reflectivepundit

ISIS and the Terrorist Threat after the Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Kudos to the our country’s intelligence community, our Special and Conventional Forces, and the Syrian Kurds for locating and taking out ISIS’s founder and spiritual leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a daring raid. After the earlier demise of the physical “caliphate” this weekend’s death of Baghdadi is a welcome victory for the United States and all other targets of the ruthless and cult-like doctrine of the Islamic State and its fanatic jihadists.

It was hardly surprising that Donald Trump during his rhetorical victory lap resorted to superlatives as he compared the end of al-Baghdadi to the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden during Barack Obama’s presidency. During his Q & A session with the press President Trump boasted in the style that dominates his political rallies, “This is the biggest one perhaps that we’ve ever captured...This is the biggest there is. This is the worst ever. Osama bin Laden was big, but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade Center. This is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, a country." Trump tried to bolster his own achievement and minimize that of his predecessor by characterizing al-Baghdadi as bigger than bin Laden; he also diminished and dehumanized the ISIS leader as dying “like a coward” and “like a dog.”

Trumpian lingo, not the tone normal presidents used in similar situations!

By declaring that “the world is a much safer place,” the president raised a very important question, namely, whether the death of the leader of a dangerous terrorist organization will likely weaken that group or even signals the beginning of its end.

Unfortunately, the answer is a clear NO. Remember that al-Qaeda did not go away after bin Laden’s violent death but gained in strength in various regions of the world—including Syria. And ISIS, an off-shoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq, became a deadly factor after bin Laden was gone.

As President Trump allowed, indeed encouraged Turkish President Erdogan’s troops to force Syrian Kurds, our staunchest allies in the fight against ISIS, out of their homeland as U.S. forces left the area hastily, the many thousands of ISIS fighters in hiding and a growing threat of their brethren escaping from prisons guarded by Syrian Kurds are major factors in ISIS’s likely revival. Moreover, even after the caliphate was defeated, ISIS expanded elsewhere, including in Afghanistan and several African regions.

In his statement and exchanges with the press yesterday Mr. Trump’s first and most profoundly thanked Russia (and his idol Putin), Turkey (and his strongman friend Erdogan), and Syria (and human rights violator supreme Assad) for their assistance. Those parties merely allowed the U.S. military to fly over their controlled parts of Syria. Although the Kurds were crucial in providing human intelligence to pinpoint al-Baghdadi’s hiding place, the President minimized their role. And he once again attacked our Western allies, democracies, for their lack of cooperation.

America’s posture in the fight against ISIS, al-Qaeda and their many affiliates relied for years on relative small footprints of the American military and major fighting roles for local allied forces.

But Trump's betrayal of the Syrian Kurds does not bode well for present and future alliances of this kind nor for America's crucial alliances in Europe and Asia.

 

The Orwellian Truth and Big Brother Trump

By Brigitte L. Nacos

We have heard it all from the White House before. There are no objective facts, there are alternative facts. Think of Donald Trump’s claim that the crowd size at his inauguration was   unprecedented although aerial photos showed clearly far more people at Barack Obama’s first inauguration.

Facts do not matter for Trump and his staffers who deal a lot in alternative facts and post-truth.

What unfolded in the face of Hurricane Dorian deserves mentioning even though nothing coming out of the White House defying fact and reality is terribly surprising.  

It began with the President tweeting that Alabama was among the states threatened by Dorian--perhaps an unwitting mistake. After weather experts assured the public that there was no threat whatsoever for Alabama, Trump could have easily acknowledged he made a mistake. Instead, he continued to insist that Alabama could be affected.Yesterday, from the Oval Office, he displayed a map issued by the National Hurricane Center that was obviously falsified to show Alabama could have been affected by Dorian.

Challenged by news reports, the President issued yet another tweet this morning insisting,  “What I said was accurate! All Fake News in order to demean!”

This all is so similar to totalitarian alternative reality, fact, and truth as described in George Orwell’s “1984;” it is so strikingly similar to what Big Brother’s voice O’Brien tells Winston who has not yet surrendered to the totalitarian dictate:

“Winston, you believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right...But I tell you, Winston, reality is not external...

Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.”

In a moment of dissent Winston wrote in his diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two and two make four.”

Big Brother knew.

Following a torturous process overseen by O’Brien, Winston does no longer question Big Brother’s complete control over fact, reality, and truth.

When Big Brother says two plus two equals three—or five—or anything, it is the truth.

As the U.S. President continued to claim that Alabama was threatened by Hurricane Dorian against all facts, his message was clear: Whatever Big Brother Trump holds to be truth is truth.

Thankfully, America’s 2019 is not Orwell’s 1984...

Publicity is the Oxygen of the Trumpian Propaganda Show; the Mainstream Media Can Deny It

Brigitte L. Nacos

During many years of terrorism research I found ample evidence that publicity is central to the terrorist scheme. Terrorism is a communicative act designed to get attention and dominate the media, elite, and public agenda. I am not suggesting here that President Trump is a terrorist comparable to those who carried out 9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, or the recent attacks against innocents in a supermarket, synagogues, and churches--although his rhetorical twitter bombs are quite similar to those thrown by contemporary online jihadists and white supremacists that incite violence.

I suggest that just as publicity is the oxygen or lifeblood of terrorism, publicity is the oxygen or lifeblood of Mr. Trump’s destructive and disruptive propaganda show. During his 31 months in office Trump’s solo propaganda stream has been extremely successful. Even the best mainstream news organizations report on television, radio, in print or online instantly and seemingly breathlessly every crazy tweeted or spoken word this man utters.

Normally, when the president speaks, the press listens, and the public will be informed. But Donald Trump is not a normal president. In a rare moment of truthfulness, he said the other day that there was never a president like President Trump. Indeed! He and his cronies have cut normal routines between press and White House officials. There are no longer regular press briefings or new conferences. The transparency that Trump’s minions claim does not exist in this White House and Administration.

For Trump and his crew the news media serves conveniently as megaphone for the president’s mostly nonsensical and self-aggrandizing propaganda: insults, attacks, warnings, threats—with occasional assurances of love addressed to his truth-loving counterparts in North Korea and Russia and his friends at FOX News.

Nothing of this is newsworthy; nothing provides important public affairs information for the American people. Instead, this non-substantial news crowds out coverage of important news on immigration, health care, the environment, foreign affairs.

Most of the media unwittingly and some of the media wittingly magnify Donald Trump’s propaganda.

His unwitting accomplices in the mainstream media must stop this practice, must deny this president the oxygen that keeps his crazy rhetoric center stage 7/24.  

News organizations should declare a moratorium on covering non substantial Trump messages, whether tweeted or screamed at another campaign rally. It might not temper or cut down on Trump’s bully rhetoric, but it might reduce the frustrations and anxieties of many Americans who are exhausted from the never-ending coverage of this president’s unpresidential words.

Why not give it a try?

America’s Liberal Democracy under Attack

 

By Brigitte L. Nacos

With the news media already in weekend mode, the US Supreme Court announced on Friday its ruling that President Trump can use $2.5 billion to build his controversial Wall at the Southern border –although the Congress had earmarked this money for the Defense Department. Ignoring that the US Constitutions reserves the power of the purse to the legislative branch, the Court’s decision allows Trump to spend billions to fulfill his number one campaign promise in 2016. Not Mexico as he promised then but American taxpayers at the expense of the military will pay for the wall.

Reports about the ruling were momentarily “breaking news” on cable TV and mostly forgotten, when Trump threw another of his tweet bombs insulting Congressman Elijah Cummings and his Black constituents in Baltimore. Just as the President had early characterized countries with Black populations s-holes, his latest tweet insult called Cummings “a brutal bully” and his congressional district “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and “the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States.”  Cummings is one of the most soft-spoken members of the House. Given that Trump has a long history of attacking, insulting, and stereotyping African-Americans, Latinos, and other minorities of color, he added to the list of outrageously racist statements.

The attack on the African-American Congressman and African-Americans residing in his district, about half of his constituents, came shortly after similar content in his beloved Fox & Friends program on FOX News. This is typically how it works—the President sees and hears what he likes on FOX, tweets it as his own and thereby triggers massive mainstream news coverage.

