When judging the hyperbole emerging from Capitol Hill about the Islamic State, you must keep this in mind: “The threat ISIS poses cannot be overstated.”
That’s what Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, wrote in a USA Today op-ed on Sunday.
In other words, there can be no hyperbole.
In what is therefore, by definition, understatement, Feinstein called the Islamic State “the most vicious, well-funded and militant terrorist organization we have ever seen.”
She expressed sympathy for those who don’t fully appreciate its horror — yet. “I recognize the reluctance of many Americans to engage in another war in the Middle East. But it is imperative that every American is fully cognizant of how dangerous and deadly ISIS really is,” she wrote. “Americans need to understand ISIS’ degree of viciousness as well as what will happen in the absence of U.S. leadership and action… [W]e could suffer the consequences for decades to come.”
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez told Fox News on Sunday: “ISIS is a savage terrorist organization that has to be defeated before they can create the operational wherewithal to conduct a September 11th-like tragedy.”
This despite the fact that national security officials have seen no sign of domestic threats posed by the Islamic State.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) got all metaphorical on Fox News earlier today: “ISIS is, in kind of a scary way, it’s like something Ian Fleming created. It’s like Dr. No,” he said. “It’s the evil empire that is not a nation, just an evil group of people, or an evil individual at the head, that’s a threat to the free world. It’s like privatized terrorism; a public-private partnership.”
“It ought to be pretty clear when they start cutting off the heads of journalists and say they’re going to fly the black flag of ISIS over the White House that ISIS is a clear and present danger,” said Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.
But here’s the thing: Democrats do actually come off as somewhat understated — in comparison to their GOP colleagues.
“It is a real menace to our moving forward as a peaceful society,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) told a St. Louis radio audience today. “Where they are, in Syria and Northern Iraq, puts them on the back door of Europe.”
Writing in the National Review, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) called the Islamic State “an existential threat to America.” The U.S., he wrote, is “the target of the most lethal and powerful terrorist group ever to have existed.”
He warned: “The Islamic State has apparently gained control of several dozen kilograms of radioactive material from research institutions in Mosul, Iraq. It cannot be made into a nuclear bomb, but it could be used in a ‘dirty bomb’ to contaminate a wide area with radioactivity.” (Wrong.)
And the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jim Inhofe (R-OK), told a TV station in August: “We’re in the most dangerous position we’ve ever been in as a nation.” That’s ever.
“They’re crazy out there and they are rapidly developing a method of blowing up a major U.S. city and people just can’t believe that’s happening,” Inhofe said, evidently incredulous about the naivete of his fellow Americans.
Photo: MGM Studios
Developing the threat to bring back conscription..”no boots on the ground” because few remain convinced or committed to false war.
Part of the “rationale” for the sweep over and utter subjugation of Palestine is the example of US. We started the Westward “exceptionalist, Manifest Destiny,” steamrolling over the native inhabitants, continuing to sovereign Mexico, the whole Southwest. This massive theft was at the point of cannons and massacres. Such an ethos is extant with Israel’s enveloping Palestine. We did it, so it’s OK for Israel to emulate US.
It sounds like Inhofe is yearning to resurrect Tom Ridge’s old color-coded scare the public system.
A fear campaign and a response measured in bombs are precisely what’s needed in this final phase in the runup to the midterms. Otherwise, the Dems don’t stand a chance at holding the Senate.
Mr Froomkin,
I fail to understand what point you are making about the difference in rhetoric between the Democrats and Republicans. I think the column would read better and be more interesting if you put both D/R next to each of the names of these congress people.
We may have two parties, but we only have one foreign policy.
What a prejudiced article.Sorry Feinstein but the truth is YOUR govt.the US is the scariest most evil thing that the world has ever experienced!Hiroshima,Nagasaki,Iraq,Syria come to mind!We won’t even mention the evil abomination that is called the IDF backed by the US of course!Wake up!
Israel is a far worse terrorist organization. Better equipped, aimed at civilians and children, financed by the richest and most vile extremist sect the Zionists.
