A Few Thoughts on Foreign Policy in the Wake of ISIS

Another day, another beheading, this time of a British citizen, Alan Henning. ISIS has threatened to kill an former US Army Ranger, Peter Kassig, next.

Obviously, this kind of brutality prompts an emotional and visceral response from everyone who hears about it. ISIS is a group of fanatical, violent, and above all evil men who have no moral restraint of their horrific acts. There is nothing to salvage, to negotiate with, or to understand. They have abandoned any pretense of human decency in favor of unfettered depravity. This is unquestionably true.

What, then, shall the United States and the civilized West do? What is our responsibility as a nation in the face of such unabashed evil? What kind and degree of threat does ISIS pose to our country, our culture, and humanity at large?

Well, I'm not going to presume to be able to answer those. I have thought about them quite a bit, though, and I hope that, if I haven't arrived at answers, I've at least determined some of the proper questions.

The most pressing issue is the prospect of military response. We've already committed to airstrikes and certain detachments of personnel ("boots on the ground" rhetorical maneuvering aside), which we have yet to classify as a war (as evidenced by the administration's avoidance of the term and the lack of congressional approval thus far). There's an important issue of executive authority at stake, one that I'll refrain from addressing for now. My current question: should we, the United States, declare and wage war on ISIS?

That "should" makes this question tricky. The emotional response I've seen (and felt) is that, yes, we should obliterate these monsters from the face of the earth. Why wait and allow them to kill more people? It seems simple: they're evil, we need to be good, and if we do nothing, evil will prevail.

If it only it were so easily determined. Our nation was built largely on a foundation of natural law theory, which (to unsatisfactorily summarize) dictates that a nation is responsible for protecting its (its citizens') life, liberty, and property. If another party attacks or imminently threatens these, the nation, like the individual, is allowed (and, indeed, obligated under the social contract) to use force in response. Again, seems simple: we defend ourselves, and that's the only tolerable use of force on another nation or party.

Yet, when theory goes into practice, such lines blur. What constitutes a real and actionable "threat" to our country? Must we wait until we have actually been attacked and our lives lost before we can use force? Is the potential of attack (such as the buildup of military force in range of our citizens) enough to justify war? Is stated or discovered (by espionage, perhaps) intent to attack us enough? Some combination of the two?

In the present matter of ISIS, we do have some facts: they have stated their intent to kill us ("We will raise the flag of Allah in the White House"), and they have killed our citizens (in public beheadings). From this, one could make a case for use of military force. There is one more factor, though: ISIS's ability to actually carry out their threats. Though they call themselves an Islamic State, they do not have the normal characteristics of a nation-state that we might declare war upon. They hold cities as tactical locations more than as home territory, they do not have demarcated borders, they do not have a traditional military. As such, they do not have similar capabilities of war to, say, Russia or China. Their equipment and arms are stolen, not produced. They use what's available rather than what a factory can churn out. Their scope and power, then, has estimable limits.

Then again, such unconventional violent actors are hard to predict, as 9/11 showed us. What is the risk of another suicide attack? Could ISIS fighters infiltrate or seize airplanes and attack us? Could they acquire biological weapons, cyber-warfare capabilities, or other means with which to harm us? Even in such cases, are they really capable of amassing enough power to actually conquer our capital and fly their flag above it?

Considering I don't work for the CIA, I can't really answer those questions. Nor can any average citizen with any reasonable certainty. With such issues, I don't believe there is any completely correct answer or any perfect response we can find. We can argue about principles of non-intervention and self-defense, but when push comes to shove, do any of us really, truly, with complete confidence, know what to do?

No. Of course not. Anyone that says otherwise is lying.

What I will say on the matter is that, whatever our approach ends up being, I want it to be based solely on the protection of out citizens' lives. All decisions must flow from that principle. That could include many things: helping allies that are in a position to protect us, taking preemptive action on individual ISIS threats, or even avoiding military action for the sake of keeping soldiers out of danger. Whatever we do, it needs to be with the aim of minimizing our loss of life.

Ultimately, that's what our government is for. We've voted for representatives and executives and told them: "Protect us. Protect our lives, liberty, and property. That's your job."

I just hope they do it well.

The Scourge of Scientism: Why I Can't Stand NDT

Before going any further, read this.

Done? Ok. This should let you know where I'm coming from for this piece, which is being written on a high of caffeine and angst.

What makes me so mad about what that Federalist piece reveals is not merely the fact that Neil deGrasse Tyson, beloved host of Cosmos and demigod of the "nerd" community, fudged quotes to support his talks. It's his entire attitude and apparent compulsive need to belittle everyone who is not as "objective" or "sciencey" as he is supposed to be.

