Thoughts on Orlando

The horrific events in Orlando were matched by an equally horrifying response by the Obama administration.   He continues to make strategic blunders on a grand scale that historians may be writing about for centuries.  Worse, as evidence piles up that his strategy is amiss, he simply doubles down and sticks with it.   Strategy is strategy, whether it is in sports, war, business or politics.  And every high school football coach in America knows that if the other team keeps scoring on you, you need to change something.

Right now, Radical Islam is beating Team Obama badly at the game of strategy.  

The first strategic blunder was the minimization of the threat.  Early on, President Obama dismissed ISIS as the “j.v.” and a “bunch of guys in pickup trucks.”  As late as last fall, Obama admitted he had no strategy for ISIS, and obscenely, on the eve of the Paris attacks, blithely declared that ISIS was contained.  He has made ludicrous statements such as asserting that the risk of dying in a slip and fall in a bathtub is greater than that of being killed in a terrorist incident.  He has released Gitmo detainees that are known killers and bombmakers.  He has continued to peddle the narrative that ISIS does not constitute an existential threat to the U.S.  His continued underestimation of the nature of their capabilities, their different forms, their reach, and their resilience is deeply troubling.  Worse, when the opposition party raises issues, he demonstrates more ire and more contempt for them than the enemy.  The U.S. military was able to obliterate the world’s 3^rd largest military in 100 days in the desert in 1991, yet after almost 15 years in Afghanistan, the Taliban controls more territory than it did 10 years ago in Afghanistan and ISIS is able to inflict casualties in Europe and our homeland.  Radical Islam’s ability to rebound and hit the West should end any threat minimization.  It is certain to evolve and become even more deadly.

The second strategic blunder has been the atrocious framing of the problem by the Obama administration.  Obama has twisted himself into a pretzel in his attempt to dissociate Islam from terror.   The business world is littered with failed companies that tragically dismissed smaller, more nimble competitors, misjudged the market, and were ambushed by technological advances that neutralized their advantages.  It is no different in the competition among countries and ideas.   Defining and framing the problem is everything.  It permits us to focus and expend resources wisely, build consensus, rally the nation and ease the fears of the citizens. 

“These aren’t religious warriors,” proclaimed Obama following the attack.  They problem is that THEY think they are and that’s all that matters. In Graeme Wood's seminal article, "What ISIS Really Wants," published in March of 2015 (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/), Wood noted bluntly, “ISIS is Islamic.   Very Islamic.”   Whether Obama thinks they are Islamic or not is not relevant, and, indeed, will frustrate attempts to develop a real strategy around it.  It is their belief system, their interpretation of the Qur’an, their worldview that we are countering.  His denial that the words “radical Islam” have meaning in this struggle is almost surreal.  As somebody who trained for his professional life in law school, and whose political ascendancy was largely through rhetoric, he now claims that words are unimportant.  Every student of history and of leadership knows that this is simply not true.   When framing issues, words matter greatly.   Loretta Lynch’s statement that the Orlando 911 calls will have references to Islamic terrorism redacted is simply a stunning obfuscation of what we all know to be true. 

Islam has sick and pathological aspects to it, and the darker parts of it—those that directly contravene Western values of tolerance, individual freedom, and democracy—have been latched onto by various groups to attempt to impose its will on the rest of the world.  The more realistic we are about it and its pervasiveness, the better chance we have of shrinking, controlling, and eventually defeating it.  My religion-- Catholicism has also had pathologies throughout its history.  Among them were the sale of indulgences and the child sex abuse scandals.  By claiming that it held the keys to the everlasting kingdom, the church enriched itself by selling passes to heaven until Martin Luther came along to expose the corruption of the scheme.  The child sex abuse scandal was even worse.  The abuse involved not just one parish, one diocese, or one country.  It was systemic, pervasive and global.  There were thousands of children that suffered a lifetime of shame and pain, lives ruined by alcoholism, drug abuse, and wrecked relationships until the Church’s mishandling of it was exposed through the press.  Of course, we did not condemn all Catholics or even all priests because of this scandal, but you could hardly be accused of being a “bigot” or “Catholi-phobic” if you declined to permit your 10 year old son to attend an overnight religious camp supervised only by priests.  That wouldn’t be bigoted. That would be prudent.  Similarly, we cannot shrink from calling out the necrotic parts of Islam and those that espouse it.

