Here goes: the Republican National Convention begins today

The New Neo Posted on by

And it certainly promises to be somewhat more “interesting” than usual. Even if all goes according to the book and Donald Trump becomes the nominee (as I believe will happen), he’s such an unconventional candidate that it promises to be different.

Many prominent Republicans are absenting themselves from the festivities:

In a historic break from tradition at this week’s four-day celebration of the Republican Party in Cleveland, at least a dozen Republican senators, four governors, the past two Republican presidents and the past two GOP nominees intend to skip their party’s national nominating convention””just as presumptive nominee Donald Trump tries to show he is unifying the party.

It isn’t unusual for politicians to skip a convention, particularly for those who are facing tough re-election challenges and must devote their time to campaigning. But the sheer number of high-profile Republicans avoiding the party’s marquee event in 2016 is noteworthy, signaling the extent to which the billionaire businessman’s coronation has fractured the party.

I don’t blame those not attending, despite the incredibly high stakes and the need for the GOP candidate to win. If I were in their shoes I would find it difficult to stand up there, too, and speak for him—although I might try to force myself, if only to take a strong anti-Hillary stand.

But I don’t think Trump’s “coronation” (note the loaded word) has “fractured the party.” It’s not that I don’t see the fractures. But I think Trump’s nomination is a symptom, a result of an already-existing fracture that has widened somewhat but had already been getting large before Trump ever declared himself a candidate in the 2016 race.

Here’s a handy chart of who the speakers will be this year by category, as compared to previous years:

speakersrnc

Here’s the schedule for some (not all) of the speakers, subject to change. C-SPAN covers the whole thing, including non-prime time events, if you’re really into seeing every little last bit (some of the following names were not at the link, but appeared in an email I got from the GOP about the convention):

Monday evening: Melania Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Joni Ernst, Willie Robertson (of Duck Dynasty), Rick Perry, Scott Baio (!), Marcus Luttrell (retired SEAL), Pat Smith (mother of one of the men killed in Benghazi), Jeff Sessions, and Tom Cotton

Tuesday evening: Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Chris Christie (otherwise known as The Bridesmaid), Ben Carson, UFC (that’s Ultimate Fighting Championship) President Dana White, Tiffany Trump, and Donald Trump Jr.

Wednesday evening: Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Eric Trump

Thursday evening: Ivanka Trump, Reince Priebus, Jerry Falwell Jr., Peter Thiel (libertarian tech entrepreneur), and of course the piece de resistance—Donald Trump himself.

I’ve never been a fan of political conventions, but the prospect of this one makes me feel especially sad. I suppose it’s a good thing that Trump has a lot of telegenic children to fill up those empty spots. I have no idea how a disaffected non-Hillary Democrat or an undecided Independent will feel about the lineup, but I comfort myself with the idea that I can’t imagine that the DNC lineup will be so very compelling either.

Of course, many people expect and fear that the more “interesting” events won’t be on the convention floor, but in the city of Cleveland, and that the racial unrest and political unrest that’s been escalating around the country will take disruptive and violent hold there. Let’s hope not.

What a year.

[NOTE: See also this.]

Suicide, homicide, and terrorism

The New Neo Posted on by

In the aftermath of the Bastille Day terrorist attack in Nice, some in the press seem to be emphasizing the fact that the perpetrator probably was not trained directly by ISIS, and had had marital troubles and reportedly been depressed.

Although authorities need to know all the details, this emphasis on the psychological can serve to minimize the huge influence of the ideological. Suicide murderers and suicide bombers of the Islamist variety have—as do all killers—a variety of motives, a mix of influences. There is the psychological (desire to die), of course. Even that is not simple with an Islamist terrorist—in other words, why do they want to die? Depression is probably in the mix for some, but for all there is the motive of their concept of religious martyrdom and reward—both in the next world, and prestige for their family in this world.

These are not the ordinary suicidal thoughts or even ordinary homicidal thoughts. And the Bastille Day attack was not an ordinary suicidal or homicidal act, or even a primarily suicidal act at all, any more than was true of the 9/11 plotters (who also knew they would die).

