{"id":8134,"date":"2015-01-13T07:50:53","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T15:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8134"},"modified":"2015-01-13T07:50:53","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T15:50:53","slug":"summit-on-violent-extremism-laugh-or-cry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/summit-on-violent-extremism-laugh-or-cry\/","title":{"rendered":"Summit on Violent Extremism\u2014Laugh or Cry?"},"content":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO-The Corner<\/a><\/div>\n
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It was just announced that the White House, in the wake of the mass murders in France, plans to reactivate an old idea of convening a \u201cSummit on Countering Violent Extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this an accurate news account or some sort of cruel satire?<\/p>\n

Is there something about the recent attacks in Boston, Canada, Australia, and France, in the larger landscape of what the Islamic State is doing in the Middle East, that the Obama administration does not understand?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Such a summit that mentions neither terrorism nor Islam in its title would be like fighting Nazi Germany as if it were a crusade against \u201cextremism\u201d \u2014 perhaps true but utterly trite. What global threat could be included under the rubric \u201cviolent extremism\u201d in addition to Islamic terrorism? Are Hindu nationalists threatening the Boston Marathon, Puerto Rican independence thugs storming U.S. army bases to shoot soldiers, anti-abortionists filming ritual beheadings, or Buddhist reactionaries blowing up European media offices? Have skinheads hijacked German airliners and rammed them into the Brandenburg Gate? Is the \u00a0Tea Party attacking New York policemen with hatchets?<\/p>\n

And what possibly could the Obama administration offer to such a global effort? Can one imagine the administration\u2019s 15-point conference agenda?<\/p>\n

I. The power of euphemisms<\/strong> \u2014 how \u201cworkplace violence\u201d and \u201cman-caused disaster\u201d lessened violent extremism.<\/p>\n

II. Understanding your enemy<\/strong> \u2014 why the Muslim Brotherhood is largely \u201csecular\u201d and jihad is really a \u201choly struggle\u201d.<\/p>\n

III. Mythology at work<\/strong> \u2014 the Cairo Speech as a means to win hearts and minds<\/p>\n

IV. The art of swapping hostages \u2014 <\/strong>the Bowe Bergdahl paradigm for ending hostage-taking<\/p>\n

V. Miranda rights and civil trials<\/strong> \u2014 why foreign terrorists are not really enemy combatants<\/p>\n

VI. Closing Guantanamo<\/strong> \u2014 how releasing Islamic terrorists makes us safer<\/p>\n

VII. Calming the waters<\/strong> \u2014 the Iraq model of how to stabilize postwar societies by withdrawing all U.S. peacekeepers.<\/p>\n

VIII. The Benghazi video maker<\/strong> \u2014 how demonizing our own and attacking free expression win respect<\/p>\n

IX. The Value of silence<\/strong> \u2014 why ignoring the Iranian Green Revolution and Egyptian president Sisi\u2019s recent speech makes sense<\/p>\n

X. Clapper, Brennan, and Holder<\/strong> \u2014 why the right experts matter and how they mitigate extremism<\/p>\n

XI. Drones are the answer<\/strong> \u2014 how blowing up suspected terrorists is better than interrogating live confessed ones<\/p>\n

XII. The art of the redline<\/strong> \u2014 why issuing but not enforcing deadlines, redlines, and step-over-lines are game-changers<\/p>\n

XIII. Courting Iran<\/strong> \u2014 how concessions, weakening sanctions, and allying with Iran in Iraq thwart extremism<\/p>\n

XIV. Isolating Israel<\/strong> \u2014 when Netanyahu is called a \u201cchickens***\u201d and a \u201ccoward\u201d the West wins allies<\/p>\n

XV. Russia to the rescue<\/strong> \u2014 utilizing the resource of Vladimir Putin as a way to lessen Middle East tensions<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO-The Corner It was just announced that the White House, in the wake of the mass murders in France, plans to reactivate an old idea of convening a \u201cSummit on Countering Violent Extremism.\u201d Is this an accurate news account or some sort of cruel satire? Is there something about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[977],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-27c","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5911,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obama-borg\/","url_meta":{"origin":8134,"position":0},"title":"The Obama Borg","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"How \"man-caused disasters\" replaced Islamist terrorism in the Obama lexicon. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In\u00a0Star Trek\u00a0lore, the Borg\u00a0was a collective of servile drone operatives that sought to assimilate other species into\u00a0its \u201chive mind.\u201d Something akin to that creepy groupthink arose when the Obama administration took power and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war-on-terror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9369,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-highways-to-orlando\/","url_meta":{"origin":8134,"position":1},"title":"The Highways To Orlando","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ Defining Ideas We know what the recent terrorist attack in Orlando was not. 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We are watching carefully aggressions in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and in Eastern Europe. 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