How to Empower Violent Extremism

National Review ^ | 2/24/2015 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Servant of the Cross]

Every time Obama “contextualizes,” Putin and ISIS grow bolder.

Not too long ago, most Russians were reportedly unhappy with Vladimir Putin. His crackdown on freedom and his kleptocratic economy were hardly popular. Most likely, given their druthers, Russians were not all that interested in Putin’s risky and costly dream of gobbling up former Soviet Republics to create some grander version of Russia’s mess.

But now? As the ruble crashes, as Russia’s oil income dives, and as sanctions start biting the man in the street, Putin, in counterintuitive fashion, is apparently more popular than ever.

Why? Because he has become an easy mechanism for ordinary Russians to vent frustration and anger over what they perceive as a too-powerful and bullying West. In a fairer world, Western decadence and self-indulgence would not have earned Americans and Western Europeans singular wealth, leisure, influence, and an overall good life — at least not more so than an Orthodox, politically proud, and historically illustrious Mother Russia. Add in the fact that Russians prove covetous of Western things, especially an elite that, like a moth to a flame, seeks to replicate exactly the sort of good life that it condemns as Western decadence.

Most Russians are not Putinists, any more than the nearly two-thirds who voted against Hitler in 1932 were Nazis. But both present-day Russians and Germans of the 1930s were willing at first to be amused by, and later to vicariously invest in, a movement that voiced openly what many at times felt silently.

[Servant of the Cross]

How to empower violent Islamic warfare across the Middle East and aggression by Putin's Russia?

Elect BHO to the Oval Office.

[Tax-chick]

Writers who aren’t part of the Democrat Propaganda Ministry shouldn’t use “violent extremism” or “extremist violence.”

[elhombrelibre]

Putin’s re-building of the Soviet empire and the rise of ISIS are the two prime examples of how bad a President Obama is. It’s shocking that some FReepers have looked at Putin as the anti-Obama. In fact, he’s as phony as Obama and out front of him in making the Russian nation, through his president-for-life approach, his personal property.

[Servant of the Cross]

True. Like a war on "terror", it doesn't properly identify the battle or the real enemy.

We should have the courage to name the enemy who began the unprovoked war that we are forced to repel.

[nathanbedford]

The Islamist objects that the poverty and general wretchedness of the Middle East do not derive from self-inflicted pathologies like autocracy, statism, fundamentalism, collectivism, endemic tribalism, misogyny, or intolerance; rather, they are caused by aggressive foreign enemies, Americans and Jews in particular. At home, traitors, heretics, apostates, and atheists have weakened Islamic spiritual life, in pursuit of a tawdry covetousness of Western trinkets and shibboleths.

Doctor Hansen cites classic examples of projection creating a "mirror image" in another tribe or nation of the reciprocal of the very shortcomings which afflict one's self.

So long as Islam can supply a steady stream of conspiracy theories and other rationalizations we can expect Islam to be paranoid and aggressive. So long as the left such as we see the Obama administration can deflect by playing the race card, we will have a very dangerous internal element in America. These two entities, irrational Islam and overbearing leftism, share more than their contempt for the liberty of the individual, they both are cults and both succeed in bamboozling their cult members with these rationalizations because they provide emotional release.

The emotions trump reason and the result is tyranny and bloodshed.

[Hugin]

Extremist violins on the other hand are fine.

[Teacher317]

The Islamist objects that the poverty and general wretchedness of the Middle East do not derive from self-inflicted pathologies ... ; rather, they are caused by aggressive foreign enemies, Americans and Jews in particular.

Odd, since Islam began 1400 years ago, and the US was not created yet, nor had much of an influence in the Middle East until the mid-20th century.

In truth, Islam wants to kill everyone, including not-devout-enough Muslims. It is a murder cult, and always has been.

[Tax-chick]

LOL!