Focal Points Blog

Are Class Differences Between Muslims in Europe and U.S. Really Determining Factor in Terror Attacks?

In the U.S. Muslims tend to be middle-class; in Europe, the urban poor.

Many Muslims in Europe share characteristics with Europe’s nationalists — and, in the U.S., supporters of Trump. (Photo: IBT Times)

At Politico magazine, Daniel Benjamin writes: “Since 9/11, the four largest attacks in Europe … have claimed at least 426 lives. In the United States, even with the Fort Hood shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing and San Bernardino, the total is 45.” In other words: “Western European Muslims are three times likelier to end up in ISIS than their American co-religionists.”
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Gorbachev Was Just Too Far Out Front of the United States

Mikhail Gorbachev exploded the Reagan administration’s little minds.

By Russ Wellen, 2 days ago

Many still believe that the United States won the Cold War and that nuclear weapons were the reason why. Pictured: Mikhail Gorbachev. (Photo: Dgies / Flickr Commons)

Conventional thinking holds that nuclear deterrence helped the United States win the Cold War. Unfortunately, that may be doubly delusional. In their 1994 book We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton University Press), Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein write:

The conventional wisdom has two components. American military capability and resolve allegedly convinced Soviet leaders that aggression anywhere would meet unyielding opposition. Forty years of arms competition also brought the Soviet economy to the edge of collapse. The Reagan buildup and Star Wars, the argument goes, were the straws that broke the Soviet camel’s back. Moscow could not match the increased level of American defense spending and accordingly chose to end the Cold War.
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Hillary Clinton Still Stuck in Time Warp About Israel

As with Israel, many of Hillary Clinton’s positions have passed their sell-by date.

By Russ Wellen, 3 days ago

Hillary Clinton’s remarks before AIPAC sound like someone from the Bush administration. (Photo: Marc Nozell / Flickr Commons)

In her speech before AIPAC on March 21, Hillary Clinton sounded like the Obama administration had never happened:

“The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever,” Clinton declared. “We must take our alliance to the next level,” she said, calling for “even more intense security and diplomatic cooperation” and demanding that the U.S. arm the Israeli military “with the most sophisticated defense technology.”

Cruz Tries to Have It Both Ways With His Foreign-Policy Advisors

Cruz’s team spans the spectrum from run-of-the-mill neocon to flaming Islamophobe.

By Russ Wellen, 4 days ago

Ted Cruz would allow Islamophobe Frank Gaffney into the henhouse. (Photo: Matt Johnson / Flickr)

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz announced his team of foreign-policy advisors on Thursday, March 17 by saying, “After two terms of a failed Obama-Clinton foreign policy, our allies are confused and frightened, and our enemies are looking for opportunities.”

Never mind our allies, Americans — at least those who follow foreign policy — are confused and frightened by his team. The list includes the infamous Frank Gaffney, a number of people less well-known, and neocon Elliot Abrams, who was an adviser to former President George W. Bush.
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Progressives Whiffing on Talking Point About the Rich and Taxes

Tax breaks and evasion as well as offshore investments by the rich means less money for national security.

By Russ Wellen, 5 days ago

When the corporate rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, it leaves us more vulnerable to attack. (Photo: J. Stephen Conn / Flickr Commons)

Progressives are missing an obvious talking point regarding the rich, corporate and otherwise, and national security. You always hear that tax evasion by the rich could fund needs such as education and poverty in the United States. But another area is being shortchanged as well. I addressed this in a 2012 post titled Low Tax Rates for the Rich Harm Not Only the Economy, But Defense, which I present here, updated.
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Just How Much Should Paul Bremer Be Blamed for the Rise of the Islamic State?

Plenty, according to Neil Swidey’s astonishing article in the Boston Globe, but not entirely.

