The West’s Annus Horribilis at the Hands of Islamists

July 15, 2016

The West's Annus Horribilis at the Hands of Islamists

The Paris attacks were in November 15. Easily forgotten is that that same week, Islamists killed Americans in Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Mali.

The San Bernardino attack was December 2.

On New Year's Day, ISIS rounded up and executed about 300 African migrants in Libya.

The Brussels Suicide Bombers struck March 22.

A car bomb went off in central Istanbul, June 7.

The Orlando attack occurred June 12.

The Istanbul airport attack was June 29. Not many people noticed that one of the people wanted in connection to that attack was once held in Guantanamo Bay and released to Russian authorities in 2004.

The Dhaka, Bangladesh attack was July 1.

And now, Nice, France:

A father and son from Texas and 10 children are among the 84 people murdered Thursday night when a terrorist plowed an explosives- and weapons-laden truck into a crowd of thousands gathered along a seaside promenade in Nice, France, to watch the city's Bastille Day fireworks.

The driver, who sources identified to Fox News as a 31-year-old Tunisian national, left a mile-long swath of carnage along the seaside walkway before police killed him in a shootout. French authorities did not hestitate to pronounce the attack, which began at 10:40 p.m. local time, an act of terrorism.

"Such a monstrosity," French President Francois Hollande said Friday morning. "France is deeply saddened, but it is also very strong. I can assure you we will always be stronger than the fanatics who are trying to attack us."

One site calculates that so far in 2016, there have been 1,268 Islamic attacks in 50 countries, in which 11,664 people were killed and 14,087 injured. Most of these attacks occur in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and never make the news in the United States.

The Republican Party Bets It All on Trump

If Trump loses "bigly" in November, we know who to blame: the Republican primary electorate, who picked a candidate who struggles against the deeply flawed Hillary Clinton; and the Republican National Convention Rules Committee, who torpedoed any discussion of replacing Trump. Our Tim Alberta -- who's an absolute must-read, must-follow-on-Twitter reporter -- lays it out in depressing detail:

After months of hype — and weeks of misleading media narratives — the efforts to derail Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention ended abruptly and undramatically here during a marathon meeting of the Convention Rules Committee.

Fourteen hours after the committee hearing was gaveled into session, delegates delivered a swift and anticlimactic verdict on a proposal that would have allowed all delegates to vote their conscience on the convention floor next week. The amendment, offered by Colorado delegate Kendal Unruh, received national attention in recent months and was reported by several major media outlets to have a realistic chance of garnering the 28 votes needed to produce a "minority report" that would result in a convention-wide vote on the topic. Yet when the time came for a vote in the Rules Committee, the margin was so lopsided against the amendment that no recorded vote was taken — meaning no minority report will be considered on the convention floor.

Even now, knowing everything we know, the RNC wants Trump. We know there will be no pivot, that he's easily distracted, that he has no impulse control, that he's petty and vindictive, and that a lot of weeks he's polling terribly.

Trump-Pence . . . Am I The Only One Relieved?

Having said all that, I think Mike Pence is a pretty good pick — assuming this isn't the biggest head-fake of all time and Trump doesn't shock the world by announcing someone else.

Where Trump is unpredictable, Pence is reliable. Trump is all over the map ideologically, Pence's record is pretty consistently conservative. Trump is midtown Manhattan glamor and over-the-top boasting; Pence is Midwestern calm and straight talk. Trump envisions a big, powerful presidency ruling by decree and making sweeping changes to make America great again; Pence is an impassioned federalist. As he said at the NRA Convention in 2014:

Washington is not only broke, it's broken. The cure for what ails this country will come more from our state capitals than it ever will from our national capital. Despite what some may think in Washington, our state governments are not territorial outposts of the national government. The states are the wellspring of the American experiment. It will not be enough to cut federal spending; the next generation of leaders must permanently reduce the size and scope of the federal government by returning to the states the rights, resources, and responsibilities that are rightfully theirs!

Trump said his favorite Bible verse is "an eye for an eye"; Pence said, "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And that means freedom always wins."

This is the most balanced pair since Paula Abdul hooked up with that animated cat.

Ann Coulter is apoplectic:

Pence is the combo-platter of disaster. He's all in for corporate America bringing in as many guest workers as they please to replace American workers, tried to sell the monster amnesty as a "compromise bill." (How about this compromise: We start with a wall...) He also somehow managed to tick off both sides in gay marriage debate. After his state passed a law protecting Christians from having to participate in gay marriages, all hell broke loose. Pence thought to himself: 'I have semi heading for me. Should I just stand here? Yes, I think I'll just stand here!' First, he allowed himself to be portrayed as a right-wing homophobic nut and then -- just days later -- he sold out to the left-wing activists, anyway.

What do Trump's regular fans do if they think he completely botched the biggest and most consequential decisions of his candidacy?

Remembering Bloomberg's 'Throw [Kids] Up Against the Wall and Frisk Them'

My friend Cam Edwards reminds us of some words from Michael Bloomberg about policing and race that somehow never got much attention or criticism, and have been conveniently (for him) almost entirely forgotten:

Appearing before nearly 400 people in Aspen on Feb. 5, the billionaire founder of Bloomberg L.P. argued that in order to save lives, police should seize guns from male minorities between ages 15 and 25.

