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Trumpeting

Falling to second place in Iowa polling behind Ted Cruz, Donald Trump has resorted to his usual tactic: a bold, headline-catching statement, this time about not allowing Muslims into the United States. The proposition is ridiculous, immoral, impractical and odious, but so is its bozotic proponent.

This time, the other Republican candidates are roundly denouncing Trump, hoping to use the occasion to push him off the hilltop and begin his slide to oblivion, where erstwhile number 2 candidate Ben Carson already is headed. Getting rid of Trump now would allow Cruz and Rubio–the only two Republican candidates who have any chance of competing for Hispanic votes–to duke it out for the nomination. That’s what the Republican establishment wants to see.

However that turns out, Trump remains significant, not for what he says but rather for the people he represents. His crowds are enthusiastic about blocking Muslims from the United States. They are the same crowds who have cheered his disdain for Mexicans, his proposal to build a wall on the border, and his coded but clear racism.

Folks with similar views have just given Marine Le Pen a big municipal election victory in France and have sought to block refugees from settling in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and other newer European Union countries. A few more terrorist successes could generate a tidal wave of illiberalism and zenophobia throughout the Western world.

That of course is precisely what the Islamic State would like to see. I may share some of the dissatisfaction with President Obama’s “no drama” reaction to recent ISIS attacks, but he is certainly correct that over-reaction is also perilous. No one wants American boots on the ground more than ISIS, since that would provide it with even more recruitment and hostage/kidnap potential than it has today. As the Turks are finding in northern Iraq, force protection is a serious proposition when coming close to ISIS.

Protecting civilians at home is also a serious challenge. It won’t help much to tell Americans that their odds of being a victim of international terrorism are infinitesimally small. The impulse to overreact to threat, and to do so quickly, is deeply ingrained, as Daniel Kahneman and others have demonstrated. And there is always the possibility that another attack on the scale of 9/11 will disrupt American life. I watched the Diane Keaton/Morgan Freeman film Five Flights Up on the way home from Zagreb Sunday. It involves a tanker truck abandoned menacingly on one of the bridges into Manhattan. It’s miraculous it hasn’t really happened, yet.

So what is to be done?

Zal Khalilzad offers the following prescription for the Middle East:

In the short-term, a comprehensive strategy will involve a U.S.-led no-fly zone to protect civilians, ground forces to defeat ISIS—which a majority of Americans now support—and heavier arms transfers to the Kurds. Longer-term, the United States will need to take the lead in transforming the Middle East politically and geopolitically, just as we did in Europe and East Asia after World War II. While military operations might generate tactical successes, the defeat of ISIS and other similar groups will require sustained partnerships with local allies to mobilize the people of the region against radical Islamism. It will also require convening regional forums and dialogues to tamp down sectarianism and encourage a positive vision of tolerance for the greater Middle East.

None of that sounds much better than the current effort, which includes many of the things Zal cites, though perhaps not to the degree he would like to see them pursued. Another effort to transform the Middle East doesn’t sound so great to me either. Last time we tried that it didn’t work so well. Note also that he is vague about where the ground forces would come from and doesn’t consider the implications of a no-fly zone with the Russians in the air. Zal gets even vaguer in discussing what to do for homeland security. He manages to offer the Communist threat as an analogy to ISIS. That doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Trumpeting is not limited to Trump. The fact is the President’s critics don’t have a lot of good ideas. I don’t think there are any that will bring a quick end to ISIS’s frightening but still small attacks. And there are lots of ways we might make things worse.