In this case as in many similar tweet bombs before, his core supporters received another assurance from their Dear Leader that he is a White Nationalist defending their hateful, divisive ideology. Building the Wall, putting racial and religious minorities in their place along with Democrats and everyone else who does not support him is the Song of the King for the coming election campaign.

America’s liberal democracy is under attack and shows already some cracks. Just like power-hungry leaders abroad, such as Erdogan in Turkey or Viktor Orban in Hungary break institutions or hand them over to loyal supporters, Trump, too, has partners in Courts, the Department of Justice, and most of all in the Republican majority caucus in the US Senate.

When the Dear Leader is Said to Be Sent by God

By Brigitte L. Nacos

“Loved watching the crowd fill up for the 547th Rally in Green Bay. There has never been and probably never will be a movement like this again. Only God could deliver such a savior to our nation and only God could allow me to help. God bless America!”

The above tweet posted by Donald Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale on April 30, 2019 celebrated the U.S. President as savior sent to America by God. Parscale was and is not an exception among those who worship the Dear Leader in the White House as God-sent gift. Others in Trump’s orbit and many of his supporters among Evangelicals--ministers and rank and file supporters-- believe that he is the leader of a divine movement blessed by the Lord.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the recently departed White House press secretary, told the Christian Broadcast Network News when she was still in office,  

”I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president. And that’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

Earlier this week and following Trump’s racist tweets against four members of Congress, all women of color, Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the only black cabinet member, praised Trump during a cabinet meeting in the White House,

“You know," he said, "as I told you before, I think God is using you.”

This kind of worship is not unique among coteries surrounding divisive, racist, illiberal leaders. And it is not unique for hard-core rank-and-file supporters.

Comparisons to those surrounding Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany are instructive:  

Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, said in a speech, “With all our powers we will endeavor to be worthy of the Führer [Hitler] thou, O Lord, has sent us!”  

Hermann Goering, one of the most fanatical and most influential figures in the Nazi party and Hitler’s government, told the nation, “God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany.”

Joseph Goebbels, Secretary of Propaganda, who had grown up in a very religious family, stated, “We have a feeling that Germany has been transformed into a great house of God, including all classes, professions and creeds, where the Führer [Hitler] as our mediator stood before the throne of the Almighty."

There are valuable lessons to be learned from the past, But too often, as in today's America, those lessons and warnings are ignored by open worshipers and silent enablers of the occupant of the Oval Office.    

God Help America!

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Instead of singing “God bless America” this July Fourth holiday, we must rather wish and sing, “God help America!”

We do not need blessings for the dismal state of affairs but rather help to prevent further damage to our democracy.

To be sure, the great ideals of America were never fully realized—but there has been progress, sometimes more rapidly and sometimes more slowly.

Since Donald Trump took the highest office in the land, the president himself, his advisers, his incompetent department heads, the blindly following GOP in Congress, and his media propagandists led by FOX news have violated or supported the violation of laws and democratic rules of the game. Instead of moving Americans forward to a more promising future, they united to usher in a reactionary regime presided over a demagogue in bed with despicable dictators around the world.

Trump’s role at the G-20 meeting in Japan and his self-organized unreal reality show meeting with North Korea’s supreme human rights violator Kim Jong-Un was another embarrassing horror show on the international stage. After sharply criticizing Japan and Germany just before the meeting began, Trump’s jovial get-togethers with Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman( MBS), bolstered the international standing of ruthless rulers that violate civil liberties, human rights, and international law.

Trump continues to believe Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election campaigns in order to help candidate Trump rather than believing his own intelligence agencies that found ample proof of Russian malfeasance.  He believes MSB’s implausible denials that he ordered brutal murder of a Saudi journalist and U.S. resident in spite of contrary findings by the CIA and the United Nations.

The Donald’s latest meeting with North Korea’s Kim, with whom he fell in love thanks to the North Korean’s lovely letters, was not only celebrated by the President but by the American mainstream media as “historical.” Obviously, the very press that Trump has labeled again and again “enemy of the American people,” is falling again for his pre-campaign antics as they did before and during his 2016 campaign.

