Yes, CNN, It DOES Matter If Obama Uses The Term "Radical Islamic Terrorism"

CNN's bias is showing again--or, rather, still.

Throughout the 2016 Presidential campaign, Donald Trump has repeatedly called for  both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to call the motivations behind atrocities such as the Orlando and San Bernadino shootings by name: "Radical Islamic Terrorism." When assessing the importance of this label, CNN conveniently leaves off the "Radical" adjective while pontificating about the efficacy or inefficacy of the term.

To critique a term, one must first accurately reference the term. If the term is "Radical Islamic terrorism," then critiquing the use of "Islamic terrorism" is ultimately a straw man argument. CNN is, as is its wont where the Republican nominee is concerned, making a straw man argument.

It should be noted that many commentators, particularly of a conservative bent, are ambivalent about a substantive distinction between "Radical Islam" and "Islam". A great many people will agree with Milo Yiannopolous on this point--that the problem, and the enemy, is in fact simply "Islam". 

Still, I appreciate Trump's nuancing with by making it "Radical Islam." It opens the door towards the posture of "Radical Islam" being different from "Islam", in the same way "crony capitalism" is different from "capitalism." It allows for common cause with moderate Muslim communities here in the USA to eradicate those who would use religion as a justification for murder.

If a Muslim living in the United States accepts that Sharia is not the law of the land, and will not be the law of the land, we need not make of him an enemy. We can make of him a friend.

If a Muslim living in the United States accepts that he or she lives in cosmopolitan society, with diverse belief systems and creeds, and is willing to live in peace with those creeds, we need not make of him an enemy. We can make of him a friend.

If a Muslim living in the United States is willing to assimilate into our culture, meeting our culture "halfway", we need not make of him an enemy. We can make of him a friend.

If a Muslim living in the United States demands Sharia, rejects our cosmopolitan society, and refuses to assimilate, then he has made of himself an enemy, and we can never make of him a friend. That is simply not one of the potential outcomes under those circumstances.

The United States is still the nation founded on the premise that all men are created equal, with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that government is the tool men use to preserve those same rights. Any religion or creed that cannot celebrate this premise will never be compatible with American civic life, and so must be removed from our civic society.

It necessarily follows from the term and Trump's repeated use of it that Trump understands both the nuance and the need for the nuance. In the chaotic and painful aftermath of the carnage in Orlando, that nuance and only that nuance allows Trump (or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton), to label, identify, and call out the threat that faces us--"Radical Islam"--while leaving an opening for the more moderate Muslims to make common cause against what should be a common enemy.

"Radical Islamic Terrorism" is the nuance that allows Muslims either living in this country or wishing to legally emigrate to this country the chance to be Americans, certainly in spirit and ultimately in citizenship as well. "Islamic terrorism" compels all Muslims to decide: their fate or this nation, their personal liberty or the freedom our society hopefully still cherishes. "Radical Islamic Terrorism" is the nuance allows us to oppose ISIS directly on its own without alienating the Muslim states we need as allies to defeat ISIS once and for all.

Yes, CNN, is does matter if Obama uses the term "radical Islamic terrorism." The term tells us he's looking at the right problem, in the right time, and in the right frame of mind. The term tells us if Hillary Clinton can or cannot competently address the real problems facing our society, here and around the world. It matters so much, that it even matters if your staff will are able to use the term "radical Islamic terrorism."

Sadly, it appears that your staff, just like Barack Obama and just like Hillary Clinton, are not able to call the enemy by its name: 

Radical Islamic Terrorism.

Ted Cruz Demands The Media Discuss His Mistresses

Ted Cruz gives yet another lesson on how to turn a non-story into a story.

The Daily Mail asked Cruz to put the National Enquirer sex scandal story to rest and state specifically that he'd 'always been faithful' to his wife Heidi. Instead of saying that simple statement, allowed surrogate Carly Fiorina to rail at the putative injustice of "dancing to Donald Trump's tune."

