter of integration, diversity, justice, and human rights Jo Cox was assassinated in an act of terrorism that targeted her for her beliefs, a killing timed shortly before the vote.  Perhaps the only silver lining in this sorry experience is that she did not live to see her beloved UK vote to make such a regrettable decision, one that would have pained her deeply.

How to Avoid War Amid So Much Hate, Fear, & Division? 

If 2016 truly does mark the end of an era of increasing openness that lasted from 1945-2016 and the beginning of populations saying “No!” to globalization and “No!” to reasonable, measured centrism, the real question we must all start asking ourselves right now is, if, for the time being, a more closed, insular, nationalist, and bigoted world is where we are headed, how will we be able to operate in such a world to avoid the massive levels of armed conflicts those mentalities have always produced in the past? 

The answers are not easy or even apparent, but this question must be central to our politics and our worldview in the post-Brexit world.  I personally hope that, if this is the direction in which humanity is headed, there is a way to avoid large-scale conflict, but I am not sure I can objectively say that I hold this hope with a high level of confidence.  Yes, we can take hope that, whether with Trump in America or the Brexit vote in the UK, the rising generation is clearly choosing openness and diversity over being closed and bigoted (for the time being, anyway); at least in the UK, though, we see that the old and fearful carried the day and have set the course of the UK for time being, and younger voters turned out in significantly lower numbers than older voters.  Will these trends be mirrored in the U.S.?  It appears to be too late to stop Europe’s rightward lurch at the hands of the old and fearful, at least for some time; should the U.S. follow suit, I tremble for the West, democracy, and the world.

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Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse May 8/9, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 8th/9th, 2016

Aaron Bernstein/Reuters

AMMAN — I must confess, in a race full of unprecedented behavior, I was still shocked that a distant second place candidate in the Republican presidential nomination race—one who was mathematically eliminated from winning a majority of delegates from the primary/caucus process, from winning the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention—would name a running-mate for the vice president slot with about one-third of the time still left in the contest and months before the convention, long before anyone else had ever done so during our modern nomination process.

Then again, since the chutzpah of both Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina knows no bounds, I really should not have been surprised that either Cruz named Fiorina as his “running mate” even though he is not even close to being his party’s candidate, and that she, of all people, would accept.

Pride As a Vice

This amazing duo lasted one week—just one week exactly—before Cruz gave up his quest for the presidency.  After just seven days of existence, the Cruz-Fiorina ticket was no more, and Fiorina now has the record for the shortest vice presidential candidacy in U.S. history.

It is worth examining this exceptional piece of desperation political theater because it is truly a singularity in terms of its sheer absurdity and inanity.

Short-lived though the ticket was may be, the two are truly perfect for each other: along with Donald Trump, they are by far the most shameless, dishonest self-promoters of this election cycle.  In case you might be under the incorrect assumption that they are not the most shameless self-promoters out of over twenty candidates  in both parties (apart from Trump), a brief education is in order below.

Lyin’ Ted

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

First up: Ted Cruz.

Full disclosure: I am not a fan of Trump and I view his candidacy as a historically dangerous one for democracy and for Western civilization, but his “Lyin’ Ted” nickname for Cruz he came up with is about as spot-on as you can get when it comes to that man, because he lies constantly and plays dirty and deceitful politics on the campaign trail.  Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact has been checking statements by Cruz since 2012, and, as of today, nearly two-thirds (64%) of his statements that it checked were categorized as mostly false (31%) or worse: false (27%), (liar liar) “pants on fire”-false (6%); only 22% were rated positively: true (6%) or mostly true (16%).  His record ranks among the worst of all the candidates for this election, with only Dr. Ben Carson and Donald Trump having a higher portion of mostly-false statements or worse.

This is a man whom the recently-former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner just referred to as “Lucifer in the flesh,” and Boehner noted in same statement that he has “never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in…[his] life.”  Reflecting Boehner’s words, it is even a widely understood piece of political insider wisdom that Ted Cruz is the most hated man in the Washington, DC political establishment (especially in the Senate), an establishment he is extremely hostile to but is also, nevertheless, something of a member of since he is one of only 100 sitting U.S. Senators; he turns on friends, he turns on his own Republican Party, he feeds off and uses skillfully delivered and amplified misinformation in the way a Sith Lord feeds off anger, all in a quest for personal power for Ted Cruz, regardless of who or what he damages in pursuit of this power.  In fact, it all seems to actually be part of his plan, because he has always worn the hatred of those he deems “The Establishment” as a badge of honor, and has sold this as a badge of honor—even as part of his campaign platform—quite successfully to his supporters.

This is a man who led his followers to believe that he could use a government shutdown he personally orchestrated to (ostensibly) attempt to force a repeal of Obamacare, though this ignored basic constitutional and political realities, of which Senator Cruz is supposedly an expert.  No, the real reason he engaged in such a stunt—complete with reading Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” in the Senate while on the taxpayer’s dime, all while blithely missing the irony in doing so—was for one reason and one reason only: to promote himself.  And in this, he wildly succeeded, even as he alienated himself even more so among his Congressional colleagues and caused a damaging government shutdown that risked the United States Government defaulting on its debts, damaged his political party’s brand, cost hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors (about 850,000 people) days to weeks of pay, and caused harmful economic spillover effects to the tune of $24 billion nationally and 0.6% in national GDP growth, economic effects felt especially in Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland.  Moreover, this shutdown occurred even as, embarrassingly, the Syrian government was able to fully operate in the regions of Syria it controlled in the midst of a full-scale civil war.  Yes, all these were acceptable casualties in Cruz’s quest to elevate himself to maximize his exposure and thus his chances for his presidential bid.  If there is any doubt as to how calculated all this was, consider that Cruz was the first major candidate in either party to officially announce his candidacy in a field that would swell to over twenty individuals.  He had clearly been planning for some time, and he would hardly have been unaware of the fact that the government shutdown is that for which he is most known by the American public; he sure isn’t known for his record as a legislator in the Senate, where he by far makes more noise than actually engaging in the normal tasks of being a U.S. Senator.

This is a man who has engaged in the ultimate deception on one of his signature issues: Cruz constructed what is possibly the most masterful lie in the history of American politics on immigration policy, positioning himself exquisitely carefully to be able to play both sides of the issue depending on which way the political winds blew in what may very well be the most planned (and one of the longest-running) series of political lies in American campaign history.  That he did lie many, many times and manipulate over an extended period of time on this issue is not in doubt and has been meticulously documented by William Saletan at Slate.

Then there is the infamous episode I wrote about some time ago, where Cruz was booed off the stage at an even highlighting the plight of Middle Eastern Christians.  Most of them are Arab, and Ted Cruz chose to open his remarks by insisting that Middle Eastern Christians first and foremost need to stick up for the Israeli state, even as it illegally occupies millions of Arab Palestinians, Christian and Muslim alike, and denies them basic human rights.  Middle Eastern Christians living under forces hostile to Israel—including ISIS—would be risking their very lives speaking out in favor of Israel.  This does not mean that Cruz does not have a point in the sense that as a minority in a region that generally treats minorities awfully, Christians there have a plight in common with Jews in a general historical sense, and that many anti-Israeli forces go way too far and veer into anti-Semitism, but this is not the main issue facing Christians in the Middle East at a forum dedicated to their suffering, not that of Israeli Jews and Cruz’s approach was certainly not appropriate, especially leading off with that, at that particular event.  Encouraging what he encouraged was not a way to help persecuted Middle Eastern Christians, and was, in fact, asking them to needlessly expose themselves to danger, up to and including death.

Ted Cruz is not stupid.  Ted Cruz knows this.  Ted Cruz didn’t care about Middle Eastern Christians. Ted Cruz knew that much of the Republican evangelical base is fervently pro-Israel to the point of being apologists for Israel’s (self-)destructive and illegal nearly-half-century occupation of Palestinian territory.  Ted Cruz knew he was doing this was elevate himself in the eyes of the very people in America whose votes he needed to win in order to win his party’s nomination for the presidency.  Ted Cruz was perfectly willing to use Middle Eastern Christians as a prop to help himself.

This is a man who routinely engages in dangerous demagoguery when it comes to issues related to terrorism, Muslims (including Muslims-Americans), and Islam, in a dangerous way that preys on fears and creates more division, suspicion, mistrust, and hostility than is necessary, but this has been largely overlooked to a degree because of the Trump phenomenon.   Yet from to ISIS to Palestinians, from San Bernardino to the Iran nuclear deal (which Cruz has outrageously claimed makes “the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism”), Cruz has played a game of risky rhetorical hyperbole that deals in misleading demonization of vulnerable minorities to win political chips in order to elevate himself politically.

The lies and deceptions and destructive, selfish behavior do not begin or end here, but they are major points of a highlight reel.

This is the real Ted Cruz.

Failed Fiorina

Getty Images

Now, to pivot to Mrs. Fiorina.  Perhaps you are thinking she is better, but they are actually a match made in heaven (or hell, if you’re in Boehner’s camp).

Out of the political contenders this election cycle, only Dr. Carson, Trump, and Cruz have worse records on PolitiFact than Fiorina.  For Fiorina, 55% of her reviewed statements were at least mostly false (23%) or worse: false (23%), (liar liar) “pants on fire”-false (9%); only 28% were rated at least mostly true (14%) or true (14%).  Math might have eliminated them from getting a majority of delegates from the voting contests, but it sure makes them close in terms of lying.

In fact, as I have noted before, most of the two pillars that are together the entire premise of her presidential campaign (all of one and part of another) are based on falsehoods. 

For one thing, she has the gall to run on her record as a corporate executive at Lucent and as the first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company at Hewlett Packard (HP), but she was instrumental in destroying both companies, facts which do not stop her from spinning her record to absurd lengths to shamefully duck from her clear responsibility in both historic business collapses.  As I wrote of her time at Lucent, she was either too stupid to know what was going on, which is unforgivable, or complicit in illegal and/or highly risky, highly-irresponsible business practices, which would be highly unethical and immoral.  The implosion of a company ensued, costing over 100,000 people their jobs, but Carly managed to use the deceptively ostensibly false posted “success” to land her the top job at HP, leaving just before Lucent came tumbling down.  With HP, she was actually in charge and helped to severely weaken the company from the most powerful position within it, for which she was fired after destroying much of the company’s value and shedding thousands of jobs.  She has been noted as one of the worst CEOs in modern history repeatedly.  And in each case, she made sure that her harmful business activities would be rewarded to the tunes of many millions of dollars, even as the companies she guided lost many millions of dollars in business and value.  One thing (perhaps the only thing) she excelled at during her time at both Lucent and HP was self-promotion.

The other pillar of her campaign is that she is a female secretary-to-CEO success story, but this is only partially true: yes, she achieved historic success as a woman, but only worked as a secretary while she was attending college and law school, dropping out of the latter.  When she later went to business school and earned her MBA, she began right after graduation at AT&T (later her section became Lucent) on a fast-track executive-level path to senior management.  That is a pretty normal narrative—to work while in school in temporary administrative positions to help cover expenses/tuition while after you earn your degree you hardly start at the bottom—and is hardly the direct path from secretary to CEO that she misleadingly makes it out to be.

No wonder when Carly Fiorina ran for a U.S. Senate seat in California on the basis of her deplorable business record that voters there resoundingly rejected her.

But if having her campaign’s premises be less than truthful isn’t enough for you to put her in league with Cruz, like Cruz, she has had some of the most spectacular lies of this campaign season and has refused to back down from them despite being repeatedly confronted with overwhelming evidence that he claims have been false.  I am talking especially about her despicable falsehoods she has repeatedly perpetuated regarding the women’s healthcare advocate and provider Planned Parenthood, whereby Fiorina claimed that Planned Parenthood was, in her words, utilizing “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain” in video she had seen with her own eyes (so she claimed), that Planned Parenthood sells dead baby organs for profit to some kind of baby organ trafficking network.  In reality, no such video exists actually linking Planned Parenthood to any such activity, she grossly mischaracterizes the video in question that according to all expert review does not seem to either be of an abortion or at a Planned Parenthood clinic, and there is zero evidence Planned Parenthood engages in the trade of fetal organs/tissue; in fact, a grand jury convened to consider charges against Planned Parenthood for illegal activity only found the activists targeting Planned Parenthood worthy of criminal investigations, not Planned Parenthood itself).