"These kids think they're going to get killed anyway because all their friends are getting killed," Bloomberg said during the speech. "So they just don't have any long-term focus or anything. It's a joke to have a gun. It's a joke to pull a trigger."

National media outlets latched onto that portion of the discussion, in which Bloomberg said one method to deal with the issue is to "throw them up against the wall and frisk them," referring to the controversial stop-and-frisk tactics New York City implemented during Bloomberg's tenure . . .

It's worth noting that Bloomberg's "them" was kids; the full quote was that the "only way to get guns out of kids' hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them."

Furthering his point in Aspen, Bloomberg said city governments need to fund law enforcement judiciously, dispatch more police and get them into minority neighborhoods. About 95 percent of murders are credited to young, male minorities, he claimed, adding that motives are usually associated with drugs or domestic disputes.

"One of the unintended consequences is people say, 'Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana. They're all minorities,'" Bloomberg said. "Yes, that's true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that's true. Why do you do it? Because that's where all the crime is."

Cam makes the point that this is probably not the most effective way to address the crime that concerns the public most, homicides.

If the media covered the gun issue fairly, you'd see large numbers of talking heads on your TV screen explaining that Bloomberg's comments miss the point that many who complain about excessive policing policies are making: It's not the guy smoking a joint that they're worried about. Or, at least, they're not as worried about him as they are about the armed robber who never seems to get arrested, or the murders that go unsolved. Chicago's homicide clearance rate is less than 20 percent as of June 30. As homicides spiked in Baltimore last year, the homicide clearance rates plummeted.

This isn't because cops don't care about the victims. It's because the department's resources (and those of the broader criminal justice system) and priorities are often aimed at high-profile, media-friendly sweeps and temporarily beefing up the police presence in high-crime neighborhoods. Meanwhile, as murders go unsolved, some turn to retaliation, and the cycle of violence continues. The recent book by Los Angeles Timesreporter Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder In America,makes a strong case for a change, not in law, but in tactics to continue driving down the violent crime rate.

The "Broken Windows" approach to policing — arrest and prosecute the small crimes to keep public order, which will discourage the bigger crimes — was probably the right approach for New York City and other big cities in the 1990s. But it's possible that this approach is a law of diminishing returns, or that it has a consequence: lower crime rates but a growing sense from citizens that the cops are hassling them for no reason.*

The arrest-and-prosecute philosophy of "Broken Windows" is probably a dangerous mate to the Nanny State, which creates regulations, rules, laws and ordinances for everything. Matthias Shapiro observes that when liberals see their ideas going wrong, they just avert their eyes:

This is particularly fascinating as it dovetails with what Charles C.W. Cooke pointed out in the aftermath of Eric Garner's death. Cooke lays out the fact that Garner was, in fact, breaking the law and thus subject to an altercation with the police. Cooke notes (I think appropriately) that the more laws and regulations we have against these small-time crimes, the more we will see these kinds of escalations.

So why can't we come together on this? The right wants to vastly reduce the regulations and scope of the government. But the left is instinctively against the anti-regulation push, worried that fewer regulations will lead to more abuse by bad actors such as large corporations or scam artists.

On the left (as in the WaPo piece), I can't ultimately tell what solution liberals are pushing for. It seems they want the right to ignore the fact that these laws exist without changing them.

* Late last year I got a ticket for an expired safety inspection sticker . . . on my new car, one I had owned for less than six months. The cop flashed his lights as I passed him writing up a ticket for someone else, I pulled over, and he noted my sticker had expired six days earlier. A gas station stood within a half-block from us; I figured he would tell me to go get the car inspected. Instead, he wrote up the ticket and said — politely — that I try to get the fine dismissed in court. I had the car inspection completed within twenty minutes — surprise, surprise, my new car passed the test with flying colors — and a few months later, went to traffic court. I watched a couple dozen cases of people dealing with charges of speeding, going through red lights, driving with no license or expired licenses — moving violations and charges much more serious than an expired safety inspection sticker.

Finally I was called, and upon seeing my inspection certificate, the judge declared "case dismissed," and banged the gavel, moving on to the next case. I like to think he was a little irritated with the cop, although I couldn't prove it. I had a whole speech prepared, about how I have one speeding ticket in twenty years of driving, how there was no reason to think the car was unsafe, how if the cop had let me off with a warning my actions would have been the same. All kind of moot, since the judge seemed to think my infraction was as minor, inconsequential, and easily-remedied as I did.

The point is that if I, middle-aged married white guy with kids driving his light SUV and living in the suburbs, feel like the cops needlessly hassled me and wasted everyone's time by giving me an unnecessary ticket, imagine how a young African-American male feels. If you feel like you're being mistaken for a criminal suspect, falsely accused of shoplifting, women clutch their purses closer when you walk by, mall security guards watch you as you shop, et cetera, how long does it take for you to get resentful and distrusting of the police?

ADDENDA: On this week's pop-culture podcast, Mickey updates us on the joys of not-so-small puppy ownership and how it compares to The Secret Life of Pets; why the country's gone nuts for "Pokémon Go" and how it took a video game to get kids off the couch; HBO's The Night Of and what it takes to make a compelling crime thriller; ABC's effort to restore family-friendly programming with "Sunday Fun and Games," and our impassioned debate about french fries.