Who Shaped the Orlando Killer More? His Father or ISIS?

NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 2I’ll leave it to others to make some kind of grand distinction between “terrorism” and “hate”. As though one comes at us only from “others” while the latter is homegrown. But following the first flow of information about Omar Mateen and his homicidal spree in Orlando, the description that fits best is that of the son — the spawn — of an intensely conservative, intolerant, controlling father. Father Mateen is strange old man who comes off as a strict paternalist, a man with righteous delusions of importance, maybe grandeur, far, far beyond his achievements in the world. All of which — guessing here — shaped his son the mass murderer into something universally familiar here in the USA, and in rural Yemen, in upscale Saudi Arabia, and everywhere else. Namely, a young man in his physical prime (mis)educated in the belief of his superiority and entitlement.

Always eager to play to a familiar, preexisting narrative, our commercial media and most of our politicians have leapt to emphasize Mateen’s declaration of support for ISIS. As though that one statement, (made, we learn this morning, in a phone conversation with cops while hold up in the nightclub’s restroom) is sufficient evidence of a purposeful, dedicated allegiance to grand religious/cultural war. I’m sorry, but I doubt it.

The psychologically misshapened, of which Mateen seems a prime example given his parentage, his abuse of his ex-wife and fear of/anger toward gays, have always been a common feature on the human landscape. The facts of his broader ethnic heritage seem far less significant than the specific forces that raised him.

If you choose to blame the strains of religiously-rooted cultural conservatism that pretty obviously contorted Mateen, you have to apply the same lens to the likes of dozens of other mass murderers, men with Christian surnames, who have brought their perversion of vengeful justice to bear on black churches, Planned Parenthood clinics and federal office buildings over the years.

We may never know, but Mateen’s declaration of support for ISIS, seems much more like an afterthought, a desperate final grasp for grandiosity. A reach for an even more provocative, inflammatory ring as he realized death awaited him on the other side of a thin rest room wall.

The saner view and response to this tragedy will be to resist the knee jerk shrieks that, “ISIS is coming to slaughter us all” and therefore we as a nation must gear up for counter-jihad in Middle East and accept that unstable young men like Omar Mateen, molded by demonstrably deluded parents (usually controlling fathers) are a universal problem, (always have been), and that at its core a declaration of support for a rampaging army of similar young men isn’t appreciably different than Tim McVeigh’s allegiance to the white militia movement of Dylan Roof’s to the South’s confederate heritage.

The warped and insane routinely seek legitimacy with a higher cause.

The Home of the Brave Has Gotten Irrationally Fearful

Elevator_crashThese are very scary times. Who among us does not lie awake at night worrying about dying in an elevator? I mean, what if one came crashing down while you were riding in it? Makes me shudder just thinking about it.

So I don’t care how tall the building is, I’m taking the stairs.  So are all of my family members. Better yet, we usually avoid going into structures with elevators.  Frankly, I wish they’d just outlaw them.

Or dogs. Oh sure, dogs look cute and all. I do understand that some of them actually aren’t killers. But still, I don’t let my family near dogs, because some have killed humans. Therefore, my family usually carries concealed firearms to protect themselves from being killed by vicious canines.  For goodness sake people, let’s not let any more dogs into our communities!

Paranoid, you say? I should accept the relatively low risk associated with elevators and dogs?  I shouldn’t let irrational levels of fear steal my peace-of-mind and quality-of-life?

Well, the risk of being killed by a dog (1-in-18,000,000) or dying in an elevator (1-in-10,440,000) is actually a bit higher than the risk of being killed by terrorism (1-in-20,000,000).  As context, consider that 1-in-100 Americans will die in a car crash in our lifetimes, yet Americans routinely ride in cars and don’t get particularly stressed about it.

Fear_of_terrorism_surveyDespite this relatively low level of risk, many Americans are overcome by our fear of terrorism. Even in June 2015, well before the recent Paris and California terrorist attacks, Gallup was finding that about half (49%) of Americans were worried that they or someone in their family would personally become a victim of terrorism.  Given the 1-in-20,000,000 odds, that level of fear is not rational.

Because of Americans’ extreme level of fear, we’re stocking up on guns. We’re betraying our national values by persecuting people who look and worship differently than us. Surveys even show that we’re willing to send young Americans to fight in yet another lethal, mega-expensive, and terrorism-provoking middle east quagmire.

Terrorism is a threat. We absolutely should take reasonable steps to limit and reduce the undeniable risk terrorism poses.   But we also need to keep the risk in proper perspective, so that we can continue to truthfully say that we are the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Note:  This post was also featured in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.

What Not to Do in Response to Paris.

Lambert_to_the_SlaughterBy the sound of the usual drum beaters you’d think 2003 was 1200 years ago not just 12. After the attacks in Paris the other night you’ll be relieved to know that once again the solution to this problem is “relatively easy”, certainly if you’re listening to someone, a wandering minstrel candidate for example, who doesn’t really have to do anything.

Eight guys with machine guns and suicide belts creating horror and havoc in big, pleasant city Westerners are both familiar with and care about, (i.e. not Baghdad or Beirut), is qualitatively different. Therefore, just like 2003, our pathway to peace is obvious. Invade someone. Syria in this case, maybe a part of Iraq too (again). Kill the dictator. Assad. And ISIS. Wherever they are. And take over the country. Then, although this tends to get all boring and nuancy, restore all the usual government functions like courts and sewage systems and Departments of Motor Vehicles and then, after a while toss the keys to some reasonable people and book a flight home.

