How the Republicans reacted
by digby
It’s been obvious for some time that the Republicans were gearing up for a national security election. Part of this is simply because they’re desperate and this is one issue on which they are almost always seen as having an advantage. They have portrayed Democrats as weak on defense for decades, often using gendered tropes to drive the point home, so the prospect of facing a woman in the general election offers them an unprecedented opportunity to drive home that theme in ways that feel both familiar and new.
When Jeb Bush entered the race, it was clear that the establishment believed that enough time had passed for people to forget their last disastrous turn at the helm and they could start beating their war drum once again. Up until this past weekend, they had been nibbling around the edges of the ISIS debate mainly because there just aren’t any simple answers. Sen. Lindsey Graham was the designated hysteric on the issue, pretty much fashioning an entire presidential campaign around repeated warnings that terrorists are coming to America to kill us all. (The fact that his candidacy is mired below 1 percent might speak to the fact that nobody cared about that — but it’s more likely the messenger than the message.) Most of the field had subsumed their usual fear-mongering over foreign threats into the immigration debate, particularly with the emergence of Donald Trump and his deportation and wall-building scheme. His rhetoric of “criminals and rapists” infiltrating our country hits the same hot nerve as Graham’s handwringing and Trump offers a much more satisfying solution.
But Friday night’s terrorist attack in Paris refocused the national security debate on terrorism, at least for the time being, and the Republicans were all forced to respond. Graham, naturally, came out with his patented dead-eyed pithy pearl clutching:
If you really want to make a difference, go into Iraq and Syria with an international coalition on the ground and destroy these guys. Every day they’re allowed to survive is a day that we can get hit.
Basically he reiterated his earlier call to launch another invasion of Iraq, but only this time don’t shilly shally around — invade Syria and anyone else who looks at us sideways. There’s no word on how this would make an attack like Paris less likely, but Graham’s not the only one who persists in believing that bombing, invading and occupying Middle Eastern countries is the solution to terrorism around the globe. One might think they would have reevaluated this assumption after our experience with invading Iraq — and the many terrorists it created and acts of terrorism that followed — but they clearly haven’t.
The GOP frontrunners’ reactions to Paris were even less coherent than usual. The night before the attack, Trump had said that his solution to ISIS was to “bomb the shit out of them.” He was speaking about bombing the oil fields to dry up their source of wealth (and, in the process, create a massive environmental disaster). He didn’t explain how this would stop terrorist attacks in other countries either, although he did offer some advice for Europeans about how to deal with these terrorist attacks a couple of days later:
“When you look at Paris — you know the toughest gun laws in the world, Paris — nobody had guns but the bad guys. Nobody had guns — nobody. They were just shooting them one by one, and then (authorities) broke in and had a big shootout and ultimately killed the terrorists.” “You can say what you want, but if they had guns — if our people had guns, if they were allowed to carry — it would’ve been a much, much different situation.”
Apparently, Trump is unaware that Beirut, where a similar attack took place just a day before, is a full-fledged open carry city. Suicide bombers present unique challenges that even a quick-draw cowboy like Trump can’t easily solve with his concealed carry permit.
Ben Carson carried on weirdly about how humans have large frontal lobes unlike animals and also discussed his plans for a no-fly zone over Syria on Fox News Sunday:
CARSON: And I would make sure that the Russians understood that we are going to do that.
WALLACE: If I may press my point, what do you do if – after we shoot down a Russian plane, they shoot down one of ours?
CARSON: If they violate it, we will, in fact, enforce it. And, you know, we’ll see what happened. You know, too, for us to always be backing down because we are afraid of a conflict, that’s not how we became a great nation, Chris.
WALLACE: But you’re talking about getting potentially into a shooting war with Russia over Syria?
CARSON: Well, if we established a no-fly zone and we make clear the rules, if they violate it, that’s why you have a no-fly zone. That’s the very definition of a no-fly zone. You can’t fly there.
This is actually a welcome evolution from his earlier stance that “rules” in war are a form of political correctness. (This, by the way, is the man who former CIA director Michael Hayden says has all the right instincts.)
So much for the frontrunners, the men who are between them garnering over 50 percent of the Republican Party’s support right now. But what about the other candidates?
Well, John Kasich gave a bizarre, stream-of-consciousness monologue during which he offered this solution: “The way you prevent these kind of things from happening is that you know they’re going to happen.” Ted Cruz, meanwhile, called for some good old fashioned shock and awe, apparently, under the logic that we need to be less tolerant of civilian casualties because the terrorists are intolerant of civilian casualties. As with the other candidates, it’s unclear how this will help prevent terrorism in other countries, but it seems to get the crowds excited.