Just look at this tweet of his. If the sheer smug of that statement doesn't make you want to ralph, you might be someone who "****ing Loves Science" on Facebook. But let's take that tweet at face value. He doesn't want people who aren't grounded in objective reality to be in positions of power. Ok, so what does that mean? Who are these people who don't include such things in their worldview that are so dangerous?

Well, here's a clue. Surprised? Me neither. Closely tied to his agenda of making science the standard of political authority is the denigration of Christianity. Look no further than this clip from Bill Maher's show in which Maher takes a quote from a Creationist, Ken Ham, paraphrases it to make sound like a crazy Christian redneck rambling, and lets Tyson knock the softball out of the park with a remark, an eye-roll, and a head shake.

(As a side note, Tyson also seems to have a strange fixation with aliens and their superiority to humans).

What do we learn from this? We learn that Tyson is not trying to have an intelligent debate about epistemology or formulate a coherent empirical philosophy. He's acting as a prophet, a carnival barker, a mouthpiece to rouse the rabble of religion-haters.

The point of this isn't to make Tyson look like a jerk, though. That's too easy. He wouldn't be so popular and respected without a reason. There's a disturbingly vast contingent of people in this country that rely on this kind of brainless affirmation of their biases. They sneer at Christians, so when a guy on TV does it, they celebrate. They think looking at pictures of space and making puns about molecules makes them cool and smart, so when a guy with a meme face does it, they salivate.

This mentality has little if anything to do with actual science. As many other smarter, angrier people have explained, almost no one retweeting NDT or liking posts by IFLS actually enjoys conducting experiments, gathering data, and testing hypotheses. What they're interested in is having an Authority on their side. They appropriate Science as their trump card. "Oh, you're skeptical about climate change? You must hate Science." "Oh, you believe in God? Well, Science doesn't, idiot." And the real irony is when these people try to use Science to trump, you know, actual science, like in the climate change and abortion debates.

In essence, the crowd hanging on Tyson's every word is no different than, say, the Joel Osteen fan club megachurch, or the Westboro Baptist Church, or the Manson Family. They're all groups of people that have clung to a figure telling them things they want to hear, smoothing over their doubts, and affirming their broken philosophy. It's a way of shutting out skepticism and doubt. It's a way of avoiding the tough questions of life by blindly accepting a man's words as Revealed Truth. It's a way of trying to fill a void, of finding diversion from the inquietude of the soul, as Pascal puts it.

Science is their God, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, for the moment, is its avatar.

The Good, the Bad, and the Depraved

Charles C. W. Cooke wrote an excellent piece for National Review about ISIS, barbarism, and the inadequate wishful response to evil that pervades our society. He touches on a subject I've thought about often: the philosophical drive behind modern liberal thinking.

His best words, in my opinion, are: "Elsewhere, others are seeking explanations as to what might have pushed Foley’s killers to such extraordinary lengths. Perhaps, they ask, IS’s behavior is the fault of something else. The United States’ invasion of Iraq, maybe? Or the legacy of colonialism, or of global inequality? Do these men just need running water? This instinct is folly, the product of the mistaken conviction that man is perfectible and his nature pliant, and that there is something intrinsically different about our age."

That mistaken conviction is the cancerous principle behind most, if not all, liberal policies and talking points. Foreign policy is a great example. The United States has been pouring money into Afghanistan since the 1940s in the hopes that improved conditions will beget improved culture. This, of course, has been an utter disaster. If anything, it has only given evil men more tools to use toward preying on the innocent. There's a reason the Taliban uses AK-47s and Russian tanks; they simply absorbed modern tools into their medieval culture of tribal warfare.

So too does ISIS commit unthinkable acts and use the internet to make its aims clear. They are carrying out jihad, just like they have for thousands of years, only now they have Twitter accounts (no, seriously, I've seen them). They know what technology is, they know what Western culture is, and they know what democracy, wealth, and prosperity look like. They don't care, because they are not driven by such material concerns. They believe in an evil god who tells them to do evil things.

Westerners like to think men are driven by circumstance above all. Men only commit evil out of deception driven by desperation, we tell ourselves. Every man is the equivalent of a street urchin stealing an apple because he's hungry and knows no better. If someone would just take that urchin in, give him a hot meal, tell him about social justice, and tell him he can do whatever he sets his mind to, he'll become an enlightened, valuable, inoffensive member of a happy society.