She has also levied vicious, quite mean-spirited, and grossly unfair attacks against Hillary Clinton, perhaps thinking that because she is a woman she could get away with such abuse more easily than if she were a man.  In fact, apart from spinning her own business record and lying about Planned Parenthood, aside from a few debates where she “shone” by delivering one-liners with a degree of competence, and other than mixing it up with Donald Trump, hyperbolically attacking Clinton is what most characterized her short-lived presidential campaign.

This campaign did not last more than the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, where she finished in 7th place in both states with less than 2% and a little over 4% of the of the vote, respectively.

This is just a brief taste of the major highlights of the real Fiorina, but one that still gives you the real flavor.

Perfect for Each Other, Perfectly Unfit for Office

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

So, when you thinks about it, if Ted Cruz, who was just mathematically eliminated from winning a majority of delegates from voting contests, still fully intended to find a way to get party elites to hand him the nomination in a sheer disregard for the will of the primary/caucus participants, the idea that he would pick someone who came in 7th in two contests and then dropped out actually makes sense in Ted’s World.  And if Carly Fiorina was going be willing to try to use her historically bad record as a top business executive as a reason for voters to consider her to be a U.S. Senator or the Republican Party’s nominee for the presidency, then why not use her historically bad record as a political candidate for the Senate and the presidency as a reason for voters to consider her to be the Republican nominee for vice president on a ticket that would be inherently undemocratic in nature and a longshot (even at a contested convention, as I wrote earlier)? 

(On a quick aside, Marco Rubio, apparently, rejected such the same request from Cruz that Fiorina did not reject)

As with his behavior concerning the shutdown, Cruz was thinking about what was good for Ted Cruz, first and foremost; and it is telling that another person who thinks like he does—primarily about herself—would accept the offer to be the vice presidential nominee on an almost certainly doomed ticket, months before any ticket had ever been formed since the modern primary/caucus system was instituted.  The last time a move even remotely like this happened? Reagan’s failed, desperate attempt to edge out Gerald Ford in 1976 when he named a running mate at the end of July, three weeks before 1976 Republican convention (and three months later than Cruz, who made his move three months before this year’s convention!).  Reagan, though, unlike Cruz, was not mathematically eliminated from winning a majority of delegates from voting contests when he made his announcement.  Still, Reagan’s selfish gamble against an incumbent president when Ford was heavily favored helped to weaken Ford and hand the presidency over to Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.

Gary Settle/The New York Times

We don’t know who will win the White House in November, but we do know that both Cruz and Fiorina have developed a megalomaniacal, delusional sense of self-importance and a massively inflated views of their own records that, time and time again, has allowed them in their minds to put themselves ahead of the organizations for which they are ostensibly fighting.  If not mathematically, we must hope that morally and ethically this eliminates them forever from consideration for high national office, especially, but not limited to, the presidency. 

Again, I am not at all a fan of Trump, but at least Trump has a record of a moderately successful businessman (if hardly a perfect one) and of getting deals done and earning the respect of many of his colleagues; Cruz is hated in the Senate (fellow Republican Senator and former presidential aspirant Lindsey Graham said that “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” and only 4 out of 53 fellow Republican senators have endorsed Cruz, 2 of them doing so very unenthusiastically), and Fiorina was fired as CEO of HP, with both Cruz and Fiorina having terrible records in their highest professional capacities as noted earlier. 

Having seemingly settled on Trump, the Republican Party and its voters deserve little credit for anything these days, and yet, at least in picking Trump, they can arguably said to not have picked the very worst out of seventeen candidates (even if he is still pretty awful); at least they had the sense to pick neither Cruz nor Fiorina, who have the dubious distinctions of being two of the only candidates that can be said to be worse than Donald Trump.

Goodbye Ted and Carly (For Now)

AP

Unfortunately, the shamelessness and egomaniacal delusion displayed by both Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina means we would only be unbelievably fortunate for this failed ticket to be their political obituaries; no, their incredible narcissism that flies in the face of their terrible records is a strong indicator that we have, unfortunately, not seen the curtain call of their political theatrics in pursuit of offices for which they are most assuredly unfit.  And at least in that regard, they are in good company with many of their Republican colleagues, Trump included.

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse March 29, 2016 

By Brian E.Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) March 29th, 2016

REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

AMMAN — Terrorism is one of these words behind which the intended use most often carries a hope that those hearing or reading it will instinctively shudder and recoil.  Like all such charged words—racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, genocide—the gravity attached to them has an inverse correlation with higher frequency, more careless usage; such words retain their power and effectiveness if and when they are specifically applied selectively to instances that match a relatively clear definition and/or scope of activity; overuse cheapens and diminishes their power.  That is not to say that such terms do not sometimes deserve reconsideration, reappraisal; sometimes it is necessary to update and expand our understandings of such delicate terms.  At the same time, a vocal minority that simply wants to apply the labels because they just really don’t like something or someone—calling drones strikes terrorism and the equivalent of ISIS attacks, calling almost all Donald Trump supporters racists, calling almost all Republicans sexist, calling all critics of Israeli government policy anti-Semitic, calling Israeli actions towards Palestinians genocide—must be called out for what they are: partisans trying to hijack one awful thing to make something else they don’t like be condemned at a higher level.  Thus, when dealing with these terms, it is important that the conversation around them attempts to forge a degree of clarity.  If such efforts are not undertaken or fail, it is harmful to the ability to unite and fight actions that clearly fall under the appropriate use of these terms, and terrorism is no exception.  As the late Christopher Hitchens noted in 2002, “If any of the terms in our new lexicon has undergone a process of diminishing returns, it is the word “terrorism.””

What’s in a Name?

Violence is part of humanity, even from our earliest days; it was in nature and part of primates’ existence before they even evolved into humans; therefore, the violence of humanity predates humanity.  One thing that is certain about human-on-human violence is that the parties on the receiving end will always protest, and quite often, it is normal for the aggrieved parties to cry “terrorism” when they receive such violence.  Even if the aggrieved party is justly angry and justly thinks the violence in unjustly meted out, the label terrorism may not be appropriate.  Every person has the right to defend him or herself and every government has the right to defend its people and territory and to use violence to both stop active aggression and prevent aggression where there is a clear and present danger, even to the point of striking outside its borders.  A U.S. drone that kills either 1.) a group of active militants and several bystanding civilians or 2.) kills civilians by honestly mistaking them for militants cannot be equated with a group of militants that deliberately target and kill civilians as an end target.  At the same time, if locals use guerilla tactics against U.S. military forces stationed abroad in, say, Iraq, simply giving them the same label as militants who are killing civilians in markets or houses of worship is also inaccurate.  Labeling all of these perpetrators terrorists and acts terrorism is not only inaccurate, but counterproductive to the point of making the term meaningless, subject to the whims and partisan beliefs of whomever wants to appropriate the term to denigrate, rightfully or wrongfully, anyone with whom he or she disagrees.  To go back to Hitchens, “we need a more exhaustive and exclusive and discriminating definition of it, or recognition of it.”  For him:

“It’s glib and evasive to say that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” because the “freedom fighters” are usually quite willing to kill their “own” civilians as well. But then, so are states… All parties to all wars will at some time employ terrorizing methods. But then everybody except a pacifist would be a potential supporter of terrorism. And if everything is terror, then nothing is—which would mean we had lost an important word of condemnation.” 

For most people, there is “a simpler – and perhaps more honest – definition: terrorism is violence committed by those we disapprove of,” to quote Brian Whitaker in a Guardian piece.

All Terrorists & All Violence Are Not Created Equal

Charles Tilly/Sociological Theory

Hitchens, a lifelong socialist with a soft spot for revolutionaries and rebels—from Iraqi Kurds to Leon Trotsky—would never equate the IRA or Hamas with ISIS or al-Qaeda.  For him the test is the realistically possible and rationality: do these militants ask for something that a rational person could live with and willingly accept—an independent state, an end to military occupation, an end to institutionalized discrimination—or do they seek that which a rational person could not willingly accept: mass oppression, mass murder, forced religious conversion, to go centuries back in time? In Hitchens’ mind, true “Terrorism, then, is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint;” he therefore writes: “Enfolded in any definition of “terrorism,” it seems to me, there should be a clear finding of fundamental irrationality.”  For Hitchens, “What this means in practice is the corollary impossibility of any compromise with” groups that practice terrorism in this purer sense.

The distinction Hitchens is making is that the label both of people as terrorists and actions as terrorism is more aptly reserved both for people who, and actions that, seek to impose a system of terror, rather than be applied to those who simply employ certain violent tactics for understandable, rational, and even laudable goals.  In other words, whether one is fighting for liberation and freedom as an end or for an end of imposing a murderous regime that butchers its own people and destroys freedom matters far more than the means employed in such fights (though they matter too).  For Hitchens, often those terrorist groups concerned with more noble ends are far more discriminate and measured in their means than those groups for whom brutality is the ultimate temporal end, and while in any conflict, destruction is a necessary evil of means, its scale and especially whether the destruction of lives and freedom is the end itself in a temporal sense are what matters most.

In a video discussion of WWII, Hitchens, along with Victor Davis Hanson, noted that while both the Axis and the Allies engaged in deliberate terror air bombings of civilian populations, and that such actions are hardly simply easily summed up as excusable under the circumstances, what Western Allied powers did with enemy civilian populations under their control—took care of them and spread stable, democratic government—compared to what Axis powers did to enemy civilian population under their control—systematic murder and enslavement and the propagation of totalitarian systems—is the primary distinction which by far matters the most even if does not come close to fully absolving the West for its conduct in terror bombings such as Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.  War brings out excess and the worst in humanity by its very nature, but even if both sides commit similar and comparable excesses at times, scale and what ends inspired those excesses to be committed in the first place are not things that can be forgotten and certainly expose any argument attempting to equate the Nazi and Imperial Japanese regimes with the U.S. and UK governments.

There is a limit for Hitchens to those whom we can define as rational, as “some definitions cannot be stretched beyond a certain point, and the death wish of the theocratic totalitarians, for themselves and others, is too impressive to overlook. One has to say sternly: If you wish martyrdom, we are here to help—within reason.”

Hitchens makes a passionate case for primarily using the terms terrorist and terrorism to refer not merely to tactics but end goals, and his argument is not without its strong points.  But for now and for some time policymakers and international affairs experts have loosely agreed on a broader definition (if not all its specifics) that is still both useful and far less narrow than less useful definitions.

Mainstream Views on What Is Terrorism

Joao Silva/The New York Times

Contrary to the more mainstream understanding of terrorism today, the ancient Greeks actually conceived of terrorism as a form of government (terrorcracy or tromokratos), much like democracy, monarchy, aristocracy, and so forth, in which terror was the main way the state functioned and kept law and order.  The word “terrorism” first really appears in 1795 in French (“terrorisme”) to describe Jacobin rule of France during the French Revolution, so its original use was describing government rule through terror.  It is only in the mid-to-late-nineteenth century when “terrorist” as a term is used to describe attacks on the government by the UK and Russia, respectively.  Thus, Hitchens’ approach is interesting in that his preference is for the term to be applied to non-state groups that seek to embody terror and make it an end in the way of the Jacobin regime. 

Like Hitchens, who saw a major aspect of terrorism as being an absence of reason, terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman also discusses a useful definition of terrorism that involves defining what it is not.  Where Hitchens pushes a definition that involves the absence of reason, Hoffman tries to define terrorism by going through the types of violence that it is not and showing that terrorism fills that gap.  For Hoffman, this leaves us approaching a definition that is “the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change.” One Israeli definition is basically the same, but narrows the terrorists’ targets to “civilian targets.”  Similarly, even as the term remains challenging to define, consensus within many varying international legal definitions of terrorism involve “common core elements” that at least include violence against civilians as part of a campaign to intimidate or coerce populations and/or governments, an understanding that most major mainstream analyses seem to have confirmed, even if there is significant disagreement over additional acts as to how they are—or are not—terrorism where and when government and/or military targets can be included.

