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Lessons and Questions.

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Boko Haram first rose to the attention of people in Europe and America in mid-2014.[1] Then Nigeria occupied the center of attention. However, the Nigerian military appeared incapable of defeating Boko Haram. The military has been used as a source of income for politicians, rather than as a fighting force. Furthermore, the Nigerian government largely spurned Western offers of assistance.[2] Boko Haram also spilled into the surrounding countries of Cameroon, Niger, and Chad. It conquered a territory the size of Belgium. So the Western countries (France and the United States) turned to those same neighboring countries to lead the fight against Boko Haram. American Special Forces troops were assigned to assist the African military forces actually willing to fight Boko Haram. The Americans established a base for drones in northern Cameroon. From this base surveillance drones have been hunting Boko Haram forces throughout the whole four country area.

Chad has played an important role in this process. Chad has a troubled recent history, to put it mildly.[3] As a result, its troops have a lot of experience at fighting armed opponents (as opposed to shooting at civilian demonstrators). Unlike Nigeria, Chad had devoted most of its defense budget to training and equipping the soldiers. Having already battled the Islamist uprising in Mali in 2013, troops from Chad helped roll back Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger during 2015. Recently, this strategy began to pay off as Boko Haram was forced out of territory it had controlled and lost much of its ability to wage “conventional”—if irregular–war.

However, the armies of Chad and Cameroon can defeat Boko Haram, but they are too small to hold all the ground and to provide security. So, defeat in one form of warfare has caused Boko Haram to turn to another form: suicide bombings and road-side IEDs. For example, since July 2016, Boko Haram has carried out at least 40 suicide bombings in northern Cameroon alone. Recently, a pair of suicide bombers struck in Chibok in northern Nigeria, killing 12 and wounding 15. So far, Boko Haram’s campaign is working. An estimated 100,000 people have fled the Far Northern region; driving from one village to the next requires a military escort; and the local economy is hardly functioning.

With the regular armed forces strung out on other operations, the government of Cameroon has had to improvise. One response has been to organize self-defense groups called “comites de vigilance” in each village. These local militias aren’t—yet—particularly well-armed. They possess a mix of what amount to “zip guns,” machetes, and bows and arrows. However, their chief role is to be alert to any strangers who appear, then to inform the army.

These developments raise a number of questions. First, most of Chad’s troops are Sunni Muslims. Why will they fight against an ISIS affiliate, when the Sunnis of Iraq and Syria will not fight against ISIS? Second, both Chad and Iraq get most of their income from oil, but the price of oil has fallen. Will this affect their ability to sustain the struggle? Third, will a defeat of ISIS forces lead to the same switch to relying purely on terrorism within Iraq and Syria?

[1] Yarolsav Trofimov, “ Nations Turn to Chad to Fight Jihadists in West Africa,” WSJ, 22 January 2016; and “After Losing Land, Boko Haram Responds With Bombs,” WSJ, 29 January 2016

[2] Probably the two are related. The former French territories have maintained contact with France. In addition, Israel has provided some training in Cameroon.

[3] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad

A Geographer Reads the Newspapers 1.

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Singapore is a microscopic island-country. It should be poverty-stricken: it’s tiny and has no natural resources. In fact, it is very prosperous. It has a great port and it is located at one end of the Malacca Straits, a major world shipping channel between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Need fuel or repairs or supplies? Stop in Singapore. Picking up or dropping off a cargo for anywhere in Southeast Asia? Stop in Singapore. Business generates profits (ka-ching!) and those profits mean that Singapore is a good place to borrow money. So, you’ve got a good idea for a pot plantation on a remote island or a new textile factory in Bangladesh or a TS brothel on Soi Cowboy? Stop in Singapore. These “core” businesses than send out local shock-waves. What that means is that there are sky-scrapers, office buildings, and slums all over the place. However, you can’t build these without construction workers.

