So what’s the fallout?
by digby
Robert Kuttner has a thoughtful piece at the American Prospect on how the Paris attacks might affect civil liberties, U.S.-Russia relations, Israel, and the 2016 election that’s well worth reading. It’s surprisingly outside the box but that’s because the status quo may have been broken and it’s possible that something’s going to change. The question is how.
On civil liberties he wonders if we we will need to reevaluate our opposition to surveillance. I hope not. The whole point of terrorism against the west is to make us undermine our own liberties and rights. They don’t present a real existential threat on their own; the only way to achieve their goals is to make us abandon our values and turn on ourselves. There hasn’t been a lot of discussion of getting more surveillance (aside from fatuous nonsense from fools about Edward Snowden having blood on his hands) but this article says, without presenting any foundation, that the spooks are telling reporters they assume these ISIS terrorists were using encryption so we need to “do something about that.” (This has been a lively debate recently.) It’s possible that’s true, but this reeks of standard government opportunism to me. They always move quickly in the wake of a crisis.
Kuttner also contemplates the idea of a partnership with Russia to defeat Assad and ISIS, an idea which he says is starting to sound less fringe:
In World War II, the U.S. made common cause with Josef Stalin, a far worse tyrant and geopolitical menace than Putin. ISIS evidently brought down a Russian plane, and Putin has a number of Islamists on his borders and inside Russia. Despite conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere, the U.S. and Russia do have common interests here. A grand bargain, of the sort hinted at by Putin, would ease out Assad, end the Syrian civil war (which makes it far harder to target ISIS) in exchange for recognition of Syria as a Russian sphere of influence or client state.
Stabilizing Syria would also damp down the key source of the refugee crisis now overwhelming Europe. So a grand entente with Russia is outside mainstream discussion, for now, but far from crazy. It would be astonishing if this were not a key topic of the upcoming G-20 summit, which begins Sunday.
Judging from tweets like this, the wingnut primal scream has already begun:
Terrifying photo pic.twitter.com/TVJeBkFc9J
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) November 15, 2015
(If you want the real flavor read the responses to that tweet …)
Kuttner thinks that Israel issues have just receded a bit as a primary concern in mid-east politics and that the 2016 election now favors the Democrats more than ever since the warring GOP factions as represented by the presidential field are all undercutting each other.
I’m not so sanguine about that last bit. It’s true that Clinton’s experience and somewhat hawkish reputation may be useful in attracting independents but I suspect the Republicans will find it very easy to come together around “patriotism” and imperialist pride. It’s one of their main organizing principles. Unfortunately for them, this attack took place somewhere other than the US and it happened a year before the election. Unless they are “lucky” enough to score a big attack here over the coming months, I’m not sure the electorate’s attention span is quite long enough for this to be the most salient voting issue. My money remains on their clever emotional conflation of immigration with the terrorist threat — sheer xenophobia — as their campaign strategy. But we’ll see.
Anyway, read the Kuttner article. Good food for thought after a very scary week-end.