Counterterrorism Must Necessarily Be Complex & Nuanced

Additionally, while few would disagree that terrorism is a tactic that states are capable of utilizing directly (“state terrorism”) either on their own people or on others, terrorism, when used as a word by itself, generally refers to non-state actors, though state sponsorship is not ruled out.  That is not to say the “state terrorism” is a better phenomenon, more legitimate or respectable, than non-state terrorism, and there is an interesting philosophical debate as to how the word terrorism should be used and to what, in its purest sense, it should refer to, but that is not the focus of the policy maker; for policymakers and the elected officials we choose, “state terrorism,” as with all actions coming directly from state structures, can often be dealt with fairly conventionally on a macro-level through the interstate international relations system.  Those carrying out those acts of terrorism, except, generally, at the lowest level, are generally protected by a state or states; to deal with them, states must be dealt with.  State-sponsored terrorism requires a more hybrid response, as a state can be pressured to reduce or stop its support for such terrorism through traditional means, but to whatever the degree the terrorist group receiving sponsorship is an independent actor it will likely have to be dealt with using more traditional counterterrorism means, which is the type of response that governs non-state terrorist acts.  Compared to non-state terrorism, state-terrorism is relatively easy to manage: a single state government, even if not wholly united, is far easier to deal with than a non-state actor because the points of possible engagement and leverage are limited and generally well-understood.  Negotiating and interacting with terrorist groups that are not part of a state structure is far more challenging precisely because such groups are not constrained by the rules of the international state system; if a faction of a state government breaks off and does not honor an international agreement, that state’s government can still be held responsible, and it can even be supported to give it the ability to reign in its recalcitrant faction.  But non-state, independent terrorist groups, whose organizations are often opaque, diffuse, and decentralized, where there is no steady or reliable point of contact or central authority and where there can sometimes be little or no desire for negotiation on the side of the terrorist organization (especially over long-term conflict resolution as opposed to, say, a cease fire or prisoner exchange), require a very different set of nontraditional approaches and means for the policymaker to deal with them; this evolving, non-traditional set of tools is what is most is most often understood to fall under the term “counterterrorism,” which itself can have much overlap with the toolbox of “counterinsurgency (COIN),” as terrorism as a tactic can be used as part of war or when there is no war, falling under the watchful eyes of both civilian and military sentinels, sometimes at different times and/or under different jurisdictions, other times simultaneously.  Not every militant attack in time of war, rebellion, or insurgency is necessarily considered terrorism though some are, depending on the definition, but generally every militant attack that is not of a traditional criminal nature and that is outside of a war/rebellion/insurgency setting is considered terrorism.

Such distinctions may seem moot, but they are from it, as are the distinctions Hitchens makes between terrorists that are rational (those who can be accommodated by reasonable and just means) and those who are irrational (those for whom there is no reasonable or just accommodation possible).  Smart, effective counterterrorism approaches will make such distinctions a core driver and a core base of such policy.  Such approaches were exactly how Gens. Petraeus and Chiarelli went after the problem of violence in Iraq, and in a short period of time, they had brought groups that had been using terrorism against U.S. forces and the Iraqi government over to fighting on behalf of U.S. forces and the Iraqi government against other, more extreme terrorists like al-Qaeda in Iraq (ISIS’s precursor), and Iraq was soon on the path to dramatically decreased levels of violence, levels that were the lowest since the war began.  The recent rise of ISIS is hardly an indictment on this strategy, as, in the end, violence in Iraq only rose in 2013 in response to the terrible sectarian policies of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and spillover from the Syrian Civil War, over a year after the last U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq late in 2011.  If anything, these events show how closely related the incidence of terrorism is to oppression, politics, and policy, and how variable it is in relation to changes in all of these.

Republicans/Conservatives Often Fail to Grasp Counterterrorism Basics

But too many conservatives and Republicans don’t even seem to acknowledge such realities.  In fact, for a problem that requires a decidedly nuanced approach, their prescriptions tend to lack nuance altogether.

To be fair, a good number of leading Republicans are careful to acknowledge that Islam as a whole is not the problem, and that ISIS does not reflect Islamic values in a generally, mass-practiced sense, that the West is not in a titanic civilizational struggle with the Islamic world: Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Lindsey Graham, and a number of others. 

But many—far too many—do not, including Trump and Ted Cruz, two of the last three remaining candidates for the Republican nomination; Dr. Ben Carson, the last of the candidates to drop out before Marco Rubio, also fell into this trap.  And they and those who think like them are the ascending, dominant voices in the Republican Party today.  Too many Republicans and conservatives want to lump all terrorists into the irrational, terror-as-an-end categorization; the only solution is eradication and marginalization.  When Republicans talks about terrorism, they never shy away from linking it with Islam (and the vast majority of Republicans are in favor of at least temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the U.S., à la Trump); they prefer to talk about a broad, civilizational clash à la Samuel Huntington; for them, it is a war of America standing up for Western, Judeo-Christian values against a foe that represents Eastern, Islamic values that are the antithesis of everything for which the U.S. stands.  These people tend to inflate the conflict, describe it in grandiose terms, and push for extreme, counterproductive policies.  In this vein, Republicans tend to ascribe blind hatred of the West, freedom, and Christianity as the main motives of terrorists.  You almost never hear them talk about imperialism, colonialism, mass poverty, a lack of dignity and opportunity, and the oppression of U.S.-backed regimes as root causes and motivators for terrorism even though they clearly often are.  They tend to dismiss the reality that as awful as terrorists generally are, they also often have very legitimate grievances that need to be addressed; rather, for many Republicans, all terrorists are the same purely evil people with purely evil motives that must be utterly shunned and destroyed.

This mindset in part explains why they are so against diplomacy with Iran, the main sponsor of increasingly-less-terroristic Hezbollah, and so for confrontation and non-engagement.  As I have taken time to point out before, such approaches tend to bolster both the stature and number of extremists, including both extremist politicians and extremist violent groups, including terrorists.  Just recently, moderates in Iran trounced hard-line conservatives in elections mere months after the West’s nuclear deal with Iran.  Predictably, Republicans did not alter their illogical, near-universal, near-total opposition to the deal, even as the deal is clearly showing tangible, positive results on a significant scale. 

The idea of one policy for both ISIS and Hamas, and for all terrorist groups—failing to use the political carrot to moderate the behavior of more rationally-disposed terrorists like the latter in favor of pushing for an all-out confrontation is a policy that will fail to defuse conflict when there are serious chances to do so and will, instead, inflate it, causing more death and destruction in both the short and long-term and making long-term settlement or resolution of the relevant conflicts far more unlikely—is not an idea that advances the interests of the U.S. or makes it safer.  The one-size-fits-all approach that Republicans generally favor flies in the face of decades of conflict studies analyses and research, and in the face of history itself. 

Even recent history reinforces these truths: the importance of the example of the IRA/Sinn Féin in Ireland and its long, violent struggle with the British government cannot be overstated (including the example of conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s failed hard-line policies in Northern Ireland), even as it is clear groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are hardly carbon copies.  Still, both Hamas and Hezbollah, like the IRA/Sinn Féin before them, have seen a dramatic moderation of their terrorist activities since their very bloody inceptions.  Successful policy over time will be one that makes distinctions and harnesses and encourages these moderating trends, rather than pushes them in the opposite direction and paints with a broad brush, as both the recent Israeli government missteps and missed opportunities leading to the summer 2014 Gaza conflict and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s misleading attempts to equate Hamas and ISIS illustrate.  Part of the same conflict, Fatah/the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operated very much as a terrorist organization in past; since the early 1990s, and most especially after the death of Arafat, the terror role has diminished—now arguably ceased—to the degree that now it is far more common for Fatah/the PLO to be accused of inciting terror, of being complicit with terror, or of not preventing terror rather than committing terror, even by Israel, its archfoe.  As messy as these conflicts have been and often still are, the trends with these particular groups are undeniably reassuring and moving in the direction of less violence compared to recent decades.

In short, a successful counterterrorism strategy will make important distinctions between terrorist groups of different types, rather than lump them all together, allowing for the possibility of long-term negotiation and settlement with some terrorists even as others prove unwilling to consider diplomacy; if anything, there is even the possibility of causing divides within terrorist organizations between those who want to pursue engagement and those who prefer conflict, internal division that would almost always be beneficial to the opponents of such terrorist groups.

A Discerning Definition of Terrorism Helps Us All

In the end, terrorism will be difficult to define with an extremely high degree of specificity, and that task may even be, and is likely, impossible.  However, a vague yet still useful and usable definition beyond people labeling whatever violence they don’t like as terrorism and its perpetrators as terrorists is quite possible by looking at what clearly is not terrorism and what clearly is terrorism, even if there will undoubtedly be some gray areas.  Terror is undeniably part of terrorism, but any good military will try to scare its opponents into submission, either by the ferocity of its attacks or by the overwhelming relative power of its military might.  Since we have a lexicon which describes both acceptable and unacceptable military action under international law, and since “war crimes” and “war criminal” carry stigmas comparable to the labels “terrorist” and “terrorism,” it is both unhelpful and unproductive to try to blur this distinction. 

This goes for multiple sides in this discussion: Palestinians targeting Israel military targets with violence on their own legally recognized territory are more properly thought of as rebels and insurgents than terrorists, and labeling excessive Israeli military actions against Palestinians as terrorism serves no purpose when war crime vocabulary is already clear and well-defined.  The attempts by Israelis to enlarge the definition of terrorism to cover any and all violence directed at Israeli targets, whether civilian or military, is no more accurate or helpful than Palestinians trying to label all Israeli military activity, even when justified, as either war crimes or terrorism.  Such use of such terms only encourages eye rolls and a boy-who-cried-wolf-likelihood to ignore future accusations using these terms.  We could say the same for situations with American occupation forces currently in Afghanistan and formerly in Iraq, and to the U.S. government’s credit, it has increasingly become more circumspect in applying the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist,” recognizing that some local fighters are actually more aptly called insurgents.  Middle-Eastern locals and governments who are often understandably unhappy with U.S. drone policy, likewise, should rethink their application of the term “terrorism” to U.S. drone strikes, as the main use of them is to kill specific suspected militants that have either carried out or assisted or are preparing to carry out or assist violent attacks against civilians and/or U.S. or allies troops.  Civilians are not the intended targets of drone strikes even if they are killed, and the main purpose of drone strikes is not to intimidate the general population or governments of these locations where the strikes occur.  Errant strikes that kill mostly or only civilians are, of course, to be deplored, and more care needs to be taken to avoid such mistakes, but they are in no way moral equivalents to suicide bombers killing civilians for the sake of killing civilians in mosques and markets, and, as in other cases, simply throwing the words terrorism and terrorist back at the U.S. government because the victims are understandably unhappy with the results is not a blueprint for a useful definition of such terms but is very much a blueprint for a meaningless, subjective term to be used to describe any type of violence, justified or unjustified, of which one party or another does not approve. 

Intentional killing of civilians in and of itself and the desire for such intentional killing to force a change in policy/politics through its intimidating and terrorizing effects is a terrible thing; the ability to loudly and clearly label such acts terrorism enhances the ability to fight these acts and further stigmatize those who carry them out and their supporters; unproductively broadening the scope of these terms cheapens their use and the ability to single out such acts.  If every airstrike, drone strike, and militant attack on government and military installations is labelled terrorism, their perpetrators terrorists, then pretty much all political violence, even including just war and self-defense, can be labeled terrorism and the social, legal, political, and security tools needed to reign in the most heinous types of violence that target those most defenseless of all—non-combatant civilians—are weakened, leaving those most vulnerable of all people with even fewer defenses than before. 

It is in trying to be more reserved and circumspect with labeling certain things terrorism that we can empower those who fight against such violence and better protect the civilian populations that nearly always bear the brunt of it.  That is not to diminish or excuse war crimes and improper use of force by state militaries, Western or otherwise, but such misdeeds are better labeled using more traditional means, in part because more well-established, traditional tools of state-to-state interaction, international organizations, and international law already exist to deal with such excesses.  Casually labeling war crimes terrorism and war-criminals terrorists, in addition, can in turn have the effect of also diminishing the power of and seriousness of the war-crimes and terrorists labels. 