With every murder, the psychological interacts with the sociological (in the case of the Bastille Day perp, there was post-divorce and cultural dislocation as well). But in the case of Islamist terrorists they interact very powerfully with apocalyptic religious Islamist sentiment and the desire to kill the infidel as per ISIS’s commands. Even the modus operandi is usually suggested by terrorist manuals, as we’ve seen in the case of Nice.

A perpetrator’s psychological state may have some bearing on the question of “why this particular person and not another?” But when we hear of an atrocity such as what happened in Nice, most of us are able to name the religious ideology of the perpetrator before we know much more about him except the bare outline of his crime.

This does not mean there were not psychological and sociological aspects to the actions of the terrorist in Nice. There certainly were, and authorities need to take a look at them, too. But when newspapers emphasize them, it seems fairly clear that they are trying to draw attention away from the all-important “but for” element: inspiration by and identification with the destructive aims of Islamist terrorist groups such as ISIS.

Reflections: the day after the failed coup in Turkey

The New Neo Posted on by

What a sad sad day.

As commenter “Yancey Ward” writes:

I think it possible, even likely, that Erdogan staged the coup himself, or knew it was coming in advance and allowed the plotter so openly hang themselves.

Literally, Erdogan couldn’t have come up with a more successful plan to concentrate and extend indefinitely his grip on power. All of his legitimate opposition is likely to end up in front of a firing squad now.

Erdogan has been jailing his opposition for quite some time now, and this gives him a reason to do a lot more to them:

Jailing journalists has been one of the hallmarks of Turkey’s poor human rights record, a kind of shorthand for describing the country’s authoritarian tendencies and flawed justice system. But in the run up to a highly contested general election in June, that treatment has been extended to judges and prosecutors who issue decisions the government doesn’t like.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, under the shadow of President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, has been accusing these judges of acting as members of an armed organization attempting a coup and other judges friendly to the government have been sending them off to jail while there is an investigation.

Over the past month, three judges and four prosecutors have been put in pre-trial detention, all as a result of decisions they made while discharging their professional duties rather than on evidence of criminal activity. Another four prosecutors barred from the profession during May may be next to see the inside of a cell. The shared feature of these cases is that the decisions that led to their arrests were all on issues pertaining directly or indirectly to allegations of unlawful activity implicating the ErdoÄŸan-dominated government.

That is from an article from NPR that appeared in May of 2015. Please read the whole thing; it’s long but very informative and very chilling. The Turkish election of November 2015 (which may or may not have involved fraud; see this) kept the Erdogan faction in power. Note in that NPR article the mention of accusations of coup-planning by the judges who had ruled against the Erdogan government. Whatever the origins of yesterday’s coup (bona fide attempt or not), there is absolutely no question that it will be used to kill a lot of people who are labeled by Erdogan as members of it.

President Obama either favors this or winks at it, and uses the mantle of “democracy” to defend it. But democracy means nothing without constitutional protections for liberty and rights such as freedom of speech and of the press (as I have written many times over the years in articles about what neocons believe).

Our own press has made much of the support Erdogan has received from the people taking to the streets in support of him, as he requested, during the attempted coup. But of course he has supporters—no one ever said he didn’t, as do most tyrants, and plenty of them. But the real question is who are they, what do they stand for, what percentage of the Turks are among them—and even more importantly, what do we stand for?

“Turkey coup: Try to picture Donald Trump handling this well”

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Matt Yglesias:

Picture Donald Trump on a series of calls with advisors and heads of government from around the region, and inside the NATO alliance, devising a constructive response to a coup attempt in Turkey.

Good luck…

…[T]o be a good president you do need to be able to run good meetings. You need to get up to speed in a chaotic situation, talk to a bunch of people who are more knowledgeable than you but not ultimately empowered or accountable the way you are, and you need to try to steer some inherently unfavorable situations toward a non-disastrous outcome.