For the life of these deep thinkers, they can’t understand why Barack Obama and his hand-wringers wasted seven years crippling us with socialized medicine and strangling off the innovation of Wall Street instead of killing Muslims, somewhere, anywhere. Hell, it’s gotten so bad a guy can’t take his date to the movies in America without the fear of being machine-gunned down by some maniac.

Oh wait. Sorry. I had my psychotic terrorists confused there for a second.

I have to remember. We’re only talking Muslims here. THEY are the ones (the only ones) who want to come here and kill us.

Lacking any kind of productive ideas from the conservative intelligentsia (sic), all of whom, like a chorus of wind up toys, are chanting for a re-run of “shock and awe” and “nation-building”, serious-minded adults who can remember all the way back to the dim twilight of 2003 have to apply a set of (very) hard-learned lessons.

For example:

A: Precisely like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, what ISIS wants more than anything is an apocalyptic war with the infidels. That’s us. Or really anyone who let’s women drive cars and practice total patriarchal control. And that would be a war,  preferably in a place where ISIS can most easily marshal a constant supply of fresh recruits. In 2003 the Bushies gave al-Qaeda everything they wanted plus a wet kiss, by not only coming to war in the Middle East, but by storming into the wrong country, oblivious to the centuries-old tribal insanities they were setting loose.

B: Whacking a dictator sounds like great fun, but replacing him with something better means accepting — at best — a couple decades of civil war, suicide bombings, insurgent whack-a-mole and ruinously expensive corruption on an epic scale, with no guarantee, ever, that “good guys” will eventually settle in and keep the water and electricity flowing, much less allow girls to go to school. And who gets handed the check for this?

C: The cry of “war!” plays well to arm chair commandos watching FoxNews. But fighting an “apocalyptic cult” like ISIS, which can cause more hysteria with eight guys invading via the AutoRoute in rental cars from Belgium than holding an entire city of two million people (Mosul, Iraq) argues less for a coalition of 100,000 crusaders charging across the sand into Damascus then another Orwellian step up in cyber-spying. And not just on 22 year-old jiihadis pissed-off by the loose morals of the West, but their oil rich/Saudi benefactors funneling money to them, very likely via sacrosanct Swiss banks. There’s no fist-pumping fun in nerds somewhere voiding a bank account.

But even if you know and accept all this, and aren’t fear-mongering for votes in a Republican primary, the horror in Paris … this horror in Paris … is going to require a more aggressive response to ISIS and religious radicalization.

A proper sequencing of tactics demands first weakening both ISIS on the ground and its world-wide supply and training network by attacking their revenue/quartermaster stream. I have no doubt Team Obama is well aware of this. But getting richer-than-Croesus Sunni sheiks to comply with American foreign policy goals is the stuff of fantasy. Their tribes are going to outlive any tribe in D.C. Leverage on that crowd will require a very deep and broad financial/intelligence coalition, meaning the Chinese as well, if not the Russians, too. Good luck with that.

Then, American liberals, weighing the alternative of yet another recklessly prosecuted ground war favored by the usual chickenhawks — take a bow Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio — may have to accept a heightened level of racial profiling, if only as a consequence of better intelligence-sharing with Western Europe. Personally, I’m certain this is already going on, with the FBI and others under the strictest orders to be as circumspect and low-profile as possible. But it’ll have to get tighter.

Finally, someone should start encouraging Americans to grow a little perspective and toughen up, before something happens here, again.

Our heavily-armed homegrown terrorists are regularly slaughtering more of us in schools, restaurants and movie theaters than any ISIS fanatic could ever dream of, and we accept it as a price we must pay for our freedom. (That of course would be the freedom to imagine that like some B-movie hero we’ll be the guy with the conceal-carry permit who riddles the fanatic with bullets, saves the day and gets the girl).

If we can avoid hysteria over the semi-weekly rampages we endure here with such unsettling equanimity in the Homeland, we need to remind ourselves to react with the same dispassion when eight guys in rental cars roll over the Canadian border and do a Paris number on The West Village or Yankee Stadium.

Congress Needs To Vote On Obama’s Proposed War on ISIL

I’m an Obama backer.  Though no President can ever be perfect, I admire what this President has done on the economy, health care reform, bringing home the troops from the Bush Middle East wars, and many other things.

Congress_war_declaration_authorityBut I disagreed with him last night when he said it would be “welcome” if Congress supported U.S. attacks on ISIL.  It would be more than welcome.  It would be necessary.

I’ll let others decide whether congressional authorization is constitutionally or statutorily required for a bombs and “advisers” action like this.   But strict legality aside, democratic principles dictate that a democracy’s representative body probe the executive branch’s plans and vote on authorization before we commit as a nation to the human and economic costs associated with a potentially protracted military engagement.

In 2008, I agreed with Obama when he said:

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action.

With only a 15-minute presidential speech presenting one side of the argument available, none of us yet has sufficient evidence to make an informed decision about whether or not we should support these proposed attacks on ISIL.  Congress needs to do it’s job and give the nation a free and open debate, and a democratic decision.  If Members of Congress really want to “support the troops,” an informed, transparent pre-strike debate about the pros and cons of this military action would support the troops in a much more meaningful way than yellow ribbons ever could.

– Loveland