While Trump assured Kim and the world that he was “honored” by the joined crossing of the border between the two Koreas and lauded the Chairman Kim’s “powerful voice,” North-Korean security guards and state press used physical force against American journalists in the official press pool who pushed for access—bruising the new White House press secretary in the process.

Trump and his crew, including daughter and son-in-law, ignored these signs of Kim Jong-un’s horror show—probably happy  to draw the attention of Americans away from potential Trump opponents in the 2020 electoral race.

That brings me to the second point why God needs to help America this July Fourth: Unless Democrats competing to challenge the President next week get their act together, they will hand Trump his reelection on a platter. While it is fine to point to Trump’s promises made and promised broken record, Democrats need to offer voters a precise program for a brighter future in both domestic and foreign affairs.

If Howard Schultz Runs in 2020 as an Independent, Could a Boycott of Starbucks Stop Him?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After the first two years of Trump’s presidency and the recent shut-down of the federal government the number one imperative must be is to vote the MAGA man in 2020 out of office.

I believe that the impeachment route would be merely another irritant and stall in the GOP dominated US Senate. Democracy is best served when the electorate decides.

The biggest hurdle to vote Trump out could well be the candidacy of independent or third party candidates. Think of Jill Stein of the Green Party who might have drawn enough votes in crucial states to deny Hillary Clinton and hand Trump the victory.

Yet, Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, talks now publicly about a possible run in 2020—as an independent candidate.

What makes rich guys like Ross Perot in the 1990s and Schultz now think that they alone can heal all the ills of our political system? A good guess here is that it might be the same arrogance and hubris which motivated in the past and still motivate today the current occupant of the White House.

If Mr. Schultz believes that he is the best candidate for the highest office in the land, he should compete in the primaries of the Democratic Party given his liberal credentials.

Another business man and billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, who did a good job as Mayor of New York City, is not a pure enough liberal to have a chance to win the Democratic nomination.  He seems to recognize the pitfalls of an independent candidacy if the number one goal is to deny Trump a second term.

Schultz should take a page out of Bloomberg’s political playbook informed by experience in an actual public office and common sense.

It is telling that Trump tried this morning to goad Mr. Schultz by posting the following tweet:

Howard Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to run for President! Watched him on @60Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the “smartest person.” Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!

Obviously, Trump would love a third candidate in the race who could win enough votes from Independents and Democrats to keep him in office.

While Howard Schultz is no longer running Starbucks he is the single-largest shareholder of Starbucks holding 33 million shares directly and 1.7 million shares indirectly through trusts as of Jun. 26, 2018.

If he runs as an independent, a massive boycott of Starbucks might stop his candidacy.

What Donald Trump Can Learn from George Washington’s and John Adam’s Problems with the Press

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Donald Trump, as candidate and far more as the 45^th US President, has relentlessly attacked news media and individuals therein for reporting critically on his and his administration’s politics and policies.

Reporting that the president does not like becomes “fake” news in White House jargon.

Trump has threatened to change the libel laws, presumably having the Supreme Court overturn the New York Times vs. Sullivan ruling that makes it next to impossible for public figures to prevail in libel actions against news organizations.

Trump should read a history book to get some sense of previous presidents’ experiences with the press. He would first of all learn that some earlier presidents had a much harder time with the press than he ever could imagine.

A good time to look at would be the 1790s and the presidencies of George Washington and John Adams, both Federalists who were vilified constantly by the Republican presses of their times.

The most influential Republican (Anti-Federalist) paper was the Aurora in Philadelphia published and edited by Benjamin Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin, who hired writers like William Duane and James Callender.

Bache and his newspaper, more than any other Republican newsman and press, were constant thorns in both presidents’ hide.

Bache described President George Washington’s “comportment as ‘that of a monarch,’ his governance as the ‘apish mimickry of kingship,’ his ‘pompous carriages, splendid feasts, and tawdry gowns’ and his encouragement of the public celebration of his birthday.”

Since Bache’s Aurora was very influential in that it informed the content of many other Republican newspapers around the country, Washington war quite upset—but instead of publicly venting his feeling, he did so in conversations with and letters to friends.

