Commentary

Cruz embraces the dark side of Reagan’s legacy By John Bradshaw, NSN Executive Director The Hill | Feb. 9, 2016 Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) continuing infatuation with dictators reflects a long and dangerous tradition among conservative politicians. Cruz has recently expressed his admiration for Egypt’s leader Field Marshal Abdul Fattah al-Sisi’s hardline rule, saying that while al-Sisi “may not be a champion of democracy” he has kept the Muslim Brotherhood in line. He has also defended the legitimacy of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, pined for the days when Muammar Qaddafi ruled Libya, and regretted the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Cruz justifies his endorsement of these odious regimes by claiming that they are a bulwark against terrorism. Substitute “communism” for “terrorism” and Cruz’s formulation becomes indistinguishable from… Read More ›

A Bureaucratic Failure, Not a Scandal A BUREAUCRATIC FAILURE, NOT A SCANDAL John Bradshaw, NSN Executive Director January 19, 2016 | USA News As a former foreign service officer who served in several small U.S. posts overseas, the 2012 attack at the Benghazi facility had a particular resonance for me. But from the beginning, it was clear to me that this was not a political scandal, but the tragic outcome of two interacting forces: bureaucratic inertia at the State Department that led to chronic inadequate security for U.S. posts, and the propensity of foreign service officers to continually push against the boundaries of the security envelope. The various investigations of the attack, including the Accountability Review Board chaired by former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, all concluded… Read More ›

Donald Trump Is Helping the Terrorists Win By Steven Simon and NSN Advisory Board Member Daniel Benjamin December 15, 2015 | POLITICO American politics are undermining American national security. In their jockeying for the Republican presidential nomination, GOP contenders—Donald Trump above all—have managed to exacerbate dramatically the two U.S. weaknesses most likely to erode our country’s safety: fear and Islamophobia. The United States has made tremendous progress in the fight against terrorism since September 11. Yet it has also become all too clear that we are short of the kind of societal resilience that is essential for our success in fighting terrorism. Beyond that, we lack a shared recognition of the importance of the American Muslim community in preventing the spread of extremism. In recent weeks,… Read More ›

The paranoid style in Islamophobic politics J. Dana Stuster, NSN Policy Analyst December 14, 2015 | THE HILL When Donald Trump issued a statement recently calling on the U.S. government to bar Muslims, including U.S. citizens, from entering the United States, the condemnation came swift, as though there was still some line of good taste or ethics Trump had only just crossed. The critics are right, of course: Trump is a narcissist, a fascist, a demagogue with a third-grade vocabulary and a three-year-old’s understanding of the constitution. Which makes him an easy scapegoat for the Islamophobia that’s migrated from the far-right fringe of the political discourse to the mainstream. But Trump is a symptom, not a cause. It’s not enough to condemn Trump when his hateful… Read More ›

THE SPEECH OBAMA SHOULD HAVE GIVEN Tara Sonenshine, NSN Advisory Board December 8, 2015 | THE HILL President Obama was right to lay out the strategy for defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and to explain his policy. Full stop. But we confront a bigger problem than just ISIS, which the president understated: The temptation to turn fear into paralysis and forget the lessons of history. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and an increasing number of supporters like the logic of keeping out people whose backgrounds, ideas, values, religions and other defining characteristics we don’t like and whom we are afraid of. It’s a tempting theory. Just cordon off people and ideas behind big walls and tight borders and all will be well.… Read More ›

NSN 2016 Update: Clash of Civilizations November 13, 2015 Over the last few days, Republicans have engaged in a spirited competition over who can say the most horrible things about Syrian refugees, and a few went further, calling for unconstitutional religious tests that threaten the core freedoms this country was founded to protect. Marco Rubio is reading straight from the ISIS playbook when he calls the conflict in the Middle East a “clash of civilizations.” “ISIS wants to make this a clash of civilizations,” says Rand Beers, former Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and founder of NSN. “Why should we be helping them make their case? Why should we be turning on our own values?” By feeding the ISIS narrative and comparing… Read More ›

From Russian escalation to a negotiated solution in Syria By J. Dana Stuster November 16, 2015 | THE HILL Secretary of State John Kerry’s meetings with counterparts from the Gulf states, Iran, and Russia in Vienna represent the best chance the United States has for resolving Syria’s civil war. While Russia’s recent escalation clearly risks prolonging the violence needlessly, it could turn out to be the catalyst for a resolution to the crisis. Russia’s strikes so far and the fact that the meetings are happening at all are a reason to pursue this diplomatic opening, especially when the United States has few options in Syria short of risking a direct military conflict with Russia. When Russia began conducting airstrikes in defense of the Assad regime a… Read More ›

TO INCREASE YOUTH TURNOUT, MAKE VOTING SEXY Tara Sonenshine, NSN Advisory Board November 13, 2015 | THE HILL With a year left before a presidential election, America has a major challenge ahead: getting its young citizens to exercise, not just in the gym, but in the voting booth. We need teens and 20-somethings, and the entire under-35 generation, to get motivated and engaged in choosing the direction of this nation. In 2014, just under 37 percent of eligible voters turned out to vote, the lowest level of voter turnout seen in a midterm election since World War II. Of all demographics, the greatest drop-off in voting from a presidential year to a midterm is among young voters under 40. The share of the electorate composed of… Read More ›

RUBIO ON NATIONAL SECURITY: A CANDIDATE OF THE PAST John Bradshaw, Executive Director at NSN November 6, 2015 | THE HUFFINGTON POST Marco Rubio wants to be perceived as a youthful, forward-looking candidate, but his views on foreign policy are frozen in the Cold War. He fixates on Cold War enemies — Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba — and hasn’t updated his worldview to account for the changes that have arisen in recent decades. In his speeches, debates, and a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Rubio lays out foreign policy views that borrow the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and the policies of Bush-era neoconservatives. He sees potential conflicts everywhere and prefers to address them using military force. His critique of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy ignores… Read More ›

Tobias Gibson on Sec. Johnson’s remarks at Westminister College October 20, 2015 | THE HILL Last month, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson spoke to students at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., regarding issues such as border control and cyber surveillance and how these issues are affected by guaranteed liberties and American ideology. Johnson gave the 56th Green Lecture (the most famous lecture in this series is the “Iron Curtain” speech delivered by then-former-and-future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1946). Johnson’s speech channeled previous Green Lectures, including Churchill’s and former President Harry Truman’s “What Hysteria Does to Us,” which was given in the early years of the Cold War…While the Obama administration has had its critics, it has largely striven to strike a balance between… Read More ›