Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
If the Islamic terror attacks this past Saturday have taught us anything, it is that neither Clinton nor Trump have any idea how to handle the problem, and the former probably doesn’t really want to. To recap, Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, is suspected of detonating a bomb in New Jersey near the start of a Marine Corps charity race on Saturday morning, and then another bomb in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City about eleven hours later, according to police. A third device, an unexploded pressure cooker bomb, was discovered and the investigation of it led authorities to the suspect – again all according to the police and media-published accounts.
With the general election drawing ever nearer, both Clinton and Trump used the events as campaign talking points, none of which made a ton of sense. Trump congratulated himself for correctly guessing the explosion on Saturday morning in New Jersey was a bomb, as opposed to some other sort of explosion-causing device, before the news media published authoritative accounts of the explosion in fact having been caused by a bomb.
“I should be a newscaster because I called it before the news,” Trump said, not seeming to understand that newscasters traditionally report the facts as opposed to making educated guesses.
For her part, Clinton’s comments early on were equally idiotic.
“Let’s not get diverted and distracted by kind of campaign rhetoric we hear from the other side… This is a serious challenge. We are well equipped to meet it. We can do so in keeping with smart law enforcement, good intelligence and in concert with our values,” Clinton said, hoping voters would temporarily forget she’s running for Obama’s third term and his administration has proven utterly useless at combating terror attacks at home.
Clinton might have been better off sticking to vague platitudes that would have still sounded better-reasoned than Trump’s usual bloviating; instead however, she got into specifics that couldn’t help but reveal her disdain for individual liberty, or really, individuals.
“The recruitment and radicalization that goes on online has to be much more vigorously intercepted and prevented,” Clinton said.
According to an MSN article, Clinton elaborated by calling on tech companies to “step up;” or in other words to acquiesce to government demands that they be given all the keys needed to break the encryption private companies use to protect their customers’ privacy rights when those customers use the devices those companies sell.
While Clinton argued that the government be given the technology to usurp terms of agreement and the Fourth Amendment, Trump went a completely different direction with his comments.
“We’re in medieval times,” Trump said, speaking at a rally and referencing the stabbing rampage in a Minnesota mall that wounded nine people – a rampage that was stopped by a recreational shooter and NRA-instructor with no ties to law enforcement and therefore not an “off-duty cop” as the media continues to insist on reporting in an ongoing effort to discredit any notion that armed civilians ever do any good.
The article goes on, as they do; and this bleating back and forth will go on, as it will, through early November; then we’ll be treated to Obama’s third term. As for terrorism, it’ll be just like the economy and criminal justice reform, problems that Obama worsened, or didn’t really address at all and the blame for them will be pushed off onto Republicans or something else.
Regardless of who wins, however, there will continue to be Islamist terrorist attacks on US soil. The terrorists will as often be American-born young men from Muslim families and whose bloodlines go back to Middle Eastern countries where the US murders civilians with impunity using armed drones and bombers. These attacks will continue because no matter who wins, and it’s going to be Hillary anyway, the next president will continue to exacerbate the problems in that region.
A Trump presidency, which isn’t going to happen, would worsen the problem of Islamic terror by the fact Trump would make America’s foreign and domestic policies worse. Turning up the military violence on the Middle East, as he would do, would create more terrorists at home and abroad, as it always does. His proposed profiling and screening of Muslims would also only serve to inspire more terrorists as well. His idea that government can actually be useful in screening people and otherwise preventing terrorists from entering the nation is laughable.
Clinton, on the other hand, will just carry on the Obama doctrine of using armed drones to kill people all over the world. While George W. Bush is often held up as the boogeyman most associated with drone strikes, Obama has eclipsed Bush in that regard, in terms of both the body count and the number of nations attacked. Obama opened up fronts in the drone war in both Yemen and Libya and has pounded the region relentlessly with Hellfire missiles launched from drones.
Drone strike math is pretty simple. The Hellfire missile was designed to destroy Soviet T-72 tanks. So, when one hits a Toyota, there’s a bit of excess energy given off by the warhead as Toyotas are a bit less rugged than a main battle tank. That energy kills and maims everyone around the intended target of the missile strike – who may or may not have been a terrorist to begin with. However, some of the family members of the injured and killed bystanders are now most certainly terrorists – resulting in a net gain of terrorists for every drone strike. This formula has worked out quite well for the defense contractors who make missiles and drones. It’s also worked out wonderfully for the federal government. If the government is busy making new terrorists, there’ll always be a terror threat which can be used to rationalize even greater violations of individual rights – like those Clinton is already calling for, like those Obama called for in the wake of San Bernardino. And, more terror attacks increases the likelihood of another one involving a semi-auto rifle, which will serve as another springboard for the Left to make another attempt at a sweeping gun ban.
In short, neither candidate can solve the problem of Islamic terror; Trump because he cannot understand the nature of the problem to begin with, and Clinton because it is most certainly not within the government’s interest to actually end the threat of Islamic terrorism. The benefits to the federal government of an ongoing terrorist threat vastly outweigh any gains to be had by ending the threat. And, let’s face it, there is no sexy way of actually fighting Islamic terror effectively. Ending the threat means understanding it first; it means disengaging with that entire region militarily and then as much so politically as is possible. And not just “as is possible while protecting the interests of Shell, BP, etc.,” but, “as is possible.” It means giving up the notion that the West can, and has the right to, impose regime changes in nations there. It means scaling back the overt and uncritical support of Israel, which doesn’t need U.S. military support anyway. It means a sea-change in U.S. foreign policy, a sea-change that doesn’t have anything to do with the interests of the federal government or its crony corporations. Therefore, this problem will never go away; our politicians will keep us mired in this forever war because it is in their interests to do so. And, at the end of the day, the only interests that ever matter are those of the politicians in power.
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