In the end, a more careful definition and more careful approach to terrorism will save more lives and weaken terrorists further than more careless, less nuanced approaches, which may actually empower terrorists and make us less secure.  In an age of hypersensitivity that is further amplified by global social media, language carries an additional weight when dealing with such weighty subjects.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

As Americans view today’s ISIS terrorist attacks in Brussels with horror, they should remember how much more integrated American Muslims are than European Muslims and should avoid choosing leaders and policies that alienate American Muslims.  Unlike many of Europe’s disaffected, ghettoized, and discriminated-against Muslims, America’s successful Muslim community is among its greatest assets in the fight against Islamic terrorism.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse March 22, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) March 22nd, 2016

Ketevan Kardava, via Associated Press

AMMAN — Americans should not judge their own situation in regards to its Muslim population and immigration issues as being in the same vein as Europe’s; Europe has significant and increasing problems when it comes to such issues, but Americans, in comparison, have at most modest problems in regards to these situations.  However, unfortunately, terrorism creates a sense of fear unlike any other issue, and rationality often falls by the wayside as emotional responses tend to come to the forefront.  Ironically, America overreacting to attacks in Europe and/or at home will only serve to exacerbate otherwise manageable situations; sadly, this reality will likely do little to prevent or mitigate such a predictable overreaction.

The Trials of Terrorism: America vs. Europe

I recently wrote that Western democracy is on trial.  There are mixed signs, at best, as to how Western democracy is meeting these testing times.  Unfortunately, terrorism is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to get Western democracies to compromise their values and engage in self-destructive behavior.  In fact, provoking the U.S. to commit self-harm after the 9/11 attacks was one of the main objectives of bin Laden’s and his al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks, and they succeeded wildly in this endeavor, playing the George W. Bush Administration like a harp.

Unfortunately, this latest major Islamic extremist attack in Europe since 9/11, following major attacks in Paris in 2015, London in 2005, and Madrid in 2004 (the only non-Islamic terrorist attack in Europe since 2001 of a comparable scale was Anders Brevik’s 2011 Norway rampage), will only likely further empower right-wing extremists in Europe that are already riding waves of fears of both terrorists and immigrants to increased power.

It is understandable that Americans instinctively look at what’s happening in Europe and become apprehensive about Muslims and immigration in the U.S.  But even a brief examination of the data on these issues in relation to America proves such fears unfounded.

Since 9/11, only 45 people have been killed by Islamic extremist attacks in America, including the San Bernardino shooting. The July 7th, 2005 London attacks alone killed 52 people; the attacks in Madrid a year earlier on March 11th killed 191 people, and the November 13th Paris attacks killed 130 people.  In just those three largest attacks, the number of people killed by Islamic extremists is over 828% more than total number of people killed in America by Islamic extremists after after 9/11 in 2001, and this does not include smaller attacks in Europe or today’s attacks in Brussels, Belgium, already the fourth deadliest Islamic attack in Europe since 9/11, with dozens dead and many more wounded.

Issues of Immigration: America vs. Europe

AP

As for immigration, Illegal immigration in America is a declining problem, as the overall illegal immigrant population has been declining since 2007, less than 16% of current illegal immigrants have arrived within the last five years, and illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born U.S. population.  Hyperbolically inflating this problem on the part of Republican politicians, most notably Donald Trump, might be winning voters’ hearts and mind but such tactics are based on false delusions.

Europe, on the other hand, has a huge problem with immigration.  Unlike the United States, which has vast oceans and half the planet separating itself from the world’s biggest refugee-producing hotspots in the Middle East/North Africa, East/Central Africa, and South Asia, all these regions are either close to Europe (Syria, Iraq, Libya) or reachable by land and ferry.  Thus, Europe has seen a dramatic increase in people fleeing to it from their homelands and refugee camps.  As the world faces the largest refugee crisis since WWII, about 1.8 million people migrated to Europe in 2015 alone, by far the most from Syria, followed by Afghanistan and Iraq; other Muslim countries are also high on the list, and these trends continue in 2016, with over 135,000 migrants arriving in just the first two months of year; the EU response has been haphazard, disorganized, and overall quite lacking.

Muslims Experiences: American vs. European

WRAL Raleigh

In addition, American Muslims (a very small but growing minority of about 3.3 million/1% of the U.S. population) are generally well-integrated and assimilated, are highly-educated, are relatively middle-class and successful, and feel life is better in U.S. that where they came from.  All total, only ten American-born Muslims have carried out terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 9/11.  Europe, on the other hand, with a far larger Muslim population in both absolute and proportional terms and one that is also growing, was having well-documented problems with integration, opportunity, and discrimination in regards to its Muslim population even a decade ago; today, those problems are today only dramatically worse and continuing to get worse.

Europe’s Muslims Immigrant Problems Are Not America’s

Fox News

Racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia are serious problems in America and also in Europe.  If people want more security after terrorist attacks, yes, those factors play into it but others need to respect that fear is a prime motivator and understand that trying to make people look racist after they fear a particular group of people who have extremists within their ranks that is the group most often perpetrating such attacks is myopic and exposes and gross lack of understanding of human nature.  Yes, only a tiny fraction—far less than 1% of 1.6 billion—of Muslims carry out terrorist attacks; yes people should of course not overreact by painting all Muslims as terrorists and treating all Muslims differently; but to portray people who are afraid of terrorism emanating from the group most often carrying terrorism against them as primarily motivated by racism and Islamophobia is both unfair and counterproductive: by labeling such people as racist, especially if they are not terribly worldly, well-traveled, well informed, or expressing sophisticated views on such issues, will only serve to increase their hostility, fear, and sense of victimhood themselves.

On the other hand, people must not take their understandable fear to irresponsible heights, abandon reason, and opt for intolerance and phobic paranoia.  Understandable if not always rational fear cannot be an excuse for intolerance and bigotry, most of all if coming from political leaders.  As Europe continues to counterproductively drift to the far-right, America must avoid the temptation to follow suit or it risks creating fertile ground for homegrown radical Islamic terrorism by provoking the very people whose help it needs the most to combat this global cancer of Islamic extremism.

Little is gained from two groups that each feel they are victims inaccurately generalizing each other in such weighty situations.  Whether in Europe or America, there can be a thin line between fear and bigotry, and the line must be drawn wherever possible even as there is tremendous overlap.

Attacks in Europe, like the recent ones in Brussels and Paris, may make voters in both America and Europe seek harsher, more racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic candidates and policies, like Trump and his temporary Muslim ban.  The irony that Trump and Republicans are campaigning against the idea that American should avoid becoming more like Europe, and that Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party want to make America more like Europe, is entirely lost on Republicans as they seek to embody and put into practice European attitudes and approaches that have only succeeded in alienating Muslims in Europe and contributed to their violent radicalization and, therefore, the incidence of terrorist attacks originating with European-based Muslims.  Few serious people would suggest that additional caution in such tense and dangerous times is not necessary, but far-right, intolerant, provocative policies that that feed conflict, unfairly target Muslims, and undermine the core Western values of tolerance, diversity, and equality in either America or Europe will only feed and empower extremists terrorist groups like ISIS and play into their narrative.

Sadly, refugee populations and asylum seekers, by definition among the most at-risk of people, will indirectly suffer the most from these terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, especially Muslim migrants as they will more and more likely be denied entry and asylum the more such attacks happen, and suffer more and more intense scrutiny, discrimination, and even violence even if they are allowed to enter or settle in their hopeful destinations.  Americans should take comfort in the fact that from 9/11 on in the United States, none of the Muslims who carried out terrorist attacks were refugees or asylums seekers, including the 9/11 attackers themselves.

As Americans rightly look on with horror today at the carnage in Brussels, they should avoid the temptation to make the same mistakes as Europe has in mistreating and failing its Muslims population.  In fact, Americans would do well to understand how much better they have treated their Muslims immigrants and realize that this fact is a big part of the reason why America has suffered so much less Islamic jihadist carnage on its soil over the last fifteen years than Europe has.  In order to be safer, Americans should look to politicians to lead them who emphasize that “Love Trumps Hate,” rather than play on fear and division.  Playing on fear and division has not worked out well for Europe; playing to diversity and tolerance in America, conversely, has almost always been one of America’s strengths, and is one of the main reasons so many Europeans, from the colonial pilgrims to the Irish to the Jews, have fled Europe to America’s shores; it is the main reason Muslims seek to come to America today.

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

Sudden, shocking, disturbing, and largely self-propelled trends in America and Europe are doing more damage to Western democracy today than Soviet armies or nuclear missiles ever did during the Cold War

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse March 17, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) March 17th, 2016

Clockwise: Photo/Agencies, Cheryl Evans/The Republic, AP

AMMAN — Roughly a quarter-century ago, the world seemed poised for a triumph of democracy and human rights unprecedented in human history. As Francis Fukuyama famously noted in “The End of History,” the end of the Cold War marked the end of thousands of years of ideological struggle, and the spread of Western democratic capitalist ideals all around the world was inevitable with the demise of the Soviet Union. It was the end of history as we knew it: nothing could stand anymore in the way of the West and its triumphant march forward through history.

Except, apparently, the West itself.

*****

Not a New Problem

The West and democracy being their own worst enemy is hardly a new thing.

As one historian wrote:

“The pattern of routine partisanship and factionalism, and, as a result, of all other vicious practices had arisen…It was the result of peace and an abundance of those things that mortals consider most important. I say this, because, before the destruction of…[our chief rival power], mutual consideration and restraint between the people and the…[governing elites] characterized the government…Fear of a foreign enemy preserved good political practices. But when that fear was no longer on their minds, self-indulgence and arrogance, attitudes that prosperity loves, took over. As a result the tranquility they had longed for in difficult times proved, when they got it, to be more cruel and bitter than adversity…every man acted on his own behalf, stealing, robbing, plundering. In this way all political life was torn apart between two parties, and [our political system], which had been our common ground, was mutilated…And so, joined with power, greed without moderation or measure invaded, polluted, and devastated everything, considered nothing valuable or sacred, until it brought about its own collapse.”

The above quotation is not from a Western historian of the twentieth or twenty-first centuries; rather, it is the ancient Roman historian Sallust writing in the first century B.C.E. in his The Jurgurthine War (41.1-10). He was writing of the slow self-destruction of the democratic Roman Republic, which lasted nearly 500 years, after its final triumph over Carthage. He lived to see his Republic crumble politically, dying a few years before Octavian would become first of the Roman emperors.

HBO

American Founding Father and (second) President John Adams wrote in the early nineteenth-century of democracy being its own worst enemy:

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.”

*****

“Flet victus, victor interiit” (The conquered mourns, the conqueror is undone)—Latin proverb

Much like ancient Rome, the West today exercised relative restraint in domestic affairs when faced with a mighty foe as the Soviet Union functioned as its Carthage. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, the United States seemed poised to dominate the world for the foreseeable future and the European Union was on its way to producing a unified Europe that would also be a dominant global power, working in tandem with the United States to spread and maintain peace, democracy, and capitalism.

Lionel Cironneau/AP

Just a few decades later, in 2016, that vision appear to be fading.

In the United States, the presidency of George W. Bush squandered a massive budgetary surplus, the result of a prosperity not seen since the years after WWII, when Eisenhower gave America a globally-unprecedented highway system and a military that ensured it would be the dominant player in the Cold War; Bush opted to use America’s prosperity to pay for lopsided tax cuts for the wealthy and then prosecuted two disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose costs he added to the deficit and debt, and the latter of which destabilized the Middle East more than any event since the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after WWI.

At home, his administration (and other officials) failed miserably in addressing Hurricane Katrina as it humbled and partly destroyed New Orleans, a great American city, and did nothing to prevent the onset of the greatest global financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression (barely managing to address it in time to prevent a possible total meltdown of the global financial and economic systems).

Now, America’s first non-white president, Barack Obama, has encountered a level of obstructionism and partisanship from Congress unseen since the Civil War; the elation and hope of the election results of 2008 has given way to a level of dysfunction and gridlock that calls into question America’s ability to govern itself regardless of who sits in the White House.  As of now, the U.S. may have a vacant seat on its Supreme Court for close to, or more than, a year, the longest vacancy since the 1840s and the result of partisan obstruction on the part of the Republican Party.

Over the last few months, that Republican Party, one of America’s two main political parties since the elections of 1856, appeared on the verge of melting down in the face of the candidacy of businessman and TV personality Donald Trump; just a few days ago, it seems it reluctantly accepted that he is near-certain to be its nominee. In a few months, the United States might be able to be said to have gone in a mere-quarter century from victor of the Cold War to electing a President Trump.