Can there be a more bizarre, cringeworthy, and thus newsworthy response to what should be a simple straightforward question?

No matter the journalistic ethics (or lack thereof) of the National Enquirer, Ted Cruz has been accused by that publication of multiple adulterous affairs and sexual liasons. Instead of rebutting the charges simply and directly, Ted Cruz has

• Denounced the story as "garbage".
• Said the story was an attack on his wife, Heidi.
• Attacked Donald Trump and his "henchmen" (despite the media reporting the likely origin of the story was the Rubio camp).

At no time has he said whether or not he has been unfaithful to his wife.

As Rick Sanchez of Fox News notes, the National Enquirer story is not an attack on Heidi Cruz or their daughters, but on Ted Cruz himself. Calling the story an attack on his wife is a bit of disingenuous distraction. 

Moreover, it is not Donald Trump accusing Ted Cruz of multiple infidelities (one hopes Donald, whose marital track record is hardly perfect, would know better than to commit that particular hypocrisy), but the National Enquirer. Other than calling the story garbage, Ted Cruz has said very little about the tabloid directly, preferring to go after Trump in each response to the story's allegations. Calling such behavior bizarre is an understatement to say the very least. Were this unfolding in a courtroom, with Cruz testifying from the witness stand, one can almost hear the attorneys lambasting his diatribes as non-responsive and asking the judge to direct Cruz to answer the question.

In an equally bizarre episode, when one of Cruz' alleged mistresses, CNN contributor (and former Cruz staffer) Amanda Carpenter, was challenged directly on live television by pro-Trump Boston Herald columnist Adriana Cohen about the allegations, her response was to "lawyer up":

What’s out there is tabloid trash. If someone wants to comment on it, they can talk to my lawyer. It’s categorically false. You should be ashamed for spreading this kind of smut. Donald Trump supporters should be held to account for it.

What Ms. Carpenter, who is married, did not say, is that she had not had an affair with Ted Cruz. The lawyerly parsing of words certainly gives the appearance of the spirited denunciation sought by Ms. Cohen, but closer scrutiny shows considerable wiggle room with regards to the specifics.

As Rick Sanchez succinctly said at the beginning of his op-ed column on the l'affaire Cruz:

If the National Enquirer wrote a story about me cheating on my wife with five women, I had better be extremely definitive in my response; because if I’m not, my wife –smelling the guilt – would kick my ass.

Both Ted Cruz and Amanda Carpenter have spouses. Neither has been "extremely definitive" in their responses. Rather, both Cruz and Carpenter have, at every turn, sought to turn the story onto Trump. Thus a story that Cruz does not want discussed remains legitimate material for the media to discuss.

In 2008, the New York Times published an article alluding to an affair between Senator John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman. Both McCain and Iseman denied the allegations, and thereafter refused to discuss the matter. The story died out soon after, and the New York Times had its own ethics questioned for the way it sourced and presented the story. Cruz and Carpenter have done the exact opposite.

Bizarrely, and probably suicidally, Cruz demands the media discuss his mistresses. For whatever reason, he deems this a more meaningful and relevant story for the campaign trail than his stances on the various issues.

Hillary Clinton's Inevitable Victory? Election Returns Say Otherwise.

Edward Luce, of the Financial Times, has declared the 2016 Presidential election over except for the shouting, and declared Hillary Clinton the winner in a blowout victory--an amazing feat, given that the actual election itself is still six months away.

Luce' argument is that Donald Trump is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee, that Hillary Clinton is assured of being the Democratic nominee, and that Donald Trump cannot help but lose horribly to Hillary Clinton in the general election. 

The first leg of his thesis is admittedly fairly sound. Donald Trump leads the Republican field, and is the only candidate with a plausible chance of securing a majority of delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot. 