From everything I know about Trump – not just his temperament and his character, but his actual ideas about politics and leadership – he simply doesn’t have what it takes.

Is this not a perfect description of Barack Obama’s track record? The only difference is that Yglesias is positing ignorance on the part of Trump (“fool” in the “knave or fool” narrative) and I am positing conscious intent on the part of Obama (“knave” with a dose of “fool” in that same narrative). Obama’s international outcome-steering has been very consistently disastrous for the entire seven and a half years of his presidency, and he never talks to people “who are more knowledgeable” than he is because there’s no one on earth more knowledgeable than he.

But Yglesia and his readers will almost certainly fail to see or appreciate the irony.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I’m no Trump fan, to say the least. But I’m also no NeverTrumper, and I also have read that Trump was on the side of the coup forces, which I believe is the correct (although losing) side. The coup in this case, as far as we can tell (given the fog of war and propaganda) was for secularism and the constitution, and against Erdogan’s advances towards tyranny—which I described in last night’s post, and the history of which seems to be being ignored by Obama and most of the MSM.

Which doesn’t mean that a president should have spoken out last night in favor of the coup. I believe that silence (at least for a day or two) would have been by far the best approach. But Obama jumped in to support the Islamist tyrant-in-the-making Erdogan, which is no surprise.

I think that Obama would dearly love to do the equivalent of what Erdogan did, which in this country would be something like (for example) running for vice president under a presidential candidate who delegates all the power to him, thus circumventing the two-term limit for the presidency (it may be technically possible to do so, by the way; see this). And then, once in the de facto (not de jure) powerful VP post, imprisoning the opposition, including journalists and jurists who criticize him. Because that’s Erdogan’s m.o.; Erdogan the democracy champ.

Has the coup against Erdogan failed?

The New Neo Posted on by

I was watching Fox News about an hour ago and most of the commentators seemed to be guessing that the coup in Turkey has failed and Erdogan is in control.

If true, this would not be a good outcome. The thought is that this will strengthen him and he will use it as a way to make himself—and his restrictions on dissent and opponents—even more powerful.

Meanwhile, President Obama has been backing Erdogan as the democratically elected leader of the country. However, not only is Erdogan an Islamist who would like to make religion a much bigger part of the traditionally secular Turkish government, but he is a power-hungry wannabee dictator a la Chavez (Muslim-style). Back in May the NY Times reported on a power grab:

Erdogan occupies what is supposed to be a nonpartisan, ceremonial role in a parliamentary democracy, where Davutoglu, a longstanding ally, was technically the leader. After serving as foreign minister for years while Erdogan was prime minister, Davutoglu became prime minister when Erdogan chose to run for the presidency in 2014. Davutoglu, it was imagined, would be the soft-spoken, bookish vizier to the tough, populist president.

A little background here—Erdogan had already served three terms as Prime Minister, the constitutional limit. Therefore this “chose to run for the presidency” business (the phrase the Times used) was because he was unable to remain as PM and yet wanted to remain in power, as others have done before him (Putin did a version of it in Russia, for example, from 2008-2012, although the titles were different). So Erdogan had every intention of remaining fully in charge—whatever his title and the relative powerlessness that was supposed to accompany it—and he did.

More:

Erdogan and his colleagues made no secret of their desire to rewrite the country’s constitution – drafted by a military government in the 1980s – and expand the powers of an executive presidency…

Despite internal unease within the ruling Justice and Development Party, known by the Turkish abbreviation AKP, and heated protests from political foes, Davutoglu and other party officials embraced their president’s agenda, at least publicly.

Parliamentary elections last June threw a wrench in the works. Opposition to Erdogan’s push for a presidential system, as well as the rise of a leftist, pro-Kurdish party, saw the AKP lose its parliamentary majority for the first time in over a decade. This prompted months of discord and acrimony as Turkey’s parties proved unable to form a successful coalition government, an outcome which Erdogan’s opponents claimed was precisely what the president wanted.