The US is the largest terror organization. Israel is just the Robin to the US’s Batman.
Why is there always at least one anti-“Zion” comment in these threads? We have all heard every criticism of Israel a hundred times over. Stop diverting the attention away from the relevant topic. The internet has thousands of Israel/Palestine blogs, posts and articles for you to comment on.
The more dramatic the narrative, the more likely it is that disenchanted extremists will leave their own countries to go join the cause – which reduces the terrorist threat domestically. An organized invading army that moves like an army creates a far easier target for disposal.
Well, as a non-American — i.e., citizen of one of Washington’s vassal states and thus without a vote — all I can do at this point is quote, for the hundredth time, the closing sentences of Emmanuel Todd’s After the Empire, where he advises his French audience:
“Let the present America expend what remains of its energy, if that is what it wants to do, on ‘war on terrorism’ — a substitute battle for the perpetuation of a hegemony that it has already lost. If it stubbornly decides to continue showing off its supreme power, it will only end up exposing to the world its powerlessness.”
That the US has managed to raise that “coalition of the willing” (including the French) that the world refused Georgie Bush is telling. If the American empire is going down, the rest of us appear willing to go with it.
And yet, we have NO effective security on the southern border, so terrorists, e.g. ISIS, could already be here ready to blow something up.
Many have been shouting that we ought not secure our southern border, and give amnesty to the illegal immigrants, but leaving a gaping hole – or perhaps wound – allows the fear. If our borders were solidly secured, then how could ISIS get here. With tens of thousands crossing our semi-protected southern border, who knows?
And our actual border is a proper thing to defend.
So your response to the ISIS hyperbole is more hyperbole. An excuse to … do exactly what at the border, under the threat of ISIS ‘sleepy cells’ coming in to “blow something up?” By the way, why is your tremendous fear of ISIS’ sleepy cells crashing the border restricted to only the southern border?
All ISIS needs to do is get SCUBA gear, and they could infiltrate our beaches. Hell, they might even get into our plumbing, popping up in toilets and stabbing innocent and vulnerable Americans. And not to mention attacks from space – ISIS could take control of a satellite or asteroid and crash it into the restaurant you work at!
We need to seal this country up tight from Mexican children, er, I mean IS militants.
The threat from Zionism and its facilitators like Feinstein cannot be overstated.
What a load of war profiteering BS! If we had no qualms about using barrel bombs, we could take out ISIL in a heartbeat. Seriously, napalm is still legal for some reason, so let’s show ourselves why. This can be over in a week, before Putin takes Kiev.
“We’re in the most dangerous position we’ve ever been in as a nation.”
If I think back a few decades, American politics has always had a bent for the dramatic, but this is absurd, trending toward (I hope) a backlash of significant proportions. The idea that ISIS is an existential threat to the United States is just Dick Cheney revving the money engines again…
“Mike Pompeo (R-KS) called the Islamic State “an existential threat to America”
Huh. I would have thought the USA is the existential threat to America.
I wonder what ‘intelligence’ is being fed to Feinstein, certainly there has been no honest analysis of how American policy generating terror around the world is responsible for our problems.
A case of CIA telling the ‘intelligence’ committee what they want to hear?
A case of personalities (mentalities) shaped in such a way as never to take responsibility?
A case of collective mental illness in leadership requiring bad news to justify their endeavors to ‘save’ us (while actually killing us with the policies, particularly our soldiers) ?
All of the above?
Meanwhile the Islamophobia generated, resulting in spiked hate crime, could very well create reality appearing to match the fear-mongering media, a sort of creating reality. Then FOX News and ‘friends’ (NYT, Bob Dreyfuss at The Nation, Wolf Blitzer and his Reindeer at CNN, et al, ad nausea) can crow from the top of their barns as Armageddon is literally created and they provide full coverage.
http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/08/22/demons-anonymous/
^ Meanwhile, our Commander-in-Chief attends his weekly ‘Demons Anonymous’ meetings while looking for his ‘exit strategy’ (it’s a satire)