By Russ Wellen, March 18, 2016

The blithe optimism demonstrated by the planners of the invasion of Iraq is still capable of taking one’s breath away. (Photo: Lisa M. Zunzanyika / Flickr Commons)

After George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer, the second Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq (governor of the occupation, in other words), is often considered the man most responsible for the dissolution of civil society in Iraq and the rise of sectarian strife. In the Boston Globe, Neil Swidey (not behind a paywall, as with most of its articles) explores just how much responsibility Bremer, who he calls “at once well intentioned, infuriating, and tragic,” bears.
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We Tolerate the Risk of Nuclear War Between States But Not Nuclear Terrorism

Policymakers accept the risk of an all-out nuclear attack implicit in deterrence, but have no tolerance for the much smaller nuclear terrorism threat.

By Russ Wellen, March 17, 2016

Fear of a nuclear terrorist attack can deter us as much as fear of all-out nuclear war. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons )

Did you ever notice how panicky the notion of nuclear terrorism makes us? Meanwhile, most of us consider nuclear deterrence a risk well worth taking for the sake of national security. In fact, the damage that nuclear war between states causes dwarfs that of a nuclear attack with one small bomb (or even only a “dirty” bomb). Perhaps it’s just because we assume terrorists act on bad faith — supposedly little concern about the loss of the lives of themselves and their people — while, most of the time anyway, states can be depended on to act in good faith because they are entrusted with the lives of their citizens.
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States With Aging and Youthful Demographics Can Complement Each Other

If unrest in the Middle East and mass migration ease, developed states might once again welcome workers from developing states.

By Russ Wellen, March 16, 2016

Developing states are full to bursting with unemployed young people. (Photo: Greek Reporter)

Many believe that, with contraception spreading among developing nations, overpopulation has been solved. In fact, we’re just beginning to experience the worst effects as it peaks. In the New York Times, Somini Sengupta explains:

At no point in recorded history has our world been so demographically lopsided, with old people concentrated in rich countries and the young in not-so-rich countries.

Much has been made of the challenges of aging societies. But it’s the youth bulge that stands to put greater pressure on the global economy, sow political unrest, spur mass migration and have profound consequences for everything from marriage to Internet access to the growth of cities.

Yazidi Women Seized by the Islamic State Caught Between Rock and a Hard Place

Choose your poison: Have the baby of an Islamic State fighter or be continually raped.

By Russ Wellen, March 15, 2016

Few Yazidi women captured by the Islamic State have become pregnant. (Photo: Atheist Alliance)

Yazidi women in Iraq who were captured by the Islamic State in 2014 and since used as sex slaves have been experiencing few pregnancies. Writes Rukmini Callimachi in the New York Times:

… of more than 700 rape victims from the Yazidi ethnic group who have sought treatment so far at a United Nations-backed clinic in northern Iraq, just 5 percent became pregnant during their enslavement.

Despite their medieval attitudes about sex, birth control, and abortion, the fighters who “own” and sell them have been giving them birth control pills. Why?
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Foreign Policy: Subject Non Grata in the Primaries

With little discussion of foreign policy in the primary races, we’re left wondering whether diplomacy will continue to take a backseat to military action.

By Rachelle Marshall, March 14, 2016

Instead of combating the roots of terrorism, our military strategy since 9/11 has watered and fertilized those roots. (Photo: Ruby Goes / Flickr)

With the possible exception of Ted Cruz, who proposed that the U.S. carpet-bomb Syria, discussion of foreign policy has been notably absent from the pre-primary election campaigns of both parties. Consequently we can only hope that the next president will have the temperament to rely on diplomatic solutions rather hasty military action. It is an issue that could determine the fate of America and much of the world.

In 2008 voters elected Barack Obama with high hopes that he would not commit the same sins as George W. Bush by lying to the American people, taking the country into needless wars, and ignoring international law and the U.S. Constitution. He has disappointed many of those hopes. He expanded the war in Afghanistan after saying he was ending it, he continued to hold dozens of prisoners in Guantanamo, and he authorized drone strikes and the assassination of suspected terrorists, in countries with which we were not at war.
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