New elections in November followed a wave of instability and violence across the country. The polls restored the AKP’s commanding majority in parliament and gave fresh momentum to Erdogan’s plans to reshape the pillars of the Turkish state.

Reports suggest the relationship between Erdogan and Davutoglu has been rocky for quite some time ”” with the latter frustrated by the former’s clampdown on political freedoms, including the arrests of academics and journalists, and wary of scrapping the parliamentary system for a presidential one.

Then Davutoglu, who is supposed to be the actual “democratically elected leader” of Turkey in conformance with the Turkish constitution and the title he holds (Prime Minister), was actually ousted recently in a power move by Erdogan, who is supposed to be the figurehead under him. Of course, the positions have always been reversed in this strange simulacrum of a democracy:

The clearest sign in the collapse of the tandem’s relationship came last week when Erdogan loyalists voted to strip Davutoglu of the power to appoint provincial-level party officials, something that he, as the sitting head of the party, would be expected to do.

Then, in May, Davutoglu announced his early retirement:

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu – Turkey’s leading political figure, at least on paper – announced Thursday that he plans to step down from power after less than two years in office…

Citing a “premature end” of his four-year-term, Davutoglu’s resignation comes amid concerns over Erdogan’s increasing authoritarianism, and many observers fear it will enable the president to further consolidate his power.

And then—surprise, surprise—a new Prime Minister was selected who turned out to be a strong ally of Erdogan’s:

Binali Yildirim, the country’s minister of transport, maritime, and communication, received 1,405 out of a total of 1,470 votes at a meeting of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Yildirim was the sole candidate for chairman at the special session called after Ahmet Davutoglu announced earlier this month he would not seek re-election.

Yildirim is a longtime ally of Erdogan…

Erdogan has been trying to consolidate the two offices in Turkey into one, giving himself more power. But with the selection of Yildirim, he pretty much did that already, because Yildirim is Erdogan’s yes-man.

Which brings us to today’s coup, or today’s coup that may have failed, and Obama’s early support for the Erdogan forces. This is giving me an extremely creepy deja vu feeling that harks back to one of the earliest things Obama ever did as president, support the wrong side in Honduras. I wrote many many posts on the Honduras matter at the time and later (here’s a relatively recent one).

The details in Honduras were rather different from those in Turkey. But this is what I wrote back in 2009 about what the side Obama supported in Honduras was trying to do there, and it somewhat resembles what the Erdogan side has been doing in Turkey in its consolidation of power:

The way is clear: tyrants very often use “democracy” as an excuse to get the people to override a constitution and grant them what turns out to be dictatorial, or near-dictatorial, powers, as well as the ability to extend or abolish term limits and stay in power longer than the constitution says (and in many cases indefinitely). Once the rules are changed about term limits, and power is consolidated and the voting apparatus compromised, staying in power is a relatively easy matter, really a trifle.

[NOTE: You can find updates on the Turkey situation here.]

[ADDENDUM: Daniel Pipes opined in November of 2015 that the AKP’s election victory was fraudulent.]

Military coup in Turkey?

The New Neo Posted on by

The military says it’s been successful, although it’s unclear whether that is true, but there is an ongoing attempt at a military coup in Turkey (hat tip: commenter “Sergey”]:

The full Turkish military statement reads: “Turkish Armed Forces have completely taken over the administration of the country to reinstate constitutional order, human rights and freedoms, the rule of law and general security that was damaged.

“All international agreements are still valid. We hope that all of our good relationships with all countries will continue.”

The Turkish president Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan is on holiday and outside the country. Reuters has quoted a source within his office as saying that he is safe.

Follow the link and others to keep up with breaking events. I am about to step out for a couple of hours, but will update later on this evening.

“We are at war”

The New Neo Posted on by

Listening to many commentators on the cable news stations last night talking about the terrorist attack in Nice, I kept hearing the phrases: “We’re at war.” “This is World War III.” “This is war.”

My reaction was, “Where’ve you been since the morning of September 11, 2001?” We have been at war since then, whether you realized it or not.