We see this line of thought in domestic policy as well. Government spending programs are based on the idea that throwing money at a problem will improve the situation and therefore people's lives. School spending is a profound example of this. As schools churn out students who, if they're lucky, can barely read, solutions are sought. Surely, if the teachers just had iPads, they'd be better able to make positive impacts on their students. And so, more and more money is spent, while education sinks deeper. The problem is, no one wants to face the real problem: what are students taught? What character are they developing? Down what kind of path are they led?

Down to its core, the difference between liberals and conservatives is this: liberals think people are basically good, and conditions can drive them to be bad. Conservatives think people are basically evil, and conditions can drive them to be worse. To be sure, both recognize the possibility of good in humanity. No one would donate to charity otherwise. But liberals think that things like altruism, forgiveness, tolerance (to the extreme degree) are the norm. Conservatives see them as the exception. A good exception, and one to be encouraged wherever possible, but the exception nonetheless, and one that cannot be coerced out of people.

That leads me to the point I really want to make. Liberals want their norm, a perfect society, to be real at any cost. Imperfections have to be changed, sometimes weeded out. That includes people who don't share their vision: conservatives (Christians in particular). You can't expect other people to be evil in a society free of all human evil; such thoughts cannot belong. Thomas More wrote excellently on this in Utopia. The Utopian people have no locks, no way of shutting people out, no privacy, because of course, no one would take advantage of such vulnerability. For this to work, everyone has to think exactly the same way, believe exactly the same things, live exactly the same way, by the same rules, in every aspect of their lives.

And thus we reach the interminable contradiction of liberal philosophy. To be fully tolerant, to include all of humanity, they must be intolerant to the point of eradicating all dissent. This is, while perhaps not the most blatant form of evil (the Islamists beheading journalists have something to say about that), it may be the most dangerous: evil that has total faith that it is, in fact, unequivocally good. For all its claims of nuance and understanding, it is ultimately yet another fundamentalist movement, to use our pet modern lingo. There is a ruthless simplicity behind it: humanity is good, we will make it good, and you better be good, or else.

For ISIS, that "or else" is public beheading. For American liberals... well, I think we have yet to see how far they will go.

Let me clear up your confusion, DWS.

Oh dear. Representative and chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz, from my own state of Florida, is trying to scold House Republicans. CNN Opinion published a piece written by her entitled "Republicans, we're confused." It's ok, Debbie. Thinking is hard.

She takes issue with the GOP-controlled House's vote to sue President Obama for his various unlawful executive actions. Well, actually, the vote was to authorize House Speaker John Boehner to sue, not bring the suit themselves, but I'll let the utter lack of nuance slide. She claims that this, coupled with the House GOP leadership's statement that "There are numerous steps the President can and should be taking right now, without the need for congressional action," makes for a contradictory and obstructionist position by those rambunctious, rascally Representatives. As she puts it, "Sue the President for doing his job one day; ask him to do their job for them the next. The hypocrisy is difficult to fathom."

Allow me to illuminate.

She says the House's initial failure to vote on an immigration bill and subsequent passing of a bill she doesn't approve of is indicative of this "do-nothing Congress." So the bill geared toward enforcing the law and deporting illegal immigrants apparently amounts to doing nothing. Never mind that the President immediately promised to veto it and the Democrat-controlled Senate will kill it before it can even reach Obama's desk.

This leads me to my main point. The House passed this bill as an example of what enforcing the law should look like. As in, Obama's job. He's the executive, he enforces legislation. The fact that Congress even needs to pass a bill represents a failure of the President to uphold his oath of office, which is what the House GOP observed in its supposedly contradictory statement. Schultz also claims that voters "are fed up with the more than 50 votes to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act." Oh, really? Is that why polls show about 56% disapproval and only about 40% approval for the ACA? I'd say the House of Representatives, you know, the people elected to represent the people, are doing their job fine on that front.

Speaking of jobs, look at Schultz's opening statement again: "House Republicans took the unprecedented action of voting to sue the President for doing his job and taking action to stand up for the American people." The President's job, despite his being a popularly elected official, is not to "stand up for the American people." It is to govern, to enforce and uphold law, to defend the people as commander and chief. Congress's job is to "stand up for the American people." That's why they're elected. They have constituents. They also have limits, like the President.

Maybe that's where Schultz is so confused. She seems to think the President's job is to be all three branches of government. He is supposed to make law, interpret law, and enforce law as he sees fit. Congress is supposed to write nice things for him to sign and otherwise sit there and look pretty while the expert fixes everything. Hate to burst your bubble, but that's not how things are supposed to work. Powers are separated in this government of ours to prevent solely one man, or solely an oligarchy, or solely majority rule from deciding what happens.

Schultz calls "alarmingly apparent" the Republican House's "insistence on adhering to rigid ideology." Yeah, it's called law. It's called the Constitution. It's called America.

