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| This image is hyperbole, but still, Donald Trump is doing quite a good job marketing ISIS recruitment. |
Once again, the story is a familiar arc. To most of us, the Brussels attack is a horrific outrage, a tragedy.
To radical so-called Muslims, it's a marketing campaign, and there are people in the United States, leading politicians and candidates mind you, that are making the marketing campaign all the more successful.
I know that calling these deadly attacks a marketing campaign is crass, but it kinda is. They're meant to stir up anti-Musllim sentiment in the West, which the extremists then use to say how awful the West is to Muslims so join us.
Some disillusioned people will go and join them, and more will perpetrate attacks, and the cycle goes on and on.
It's obviously not easy at all to counteract these "marketing" attacks. If it were, this would be done by now.
The Obama administration is probably not doing a perfect job at managing this, and of course his actions are open for scrutiny.
However, the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are making the ISIS terrorist "ad campaign" of sorts all the more effective.
Trump and Cruz aren't intentionally helping ISIS, obviously. It's just that ehy are putting their own ambitions over our national interests. They know some voters want simple statements that exude American strength and toughness. Hysterics and bluster sells.
So Cruz tells us he wants police to "patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods," whatever that means.
Never mind that's unconstitutional, and police departments don't report to the President. Cruz, a Harvard law graduate, should know that and probably does, but that's besides the point when you're trying to become dictator, or president or whatever he wants.
Law and order guy Bill Bratton, the NYPD Police Commissioner, said it best: "We don't need a president that doesn't respect the values that form the foundation of this country. "
Bratton noted that 900 or so NYPD officers are Muslim. So they have to "patrol and secure" themselves?
Meanwhile, our favorite fascist blowhard, Donald Trump, is trying to outdo everybody on this one, and trying to take full advantage of Brussels to advance his campaign. It's all about him. And showing what a supposed tough guy he is.
It was the usual blather from Trump. Close the borders to Muslims, waterboard suspects, despite what the Geneva convention says, go after families of terrorists, even if they didn't do anything wrong, and blame Obama for everything.
As Mother Jones noted, Trump is unwittingly one of the worlds biggest ISIS boosters, doing everything in his power it seems, to make them stronger.
Says Mother Jones:
"........Terrorism expert Malcolm Nance, the head of the Terrorism Asymmetrics Project and a veteran of Navy intelligence, took Trump to taks for doing the propoganda work of ISIS.
'Good God, they're probably cutting videos of this right now,' Nance said on MSNBC about Trump's comments. 'Donald Trump right now is validating the cartoonish view that they tell their operatives...that America is a racist nation, xenophobic, anti-Muslim and that's why you must carry out terrorist attacks against them...It's irresponsible and needs to stop.'"
Don't count on it, Malcolm
National interest is besides the point for Trump.
And sure enough, just a couple days after Nance made that comment about ISIS making videos of Trump, it appears they have, according to The Hill.
So yeah, this blowharded stupidity and shrillness from Trump and Cruz must sound wonderful to their base, which probably isn't big enough anyway to get them through the general election. (We hope)
Trump and Cruz must sound awfully wonderful to ISIS terrorist recruits, too.
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