George W. Bush realized it, and tried to rally the Western world to realize it, too. He was only moderately successful, but his actions might have been successful enough had he not been succeeded by the election of a president who wanted to soothe and lull us into thinking it had all been a big bad Bush dream.

And most people were only too happy to be lulled.

Right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that precipitated America’s entry into WWII, Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is alleged to have said, “I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Whether he did say it or did not actually say it, it expresses a sentiment that so far has yet to occur in this particular war. What would it take, and what will it take?

The Bastille Day terrorist

The New Neo Posted on by

The death toll in yesterday’s horrific terrorist attack in Nice, France, has now reached 84, with many more injured, some of them very seriously and 25 on life support, so one can expect the death toll to rise. The perpetrator of this evil deed has now been identified as:

…Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a chauffeur and deliveryman who was born in Tunis but had lived in France for years. Three police officers exchanged fire with Lahouaiej-Bouhlel during his rampage, and found him dead in the passenger seat of the truck, Molins said.

There were many police on the scene, because it was a large crowd on Bastille Day, and France was already on alert. I am puzzled as to why it took so long for them to get him, but perhaps some facts will emerge about that, too (he was certainly a moving target, partially protected by the truck itself).

Police found two automatic weapons, ammunition, a mobile phone and documents in the truck, the prosecutor said. They also found fake weapons and more documents at Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s residence.

Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had a history of threats, violence and petty theft, Molins said, dating from 2010 to 2016, and had been sentenced this year to six-months in prison for a road rage incident.

But he was “totally unknown” to French anti-terror groups, Molins said, and so far authorities have not found links to terror groups or evidence of radicalization.

“No evidence of radicalization”? I submit that the act itself is evidence of radicalization. He followed the instructions of al Qaeda quite precisely and used a method rather popular with Muslim terrorists in Israel and elsewhere (the following is from an article dated November of 2014, so this is hardly news):

…[A] Palestinian man who Israeli police say had connections to Hamas drove a car into a crowd near a light rail station in Jerusalem, killing one person and injuring a dozen others. It followed a strikingly similar attack in the same area two weeks ago that killed a 3-month-old Israeli. In both cases, the driver was killed by police at the scene.

These attack…are…the latest examples of a terrorist tactic that gets less discussion than many others but seems increasingly common, particularly in Israel.

…While the tactic may be most common in Israel, it’s appeared elsewhere as well…[A] Canadian man believed to be an ISIS sympathizer drove his car into two soldiers in a parking lot in Quebec. In Beijing last year, three Uighurs drove a jeep into Beijing’s crowded Tiananmen Square, killing two and injuring about 40. In 2006, Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, a recent University of North Carolina graduate, drove an SUV into “The Pit,” a popular campus gathering spot, injuring nine people. He told police after his arrest that he had wanted to “avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world.”

A variation on ramming attacks is also recommended in the fall 2010 issue of Inspire, the English-language online magazine published by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The magazine…was read by the Tsarnaev brothers…The article recommends that practitioners take care to gather enough speed to “achieve maximum carnage” once crowds begin to scatter, and to choose their targets carefully. “If you can get through to ”˜pedestrian only’ locations that exist in some downtown (city center) areas, that would be fabulous,” the author, editor-in-chief Yahya Ibrahim, writes. He also suggests a number of countries where such an attack could take place, including the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Denmark, and Holland. So far, thankfully, no one seems to have attempted an attack along these lines.

As I said, that was written in November of 2014. That last sentence is no longer true, of course, and as you can see, the Bastille Day perpetrator followed the instructions and did those earlier attacks one better (“better” in terms of how terrorists rate these things, numbers of people killed and amount of fear and publicity sowed). This is the only vehicular terrorist attack that has killed so many people, in part because the perpetrator chose his venue very well (pedestrian area with no other cars and huge crowds), and used a much larger vehicle.

I have two questions at the moment. The first is why a non-citizen with a criminal history like that was allowed to stay in France. I know the answer, of course: it happens all the time, and it happens here, too. The second is how the truck managed to get onto the boulevard. Did it simply smash through the barriers? Were there no guards there, or did he kill them, too? I assume some more details on this will emerge.