In contrast, Bangladesh is an economic disaster area. It is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of poor people. The “surplus” population is shoved off to work abroad in Malaysia, the Persian Gulf, and Singapore. Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi workers abroad then send home part of their pay to the wife or mother back home. These are called “remittances.” The remittances help keep afloat the national economy. At the same time, Karl Marx mistakenly described religion as “the opiate of the people.” Truth is, sometimes it is the “speed” of the people. A lot of miserable Bangladeshis have embraced radical Islam. This scares the government of Bangladesh, so it locks up a lot of the leaders.

Singapore’s population is 74% of Chinese descent, 13.4% of Malay descent, 9.2% of Indian descent, and 3.3% of other descent. About 15 percent of the population is Muslim. In short, it is a Chinese island with a bunch of non-Chinese. Most Muslims are immigrant laborers.

Sometime in the week of 17-24 January 2016, Singapore deported 27 men back to their home country of Bangladesh.[1] The police in Singapore had suspected the men of being involved with Islamic militants. They were all members of the same “study group”[2] that had turned to Islamic radicalism. Singapore announced that the men were linked to Al Qaeda and/or ISIS, and that they had been planning terrorist attacks in Bangladesh.

The government of Bangladesh then charged 14 of the men as terrorists. The other 13 were released to their families (whose addresses were, no doubt, noted for future reference). The police said that the men held radical Islamist beliefs, but they hadn’t broken any law in Singapore.[3] However, the government press release insisted that the accused were not affiliated with either Al Qaeda or ISIS. They were just, you know, ordinary Islamist fanatics. Possibly, the government suggested, they were linked to the opposition parties. (Wink, wink.) Nor were the men planning a terrorist act inside Bangladesh. Nor had they been “radicalized” while they were in Bangladesh. Instead, they had become radicalized while in Singapore.[4]

Singapore is a golden link in a chain of prosperity, poverty, and migration in South-East Asia.   That chain is now under stress.

[1] Julfikar Ali Manik, “Terrorism Charges Filed in Bangladesh Against 14 Men,” NYT, 24 January 2016.

[2] Probably they weren’t debating “what would Mohammad drive?”

[3] So, in Singapore you can be arrested and deported because the cops don’t like the look on your face. Bear this in mind when you’re making vacation plans. Still, see Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me (1952).

[4] I still can’t give blood to the Red Cross because I was in France when there was an epidemic of “mad cow disease” and I might be a carrier. (Certainly would explain the teaching evaluations.) Same thing goes for the idea that Muslims had been radicalized in Bangladesh. If people start thinking that Bangladeshi = suicide bomber, then no more labor permits for Bangladeshis. No more remittances. The whole country sinks even before global warming goes to work.

 

Annals of Counter Terrorism 1.

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Emanuel L. Lutchman lived in Rochester, New York.[1] He was born about 1990. His mother died soon afterward and he was raised by his grand-mother in Florida. He was diagnosed with mental problems early on. When he was 13 he returned to Rochester to live with his mother’s side of the family. He never graduated from high school. By 2006, at the latest, he was having “contact” with the police. In part, this stemmed from his unsteady mental health. In part, this stemmed from crimes. He did a five year bit for robbery. He became a Muslim while in prison. Prison doctors also loaded him up on meds for his mental problems. At some point he got married and the couple had a son, but Lutchman found the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood a burden. He had a felony conviction, but no high school diploma. Who would hire him? After he got out of prison, he began to follow radical Islamist web-sites and complained on Facebook about the injustices of “the system.” He soon came to the attention of the authorities, who sprang into action. His grandmother said that he was visited by FBI agents in early Fall 2015. They asked him to work as an informant. He declined.[2]

Then he contacted a member of the Islamic State abroad. The government became aware of this and sicked on him several informants. The informants soon won Lutchman’s confidence. He told them of his desire to stage an attack in the near future. The informants told Lutchman that they would help him. His first thought was to imitate the Tsarnaev brothers by building a pressure-cooker bomb. However, he didn’t have enough money to buy a pressure cooker.[3] He thought about a stabbing attack in a restaurant on New Year’s Eve. His wife had a knife and he could get a ski-mask for $5. So, this was more in his price-range.