The second leg of his thesis is slightly less certain, given that Bernie Sanders swept the 25 March primary contests in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii by huge margins (his narrowest victory was in Hawaii, where he won over 69% of the popular vote), and has now bested Hillary Clinton in the last 5 of 6 state contests. Hillary remains in the lead in both overall popular vote and in overall delegates, but in terms of the number of states each candidate has won, the race is far more balanced. Thanks to the Democratic party's large number (712) of so-called "superdelegates"--delegates not bound to any candidate but free to vote however they choose--the nomination remains within the grasp of either candidate. 

The third leg of his thesis, however, suffers from some rather significant cognitive dissonance. While innumerable polls point to a myriad of problems Donald Trump presumably will encounter with various voter demographics, all polling is at best a projection of future behavior--respondents are telling pollsters how they will vote, not how they actually have voted. Actual vote totals in the Democratic and Republican primary contests thus far paint a far different picture of how the as-yet hypothetical Clinton-Trump matchup would go.

Here are the actual numbers. These are the total votes cast in both the Democratic and Republican primaries through 25 March 2016.

• Hillary Clinton has received 8,924,920 votes out of 15,323,340 Democratic votes cast.
• Donald Trump has received 7,811,245 votes out of 19,783,685 Republican votes cast. (Actually, the total Republican vote is underreported as Real Clear Politics, my source for these figures, is no longer reporting vote totals for candidates who have dropped out after the primaries began: Ben Carson, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush).
• Ted Cruz has received 5,732,220 Republican votes.
• Donald Trump has received more votes than Hillary Clinton in the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont.

These are raw numbers, without any filtering, editing, or normalizations applied. They do not take into account, for example, that up until the most recent primaries, Donald Trump has led the field in a four-way race while Hillary Clinton has only had to run against Bernie Sanders. There is no weighting given to the argument that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are fairly close in terms of policy proposals and ideology, and are jointly grouped by the commentariat as "insurgent" candidates. There is no prognostication of the impact of the "Bernie or Bust" movement among Democrats, asserting that if Bernie Sanders is not the nominee his supporters will not vote in November (or possibly might defect to likely GOP nominee Donald Trump).

With the primaries a little more than halfway done, Republicans have convinced over 4.4 million more voters to the polls and caucuses than the Democrats. The Republican turnout edge is equal to just under half of Hillary Clinton's vote total.

On the raw numbers alone, Donald Trump trails Hillary Clinton only by 1.1 million votes overall, although he outpolls her in twelve states.

On the raw numbers alone, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz combined outpoll Clinton in all but four states (Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Minnesota), and their combined vote total exceeds that of Hillary Clinton by in excess of 4.6 million votes--a vote margin that exceeds the Republican turnout margin. If only half of Ted Cruz voters are added to Donald Trump's total, Hillary Clinton prevails in only two more states, Louisiana and Virginia.

If one follows the commentariat model of counting Trump and Cruz as insurgent candidates, it is not unreasonable to presume that, come the general election, supporters of whomever of the two is not the nominee will support the other. Certainly the two are not far apart on such matters as immigration, healthcare reform, and confronting terrorism and radical Islamic jihad.

Regardless of what polling prognosticators predict, based solely on votes cast thus far, the most optimistic scenario for Hillary Clinton is a close race and likely a photo finish in the popular vote, with maybe a slightly larger edge in the Electoral College. But scenarios where Donald Trump wins convincingly in both the popular vote and the Electoral College are not at all unreasonable.

Hillary Clinton might win in November. So might Donald Trump. Neither candidate is assured of victory, and it is foolish of the commentariat to suggest otherwise.

Donald Trump: Foreign Policy Heretic, Foreign Policy Visionary

In addition to rocking the political firmament in Washington with his full throated championing of American workers, Donald Trump is also breaking with many long standing Republican orthodoxies on foreign policy.

Donald Trump's foreign policy can be summed up in two words: America First. He says this openly and proudly--the New York Times quotes him as saying "Not an isolationist but I am America First....I like the expression."

I like the expression, too. I like the notion of an American President who will champion American interests, and not global interests.

