reflectivepundit

Romney’s Failure to Forcefully Disavow Conspiracy Theorist Trump’s Birther Claims

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The breaking news last night and this morning describes Showman Donald Trumps’ latest public outbursts about President Obama’s allegedly fake birth certificate as an unwelcome upstaging of Mitt Romney on the day, when the Republican presidential candidate secured enough votes for his party’s nomination. According to the Washington Post, “The provocative real estate magnate used the spotlight to promote his long-debunked contention that Obama was born in a foreign country. Romney aides admitted that this was an unhelpful distraction. At a moment when they wanted to put the president on the defensive, it was Romney who found himself in that position, leaving it to his aides to assert that he disagrees with Trump.” This was the dominant storyline: Trump rained on Romney’s parade just on the day, when he as the first Mormon in U.S. history had finally assured the delegate count for the presidential nomination.

The same day, when Trump used the media stage to revive the birther “issue,” Romney himself missed another opportunity to personally reject those rumors once and for all. The Caucus Blog of the New York Times reports today what happened at a campaign stop in Las Vegas on Tuesday:

“Speaking to a crowd at a furniture warehouse here, Mr. Romney recalled a suggestion from a man he had recently met on the campaign trail.

“I’d like to have a provision in the Constitution,” he recalled the man saying, “that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president and the birthplace of the president being set by the Constitution, I’d like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he could become president of the United States.”

Mr. Romney did not endorse the idea, but he seemed to like it.

“You see, then he or she would understand that the policies they’re putting in place have to encourage small business, make it easier for business to grow.”

The article claims that Romney “joked” about this and that he has said that he believed the president is born in America. But by not at all questioning an allegedly suggested constitutional requirement of citizenship and birthplace for presidents, Romney played to the most divisive, and, yes, hateful fringe of the far-right conservative base that he obviously wants to win over and mobilize for the Election Day.

Romney himself needs to take the moral highway and disassociate himself from Trump’s ever more frenzied birther rumors which are mostly perpetuated on wacky, right-wing web sites to support the argument that President Barack Obama is foreign-born and therefore not eligible for the highest office in the land. He is, as birther conspiracy theorists claim, an illegitimate president. Hand-in-hand with the birther rumors goes the accusation that Obama is not, as he claims, a Christian but a Muslim with a secret and un-American fifth column agenda.

This is not a laughing matter, not when a significant number of Republicans embrace both the birther and Obama-is-a-Muslim conspiracy theories. 

Is the Defeat of Al Qaeda “Now Within Reach” as President Obama Suggests?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

While the first anniversary of Osama in Laden’s death is reason enough to assess the status quo of the terrorist organization he founded and chaired, President Obama’s claim that the defeat of Al Qaeda “is now within reach” deserves a closer look.

There is no doubt that the demise of bin Laden was the most devastating blow against the original Al Qaeda organization or Al Qaeda Central, a close-knit group of extremist Arabs, some of whom had fought in Afghanistan against Soviet troops during the 1980s--with covert support by the CIA.  Targeted relentlessly by pilotless drones in the mountains of Pakistan, the bulk of Al Qaeda Central’s core of sub-leaders serving under bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri, now the sole Al Qaeda boss, was decimated.

Although the president’s opponents, most of all in the neo-conservative camp, try hard to paint him as another Democrat who is weak on defense and national security, the truth is that Obama has been far more decisive in fighting Al Qaeda militarily than his Republican predecessor. The lethal raid against bin Laden was merely the exclamation mark on a successful military campaign against Al Qaeda Central members and their Taliban allies.

So, if President Obama meant to say that the defeat of Al Qaeda Central is within reach, his optimism is justified.

But Al Qaeda Global is another story.

The problem here is that Al Qaeda’s ideology has proven far stronger and more durable than Al Qaeda Central. Al Qaeda as powerful idea has spread like a virus around the world. While fanatic Arabs and Muslims, terrorists and insurgents in many countries claim to have direct ties to Al Qaeda Central and have sworn allegiance to the original group, what they mostly or solely share with the original bin Laden clique is the idea of fighting U.S.-led Western powers and their allies in the Muslim world, what bin Laden repeatedly described as a Huntingtonian clash of civilizations, cultures, and, most of all, religions.

President Obama is surely aware of this. After all, he himself has authorized increased drone strikes against self-proclaimed Jihadists and Al Qaeda allies in Yemen and against Al Shabaab in Somalia. While these and many other groups in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and in the Western diaspora articulate the same ideas as Al Qaeda, they are autonomous and not at all affiliated of the original group.

Unlike Al Qaeda Central, the cells and nodes in the global network of terrorists which are inspired by bin Laden and Al Qaeda present a far greater problem for counterterrorist strategies and tactics than the hierarchically organized original group.

Al Qaeda Central may be on the verge of defeat. But the defeat of Al Qaeda as inspirational force is not within reach.