When Lutchman pledged his allegiance to ISIS, the internet contact urged him to kill many “kuffar” (Unbelievers). Lutchman then made an audio recording of himself pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the self-proclaimed Islamic State. He sent the recording to one of the informants. The informant gave the recording to his government superiors. Soon afterward, the superiors told the informant to pull out of the operation. This left Lutchman down-cast. He texted the informant that he “was thinking about stopping the operation.” The other informant quickly bolstered Lutchman’s resolve. He also took him to a Rochester Walmart. They scored ski masks, knives, a machete, and some other stuff. The bill came to $40. Lutchman didn’t have any money, so the informer paid the bill. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force then arrested Lutchman the next day.

William J. Hochul, Jr., the United States Attorney in Buffalo declared that “this New Year’s Eve prosecution underscores the threat of ISIL even in upstate New York, but demonstrates our determination to immediately stop anyone who would cause harm in its name.”

The ISIS member with whom Lutchman was in contact has not been publicly identified.

[1] Benjamin Mueller, “Rochester Man Charged With Planning a Machete Attack on Behalf of ISIS,” NYT, 1 January 2016.

[2] See: https://www.google.com/search?q=Walmart+pressure+cookers+price&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=Walmart+pressure+cookers+price&tbm=shop

[3] They range in price between $20 and $120. See: https://www.google.com/search?q=Walmart+pressure+cookers+price&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=Walmart+pressure+cookers+price&tbm=shop

The Gracchi.

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According to the guiding theory of the Democratic Party, a big government that robs the rich to give to the poor should be a permanent winner in electoral politics.[1] It isn’t, in spite of continual Democratic efforts to paint the Republicans as Rich Swells and the mere creatures of Big Business. Eduardo Porter conjectures that working-class whites assign greater importance to “racial, ethnic, and cultural identity,” than to “economic status.”[2]

In December 2015, one poll reported that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in a general election—if only college-educated people voted. On the other hand, Trump would beat Clinton if only people without a college education voted.

Porter is at pains to argue that, while Trump also polls ahead of his Republican rivals with women and upper-income voters, his main base is “less-educated, lower-income white men.”[3] He argues that white, working-class voters (especially men) are “nostalgic for the county they lived in 50 years ago.”[4] These people—he doesn’t quite say “those people”—“would rather not have a robust government if it largely seems to serve people who do not look like them.” While 62 percent of white Americans would prefer a smaller, less providential government[5], only 32 percent of blacks and 26 percent of Hispanics desire that end.   As a result, America could experience “an outright political war along racial and ethnic lines over the distribution of resources and opportunities.” Actually, it isn’t that clear. Whites account for 62 percent of the population, while African-Americans account for 13.2 percent and Hispanics account for 17.1 percent. Taken together, the supporters of a smaller government total better than 46 percent of the population. That’s a big constituency that spans racial lines.

Porter confuses other issues as well. He approvingly quotes one scholarly paper that argues that “racial animosity in the U.S. makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately black, unappealing to many voters.” For one thing, Trump has not attacked blacks to the best of my knowledge. Indeed, he has sought the support of traditional leadership figures in black communities. Trump’s white, working-class base agrees with the candidate’s policies on building a wall along the border with Mexico; deporting illegal immigrants, virtually all of whom are Hispanic-Mexicans; and registering Muslims as potential terrorists. All these can be read as expressions of concern about the loss of jobs to foreign competition, the open flouting of the rule of law, and security in an age of terrorism. For another thing, while Porter accepts that people can have predominant non-economic concerns, he ignores the chance that people are ideologically opposed to welfare dependency. Something else must be driving them. That “something” appears to be race, as in “racism.” Again, however, Porter turns a blind eye to long-standing traditions of self-reliance as an American virtue.

America’s economy, society, and place in the world have all changed in ways that most people do not like. Democrats and Republicans are both nostalgic and they offer policies aiming at “restoration.” We need something better.