Obama’s stubborn refusal to recognize the intertwining of Islam with terror and his abdication of leadership on the issue—from not attending the Paris march against terrorism to his instinctive rush to prevent the nonexistent backlash against Muslims---makes him sound at times more like the Executive Director of CAIR than the Commander In Chief of the U.S.   Most frightening to me is his willingness to subordinate Western values to avoid offending Islam.  He was at his worst when he asserted in his Cairo speech, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”  The exact opposite is true and must be true.  In the West, no religion, no worldview is above criticism or parody.  Artistic works like “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “The Life of Brian,”  “The Book of Mormon,” and even the widely criticized “Piss Christ” were all allowed to be seen and distributed in the West.  And no incidents of violence resulted.   Would we even think about producing a parody on Muhammed with dancing girls in short burkas on Broadway without risk of violence? Not if the threats against Salman Rushdie, the cartoonists that parodied Muhammed, and the deaths of Theo van Gogh and the Charlie Hebdo staff are any indication.  If we value freedom, freedom of expression, women’s rights, gay rights, the future MUST belong to those who would slander the prophet of Islam.  Obama has it precisely backwards.

Defeating radical Islam will be a very tough strategic problem.  Like the creature in the classic sci-fi film Alien, radical Islam has adapted itself quite well to our defenses.  Because it wraps religion around itself, it is an ideal defense mechanism—our nation was founded in part on religious freedom, and we are revulsed by any form of racial or religious bigotry.  More recently, it has also wrapped itself in humanitarian causes—the refugee crisis and has said that it has infiltrated those refugees.  No country on the planet is more responsive to humanitarian need than the U.S. and radical Islam is poised to exploit that.   Another adaptation is its exploitation of new technologies.   Radical Islam is a 16^th century mindframe that has successfully hijacked 21^st century networking capability through social media.  (Ironically, Lenin famously said that “the capitalist will sell us the rope we hang them with.” Radical Islam is inflicting damage with the technology we generously enabled them to access.) It has several forms and branches, that sometimes cooperate and sometimes compete---ISIS, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, and, of course, it has taken over the mechanisms of a state—Iran, the mother ship of all Islamic terror. 

Donald Trump has been widely criticized for his proposed policy to ban all Muslim immigration for a period of time as bigoted and overreaching.  And it is.  But he has gotten traction with this approach because people are scared and nervous and they see an administration that is almost willful in turning a blind eye to the issue that confronts us.   The surest way to avoid an overinclusive policy is to face this threat realistically, call it by its name, frame the problem correctly, and get our best, innovative strategic minds working on it.  If citizens do not feel adequately protected, they may ultimately opt for Trump’s approach.

We are faced with a multi-headed hydra.  Radical Islam is as totalitarian, brutal, dehumanizing and ruthless as Nazism.  We were able to defeat the Axis powers with raw industrial power.  We defeated Communism by fighting on several fronts—ideologically, militarily (through proxy wars) and economically.  Radical Islam is a tougher, more elusive, more resilient foe than Communism.  It is an idea, wrapped in a religion, armed with a network.  It has co-opted not just new recruits, but apologists in the Western media.  We should not be afraid to face it.  We need a comprehensive and realistic strategy to tackle this foe.  We need leadership that is willing to face truth.   In economic terms, we need to find ways of raising the cost to be a member of the radical Islam club.   We need to disrupt their ability to recruit and network while simultaneously respecting our own freedoms.  This will require a coordinated effort and innovative thinking on many fronts---economic, political, military, and ideological.  While Marie Harf’s solution is reflexively liberal and wrong (jobs for jihadis), her basic assertion is correct that fighting this solely along a military dimension will not likely be successful.  Blanket, simplistic solutions may have surface appeal but are not the answer—such as banning all Muslims or carpet bombing.  Even Islamic expert Daniel Pipes, who I respect a great deal, struggles with this when he says we should bank Islamists but not Muslims.   I agree, but telling them apart is THE issue.  But pretending that the problem does not exist, or recharacterizing it as something different than it is--a gun control problem, for instance, simply allows our adversary to retain the initiative.  This war will take innovative thinking, and the entrepreneurial minds in the West are more capable than anyone else in the world at this.  Unfortunately, we have an administration that is in deep denial and this is scary.  More attacks and more deaths are in our future (CIA director John Brennan directly contradicted Obama's assessment and said as much).  Perhaps it will take coordinated dirty bomb attacks on several cities before we get serious about strategy.