In one letter, Washington wrote,  “If you read the Aurora of this city…you cannot but have perceived with what malignant industry, and persevering falsehoods I am assailed, in order to weaken, if not destroy, the confidence of the Public.”  

After George Washington died, the Aurora commented,

“If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington.

If ever a nation has suffered from the improper influence of a man, the American nation has suffered from the influence of Washington.

If ever a nation has been deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington.”

Warning to Progressive Democrats: The Devil is in the Name

By Brigitte L. Nacos

When activists of the Netroots Nation met the other day in New Orleans  to discuss their strategies for the 2018 mid-term and the 2020 presidential elections, they heard from several potential presidential contenders of the Democratic Party—among them Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren. But it was Cynthia Nixon, a challenger of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reelection bid from the left, who addressed the controversial “s” word for socialist.

Nixon appealed to the progressive crowd not to shy away from the “democratic socialist” label or their agenda. “Republicans call us socialists no matter what,” she said.

The problem is, however, that the devil is in the name. And the “s” word for socialist does not sit well with Democrats and Independents either. While most Americans would be hard pressed to define the term, there is no love lost when it comes to socialism that tends to be equated with communism.

So, progressive leaders from Bernie Sanders to Cynthia Nixon and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and progressive activists everywhere drop the label “socialism” and replace it with a more benign and actually more fitting “s” word --social.  

Call yourself Social Democrats, call your agenda social, call your distinct partisan wing “Social Democrats of America” (different from your current name Democratic Socialists of America).

Your agenda is social—health care and education for all, living wages, environmental protection, human rights for asylum seekers and immigrants, and so much more of what you find in Western Europe’s comparable democracies. Most, if not all of what Progressives here fight for has long been adopted in EU countries—most of all a social safety net for everyone.

So, again, the devil is in the name. Keep the letter “s” but change the word to social!

The Damning Facts that Drive Trump’s Lies and the Hope for Truthtellers

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The facts are clear: Russian operatives controlled by Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential elections with the intent to help Donald Trump to become president. The highest U.S. intelligence officials, all appointees of this president, and the U.S. Senate’s intelligence committee controlled by a GOP chair and majority, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller agree on this.

Today, Putin admitted that he wanted Trump to win while, not surprisingly, denying any wrongdoing.

Even as he stood next to Russia’s authoritarian leader President Trump attacked the facts, repeated the lies he tweets day-in and day-out, and attacked alleged foes at home, while his actual words and body language showered admiration on the autocrat he obviously fears.

In her essay “Truth and Politics” Hannah Arendt wrote that “truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other.” Still, in spite of her claim that lies are in the tool box of most, if not all politicians, she was aware of the danger of lies trumping facts. Thus, she wrote, “The chances of factual truth surviving the onslaught of power are very slim indeed…”

That’s what Americans are faced with today: Will the truth or will lies prevail?

As the Mueller investigation moves ever closer to Trump’s campaign crew and perhaps his family, as the indictments multiply and the trial of Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort nears, the president fights the truth with lies. In her philosophical essay Arendt wrote, “Unwelcome facts possess an infuriating stubbornness that nothing can move except plain lies.”

Will President Trump manage to replace the unwelcome truth with lies?

What happened today in Helsinki was even in Trump’s dreadful playbook a new low for any president and worse yet than his bullying of NATO, the EU, and the British Prime Minister last week. The horror show was not an assurance of the Trumpian “America First” promise but rather a declaration of love to Putin and “Russia First.”  

Yet, just like Trump declared the meetings in Brussels and the United Kingdom as historical success stories, he already praised himself for his success he achieved in Helsinki “for the American people.”

Will his advisers, will Republicans in Congress, will his appointees in the intelligence community continue to support this president as they did after each of his many outrageous missteps in the past?

Or will one truthteller or a group of truthtellers finally step forth and confront the liar-in-chief and the community of his enablers and supporters in the White House, in the administration, in the Congress, in states, cities, and counties with the facts, the truth?

Hannah Arendt wrote, “Where everybody lies about everything of importance, the truthteller…in the unlikely event that he survives, he has made a start toward changing the world.”

We can only hope and pray for such truthtellers and their survival. Otherwise, God help America as we love it.