[1] “Tax, spend, elect” is one version of a motto attributed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisor Harry Hopkins. The authenticity of the phrase is disputed. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_and_spend

[2] Eduardo Porter, “Racial Identity Returns to American Politics,” NYT, 6 January 2016.   This is a variant of what Marxists term “false consciousness.” People think that that they belong to a different social class than they actually do, so they behave in the wrong fashion. In this case, people assign less importance to “economic status” than liberals think that they should.

[3] That is, the foundation of the New Deal coalition and of its successors until the Seventies. Now much despised.

[4] President Obama and other Democrats have been talking about restoring the middle class to its former prosperity. Why isn’t that “nostalgia”?

[5] This group spills well outside of the Republican constituency, let alone the Trump constituency.

The heat is on.

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Diplomatic historians will be familiar with the idea of “two table games.” That is, governments deal with both other states and with domestic constituencies. This analytical approach arose in part as a result of the domestic problems that led Wilhelmine Germany to court the danger of war in 1914. By the early Twentieth Century, the fake-parliamentary government of the Second Reich faced a serious challenge from the rapidly expanding Social Democratic Party, with the powerful labor unions at its back. Middle-class parties were also growing restive with a government dominated by big business and the reactionary “Junker” land-owners of Prussia. To rally support for the established order, Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy. Either Germany would achieve some diplomatic triumph that would redound to the credit of conservative leadership or the country would face a diplomatic crisis that led all parties to rally ‘round the flag. In the end, however, this policy brought on the First World War.[1]

According to one well-informed analysis, something like the same thing is contributing to the current Iran-Saudi conflict.[2] On the one hand, supporting the spread of the Wahhabist message of conservative Islam has been one way for the Saudis to fend off unrest. Such conservatives have seen Iran as a revolutionary and anti-Saudi force since the Iranian Revolution began (1979). They have quietly criticized the Saudi government for inertia in the early stages of the Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. That criticism may have helped spark the Saudi intervention in Yemen—and Saudi non-intervention in the struggle against ISIS.

On the other hand, handing out free stuff has been another way of fending off discontent.[3] The slump in world oil prices brought about by the American “fracking” revolution forced Saudi Arabia to choose between reducing production to push earnings back up or accepting lower earnings to maintain their share of the market. Saudi Arabia opted for the latter course because they recognized that if they lost customers, they would never get them back. However, lower income meant that the Saudi public budget had to be cut. Recently, Saudi Arabia announced a 14 percent cut in its budget, leading to reduced subsidies for all sorts of things.

For their part, Iranian conservatives are unhappy with the deal over Iran’s nuclear program and the suspected openness to “liberalization” on the part of younger people. New elections loom in February 2016. What to do? Anything that revived revolutionary fervor and rallied people to the defense of the Islamic Republic would be welcome.

Adding to the grounds for complaint by Saudis about various aspects of government policy is the problem of radical Sunnis. What to do? In October 2014, a Saudi court convicted a Shi’ite cleric named Nemer al-Nemer of sedition and sentenced him to death.[4] On 2 January 2016, Saudi Arabia executed him—along with 47 Sunnis linked to al Qaeda. In Iran, crowds stormed and burned down the Saudi embassy.[5] Saudi Arabia broke diplomatic ties with Iran. Other Sunni-ruled Arab states followed suit.

In 1914 German leaders misjudged where their policy could lead them. People had great confidence in rationality. There isn’t much rationality in “playing chicken.”

[1] See, for example, Volker Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1977).

[2] Jaroslav Trofimov, “Mideast Internal Politics Fuel Rift,” WSJ, 5 January 2016.

[3] It’s the mirror-image of “taxation without representation is tyranny.” No taxes = no right to representation.

[4] In both Iraq and in Saudi Arabia, Iran has long used Shi’ites as instruments of Tehran’s policy.

[5] It is difficult to believe that the government of Iran did not understand the implications of one more embassy invasion, especially since the seizure of the American embassy figures as the Iranian “Boston Tea Party.” Perhaps that’s why the police failed to prevent it.

Captives.

