In Brussels, Europe Is Struck at Its Heart

By Roger Cohen

March 22, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/opinion/international/in-brussels-europe-is-struck-at-its-heart.html?comments#permid=17973588

 

I generally agree with Mr. Cohen when he writes about European affairs - he has lived there and knows and understands the "European Dream".

But whenever he opines about terrorism, he is, in my view, way off base. It is easy, cheap, to criticize the "inadequacy" of Obama's policies against ISIS, but what alternative can Mr. Cohen, and indeed all the current batch of GOP candidates offer?

The implication is that the US (talk about a coalition is, for the most part, wishful thinking) can mount a military campaign (boots on the ground), and "quickly" defeat ISIS. But there is not a smidgeon of evidence that military action can solve the problem - Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya should be ample evidence of that.

In my view ISIS will burn itself out and any lasting solution will involve a very slow process of bringing a semblance of stability back to the Middle East, and the Islamic world itself dealing with the religious schism and the fanaticism of its religious leaders.

We need to remember that the bloodshed brought about by the Christian Reformation took several centuries to burn itself out.

In the meantime we, the West, need to protect ourselves the best we can, but not throw all our democratic, liberal traditions overboard in the process.

The immediate source of the terrorist scourge are not the newly arrived refugees, but the offsprings of legal immigrants, more often than not with a petty criminal record. Surely we can learn a lesson from that.

Obama's Flawed Realism

by Roger Cohen

March 18, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/opinion/obamas-flawed-realism.html?comments#permid=17937399

"It is possible to believe that the situation in Syria would be worse if Obama had followed through with punitive strikes?"

Conversely, Mr. Cohen, what evidence can you present, after Afghanistan and Iraq, that US intervention in Syria would have made ANY difference. It is now generally accepted that air power alone cannot make a decisive, lasting difference. The Russians are pulling out, not because they have "won", but because, they too, recognize the limitations of air power.

Unfortunately, since the end of the cold war, American "projection of power" has served to destabilize rather than stabilize.

The last time American intervention served to stabilize was in the Balkan war, but here the situation was dramatically different - a forcefully held-together multi-state nation was disintegrating along well established cultural and religious lines, and US/NATO airpower served to shorten the inevitable outcome and thus reduce the number of casualties.

We, the US and "the West", finally need to recognized that the artificial boundaries established in the dying days of the British and French empires, through ignorance and arrogance, cannot be sustained, because the people themselves do not "live" these boundaries in any cultural and/or religious sense. 

The "Kurdish state" is an example of what needs to be encouraged throughout the region to finally come to some semblance of peace. This involves carving up Iraq and Syria. It would also, admittedly, open a huge problem Turkey.

Two interesting links regarding Kurdish "states":

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/world/middleeast/syria-kurds.html?ref=middleeast

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/opinion/the-kurds-push-for-self-rule-in-syria.html?ref=international

Profiles in Paralysis

by Ross Douthat

March 19, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/profiles-in-paralysis.html?comments&_r=0#permid=17949695:17949753

The huge mistake which the whole Republican "establishment" is making, is to pretend that the "sudden rise of Trumpism" is the cause of the current "existential" problems within the GOP and the "Conservative movement".

The truth is that for decades, indeed several generations now, the Conservatives and the Republican establishment have been knowingly and maliciously mining the worst instincts in all of us in their dogmatically crazed efforts to turn America into a fever induced vision of something that may have existed and worked 200 years ago, in the frontier days and the "wild west" era.

The Republicans have systematically undermined any belief in the need for civility, compromise, mutual trust and social cohesiveness. Their mantra, since "Saint Reagan" has been that the government is the problem, and they have now reaped what they have sown: a significant minority of Americans have come to believe this nonsense. 

First the Tea Party reared its ugly head, taking to heart the GOP mantra that government is the (only) problem, and this nihilistic fanaticism of the Tea Party, as most clearly personified by Ted Cruz, took over control of the GOP like a cancer - forcing John Boehner from office.

The lack of civility too, has been long in coming, exemplified by the Boehner/McConnell doctrine, that the highest priority was to make Obama fail, together with their tacit complicity in the hideous attacks on Obama as a "Nigerian-born Muslim".

Douthat helped create this monster.

Waiter, Where’s Our (Political) Spinach?

by Margaret Sullivan

THE PUBLIC EDITOR MARCH 5, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/public-editor/new-york-times-public-editor-presidential-campaign.html?comments#permid=17804540:17804569

The "print media", of which the NYT claims to be the preeminent member, was the last bastion of both substantive reporting and in-depth investigative reporting. That is now history. In their battles to survive, the print media are cutting budgets for actual reporting and trying to emulate the mindless drivel of the internet.

Here again we have a prime example of how competitive, profit motivated forces is some areas can lead to disastrous effects. In trying to stay economically competitive, the media are engages in "a race to the bottom". The TV news has long since reached the level of bottom-feeders, and now the print-media is fast sinking to the same level.

There are many areas in the social/political/economic sphere where the "free market" does not work, but indeed can lead to terrible conditions. The Flint water disaster is an extreme example, where "bean counters" were put in place to take control from elected officials, with catastrophic results. Heath Insurance, and health care in general is another example where free-market, profit driven structures do not work.

Journalism, in my view, is another area where, (like in health care, where a basic level is guaranteed by all other modern societies), a minimum guaranteed access to, in this case, reliable, factual information is necessary for democracy to function.

Americans tend to discount state supported media as un-free and un-democratic - they are stuck in the model of Soviet-style media. However, in most European countries state media is an integral part of ensuring a well informed electorate.

In Germany, for example, the success of the state media (ARD and ZDF) in terms of their news and information programming, has resulted in the commercial media emulating the state media in news and information broadcasting, resulting in a much higher quality overall.

US media, in their weird interpretation of the "fair and balanced" guidelines, and their fear of being seen as biased or non-PC, will allow public figures to spout non-sense, slogans and blatantly non-factual garbage, by and large without challenge. Having witnessed first-hand a number of political campaigns and political interviews in Germany, such "passivity" on the part of journalism would be unthinkable.

The Strong Man and the Weak Party

by Ross Douthat

Feb. 4, 2016

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/the-strong-man-and-the-weak-party/?comments#permid=17788014

For some (perhaps obvious - they are part of the "establishment") reason, the Conservative pundits cannot face the reality, that the current splintering of the GOP is of their (the GOP's) own making, going back to Reagan and before. The GOP has used any and all measures to sow and reenforce discontent in their irresponsible grasp, by all and any means, for power, starting with the Southern Strategy, via Reagan's "the government is the problem", all the way to allowing the Tea Party to hijack and paralyze them. They have played to the most mean, greedy and uninformed tendencies to mobilize the most uninformed and ignorant to their cause. The outcome of this decades long effort to appeal to the lowest emotions, meanness and ignorance has now come to full bloom, as graphically and disgustingly demonstrated in last night's "debate".

It is ridiculous to try and blame the implosion of the Conservative Movement and some fictitious lack of leadership - their leadership is who encouraged and engineered this disaster, unwittingly, of course.

The GOP "base" has finally realized that "the government", which is supposedly the cause of all evil, according the the GOP deity (Reagan), are, at least half the time, the GOP establishment itself, as evidenced by the dismal antics of the GOP in both houses of Congress. And now this awakened GOP base is ready the "throw the bastards out".