Still confused?

No, Amanda, we really do hate elitist snobs for being elitist snobs.

Charles C. W. Cooke wrote "Smarter than Thou" for National Review, a piece tearing down, as he puts it, "the extraordinarily puffed-up 'nerd' culture" liberals use to assert their supposed intellectual dominance. Obviously, this impertinent rebellion against our country's true elite could not be allowed to stand, so Salon's Amanda Marcotte took up her keyboard to bring glorious retribution upon this British-American upstart. She calls Cooke's point of view "anti-intellectual paranoia" and attributes such attacks against Neil deGrasse Tyson and his fellow luminaries to simple, unabated jealousy. Let's explore her brilliance together, shall we?

Her opening paragraph is simply a gem. She opens with an explanation of all right-wing ideology: "If there’s one belief that binds the disparate factions of the American right together, it’s the belief in American exceptionalism." So far, so neutral and objective. But she goes on: "The mythology that conservatism is about promoting excellence and encouraging strivers is found throughout conservative media and literature." Mythology, she says? Oh dear, a subtle implication that perhaps this conservative belief is not as genuine as we all hoped. Where could she be going with this? Here is where she is going: "While it often manifests as contempt for the poor and the vulnerable, in the abstract this conservative enthusiasm for doing better could, in theory, be channeled productively toward actually pushing people to achieve."

Oh. Snap.

In one fell paragraph-form swoop, she has explained how much the right wing just straight up hates the poor and simultaneously pointed out that conservatism doesn't actually do anything for anyone. Ever. You guys.

But I digress. On to the meat of this delicious diatribe.

She poses an amazing question in the following paragraph: "So why are so many conservatives abandoning this enthusiasm for the exceptional in favor of what can only be described as jealous sniping aimed at people who are actually trying to expand the world creatively and scientifically?" Note the use of "only." There's no other way to describe it. It can only be jealousy, not a legitimately-held opinion, because, actually, the liberal elite are trying to expand the world, duh. Never mind the assumptions of both conservative motives and liberal usefulness to society: she's nailed it. Why even write further? But oh, she does continue, gracing us with her radiant insight into the scummy right-wing mindset.

Why do conservative thinky-smarty-types attack the liberal intellectual pantheon? To fool their stupid audience, of course. Conservative rubes must be distracted from their true oppressors: Wall Street. As she puts it, "If you can get your audiences to hate journalists and scientists, they won’t hate the wealthy bankers who actually screwed them over." Yes, tea party members, you're being led astray from the intellectual bounty and subtlety of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Wake up, sheeple!

And thus we arrive at Cooke's piece. "An illustration of the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson graced the cover, drawn to look self-satisfied, even though deGrasse Tyson hardly gives off that vibe in real life." Yes, the man who said, "My great fear is that we’ve in fact been visited by intelligent aliens but they chose not to make contact, on the conclusion that there’s no sign of intelligent life on Earth" is the epitome of humility and class.

On to what I consider the money quote: "Cooke knows that calling Tyson a poseur is a stretch even his extraordinarily gullible audience won’t buy, so be [sic] grudgingly admits that Tyson 'has formal scientific training,' though he doesn’t go so far as to allow that the director of the Hayden Planetarium is actually, you know, a scientist and not just some hipster in a lab coat costume." You nailed it, Amanda. Cooke just won't admit Tyson is a scientist because he's so gosh darn jealous, you guys. Never mind that Tyson isn't famous for being a scientist. Never mind that he's popular because you can put his face on meme pictures or because he rolls his eyes at Christians or says "climate change, you guys" on a TV show. He's just too smart, you gullible unscientific rubes. That's why you hate him.

The rest of the piece goes on for a while, but it's not really worth quoting, since it's just more "conservatives are wrong and jerky butt-faces." I just want to take a moment and really look at what our dear Amanda is saying. Conservatives don't like the superiority given off by liberal elites because they're jealous. Why would they be jealous? Because they're not as smart. It being the case that conservatives aren't as smart, they lash out against liberals for being so gosh darn smart. Conservatives don't hate being talked down to, they just hate being so stupid that they deserve to be talked down to!

And there it is. Amanda has proven Cooke's point almost as well as he himself does. Liberals want to paint themselves as smarter, more rational, more intelligent, with all the facts on their side. They paint themselves that way because they think they really are that way. When you think you really are that way, you look down on everyone who disagrees, because obviously they're dumb jealous haters. It's a wonderfully-constructed feedback loop of superiority that cannot be broken, impertinent self-loathing foreigners be damned.

Why would anyone hate people like that?