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“Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute!” So said Congressman Robert Goodloe Harper in 1798 in response to an attempt by French foreign minister Talleyrand to extort a bribe in return for negotiating a treaty with the new United States. Then came the whole Barbary pirates engouement, where Americans got bent out of shape over North African corsairs capturing American sailors and holding them for ransom or selling them into slavery.[1] So, the Americans decided to burn the place down.[2] Not the last time that Americans have felt that way. Sometimes they act on it. Certainly it has become something of a cultural trope. “The Searchers” (dir. John Ford, 1956) tells the story of a revenge-mad man hunting the Comanche band that had killed most of his family and kidnapped his nieces. In theory, he wants the niece back; in reality, he’s out for blood. So a basic American history class would probably be a good idea for radical Islamists. JMO. You do what you want. It’s a free country. Well, ours is.

Anyway, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. These days, terrorists often finance their operations by kidnapping Westerners (including Japanese) and holding them for ransom.[3] For a while, Somali fishermen-turned-pirates captured cargo ships and held both ship and crew for ransom.[4] Most countries just pay the ransom and get their people back as soon as possible. Not the US. The US opposes paying ransom, arguing—reasonably enough—that this just encourages the terrorists and pirates. Generally, the American public supports this policy.[5] In September 2014, almost two-thirds (62 percent) agreed that the government should not pay ransom, while 21 percent thought that the government should pay.

Theory versus Practice. Back in 2009, Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl wandered away from his post in Afghanistan. The Taliban snapped him up. In June 2014, the US traded five Taliban prisoners for Bergdahl. That’s “tribute.” Many Americans—43 percent according to a Pew poll—disapproved of the deal. The division followed the usual partisan lines of the Obama administration: 71 percent of Republicans and 24 percent of Democrats opposed the deal; while 55 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of Republicans approved the deal.[6] That means that 13 percent of Republicans and 21 percent of Democrats “don’t know.”

It is interesting to compare this with Israel’s response to similar situations. Since about 1985, Israel has traded Palestinian prisoners for captured Israeli soldiers, civilians, and war-dead. The customary tariff seems to be about 100 Palestinians for each Israeli: 86 Israelis released in exchange for 8,000 Palestinians.[7] It appears to be a widely shared axiom among Israelis that you get your people back, even at a high price.

[1] Previously, “Americans” had been “British.” This meant that Barbary corsairs capturing British-flagged vessels would vex the British government, which would send some hard-case from the Royal Navy to negotiate. “How ‘bout you give me some money and I give you the captives?” versus “How ‘bout you give me the captives and I let you go on living—until the next time our paths cross?”

[2] See: “To the Shores of Tripoli” (1942) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeTMTN7KtUg and “Tripoli” (1950) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XZZnWMP4CU Oddly, both star John Payne.

[3] On the other hand, there’s this apocryphal story you still hear once in a while. Some Middle Eastern terrorists purportedly snatched a KGB officer and demanded ransom. Next thing you know they got a shoe-box delivered to their hide-out. Inside were the hands of one of the kidnappers who had gone out for falafel or something. Russkies got their guy back in a hurry.

[4] See: “Captain Phillips” (dir. Paul Greengrass, 2013).

[5] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 5 September 2014, p. 17.

[6] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 20 June 2014, p. 17.

[7] “Noted,” The Week, 20 June 2014, p. 16.

State Failure Warning.

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After the Second World War, West Germany “worked its passage” back to international respectability by building a dynamic economy and eschewing militarism in favor of good works. Part of those good works came in the form of assisting developing countries with technical assistance and by participating in international agencies. That meant that Germans popped up in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. One of these Germans was Peter Eigen (1938- ), who worked on economic development projects for the World Bank for a quarter century. That gave him a lot of exposure to the corruption endemic in many developing countries. In 1993, convinced that corruption posed a formidable barrier to development and democratization, Eigen and some others formed “Transparency International.”[1] This Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) does a bunch of things to expose and counter corruption world-wide. One of the things it does is publishing an annual index or ranking of Least Corrupt to Most Corrupt countries.

