The President authorized a counter-terrorism raid in Yemen, which went about as well as these things tend to go. Is Trump’s counter-terrorism strategy just more of the same? Meanwhile we’re pitching in to help refugees. And Terry is trying to figure out how to talk to people without going crazy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/09/world/middleeast/09raid.html
http://www.aeinstein.org/books/on-strategic-nonviolent-conflict-thinking-about-the-fundamentals/
http://overduepodcast.com/episodes/2017/1/16/episode-220-the-us-constitution
A recent idea I’ve run across is to look at these terrorist organizations through the lens of a destructive cult. Here’s a youtuber discussing this with Steve Hassan see 45:14 for specifics. What are your thoughts?
https://youtu.be/j1hKF9SWP3M
Catherine,
I found the comments to be quite useful. First of all, our refugee vetting process is quite good. Since the Refugee act of 1980 was passed, the US has admitted over 3 million refugees. Yet in all that time, not a single refugee has killed an American in an act of terrorism–a near perfect record.
Also, Mr. Hassan is right in that we absolutely need Muslims both to help us combat extremist Muslim ideology, to help us understand these destructive cults, to convince current extremist cult sympathizers to re-think their loyalties, and to facilitate US counter-terrorism operations abroad. And as I mentioned in the podcast, one of the key incentives we have to convince people that they should help us is if things really go bad, we will resettle them in the US. If we don’t have that tool, it will be very difficult to recruit people to our side.
So Trump’s Muslim ban actually puts us a greater risk.