Why should we keep troops on the border between North and South Korea? North Korea is a pariah nation, and even its sole sponsor China is not going to blithely go along with any military adventurism south of the 38th parallel. The 38th parallel is no longer a front line in the battle against Soviet expansionism; the historic rationale for a continued military presence does not apply--either devise a new rationale or bring the troops home.

Likewise Trump is correct to question NATO. The NATO alliance was both a reaction to the Second World War and to the rise of Soviet expansionism in the immediate aftermath; NATO's own official history states that "the Alliance’s creation was part of a broader effort to serve three purposes: deterring Soviet expansionism, forbidding the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on the continent, and encouraging European political integration". 

The Soviet Union is no more, and Putin's Russia is a problematic threat, given its shrinking population and shrinking economy. Europe is already politically and economically integrated--some would say too much so. Neither France nor Germany--the leading political and economic actors in Europe--show any appetite for military adventurism on the continent or abroad. Against what threats do US troops stationed in Europe guard? And exactly whom are they guarding--Europe or the United States?

Moreover, as Brussels tragically demonstrates, the NATO alliance does nothing to stop ISIS from exporting terror into the western world. NATO has not stopped jihadist attacks in New York on 9/11, in Madrid and London in 2005, nor in Paris earlier this year. As an alliance predicated on mutual defense and protection, NATO is failing its members horribly against the enemy of radical Islam. Trump is right: NATO is obsolete.

US military adventurism in Iraq under Bush and Libya under Obama has not turned out at all well--sobering realities that speak to the limits of what military power can achieve: US military might is formidable, but no military can build nations ex nihilo, and no military can impose democracy on a people from without. US military muscle can topple dictators--and Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were unquestionably dictators--but it cannot create stable governments to take their place. For all the seeming electoral successes in Iraq in the years following the US invasion in 2003, without US troops the artificially created regime in Baghdad quickly lost credibility and legitimacy, and is now too weak to confront ISIS militarily even on Iraqi soil.

Challenging these assumptions does not make Trump an isolationist. It does make him a realist. And it calls to mind George Washington's warning in his farewell address two centuries ago against entangling foreign alliances; they were dangerous then and they are dangerous now. Not every foreign crisis calls for the sacrifice of American blood and treasure. Not every foreign crisis is a significant threat to America or American interests.

Contrary to the "experts" of the establishment, "America First" is a vision of foreign policy. It means to measure each foreign engagement, each foreign alliance, each deployment of troops in foreign lands, against the cold objective yardstick of how these things benefit the United States. Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute is wrong to say "'greatness' is not a foreign policy"; in fact, it is the only foreign policy stance worth having--it is the stance that says "engage where it benefits America and disengage where it does not."

The duty of the American government is to advance the interests of the American people. Donald Trump is the only candidate willing to say that, and willing to do that--loudly and proudly.

Cruz' Response To Scandal: Blame Donald Trump. Seriously

In answer to the somewhat rhetorical question of how much should we care about a Ted Cruz sex scandal come hints that the Cruz campaign knew this story was about to break.

One thing is certain: allegations of Ted Cruz' serial infidelities have been a background whisper in the GOP primary campaign for months. Indeed, it is highly likely that Marco Rubio spurred the National Enquirer on, and not Donald Trump. This does not mean, and should not be taken to indicate, that the allegations are true. At the present time, the only material presented in support of those allegations is the National Enquirer story, and the truth of that story must be judged on that basis.

But it speaks poorly of Ted Cruz that his best response with week of advance warning was to attempt to snare Donald Trump in this web of sleaze. Not only does that do little damage to Donald Trump, but it raises the possibility that Ted Cruz used super PAC money to buy silence from staffers for the Carly Fiorina campaign, and that Liz Mair's foolish trolling was a cynical diversionary tactic by Cruz to take the sting out of the story when it finally broke.

If true, we again come back to the truism that the coverup is always worse than the original sin. Adultery is not an attractive quality in a political candidate, but collusion between candidates and super PACs is a violation of election law.

By his response, Ted Cruz, far from putting the matter behind him, has raised instead more questions--and more damning questions--to be answered.