Last year Nigeria ranked 144th out of 177 countries.   As a country, Nigeria is wealthy. It has huge oil reserves, ranks seventh among oil exporters, and has the largest economy in Africa. However, most Nigerians are very poor: 62 percent of its people live on less than $1/day. How is this possible? People in authority are as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, that’s how.

In early 2014, the head of Nigeria’s Central Bank announced that he had found that the state oil company couldn’t account for a missing $20 billion and that the government’s special reserve from oil revenues had dropped by $9 billion in only a year. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan immediately suspended the indiscreet head of the Central Bank. But wait, there’s more! Somehow, criminals manage to steal 100,000 to 400,000 barrels of oil a day, often by tapping into pipelines. Somehow, the police never catch up with the gangs. In a rare case of a Nigerian politician convicted for corruption, the governor of one state piled up $250 million in bribes in eight years.[2] As any plumber will tell you, “shit runs down-hill.” Every layer of Nigerian government is permeated by corruption that enriches government employees while robbing Nigerian citizens of services and even simple dignity.

Another facet of the corruption appears in the inequitable division of the national wealth between the Christian South and the predominantly Muslim North.   In 2002, the hostility to government theft combined with a Muslim religious reform movement to create Boko Haram. “Boko Haram” means “Western education is forbidden.” That sounds very anti-modern and anti-progressive. However, if you were living in some poverty-stricken village that was constantly being robbed by a government filled with people holding fake BAs from “Western”-style universities, you might well think that the return to a more traditional morality was just the ticket. In any event, this movement sought creation of an independent state by peaceful means. By 2009, when Boko Haram had gained many followers, the Nigerian government had become alarmed. Boko Haram’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was arrested and died in police custody.

Yusuf’s successor abandoned peaceful means for armed struggle.   Often, that violence is atrocious, eye-catching, and directed against civilians. The April 2014 kidnapping of 300 school girls from Chibok is the least of Boko Haram’s crimes. Curiously, however, observers don’t believe that radical Islam drives most of its soldiers. Rather, they hate the government of crooks.[3] This doesn’t match well with the standard story on radical Islam versus the West.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_International

[2] The prosecution of James Ibori can be traced to the election of his political opponent Goodluck Jonathan as president. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ibori

[3] “Africa’s troubled giant,” The Week, 20 June 2014, p. 11.

Ayatollah Cola.

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It is a subject of some controversy exactly what President Obama hoped to get from the July 2015 agreement with Iran. Did he merely hope to avoid or postpone launching another great war in the Middle East? If so, he appears to have succeeded (for now) and a war-weary country owes him a debt of gratitude.[1] Did he hope that an agreement and an end to economic sanctions would open Iran to outside influences, prompting younger Iranians to press for political liberalization?[2] If so, he appears to be in for disappointment, at least over the short-term.

One of the big dogs in this fight is the Revolutionary Guards. Without wishing to engage in inflammatory rhetoric, the Revolutionary Guards (RG) might be analogized to the SS. They are an elite fighting force; they are the guardians of the ideological purity of the country; and they have made a good thing out of their revolutionary purity. The RG have built up a business empire that includes telecommunications, banking, construction, and the luxury goods imports that are not available to ordinary Iranians. Trade and political liberalization would be death to the RG.[3]

In a nutshell, Iran bowed before the pressure exerted on it by an American-led coalition over many years.[4] Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reluctantly approved the deal. The agreement doesn’t feel like much of a victory to Americans, but it feels like a defeat to some Iranians. The opponents of the deal included the Revolutionary Guards.

Having suffered one defeat, these conservative forces have sought to reassert their fundamental anti-Western positions in other areas. They understand the game that President Obama has been playing. They take it far more seriously than do the president’s Republican and Israeli (but I repeat myself) critics. Partly, the government has used allegations of Western espionage to imprison the Iranian-American journalist Jason Rezaian and to arrest five Iranian journalists.[5] Partly, the Supreme Leader has banned negotiations with the Americans on any other issues. Partly, in partnership with the Russians, Iran has increased its support for the embattled Assad regime in Syria.