As for the “why,” even if this guy had no obvious Islamist terrorist ties (and I’m not at all sure he didn’t), it’s not necessary to have any. ISIS, Al Qaeda, the internet, and the news take care of that, both for the inspiration and for instructions on the execution.

It’s official: Trump will be the nominee, and Pence is his VP

The New Neo Posted on by

There are two pieces of election 2016 news today.

The first is that the NeverTrump movement is stillborn, which is no surprise whatsoever. Not with a bang but a whimper, it was crushed by the committee:

A long-shot, last-ditch attempt by a few Republican delegates to prevent Donald Trump from securing the GOP nomination failed by an overwhelming margin late Thursday night.

Some anti-Trump delegates on the Republican National Convention Rules Committee sought a strategy to unbind convention delegates, allowing them to vote their conscience against Trump even if they were bound to him by primary results. Delegates loyal to Trump and the Republican National Committee fought back by proposing a counter-measure to clarify that all delegates are bound to vote based on the primary results.

The votes came near the end of a marathon 14-hour session of the rules committee to set any changes ahead of next week’s convention to officially nominate Trump as the Republican presidential candidate. The first vote, on the pro-Trump measure to keep delegates bound, passed easily, 87 to 12.

At least a month or two ago (maybe earlier) it became clear that the official movement to block Trump was going nowhere. The reasons also seemed (and seem) clear: (1) there were not enough delegates who felt that way (2) they could not coalesce around a viable alternative. Also, in recent days Trump has seemed to be climbing in the polls to the point where he appears at least somewhat competitive with Hillary or potentially competitive with her.

I maintain that it was #2 that was the most important factor in both making the movement die in its official sense—among the delegates—and it was also the reason Trump was the winner of the primaries in the first place: Republicans could not unite around an alternative. There was no lack of alternatives, however; there were too many, but no one person could manage to gather enough of the divided party members (and crossover Democrats and Independents) to beat Trump. Trump is a symptom of a divided party, not a cause (although his candidacy has further divided the party in a time when it needs unity).

That’s why during the primaries I kept calling out in increasing desperation for a whole bunch of Trump’s opponents to drop out. It didn’t happen, and now we are left with this. I continue to think that any number of alternative candidates would have had a better chance of beating Hillary, but that is moot. I continue to understand why many private citizens will continue to be NeverTrump and write in various candidates, vote for Johnson, or not vote at all (I cannot condone voting for Hillary), although I’m not a NeverTrumper myself.

The second announcement is that Trump has chosen Mike Pence as his running mate. Within the last week or so, that had become widely expected, too, although until recently I (and many others) had thought Newt Gingrich would be the one. To me, Pence is a ho-hum choice but not a bad one at all. And given the limitations of the field—after all, whoever Trump picked had to be willing to hitch his or her wagon to Trump’s rather dubious star—Pence was probably one of the best possibilities:

Democratic and progressive groups, including Planned Parenthood’s political action organization, took aim at Pence’s opposition to abortion and other policies, while Republicans were largely supportive of the move, one of the most conciliatory overtures Trump has made to date.

Former Trump rival Marco Rubio tweeted out his approval, calling it a “great pick” and saying Pence is “rock solid.” Sen. Dan Coats, a fellow Republican from Indiana, also expressed enthusiasm. “Mike Pence is a great choice and will make an excellent vice president,” he tweeted.

Nate Silver certainly thinks it was a good pick for Trump—or rather, as he puts it, Pence “was Trump’s least worse choice”:

…[I]n Pence, Trump would basically be getting a “generic Republican”: a 57-year-old white man; the governor of a midsize, red-leaning state; someone with very conservative but otherwise conventionally Republican policy positions.

That’s probably a good thing, because a generic Republican at the top of the ticket would have a heck of a chance against Hillary Clinton, whose unpopularity would be record-breaking if not for Trump himself.

So there you have it.