Jan Kruger/Getty Images

In Europe, even in the 1990s it was demonstrated twice in the Balkans that Europe was incapable of dealing with major conflicts in its own backyard without help and, more importantly, leadership from the United States. Since then, it has failed to effectively deal with conflict in Libya, Ukraine, and Syria, all within or near its periphery. The situation in Syria has led to refugee and migrant crises unseen in the world or Europe since WWII; Europe’s response has been grossly inadequate and the influx of refugees has been one of the main catalysts for the dramatic rise all over Europe of far-right political parties that border on being fascist; they are often against the European Union and are forcefully hostile to immigrants and refugees.

Leaders like Angela Merkel of Germany, trying to show kindness and compassion to refugees, may be ousted sooner by politics rather than later for her troubles, and other governments balk at attempts to coordinate regional refugee and economic policies. In France, a rising far-right party funded by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government may possibly come to control France in the coming years. Poland seems to be in the process of destroying its democracy.

A series of complacent governments in places like Greece, Italy, and Spain set off dramatic economic, finance, and debt crises that have severely weakened confidence in the European Union as well. There was, and still is, talk of a Greek exit (“Grexit”) from the EU. Now, there is talk of a “Brexit,” as, even after unprecedented concessions by the EU to Britain (concessions that severely undermined the EU), Britain’s public may still vote to leave the EU in a matter of months. The United Kingdom itself only recently narrowly avoided disintegration by secession from it by Scotland, a possibility which, it was just announced, will be pursued again.

AP

Even in Israel, considered a bastion of Western democracy in the Middle East, the public and government are becoming increasingly okay with the erosion of democratic values and a deeply undemocratic military occupation of the West Bank as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stifles Israel’s left and drives its people further to the right. The assault on democratic norms in Turkey by its government is far worse. Still worse in that region, the Arab Spring has, in general, become a massive tragedy.

Archive

Additionally, democracy by no means appears stable or secure overall in either Sub-Saharan Africa or in Latin America.

Failing the Test?

Fighting in Ukraine in 2015—Mstyslav Chernov/Wikimedia Commons

As The Economist pointed out, Europe has its “little Trumps;” America might install its Trump as president. A deeply divided American public is desperate for functionality from its government, but seems incapable of electing a Congress that can produce this; after only a few years of near-total gridlock, it may turn to Trump. If there is an ensuing period of longer dysfunction, it is terrifying to imagine what Americans might opt for then.

Likewise, in Europe, as leftist leaders are challenged, weakened, and/or ousted one-by-one and are replaced by governments whose missions are resisting pressures of EU policy, as racial, ethnic, and religious tension, fears of Islamic terrorism, nativism, and demagogues become ever more commonplace, it is terrifying to envision its future, too. An autocratic Russia sits on Europe’s edge, poking and prodding from the outside, funding right-wing extremist parties in Europe that look to Putin’s Russia as a model, even while that democratic model has become a farce.

Make no mistake, Western Democracy is on trial; if Hillary Clinton does not enter the White House this next January, who or what, then, will encourage Europe to rethink its own rightward march, and what will keep America’s Trump-led “house divided against itself” from following, even encouraging, Europe’s lead? What will that ultimately mean for democracy and its viability worldwide as this century progresses? 

That is not to say that it is certain Mrs. Clinton can solve all of these problems.  But at least with her, there will be a sincere effort from the most powerful nation on earth to push back against the downward spiral on both sides of the Atlantic; with Mr. Trump, that downward spiral will only be encouraged and accelerated.

AP

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Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse January 16, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) January 16th, 2016

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

AMMAN — I apologize to my readers that this has not been put out sooner, but life, the holidays, all sorts of things can get in the way. Yet the serious issues raised by the mid-December Republican debate have not gone away, and are still just as relevant then as they are now, thus, this analysis, while a month after the event, is still relevant to the election and to the issues of security and foreign policy. The security-oriented debate was perhaps the most banal and predictable Republican debate yet. Most candidates said nothing novel or new, and simply repeated soundbites that have grown to be as repetitive as they are hollow and hyperbolic. On issues of international security, the Republicans are as loud as they are on any issue, and provide as stark a contrast to the Democrats as they do on any other issue, too. It is worth taking a brief look at the content of the debate (though almost nothing new was said), and then to contrast what leading Republicans’ present vs. what the Democratic front-runners present.

Gov. Jeb Bush competently called for safe zones and a no fly zone and spoke out against Trump’s Islamophobic ideas repeatedly. You almost had to feel bad for him: one of the least extreme candidates on the Republican side with roughly the most relevant experience has failed to launch repeatedly and is going nowhere fast. Sen. Rand Paul thoughtfully noted that America must be restrained, especially with Russia and notions of regime change, so as not to make things worse, and spoke out against surveillance. Gov. Kasich sounded moderate (except when he called for a Gulf War I-style invasion to take out ISIS), but said nothing terribly memorable or impactful. After these moments, apart from a somewhat interesting kerfuffle over surveillance, most of the rest of the debate was just hot-air bombast. And all these candidates, who are among the most substantive of the field depending on the issue, are all doing terribly in the polls (except for Kasich in NH, who is polling respectably in NH relative to everyone but Trump) and don’t seem poised to win anything.

Now, for the leaders: Dr. Carson just seemed to be the Donny of the debate: out of his element (what is surprising is that so many people don’t realize just how out of his element he is). I recognized him as woefully unpreparedfor prime-time as of the first Republican debate, and though his star has faded from his peak at the #2 spot behind Trump, I still feel Carson’s popularity with so many Republicans is a justified basis for my sustained contempt for those very Republicans, and by contempt I am referring to my feelings for them supporting someone who is so clueless when it comes to policy and politics.

As for the rest of the candidates, they pretty much tried their best to do their best John Wayne imitations, because in their minds, complicated geopolitics and dynamic terrorist movements operating in complex social, political, ethnic, and religious spheres call for Hollywood-inspired, simplistic solutions embodied by tough-talk soundbites and cowboy posing (their elevation of Reagan to the level of semi-deity should leave no doubt about this). These other candidates—Trump, Sen. Cruz, Sen. Rubio, Fiorina, and Gov. Christie (the first three now representing the top three candidates nationally)—almost farcically and comically competed as to who could sound the toughest against the terrorists. “KILL!” “DESTROY!” “CARPET-BOMB!” “HUNT DOWN!”” blah blah blah…

One of the most nonsensical moments came when Cruz, who had earlier recklessly said he wanted to find out “if sand can glow in the dark,” was asked if he would “carpet-bomb” Raqqa, ISIS’s “caliphate’s” “capital,” even though there were hundreds of thousands of civilians there; his response was that he would not bomb a city but, instead, would bomb where the ISIS soldiers were (HINT: THEY ARE IN RAQQA THE CITY, TED!). Yes, just another moment when the rhetoric was exposed as wholly inappropriate to the situation, and yet, almost invariably, such extremist statements were met with wild applause from the Republicans in the audience.  Fiorina, lying and misleading as much as ever, made it clear that she was an expert on national security because she named the Sixth Fleet… by name! Rubio sounded completely foolish when he (sensibly) noted that the main fight against ISIS had to be carried out by Sunni Muslims in the Middle East, then just moments later criticized Obama and Clinton for “leading from behind” and “outsource[ing] foreign policy,” apparently oblivious to the stupendous contradiction involved. So even though Rubio was often making more sense than the other leading candidates, he had plenty of moments when matched them in ridiculousness. Yes, these candidates stumbled over each other trying to sound as macho as possible in order to win the support of their childish Republicans base.

At this point, it’s useful to be reminded of some clear contrasts between the Republicans and the Democrats on foreign policy (especially for all the fools who claim there is no difference between the two parties):

1.) Hillary Clinton, the democratic candidate with the most relevant experience and the most moderate positions, is the front-runner, and has at least a 90-95% chance of winning the nomination according to statistics prodigy and super-accurate election predictor Nate Silver (he got every single state’s choice in the 2012 presidential election correct in his predictions); on the Republican side, the candidates with the least experience and most extreme positions are leading and, combined, dwarf the support of experienced, more reasoned moderates.

2.) For all their tough talk, top Republican candidates have offered very little specifically that would do now differently than Obama; they say they want to bomb ISIS, but Obama is doing that; several say they want push Sunni Muslims to lead the fight against ISIS with the promise of more aid if they do so, but Obama is doing that; they say they want to arm the Kurds, but Obama is doing that. The main differences amount to how they would talk about ISIS (more John Wayne/Reagan-esque posing line delivery!) and what they would do in terms of refugee entry into the U.S. All this more or less applies to the situation with Russia and Ukraine, too: you can count on Republicans to come up with needlessly provocative bombast even as they struggle to fault the specifics of his overall strategy. Thus, in general, the nebulous Republican criticism of Obama has more to do with semantics and style than with actual policy, and their “solutions” have proven maddeningly lacking in specifics.  They basically say they will continue Obama’s policies and strategy, just more intensely and forcefully, ignoring the potential negative consequences of going too far.  In other words, they have learned nothing from George W. Bush’s Iraq War.

lacking in specifics.  They basically say they will continue Obama’s policies and strategy, just more intensely and forcefully, ignoring the potential negative consequences of going too far.  In other words, they have learned nothing from George W. Bush’s Iraq War.

3.) However, one clear difference is that Republicans in general are far more willing to deploy American troops on the ground in harm’s way, and, it should be added, without any exit specific exit strategy, and are, in general, willing to rely more on force while disdaining diplomacy (see their response to the Iran nuclear deal), than are Democrats.

4.) Another clear difference is that Republicans, in general, seem less concerned with inflicting civilian casualties in fighting ISIS than Democrats

I suppose it is easy to see why the leading Republican candidates are ableto appeal to less educated voters with a cartoon understanding of the world that think the solution to Putin and ISIS is to for America to be more like John Wayne. Again, their hero Ronald Reagan is basically a second-rate, wannabe John Wayne, so this should not be any surprise. That so many Republican voters are falling for this silly nonsense is just another indication of the vast gulf between Democrats and Republicans in terms of seriousness and credibility on the major issues of the day.

See also: review of most recent Republican debate

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at @bfry1981)

If people thought 2015 was bad, 2016 shows no sign of letting on up on risk.  The Middle East, China, Europe, Central Africa, even the United States will all raise serious questions about risk in 2016.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse January 7, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) January 7th, 2016 (Altered version posted on Global Risk Insights January 26th)

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AMMAN — The year 2016 will pose a number of major risks for the international community, and many of these risks were already major issues in 2015.  Not only typically high-risk areas like the Middle East and Africa are highlighted, but also China, Europe, and America.  Here are five of the largest ones that will be headlining the news throughout the year.

1.) Middle East Morass

Pat Bagley/Salt Lake Tribune

The greater-Middle East will continue to present a number of challenges to the world in 2016.  While the situation with Iran moving towards de-escalation over nuclear tensions and a lifting of sanctions that could happen as early as January is indeed welcome, there is little else occurring in the region that is reassuring.  The general Sunni-Shiite divide will continue to present problems.  Though ISIS has been gradually pushed back throughout the year and lost some territory in Iraq (including, most recently, Ramadi) and Syria, there is no guarantee that ISIS will not be able to retake what it just lost as the dynamics in its spheres of operations are incredibly complicated.  There is reason to fear that Russia’s recent foray into Syria will continue to bolster Assad’s brutal regime and make things worse for non-ISIS rebels as well as Syrian civilians, all while having at best a minimal effect on ISIS itself; Putin has not shown any indication as of yet that he will be changing what Russia’s military forces are doing there. 

Not much will come out of Turkey’s shooting-down of a Russian military jet that will have larger effects beyond either country, except that both Putin and Erdoğan will be able to use this to bolster their support at home.  With Turkey having long been an example of secular democracy of a sort in the Middle East, the world can only disappointingly expect the recently further empowered Erdoğan to continue his country’s march towards increasingly Islamic and authoritarian single-party rule (he just recently cited Hitler’s Germany as an “effective” political system) as well as conflict escalation with Turkey’s own and the region’s Kurds.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also seems set to continue his country’s slower march to eroding liberal democratic values in favor of more theocratic, Jewish-ethnocentric laws, practices, and regulations while simultaneously provoking Palestinians into higher-levels of violence with increased settlement building and occupation coupled with no serious attempt to engage with Palestinians on a two-state solution.  This, in turn, will eventually provoke more serious military responses from Israel, which will only further empower extremists like Hamas or worse at the expense of the apparently crumbling Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, in turn only further empowering Israeli extremists.  As if also reading from a similar card, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi seems set on pursuing a path of oppression against Islamists which will only see further violence and escalation in an already escalating mini-insurgency of sorts.  Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was cut in the same vein as these leaders, but thankfully the Obama Administration, Iraqi Shiites, and even Iran all worked together to nudge him aside in favor of the far less sectarian Dr. Haider al-Abadi in 2014.  The retaking of Ramadi—without civilian-casualty-intensive tactics—by Iraq is a significant victory for Abadi’s government, but it remains to be seen if this success is one that can be maintained and to what degree if any Abadi’s situation stabilizes enough for the Iraqi government to make any further gains, let alone prevent fresh losses, though as of now the trends are positive, and Ramadi could be a sign that Obama’s strategy for dealing with ISIS is beginning to pay off; only time will tell and the most difficult fights are yet to come either way. 