For the moment, having won something big, the moderates are in no position to mount an effective resistance. President Hassan Rouhani, who is presented to the West as a pragmatic moderate, has been keeping his head down.

The deal isn’t a “done” deal. It could still slide off the road. The International Atomic Authority Agency (IAEA) was supposed to report on previous efforts to build a nuclear weapon in December 2015. The Iranians have refused to co-operate and the inquiry is stalled. Iran is scheduled to cut its stockpile of uranium from 8,300 kilograms to 300 kilograms, and to disconnect most of its enrichment centrifuges by January 2016. If the Iranians refuse to ship their uranium stockpile abroad for safe (for everyone else) keeping, the whole deal could unravel. Meanwhile, elections for the Iranian parliament are scheduled for February 2016 and elections for the American House of Representatives, Senate, and Presidency are scheduled for November 2016. In short, things aren’t over yet. This is likely to be a long struggle.

[1] Doesn’t mean the bastards will pay, just that they owe. Maybe he could hire a collection agency? Call everybody up at the dinner hour, lay a guilt trip on them or threaten to repossess their cars in the middle of the night.

[2] There’s a certain comic element here. If you have the misfortune to run across those postings on Facebook by some immoderate conservatives, you’ll often see President Obama denounced as an America-hating (not to mention crypto-Muslim) traitor. Meanwhile, the president has tried to establish increased cultural and economic contact between the United States and Iran and Cuba. His guiding idea appears to be that people in messed-up societies who encounter America will go “Yeah! I want some of that!” See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N2k-gv6xNE or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZy3qzzc9ag

[3] See: Michael Thad Allen, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

[4] “The struggle inside Iran,” The Week, 11 December 2015, p. 11.

[5] If this was happening in the United States, people would call it “McCarthyism.” Quite rightly.

In re: Donald Trump as Crazy Person Redux.

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In a January 2013 Gallup poll, 47 percent of people identified as Democrats or Democrat-leaning Independents, while 42 percent identified as Republicans or Republican-leaning Independents.[1] How does that apply to other issues?

First, a large share (40 percent) of Americans and almost half (49 percent) of Republicans would support registering Muslims in America.[2]

Back of the envelope, if 49 percent of Republicans favor registering Muslims, that comes to about 21 percent of the electorate.[3] The other 19 percent come out of people who identify as Democrats or as Democrat-leaning Independents. That’s about 40 percent of the Democrat voter base who agree with Donald Trump on this issue. Basically, there are only marginally more Republicans opposed to registering Muslims than there are Democrats who favor it.

Second, in 2011, 47 percent of Americans thought that Islam’s values were “at odds” with America’s values. By November 2015, 56 percent of Americans thought that Islam’s values were “at odds” with America’s values.[4] In late November 2015, 56 percent of Americans were against allowing Syrian refugees into the United States. In contrast, 41 percent favored accepting Syrian refugees.[5] That leaves only 3 percent who “aren’t sure.”

Back of the envelope, if 42 percent of voters are Republicans and 56 percent of people think that Islamic values are incompatible with American values, then 14 percent are not Republicans. That 14 percent amounts to almost one-third of the people who self-identify as Democrats. Bernie Sanders isn’t going to tack into the wind to capture this share of the vote, but Hillary Clinton well might.

Third, opinion polls in October 2015 revealed that almost half of Americans (46 percent) supported building a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico.[6] A slightly larger share (48 percent) opposed building a wall.

Back of the envelope, if 46 percent of Americans favor building a wall, and 42 percent of Americans self-identify as Republicans, then 4 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning favor building a wall. Even so, the previous statistics suggest that almost half of Republicans (about 21 percent) aren’t drinking Donald Trump’s Kool-Aid. But that means that a lot of Democrats (21 + 4 percent = 25 percent) are drinking the Kool-Aid.

So, Trump can be stopped pretty easily in a general election. Why don’t we think about the issues that unite us, rather than about the party labels that divide us? Unless, of course, what you want is the warm, gooey, chocolate-chip-cookie-fresh-out-of-the-oven feeling of moral superiority. Even if it means a disaster for the Republic.