Delivering a blow aimed at the LGBT community just as the Obama administration was pushing hard for expanded LGBT rights was a message, and not merely coincidence.  Team Obama has underestimated radical Islam and has been outflanked.

Hope

I attended college reunion festivities at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park recently, and had a grand time.  I began showing up regularly about 8 or 9 years ago and always run into old friends and make new ones that are doing interesting things.  The presentations are quite good—it’s electrifying to hear a lecture by a Nobel Prize winner and to be around so many intellectually engaged people.

But in this crazy, upside down, rancorous election year, I got something more important out of it---hope for the future.   It’s easy to be pretty morose about the times we are in.  We have had an economy that has been performing   below trend line for years.  International threats seem to be multiplying.  Race relations have gotten worse, not better.  No matter how you cut it, our two expected nominees are deeply flawed. 

Sure, it was fun to catch up with old classmates and listen to lectures.  But this year, there seemed to be more students mingling at the cocktail parties, perhaps because they have been told to start networking early.  This year, I also spent a little more time talking to them.  And what a treat it was.  I found them to be interesting, engaging, and of course, very, very bright.

Three of them caught my attention.

The first one was a gangly young man, sitting alone at a table in the beer garden, working at his laptop.  I was standing next to him, and he nudged me and asked, “Excuse me, sir, can I bother you for a few moments to show you the app I am developing?”   I sat down and he walked me through an impressive piece of work.  The young man studied the Great Books as an undergrad, and developed an app around them.  The app is designed to disseminate the Great Books through readings, games, and quotes.    There are quotes from Euripides, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Thoreau—in short, the great writers and thinkers that make up The Canon.   Those that scholars like Harold Bloom have determined are vital to our very humanity, and, sadly, the same ones that the PC-crazed students at Yale want to have removed from the curriculum for being “too white.”   But at The University of Chicago, not only are they still taught and revered,  a student has taken up the task of connecting these great works to modern technology to make them more accessible to others.  I marveled at his genuine passion for his work.

The second student I conversed with was a vivacious woman that was graduating.  She was forward to the start of her PhD program in neuroscience and bubbled over with enthusiasm over her impending stint at a Polish university where she planned to research in cat and dog reaction to anxiety and depression.  She went on and on about her academic work, and how excited she was to get to the next level.  In the midst of our conversation, her smile suddenly ran off her face and she grew very serious, lowered her voice and confided, “I’m really afraid to leave here.  I’m afraid that I will never find a place that I will love as much, as intellectually rich and be living with so many bright people.”  I paused, struggling to find the right response to her, “You are right to feel that way.  This university is a very special place.  You will likely not find a place with such a concentration of people that are as devoted to intellectual life.  As you get on in life, you will need to find other avenues, other ways to fill that need, but it will always be there.  And don’t forget to return for reunion weekend.” 

Finally, there was young woman presented her thesis on education in India.   She presented compelling evidence to show that merely having separate bathrooms for boys and girls (many schools have no bathrooms at all) raises the proportion of girls that stay in school by a statistically significant amount.  This effect is pronounced as girls hit puberty and begin menstruating.  Often, girls simply drop out of school rather than endure a lack of privacy.  Assuring safety, security and privacy turn out to be pivotal factors in keeping girls in school.  This young woman will be taking her results to organizations like the WTO to argue for an adjustment in spending priorities based on her research.

There were others, of course.  I just cited a couple of examples.  But it was terribly stimulating to connect with this next generation of brilliant, engaging minds,-young people that are consumed with the acquisition of new knowledge, of looking at the world in a new way, forming new connections, of making some contribution that advances our understanding of the world, and, indeed changes it.   The young man that was working on the app for the Classics –marrying the wisdom of the ancients to the digital age (instead of jumping on the bandwagon of those that would discard it)  is exactly the kind of young person that Chicago attracts, develops, grows, and then lets loose on the world.

Amidst this sometimes grim economic and political climate, those young scholars gave me reason to hope.