It is highly unlikely for an attack to happen because terrorist come here. ISIS recruits over the internet. To carry out a coordinated attack without being detected would be difficult, but not impossible. Isolated, radicalized U.S. citizens are the biggest risk.
The Paris attack was coordinated with an attack in Mali. ISIS’ message is that they can hit anywhere. The breeding ground for radicalization is in Brussels. Europe’s system of taking in refugees is completely different from ours in the U.S. Terrorists do their research to find the weak spots, and they use the internet effectively.
France is fiercely secular and the most visited tourist site in Europe. ISIS was sending the message, “We can strike anywhere we want, any time we want.” France has not done a good job of assimilating Muslims. What does the Paris attack tell us about ISIS’ strategy? Here are my thoughts. I’d like to have your comments.
Robert Taft said, “The business of the opposition is to oppose,” but what he meant by that was “loyal opposition.” Along with the ability to compromise, this seems to be a missing element in today’s politics. Loyal opposition carries responsibilities and often leads to effective solutions and policies.
How do you balance development, conservation, and competing interest groups? The recent rejection of the Keystone Pipeline reminds me of the Hetch Hetchy Valley controversy. The water supply of San Francisco was at stake. The Keystone Pipeline controversy is not simply a battle between “tree huggers” and oil interests.
There are lessons from the breakup of Yugoslavia after Tito’s death that help explain the chaos in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Tito’s dictatorship was the glue holding the system together. The current discussion is about Islamic terrorism and attempted genocide, but in the breakup after Yugoslavia, Orthodox Christian Serbs attempted genocide against Bosnian Muslims. No one really knows how many were murdered, but in Srebnica alone there are graves holding the bodies of at least 7,800 Bosnian Muslims. Without Sadam holding the system together in Iraq, there was ongoing civil war and the breakup of an artificial nation. The same thing happened with the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya. The situation with the Assad regime in Syria is still unfolding. These are all nations that were never able to establish a sense of national identity.
Russia’s supply lines have to go through the Bosphorus, and the Turks can make that difficult. The Roman Empire learned that there were great dangers in overextending. The frontiers of an empire present significant dangers and choices about what is worth fighting for. Just as Russia overextended itself in Afghanistan, it may be doing the same in Syria. Putin may have gotten himself into more trouble than he imagines.
Our interests in the Middle East go back to the earliest days of our republic. There are three essentials that are non-negotiable parts of our foreign policy: sea power, security of Israel, and promotion of democratic values. Given these non-negotiables, a collision of values with Islamist forces is inevitable. This is a summary of part of a presentation I gave this week in a four-part lecture series.
The increased violence in Jerusalem, usually knife attacks by lone-wolf individual Palestinians, seems to center around rumors about the site holy to Jews as the Temple Mount, yet also revered by Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif. They believe that the Jews are planning to take over the Haram al-Sharif.
This history goes way back. A similar situation arose in 1929 when about 6,000 Jews said they were going to “the wall” to pray. Rumors spread quickly. There were riots and in some cases outright massacres. This led the Jewish community to organize a self-protection group. That was the beginning of the Haganah, which was the forerunner of The Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
This is a longstanding pattern that is likely to continue. Unfortunately, it escalates fear and mistrust and takes attention away from other important issues.
https://youtu.be/zMxkt7T3Ey8
Abraham Lincoln welcomed immigrants. He saw immigration as a solution to his manpower issues. His Act to Encourage Immigrants was a major factor in the Union victory in the Civil War. We competed with other nations for immigrants. The promotion of our “Streets Are Paved with Gold” national image led to one of the greatest influxes of immigration in world history.