Jordan and Lebanon have done a surprisingly good job of holding togetherunder the enormous pressures refugees have been exerting on their state systems, but there is no guarantee 2016 will not produce a tipping point or points for either or both of these smaller states.  Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and its coalition seem capable only of mismanagement in their Yemen war, where they have been careless in inflicting civilian casualties, while Libya, too, remains problematic and is now having to deal with a growing ISIS presence in its territory.  And refugees keep pouring not only into places like Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, but also, now, into Europe.  Which brings the reader to the next big risk issue for 2016…

2.) Big tests for Europe’s Union

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

While talk of the European Union’s demise is incredibly premature, 2016 opens with the EU facing several challenging trends, and its response to them could well define it for years, perhaps decades.  The welfare-state system as it now exists has shown itself to be unsustainable and there are more than a few ailing economies that present problems for the whole Union, Greece, of course, being the worst but not the only economic thorn in the EU’s side. 

Just these economic problems alone would be an enormous challenge, but, unfortunately for the EU, it is also facing several other crises.  The influx of refugees into Europe, including many Syrians, comes at the worst possible time.  Before this new wave of refugees, Europe was already seeing a rightward tilt politically speaking; a smattering of terrorist incidents in 2015, which peaked with the spectacular attacks in Paris this November, have only naturally added a large dousing of fuel to the right’s fire of anti-immigrant demagoguery.  Unsurprisingly, the tinder of anti-immigrant sentiment and fears of terrorism have created quite the pyre for rightists to illuminate themselves attractively to European voters, and all over Europe right-wing parties are gaining significant power or are even coming to lead governments.  This is making it exceedingly difficult for the European Union to come up with any sort of a coherent policy on refugee migrants, and when leaders and governments try to accept more refugees, the political cost is a zero-sum one that penalizes them and rewards the right-wing parties with more public support (and this from the continent that has been the banner carrier for liberal values for some time). 

If all this was not enough, voters in key EU economic trouble spots like Greece, Spain, and Portugal seem to be rejecting the EU’s economic prescriptions and a degree of political chaos is ensuing.  If the EU cannot collectively create and enforce policies on major issues like refugees and the economy, and if its efforts to do so are soundly rejected by voters in key EU nations, 2016 will likely raise serious questions about what the EU actually is and what it wants to be in the future.  However, political chaos is hardly limited to the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean…

3.) America’s semi-chaotic election year

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Between Europe and America, Democratic systems are hardly playing their A-game these days.  The rise of Donald Trump and the more unhinged wing of the Republican Party supporting the likes of him and obstructionist (and demonstrable charlatan) Ted Cruz (a first-time senator largely responsible for the 2013 government shutdown who has caused much political chaos and has no serious legislative accomplishments under his belt), as well as Dr. Ben Carson (a medical doctor with no relevant political experience or expertise), have made this political race the most unpredictable in recent memory.  Many accuse Trump of being racist and bigoted, but a more astute observer would look at similar politicians in Europe and see that he is playing a very smart game, leveraging Americans’ inflated fears about both terrorism and immigration to channel populist angst and ride that wave for all it is worth.  Sadly, this is as American as apple pie; even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a champion of liberal values and the architect of victory over both the depression and the Axis powers in WWII, interned well over 100,000 residents and citizens of Japanese descent; Trump even cited this action of FDR’s as a precedent. 

Such outside the system wild-cards like Trump, Cruz, and Carson looking more and more likely to become the Republican Party’s nominee for the president of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy is hardly a reassuring thing for the rest of the world.  Many Americans seem to have always naturally had a disdain for the political class throughout American history, but this election cycle may see the most dramatic materialization of this trend in American history.  Though likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton seems quite likely to defeat such a challenge, nothing is certain in American politics these days, and the unraveling of one of America’s two political parties cannot be shrugged off; even if Clinton were to win, America’s two-party system does not function when both parties are roughly the same size and one is not interested in governing (just ask Barack Obama).  What this means for the global economy and for international relations is one huge question mark of political risk.

4.) Asian economic woes

Reuters/VOA

The slowing of the Chinese economic juggernaut to its lowest officially announced growth since early 2009 was a big surprise in 2015; perhaps less surprising was Japan coming very close to entering a recession in the third quarter of this year (only escaping this label after revised numbers were released), struggling with an ageing population and low birthrate.  How the two economic giants of East Asia (and two largest economies in the world after the U.S.) tackle their economic challenges—or fail to do so—will be big narratives for the year 2016.  While nothing catastrophic is expected to happen in terms of Japan, if there is little good news coming out of that nation in 2016, that will not help the rest of the world deal with its economic funk.  China, though, is of larger concern: if things were to get dramatically worse, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has already had a difficult time dealing with public unrest from democracy-oriented mass protests in Hong Kong to worker dissatisfaction to Muslim Uighur unrest in Xinjiang will have a tough time keeping order with a Chinese public that has grown to be bolder and more frequent in voicing dissatisfaction with the government over the past few years.  There have already been tremendous ripple effects from China’s economic downturn, not the least of which is contributing to the falling price of oil since China’s enormous demand for that energy source has weakened along with its economy, but if China’s stability were to even remotely become an issue, investors and markets around the world would react far more negatively than they already have.  CCP officials have done a fine job of transitioning China from the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s to the wild success of its economy over the past few decades, so there is some reason to hope for a competent response; at the same time, that this is happening at all suggests CCP leaders are not so sure about how to manage this crisis, and it remains to be seen if 2016 will see the situation improve or become even worse.  And, of course, there are the concerns over the how various territorial disputes with other Asian nations and with Taiwan could factor into a politically less stable environment….

2016 has already started off very badly for China; just today, China halted stock trading for the day (for the second time this week!) as Chinese stocks fell more than 7% in just 29 minutes.

5.) Recipe for conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes region

REUTERS/Jean Pierre Aime Harerimana

If Rwanda’s internal ethnic problems served as a catalyst for the series of conflicts known as Africa’s World War (the deadliest conflict in the world since WWII and one that is still ongoing), current problems that are spiraling rapidly out of control in Burundi threaten to plunge the region into conflict again.  In Rwanda in 1994, that country’s Tutsi minority was almost wiped out in a genocide carried out by the majority Hutus.  The government that came to power in the subsequent revolution led by Paul Kagame was one of Tutsis, and Kagame is still in power now.  He has shown a willingness to aggressively project Rwandan military power outside of his own borders, and the UN even accused his forces of possibly committing a countergenocide against Hutus.  Kagame successfully changed his system be able to keep himself in power after pledging he would step down, something Burundi’s Hutu President Pierre Nkurunziza did by running for, and winning in July, a third term in violation of that country’s constitution.  When protests erupted in Burundi in response, the government began a crackdown that just this December began to look a lot like Tutsis were being targeted.  Burundi’s military is led by both Hutus and Tutsi officers, but recently Tutsi officers have been forming rebel groups and the president has been pushing Tutsi officers out of major positions of power or has sidelined them from more important missions.  Tensions are already rising between Burundi and Rwanda, and if Burundi erupts into civil war, Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda may find themselves sucked in in one way or another, and the simmering but quieting Congo conflict, involving Hutus and Tutsis in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, could also flare back up as well.  Ethnic conflict and hatred could well embroil this region again if events continue on their current trajectories.

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There are certainly other trends to watch in 2016, but these are very likely to dominate headlines for quite some time in the new year.  Only time will tell if these trends will improve or get worse, but for now, there are appropriately-high degrees of concern and worry about these trends.

Related article: 2015 Year in Risk Review: Risky Business

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 19, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) December 19th, 2015

Clearly, Republican ideas to strongly associate ISIS with Islam, to help dictators oppress their people, to have America take the lead and expose Americans to more risk all feed into the terrorists’ narrative and prevent authentic local solutions and politics from coming about, creating a long-term neo-imperial situation whereby the U.S. assumes long-term responsibility for this troubled region in the world.  Neither the locals nor Americans want this to be a long-term solution.  It is time the Republicans understood this and helped Obama defeat ISIS rather than empower ISIS and others seeking conflict by acting on fantastical Hollywood-action-movie-type “solutions.”  You can read a lot more about the dynamics laid out in my chart here in the chart’s companion article: Republican Criticism of Obama’s Sound ISIS Strategy Myopic; GOP Ideas Help ISIS, Endanger Americans.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 16, 2015  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) December 16th, 2015

Google Images

AMMAN — We keep hearing from prominent Republicans that the Obama Administration’s decision to completely withdraw U.S. military forces from Iraq by the end of 2011 is the primary reason that the Sunni jihadist terrorist group ISIS is now such an enormous problem (not only is this factually wrong, even characterizing the decision as a unilateral Obama Administration move is an oversimplification 1.) since the withdrawal date and terms were set by an agreement made with Iraq by the Bush Administration, 2.) since the Iraqi government, led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, refused to give American forces immunity if they stayed behind, the same reason that the Bush Administration did not accept the terms for a longer agreement, and 3.) the American people themselves decided to withdraw from Iraq in voting for Barack Obama in 2008 over John McCain). Below are the top five reasons why the idea that the American withdrawal from Iraq is the main reason ISIS is such a problem today are factually and easily provably wrong:

1.) ISIS’s Roots Go Back Before Obama’s Withdrawal, to the Bush Administration’s Iraq War and the Late 1980s

In assessing what has empowered ISIS, it is important to know how the organization started. There are two paths that led to the creation of ISIS: bin Laden and Zarqawi. Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants created al-Qaeda at the end of the 1980s from among the network of jihadists that were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, al-Qaeda began funneling funds to jihadists in/going to Iraq, many of whom eventually followed Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi accepted al-Qaeda support but did not pledge himself to al-Qaeda right away because of significant differences in goals and ideology between himself and bin Laden. After the initial period of operating as an independent group, Zarqawi and his forces eventually did pledge loyalty to al-Qaeda and began calling themselves al-Qaeda in Iraq/Mesopotamia in 2004. While operating in Iraq as an al-Qaeda branch, the group (along with several of its allies) began calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq in mid-October 2006, only a few months after the U.S. killed Zarqawi. By this time, the tensions between the group and al-Qaeda’s central leadership that had existed before the group had pledged itself to al-Qaeda had resurfaced, especially as the group became increasingly brutal, murderous, and extreme to Iraqi civilians, not only many Shiites—whom the Islamic State groups considered apostates worthy of mass execution—but also many Sunnis who were not on board with their extreme vision for Islam; bin Laden and al-Qaeda HQ preferred a more inclusive vision for its operations and one that would focus on attacking U.S. troops, not Iraqi civilians.

Bin Laden’s strategy, in the end, would have been far more successful, because the U.S. was able to crush al-Qaeda in Iraq/the Islamic State of Iraq in 2007 during the “surge” largely because many Iraqi Sunnis—particularly in Anbar province in western Iraq on Syria’s border—joined U.S. forces as allies fighting against the terrorist jihadists in the “Sunni Awakening.” These Iraqi Sunnis joined the Americans after being alienated by the terrorists’ extremist policies, mobilizing Sunni whole communities against them and denying al-Qaeda’s Iraqi franchise safe havens and popular support. This defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq/the Islamic State of Iraq was over four years before U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq and almost two years before Obama took office.

2.) The Current ISIS Threat Did Not Emerge From Iraq, It Emerged From Syria

After the success of the “surge” and local Sunnis fighting-side-by-side with U.S. forces against al-Qaeda in Iraq/the Islamic State of Iraq ended in crushing defeat for the terrorists, for years after the group was little more than a nuisance and was basically forced underground. Hounded in Iraq, the group saw an opportunity for more fertile ground when the Syrian Civil War erupted in 2011, and under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi(the current self-proclaimed “caliph”), began getting involved there. Over the course of 2012 the group began to play a major and brutalizing role in the conflict, and came to be the most prominent rebel group in Syria over the course of 2013, coming to control large amounts of Syrian territory and growing dramatically in size and power; it was this year when the group began calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Baghdadi increasingly clashed with al-Qaeda’s leadership over tactics and aims, leading to a formal split between the two groups in early in 2014; just a few months later, ISIS would use its power base in Syria to launch a major invasion into Iraq, taking much Iraqi territory, much of which it still holds today. Thus, it was the chaos and anarchy of Syria’s brutal civil war that enabled ISIS to rebuild itself and once again become a major threat to Iraq.

3.) Iraq’s Lowest Levels of Violence Persisted Well After the U.S. Withdrawal

Iraq Body Count

If Republican charges about Obama’s withdrawal causing the rise of ISIS had any factual foundation, there would have been a spike in ISIS violence in Iraq after the U.S. withdrawal. This was not the case at all. In fact, according to Iraq Body Count, the worst levels of violence in Iraq were in 2006, when roughly close to 30,000 Iraqi civilians were individually recorded as being killed, and in 2007, when the “surge” campaign took the security situation head-on and saw about 26,000 recorded civilians deaths; that number dropped to just some 10,000 in 2008, to some 5,000 in 2009, and by 2010, when the U.S. began a two-year phased withdrawal, that number was only a little over 4,000. This continued in 2011 as the U.S. completed its withdrawal, and for the entire year of 2012, after U.S. forces had left, that level only went up by a few hundred recorded deaths; the low levels of casualties even continued into early 2013. These levels of far lower civilian casualties from 2010-2012 (during and after the withdrawal) were lower than for any other period since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq (it should be noted that there are some estimates that are much higher and include methodology for accounting for unrecorded deaths, but the trends in the levels of violence are still very clear).

4.) When ISIS Rose to Prominence In Syria, Iraq Was Experiencing Record-Lows in Violence

Iraq Body Count

There were still over 45,000 U.S. troops in Iraq when the Syrian Civil War broke out in March 2011, a level that was maintained through at least part of September, but U.S. troops did not complete their pullout until the end of that year, so one cannot even make the argument that the U.S. withdrawal had anything to do with the start of the Syrian Civil War. On top of this, while the war in Syria raged and saw violence increase dramatically in 2012, record-low levels of violence persisted during that very same year in Iraq and even a few months in 2013. Thus, it is impossible to say that the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq was tied in any significant way to the rise of ISIS in Syria.

5.) Violence Only Increased Significantly In Response to Maliki’s Terrible Sectarian, Oppressive Policies, Not the U.S. Withdrawal

Jim Watson- AFP

If violence did not spike up dramatically after the U.S. left Iraq, but only did so more than a year after the U.S. had pulled out, it logically follows that something else must have been the catalyst and cause for the rise in violence. Fortunately for the curious, it is not difficult to figure out what this was: all available evidence points to only one conclusion, that the policies and leadership of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki obliterated the security gains of the “surge” and the final years of the U.S. occupation through sheer sectarianism and oppression. This is undeniable, and especially so when considering that many of the very same Sunnis who had helped the U.S. fight al-Qaeda in Iraq/the Islamic State of Iraq—Sunnis in Anbar province in Western Iraq on Syria’s border and in other places—were so fed up with Shiite Maliki’s sectarian policies marginalizing, oppressing, and brutalizing them, that they rose in full rebellion by the end of 2013. It was this situation and only this situation that allowed the newly renamed ISIS to re-enter in force Anbar province in Iraq when it did, where they entered an alliance of convenience with many of the Sunnis they had formerly fought in the region, and alliance against their mutual enemy: Maliki’s anti-Sunni government.  Using Anbar as a base within Iraq, ISIS was able to advance and take large amounts of Iraqi territory, much of which it still holds today. Thus, it was Maliki’s absolute refusal to compromise with and accommodate Iraqis Sunnis and others that created the current crisis with ISIS. The sad truth is that if Maliki had treated the Sunnis and Kurds more fairly, the Iraqi government—Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds united against terrorism as they were back in 2007—would have been in a strong position to fend off any ISIS incursions coming into Iraq from Syria. If anything, the internal dynamics of Syria spilled over into Iraq, not the other way around, and hardly related in any major way to the U.S. withdrawal. Conversely, if the U.S. had stayed the entire time, shoring up Maliki’s sectarian government that was abusive towards Sunnis, U.S. troops would have almost certainly been fighting both the Iraqi Sunni people and ISIS, hardly a good position for the U.S. to be in and one which, as I recently noted, would have played completely into ISIS’s strategy and in its favor (Putin, ironically, seems to be making this very mistake in Syria with how he is using Russian forces there).

*****

So now, next time you hear people say “Obama pulled out of Iraq and now we got ISIS as a result!” you can tell them they simply do not know the clear history or facts and that their statements are ignorant myths, and explain why this is so obviously the case. In a clear measure of their gross incompetence and how unfit they are for major office, many of the leading Republicans, including many of those dominating the presidential nomination contest and who participated in last night’s debate, are among those spewing and wallowing in this ignorant myth. For any Americans serious about combatting ISIS and terrorism, such politicians should be shunned and dropped from consideration when it comes to votes in the upcoming elections.

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Just because Obama’s ISIS, counterterrorism, and Middle East strategy is complex and will not fit on a bumper-sticker or in a soundbite does not mean it is not a good one, and a bit of time trying to understand it will reveal that Republicans criticizing Obama’s strategy are dangerously unfit for office, as their alternatives betray a total lack of understanding of the basic dynamics behind ISIS, terrorism, and the Middle East, with Republican policies like to be advocated in the coming debate certain to make ISIS stronger and expose Americans to even more danger.

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 14, 2015  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) December 14th, 2015

The White House

Note: the chart used later in this article can also be shared through its own post here

AMMAN — Though a common refrain among Republicans for some time, in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, we are hearing with renewed force that Obama cowardly refuses to call out our enemies “by name,” i.e., he avoids calling them Islamic or Muslim extremists terrorists, avoids saying that we are “at war” with “radical Islam.”  The rationales Obama’s critics suggest as to why he apparently does this range from a cowardly, timid sense of liberal political correctness all the way to claiming that Obama actually sympathizes with the terrorists and/or is a Muslim himself.

There is something of a legitimate point encased behind the more incredulous claims made by the Republicans: that Obama is avoiding emphasizing the Islamic character of the terrorists and the fact that they are Muslims (some people would like to argue that these extremists committing terrorism are, in fact, not Muslims because of their extreme actions, but the sad truth is that while all faiths have violent extremists that the majority of their co-religionists would like to disown, these extremists do find inspiration for violence from those very faiths and their faiths’ history, traditions, and texts, and must, in fact, be owned by these faiths and their co-religionists whether they want to own them or not).  But the Republicans’ point itself is a myopic one because Obama’s decision to avoid emphasizing the Islamic aspects of ISIS is, in fact, based on a very sound overall strategy to deal with the groups like ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, etc.

As usual, the Republicans can’t see the forest for the trees and are way off on their strategy; I don’t even mean this in a pejorative sense, but in a demonstrably-provable-trend sense of the Republican Party being incredibly myopic and short-sighted in its approaches to a whole host of issues, both in terms of foreign affairs and domestic issues (and that could be a whole series of separate articles). 

Before we continue in assessing Obama’s approach and choice of language, we must realize that there are other actors on this stage: the terrorists themselves.  And we must understand what they want.

Now, some of the readers might at this moment begin to get emotional, and accusations of this writer here being a “terrorist sympathizer” might be forming in some minds.  To that I would inquire, “Does a detective ‘sympathize’ with a murder suspect when trying to establish a motive, when trying to investigate and learn about this person?”  No rational person would say that this is the case; rather, it is a basis of good police-work to know as much as possible about suspects and their motivations.  Well, it is absolutely no different with terrorism.

Understanding the Forces Behind Terrorism’s Success/Appeal

Much has been made of an Atlantic article by Graeme Wood titled “What ISIS really wants,” and it will be addressed shortly; but the mother-of-all articles to come out since 9/11 regarding terrorism would have to be Mark Danner’s “Taking Stock of the Forever War,”written for The New York Times Magazine.  In this landmark article, released on fourth anniversary of the attacks and when America was well into its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a sickening truth was made plain for all to see if they had not yet realized it…

Bin Laden and al-Qaeda played the U.S. like a harp. 

What is incredible is that, in the very nature of how the U.S. conducted its war in Afghanistan, the U.S. more or less avoided the trap al-Qaeda was hoping to set.  But not so with Iraq…

See, bin Laden’s and al-Qaeda’s philosophy and aims are hardly inscrutable; they had, rather, made their aims clear with statements known publicly for many years.  For bin Laden, there was the “near enemy:” the non-Islamic regimes ruling over Muslim lands, whether they were democracies, monarchies, or dictatorships.  These regimes were supported by the “far enemy:” distant, powerful governments in the West, with the United States leading, that supported the “near enemies” with military, economic, and political aid.  In terms of bringing about the ideal system—Islamic governance based on the Golden Age of early Islam—attacking the “near enemy” regimes would be fruitless without first addressing their major Western backers.  The plan was simple: draw the West, especially the U.S., into a lengthy ground war in at least one Muslim country, one that would inflict casualties on Western forces, sap Western economic strength in the process, and leave Western publics war-weary enough that when the West eventually withdrew, Western appetite for intervention in the Muslim world would be exhausted or at least vastly reduced and the path for toppling the “near enemy” regimes would be clear Western road blocks cleared or minimized.

In the initial American intervention in Afghanistan, the entire U.S. approach was designed to be minimalist: the Taliban was brought down by air-power and U.S. Special Forces aiding local fighters.  It was not until Obama’s presidency that large numbers of U.S. troops were deployed to Afghanistan (and that was largely an attempt undo some of the damage of the Bush Administration’s policies).  Thus, the U.S. spent relatively little money there and exposed itself to only minimal damage and risk. 

This was not the case with Iraq, and though there was also a bit of a minimalist approach initially adopted there, that quickly devolved into a costly disaster requiring far more troops over a longer period of time to mitigate the damage.  But much damage had still been done: much higher casualties were incurred than American leaders told Americans would be the case; the war cost much more than advertised as well, and also lasted much longer; in late 2008, America elected one Barack Obama as president largely because of his anti-war stance and his pledge to withdraw from Iraq. 

As for al-Qaeda, the Iraq War was many ways a dream come true: while it never established the caliphate it dreamed of, its 9/11 attacks did start a chain of events that most certainly did sap American economic strength, did cause many American casualties, and did cause a war weariness in the American psyche that has meant the country is today far more reluctant to intervene in Muslim countries than it was in 1990 during the Gulf War or in 2001 and 2003, when the Afghanistan and Iraq wars started, respectively. After the Iraq invasion of 2003 especially, terrorism became far worse; Al-Qaeda itself saw its stature, number of operations, and membership increase dramatically over the course of both wars, and far more people are killed by terrorism today than before the Iraq invasion. By invading Iraq the way Osama bin Laden wanted, we performed exactly the part he laid out for us, and we suffered many of the consequences he hoped we would.

What enabled the U.S. to mitigate what could have been an unmitigated disaster, though, was not U.S policy in supporting a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government: it was the murderous extremism of al-Qaeda’s Iraqi branch(which began calling itself the “Islamic State of Iraq”late in 2006 as part of a coalition with other jihadist groups) against not only Shiites but also many Sunnis that alienated many Iraqis and drove them into the arms of U.S. forces during the “Surge” and the “Sunni Awakening” in 2007, combined with a major adjustment in U.S. counterinsurgency strategy that placed Iraqi civilians first.  The local al-Qaeda branch’s actions also created tension with al-Qaeda HQ: Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wanted their Iraqi branch to focus on U.S. forces and to avoid attacking Iraqi civilians.  But al-Qaeda in Iraq/Mesopotamia, first led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and later others, focused on creating a civil-war in Iraq by targeting civilians in an overtly sectarian manner, and also by broadly targeting any civilians who did follow their extreme, strict version of Islam (except submissive Christians).  Al-Qaeda—including what would become ISIS—was crushed by local Sunnis fighting alongside U.S. forces.

The model for defeating terrorists that emerged here would be a key component of what has come to define Obama’s approach: win over locals to your side, and fight side-by-side against terrorism with such support.  Partnering with local communities this way became so effective that towards the end of the “Surge” forward, the newly minted “Islamic State of Iraq was” rarely more than a nuisance for Iraq until the year 2013, over a year after the U.S. had fully withdrawn from Iraq.  Its resurgence was due mainlyto Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s extremely sectarian policies that would drive the same communities that had aided in the fight against al-Qaeda/the Islamic State of Iraq in 2007 into open rebellion against Maliki and Iraqi’s government at the end of 2013.  Under those conditions, the formerly titled Islamic State of Iraq, now calling itself ISIS (an acronym meaning Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham/Levant, encompassing also Syria, Lebanon, and other areas) and now formally broken away from al-Qaeda, came into Iraq and entered an alliance of convenience with many Iraqi Sunnis against Maliki’s oppressive Shiite government.

This put the Obama Administration into a quandary: it have moved to fulfill Obama’s campaign promise to withdraw from Iraq, and if Obama was going to be sucked back into conflict in Iraq, he and his administration were going to be damn sure to be careful and that the conditions under which it would reenter conflict in Iraq would make sense for its overall goals for the region.  The core of this strategy was moving away from the U.S. shouldering the majority of initiative, burden, and responsibility for fights against regional extremism and also away from larger invasions, wars, and occupations like those that were initiated and (mis)prosecuted during the (W.) Bush Administration, all while moving towards America being a friend, supporter and ally of the local and non-oppressive forces in the region fighting extremism. 

When people complain about Obama “not having a strategy” for the Middle East, they clearly seem to have missed this obvious strategy here, as exemplified by virtually all of the Administration’s actions and inactions in the region for some time.  This strategy is quite sound, as 1.) it avoids making the U.S. the main target as would happen when having its forces lead, 2.) it allows the fight to be properly framed primarily as a local vs. extremists fight, rather than a U.S./West vs. Muslims conflict, 3.) it helps to avoid generating more extremists by assisting with less-oppressive local partners rather unconditionally supporting more oppressive regimes.

This last point is particularly important in light of the Arab Spring, but also in general; many of those behind terrorist attacks against Americans—including most of the 9/11 hijackers—are from countries with oppressive governments that are supported by the United States;  hence, the “far enemy” supporting the “near enemy” rhetoric.  Even without completely ending it relationships with oppressive regimes—an ideal if impractical approach—the Obama Administration has been careful to distance itself from such regimes in the Middle East, at the very least avoiding the warm embrace of past administrations.  Egypt is a good example of this, and so is Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, but perhaps the best example is Iraq…

When Maliki’s Iraqi government asked for heavy U.S. assistance in the face of ISIS’s onslaught last summer, Obama knew that it was Malik’s own oppressive, heavy-handed policies targeting Sunnis that had largely created the crisis.  If Obama had unquestioningly come to the aid of Maliki and his government in Iraq when it was seen as brutally oppressing Iraqi Sunnis, Obama’s assistance would have just played into ISIS’s strategy of framing the conflict as the U.S. and Iraqi governments merely being forces of oppression against Sunnis.  Rather, Obama knew it was crucial to U.S. interests and strategy not be seen as aiding in Maliki’s oppression, and told Maliki that he would need to change his ways, or, failing that, told the Iraqis they would need to find a new leader worthy of American support if such support was to be forthcoming; Maliki did not swerve his course under heavy U.S. pressure, but Iraq’s political establishment did and forced Maliki out for a new, far less divisively sectarian Dr. Haider al-Abadi.  As I have written before, Obama’s withholding of support for Maliki’s oppressive government to bring about major internal Iraqi changes was a consummate diplomatic victory that was a win for America, Iraq, and the region.  If Obama had come to Maliki’s aid without demanding the Iraqi government treat Sunnis better, that would have been a gift to ISIS and further inflamed sectarian tensions and added to ISIS’s legitimacy and support among disaffected Sunnis.  Basically, Obama has signaled an end to doing dictators’ dirty work for them, and leaders that go past a certain point of heavy-handedness will find America more hesitant to help them than before.

Going back to the earlier analogy of a detective investigating a murder suspect: as I have noted before, violent crime and terrorism are actually similar problems with similar solutions; in the short term, force and deterrence is important, but in the longer run, “soft power” approaches that involve community and international development emphasizing human rights are even more important.  Obama is mocked for even suggesting this, but those doing the mocking only reveal their own myopia and disqualification from having anything to do with U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Obama’s Strategy

Note: chart is highlighted in its own post here

This leads up to the central aspects of both Obama’s Middle Eastern strategy and his ISIS/counterterrorism strategy, with Iraq as a springboard: gone are the days when Middle Eastern regimes would avoid tough political compromises with minority or disaffected ethnic, religious, and political groups, waiting for the U.S. to bail them out with military aid and sometimes military action that would simply beat these groups into destruction or submission; from Lebanon to Israel and Palestine, to Iraq and Yemen, to Syria and Egypt, many of the recent and also past conflicts revolve around a government oppressing various groups and using force, rather than politics, to achieve a “solution.” 

With Obama more than any other president, American aid the degree of it depends on whether regimes use politics over force.  Obama distanced himself from Maliki, and has also distanced himself from Egypt’s oppressive Sisi; though Syria’s Assad would be a good ally against ISIS, America working with Assad has been ruled out based on his morphing into a mass murderer.  At least rhetorically, Obama has even clashed repeatedly with close ally Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his heavy-handedness with the Palestinians.  The clear reality is that these regimes and others were able to use (the expectations of) American support and/or American military action to continue oppression carte blanche.

Now to Graeme Wood’s important article about ISIS: If bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s main aims was a long struggle to drive out western support for non-Islamic regimes with the hope of establishing a caliphate in the distant future—emphasizing the here-and-now-struggle over the caliphate—then ISIS’s focus is different: its people want to be the barrier carriers and enforcers of what to them is the only acceptable version of Islam (one based closely on Koranic text and theology), purifying the world with the blood of the non-compliers (ISIS’s expanded definition of takfir apostates) and to use this status to build both a following and a caliphate here and now, with the eventual, more distant goal of fulfilling apocalyptic prophecies.  Their power, then, begins with them claiming the mantle of Islam, the “true” Islam that will stand up to the West.

Thus, even if it does not find itself supported by a majority of Muslims, it is also undeniably Islamic; as noted earlier, most religious people are not extremists, but all religions have their extremists and religion in general tends to intensify and barbarize conflict.  More than anything else, ISIS wants and needs to be associated with Islam.

Which bring us to the other main aspect of Obama’s Middle-Easter and ISIS strategies: when defining and speaking about groups like ISIS, the smart play is to de-emphasize their Islamic nature.  Conflicts are not won with each side presenting objective descriptions of each other and each other’s characteristics and motivations; they are won with convincing and resounding narratives that almost never tell the whole story.  Propaganda, or information war, is often crucial to victory, and this has been true for thousands of years.  That does not mean that it is often best or advisable to engage in fantastical, blatant distortion, but in the case of ISIS, on the part of the West, it must mean to go out of the way to do as much to separate ISIS from Islam as possible in public statements and speeches.

Obama did not win the presidency by being a stupid man, and, in general, is not stupid, but very shrewd, even for all his flaws.  Of course he knows that ISIS is Islamic and his unwillingness to associate ISIS with Islam is not out of any sense of political correctness, timidity, or cowardice: rather, it is a very important and necessary part of a sound strategy to counter and eventually defeat ISIS.  By going out of its way to not associates radical extremist Islamic jihadist terrorists with Islam, the Obama Administration has been able to hurt terrorists’ narratives all over the world; bin Laden himself wrote of this (and the arena of narratives is one of the crucial battlefields of this war).  One of our most important allies in this conflict, King Abdullah of Jordan (a mainly Muslim country in case you did not know), is completely behind this strategy. 

ISIS’s apocalyptic vision called for a great final battle in northern Syria between itself and a great (Western?) army of “Rome,” the final showdown between faithful, true Muslims and the kuffar infidels before the end times.  The more some prominent Republicans constantly associate ISIS and terrorists publicly with Islam, the more they “shamefully…blur the linebetween [normal] Muslims and Islamic extremists,” the more they question and apply scrutiny to all of Islam and all Muslims, the more they call for massive U.S.-led military (ground) operations against ISIS, the more this gives ISIS’s murderous extremists exactly what they want, the better they can sell their narrative, the more recruits they will find, the more successful they will be. 

We saw this happen for al-Qaeda when we invaded Iraq, the aftermath of which saw a swelling of al-Qaeda’s rosters and of terrorism worldwide.  We seem to be particularly amnesic with regards to history, and, especially of late, with counterinsurgency and picking quality allies.  In the Vietnam War, America backed a regime unworthy of its professed values or the Vietnamese people, one that had no respect for human rights, and the population turned against America and the South Vietnamese government.  Another example is American support for Iran’s Shah, and America is still paying the price for that support.  Now, Republicans are calling for more robust support for Egypt’s oppressive President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi against Islamist insurgents there, including an ISIS affiliate.  They seem blithely unaware that such support might actually empower the insurgents fighting against Sisi’s regime.  In fact, if the U.S. were to go back to robustly aiding dictators who show no regard for human rights, it will prove ISIS’s propaganda true: that America and the West are teaming up with non-Islamic oppressors, who together are working against the masses of regular Muslims. 

And, crucially, more people will line up to fight us than if we were to be more careful about who we strongly supported, to whom we gave weaker support to, and who we did not support.  Iraq’s recent history proves this: the Sunnis in Western Iraq fought with American forces to defeat al-Qaeda in 2007; in 2014 they fought with ISIS against a Shiite government in Baghdad, led by Maliki, that shared no power, offered no compromise, gave no quarter to Sunnis, all while using the security forces of the state to promulgate violence against Sunni leaders and villages.  Iraq’s Sunnis were willing to fight against extremists Sunni Islamic terrorists when they believed they would get a fair shake in the Iraqi political system; when they instead were forcefully and deliberately marginalized, many of them allied with the same terrorists they had recently fought.

Instead of accommodating aggrieved groups and working out long-term compromise, these regimes will just use American support to get away with literal murder, fueling even more instability and conflict in the future.  This was a major lesson of both 9/11 and the Arab Spring, but the myopia of the Republicans leaves no room to even acknowledge this.  Instead, Obama seeks to force these regimes to engage in political compromise—the only way to defuse the sectarian tensions raging across the Middle East today—by using American aid as leverage.  By pushing these regimes to become something that locals will see as governments worth fighting for, there will emerge local government forces of Muslims with enough motivation and legitimacy (in addition to American and Western support) that can stand up to ISIS and deprive ISIS of the narrative and territory on which it feeds and survives.  Obama correctly understands than an organization like ISIS cannot be defeated by America: it must be defeated by the Muslims and governments in ISIS’s sphere of operations, and America can be there to help, but it must be the locals who lead.  A big part of any success will be the degree to which ISIS becomes divorced from Islam in the minds of the region’s Muslims.  The foolish Republicans and others who do not understand how important this aspect is to the regional dynamics and ISIS’s ability to both absorb and project power only empower ISIS in the long run.

Conclusion

The above describes Obama’s broader strategy for dealing with ISIS, counterterrorism, and the Middle East.  It is a complex, nuanced strategy for a complex, nuanced problem.  To be fair, the Obama Administration has hardly been perfect in its messaging of its complex strategy and how its components fit together.  Yet the strategy is also hardly rocket science, and even a modest understanding of Middle Eastern dynamics reveals that it is not only the best strategy, but the only one that yields a good chance of long-term success and short-term progress against terrorist extremists like ISIS.  Particularly troubling is the dominant Republican view, that if a strategy cannot fit into a bumper sticker (Trump’s “bomb the shit out of” ISIS) that means it is not (and that there is no) strategy; also, their idea that the solution to complex foreign policy problems should be modeled on John Wayne westerns.  Among many other reasons, these are reminders why the Republican Party and their leading candidates are not fit for high office, let along prosecuting a global fight against ISIS and its ill-intentioned brethren.

Getty Images

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