ISIS and Our Security

Military and intelligence sources both here and abroad seem to agree on one very significant fact in the war on ISIS. We could, undoubtedly take back all the ISIS held territory in Iraq and Syria with about 40,000 troops plus air support in about two months. The problem is not military, the problem is political and I’m not just talking about Republicans versus Democrats.

There are all sorts of negative aspects to such an invasion. It would certainly entail high casualties for our troops and even higher casualties for the civilian populations of wherever we invaded. These are serious considerations that have, so far, kept these invasions from happening. We have the troops, we have the weapons and we have the intelligence. The problem is, we have not as yet ascertained the level of negative response that such an invasion would bring from the Muslim world and how that would affect recruiting for ISIS.

Let’s face it, ISIS only exists because of our heavy-handed historical blundering during the various invasions we have carried out around the globe. Do we want to make it worse just to eliminate a ground force that is, despite GOP pundits, contained in very specific areas of Iraq and Syria? It is almost a foregone conclusion that as soon as we eliminate ISIS as a military threat it will merge into an al-Qaeda style threat. It has already begun this as evidenced in Paris and with the downed Russian airplane.

The question then becomes, which is preferable? Well, they are far less dangerous to us when they are contained in the middle of the Iraq desert but that leaves them free to plot in relative safety, the kinds of attacks they have, of late, carried out on our own and foreign shores. It is perfectly clear that it isn’t our military but our Internet potentialities that we have to ramp up if we are to fight the battle of ISIS successfully.

The Right, in this country, is going crazy about keeping all refugees from our shores. God forbid, they say, that one of them could turn out to be a terrorist, and yet they haven’t the guts to vote against the NRA when it comes to keeping guns out of the hands of people who are already on our Watch and No Fly lists. The people on those lists are considered potential terrorists by some aspect of the government. If the NRA doesn’t want to keep them from having guns, then the NRA is a supporter of terrorism. The Right, heavy supporters of the NRA, are worried about refugees who might or might not be terrorists but not about those in this country who our own intelligence services say are potential terrorists. Are they crazy?

Our refugee program has been working very well. We have processed over 785,000 refugees since 2001. Of that number only 12 have had any kind of problem with the law since arriving here. That’s less than 1 in over one thousand and none of them were Syrian. Over 100,000 have come here in the last couple of years with no problems at all.

Maybe the GOP should stop shaking in their boots about programs that are actually working and concentrate on ones that aren’t, like our gun laws, like how to counter the terrorists use of the Internet, like cutting off ISIS use of oil to finance their operations and like the Visa Waiver program.

Obama’s strongest message is that we will not succumb to fear, that acting to stop refugees because we fear that there may be terrorists among them, is doing just that, and that it gives sustenance to the ISIS fanatics by allowing them to show us, as afraid of them, thereby helping to expand their recruiting process. It’s very simple; if because of cowardice, we reject the principles on which our country is built, we will have allowed ISIS to win. We have to stand up on our hand legs and show them that we still know how to act like Americans, and that we will do what’s right despite anything that they do and anything that the cowards among us can do.

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Mike McCaul, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, someone that I have no great respect for, gave a very clear description of the basic Internet problem we are having with ISIS and why we must find a way to stop it. This is a quickly degrading situation, very difficult to understand, especially to someone like me who doesn’t really have a great deal of knowledge about how the Internet works, but in its most simplistic form it can be understood that there are places on the Internet that our Intelligence services cannot reach. Is this a good thing? Not if you are trying to intercept terrorist threats, but what about privacy?

The companies who develop Internet technology have been reticent to help the government intelligence services get access to encrypted messages on the net, mainly because our intelligence services have shown a propensity to overstep their bounds whenever they are given any access to personal, private communication. The government has a history of being given an inch and taking a mile.

So the problem becomes, if the tech developers give the government the means to bypass encryptions and invade the dark spaces on the net, will they, as they always have in the past, overstep their boundaries and in direct opposition to the constitution, invade everyone’s privacy. This may be the most important question and the answer to it the most important decision that will be considered in this generation. That sounds like an overblown statement but when examined, the ramifications of any decision on it, will certainly affect more people and in more important ways than anything we have done as a nation since we entered WWII.

If we can encourage our Internet developers to allow our intelligence services access to the secrets of encryption, will we be opening a Pandora’s box that will end privacy, the way the NSA tried to end it with the telephone invasion programs, heroically revealed by Edward Snowden? If that happens we will truly have entered the world of 1984.

If, on the other hand, a way can be found to control that eventuality, and our security services can defeat encryption as it is currently being used by terrorists, it will be an enormous blow to their ability to endanger the lives of millions of innocents around the world, whose lives have been disrupted by the terrorists attempts at bringing about chaos.

To date no nation in the world, least of all the United States has safely and sensibly been able to control this kind of power. The closest we have ever come to it is the US and Russia’s control of their use of nuclear weapons and who knows how long that will last?

The problem in this country has always been that politics has forced its way into discussions that should only be debated through logical debate by statesmen. Until we have the kind of statesmen that can carry on a discussion free of the goal of political gain we will not be able to progress to any kind of sincere and logical decision on how to move ahead and solve this enormous problem. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that we have arrived at a place where these kinds of leaders have emerged, certainly not on the Right.

To make a decision as to whether or not we are about to change the nature of the concept of privacy in this country we need statesmen, and right now they are in very short supply.

The aforementioned McCaul brought up another important and ultra sensitive point. He was asked about his feelings on the proposals by the likes of Donald Trump on the surveillance of mosques. He indicated that he did not agree with that process but that a lot of the problems with mosques would be solved simply with their cooperation. He stated that the older of the Boson bombers had been kicked out of his mosque because he was too radical but that no one at the mosque had informed the authorities about the man’s behavior. That kind of lack of cooperation is what brings the whole Muslim community under suspicion. Such a notice might have saved many lives. This goes back to something that this blog has written about before. Communities, religious, political or social, must take responsibility for their own members.

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Joe McCarthy is not dead. He is alive and disgusting in the forms of Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. It’s fascinating that George Bush with all his faults was so far ahead of these bigots. These men’s appeal to bigotry and fear must be challenged, but no one on the Left is willing to stand up and say, Trump is a bigot or Carson is a lying idiot.

A very important point was made today with reference to the real problem of terrorists getting into this country. It’s not the refugees we should fear but those who are coming here through the Visa Waiver program. Right now the UN has referred 23,092 Syrian refugees to the United States. Of those, 7,014 have been interviewed outside the country by our Homeland and other security agencies. Of that 7,024 only 2,165 have been allowed to enter the States. That’s less than 10% of the original number referred and all vetted, but they are really not the problem. The problem is people entering this country on the Visa Waiver program, 38 countries participate in the Visa Waiver program, which means that people from those countries can travel here without a Visa. They can stay legally 90 days or fewer but they can only come for purposes of tourism or business.

Sure they can. But there is really nothing to stop anyone who comes here on this program from just staying, from blending into the crowd and disappearing. If those people are terrorist connected they can easily obtain false papers and set up cells just like the Saudis who blew up the World Trade Center did. That’s the real problem, not refugees. We have to demand that the 38 countries that participate in this program, many of which, don’t have the kind of security at their airports that we do, either get their acts together and do their homework or not participate in the program. If we don’t, we are wide open to any and every kind of miscreant that wants to enter the country, and no Trumped up wall will be in a position to do anything to improve our security.