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/poll-americans-lean-democratic-republican/story?id=18180336

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 11 December 2015, p. 17.

[3] 40 percent (all Americans who favor registering Muslim)s – 21 percent (Republicans who favor registering Muslims) = 19 percent (who are NOT Republicans who favor registering Muslims). “If a train leaves Dubuque heading eastward at 30 mph and another train leaves Rock Island heading westward at 40 miles an hour, how much will the lawyers eventually make?”

[4] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 27 November 2015, p. 17.

[5] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 4 December 2015, p. 19.

[6] This is a separate question from who should pay for such a wall.

Fifth Column.

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War is a nasty business, based on what I’ve read over a lifetime. Civil war is worse still. It can pit parent against child, sibling against sibling.[1] It fuels suspicion of one’s fellow-citizens. In Summer 1936, civil war broke out in Spain. Although often seen as a prologue to the Second World, the Spanish Civil War was a primitive affair. Not a lot of tanks, or aircraft, or trucks. Marching up toward Madrid, the Nationalist (rebel) commander Emilio Mola divided his troops into four columns to better live off the barren land. He told the foreign correspondents accompanying his army that he had a “fifth column” of sympathizers inside the city which would support his troops. The phrase “fifth column” quickly passed into the common lingo of the era.[2]

In 1938, Austrian Nazis supported the German take-over of Austria. Sudeten Germans around the frontiers of Czechoslovakia agitated for a German taker-over, obviously at the behest of Berlin. Poles-of-German-ancestry demanded free dome from alleged “persecution.”

In Spring 1940, the Nazis unleashed their “Blitzkrieg” on Western Europe. Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and—astonishingly—France collapsed. The idea that a powerful state like France could be beaten in weeks boggled the mind. “Collaborationist” regimes, or at least individual “collaborators,” sprang up in many places. The reactionary French Vichy government and the puppet-state in Norway headed by Vidkun Quisling offered prime examples. It soon became an article of faith in Britain and the United States that pro-Nazi “fifth columnists” had undermined their own society in the conquered countries.

Both in Britain and in the United States a hunt for “fifth columnists” soon began. In Britain, the new prime minister quickly put a stop to the left’s demands for prosecution of “the Guilty Men” who had supported appeasement.[3] Only a handful of obvious candidates were detained (Oswald Mosely, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, for example).

It proved to be very different in the United States. There an increasingly bitter debate began over American policy toward involvement in the global conflict. Lynne Olson has argued that the Roosevelt Administration engaged in a campaign of vilification against the leading exponents of “isolationism.”[4] The most notable target was Charles Lindbergh. The “Lone Eagle,” once America’s most admired person, suffered repeated, vitriolic attacks in the press and by FDR’s surrogates. (Interior Secretary Harold Ickes looks worse than he once did.)

Subsequently, after Pearl Harbor, the federal government criminalized Japanese ancestry on the grounds that such people were inherently disloyal.[5] Shrugging off that incident, Americans then launched themselves on an anti-Communist witch-hunt in the later Forties and in the Fifties. As Arthur Schlesinger the Lesser wrote in 1949: “the special Soviet advantage—the warhead—lies in the fifth column; and the fifth column is based on the local Communist parties.” The down-side of this appeared in “black-listing” (See: “Trumbo”) and “McCarthyism.” Much ignored is the reality of Soviet penetration of the US government.

So, the fear of disloyal Americans is nothing new. Most often, it’s been misplaced. That will not stop the idiots and hysterics.

[1] See how political correctness has watered down my prose?

[2] Ernest Hemingway wrote a play called “The Fifth Column.” On Mola, who knew something about civil war, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilio_Mola

[3] It was hard to argue with a guy who had vocally opposed appeasement when he draws a veil over the past.

[4] Lynne Olsen, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 (New York, Random House, 2013).

[5] EffaBeeEye Director J. Edgar Hoover, seems to have thought the charges a crock. He headed American counter-intelligence. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans