Hasta La Gadget!

WASHINGTON — Nearly 13 years later, it remains one of the most infamous campaign ads of the post 9/11 era.

A 30-second spot that then-Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) ran against Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) in 2002 earned its notoriety by casting Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran, as soft on the war on terror.

The ad, which contained images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, listed the votes Cleland had cast around the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Cleland had pushed to give DHS employees civil service protections, pitting him against President George W. Bush on the issue. But the ad’s copy suggested that he had opposed the creation of the department itself.

It worked. Though tarred forever for dabbling in gutter politics, Chambliss emerged victorious and served two terms in the Senate.

More than a decade later, the Department of Homeland Security is once again in political crosshairs. House Republicans are threatening to let the agency’s funding lapse unless the appropriations bill includes language blocking President Barack Obama’s immigration executive actions. Senate Democrats won’t pass such a measure, and even if they did, the president would veto it.

The agency’s money is set to run out on Friday. DHS officials warn that programs will come to a halt, and that some employees will be furloughed and others will work without pay.

If that happens, however, don’t expect ads like the Cleland one to return. The operative behind the spot said it simply wouldn’t be effective in the current political climate, since the agency has come to represent bureaucratic largess as much as, if not more than, a deterrent to foreign threats.

“Back then, we thought DHS was on the front line against Osama bin Laden. Now we think DHS is fondling my junk in the airport,” said Rick Wilson, a Florida-based Republican known for his acerbic tweeting and bare-knuckled ad-making.

“We also have to look at where we are today, in terms of bin Laden is dead but ISIS is alive. And ISIS is, in many ways, more horrific at the retail level than bin Laden was,” Wilson said. “I don’t think voters think DHS is going to protect them from this nihilistic craziness. They think, drop a bomb on those motherfuckers.”

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Wilson discussed the strategy behind the creation of the original spot and why similar attacks would fall flat if Democrats tried to use them today. An edited transcript is below.

How was the Cleland ad put together?
Tom Purdue, the general consultant [on the Chambliss campaign], is blunt, rough, and puts up with no bullshit. He wanted something that hit on the national security front that would really give us a bump. And the pollster and I kind of knocked it together over the course of a Friday afternoon and all of us thought, ‘Holy shit, this is a fairly hot business right here.’

I can’t take full credit for writing every line of it. Tom had the genesis and idea. And, you know, everyone around the table knew there was going to be a Democratic shitstorm about it. Everyone characterized it as we besmirched his service and attacked his personal life … All these things that just weren’t true were all thrown out there. And [Sen. John] McCain lost his mind about it. McCain wanted to cut everybody’s head within a thousand mile radius. But look, the ad moved numbers.

Was there any trepidation in the room?
No. If you go back to the mechanics of the votes, and I don’t remember which one was which now because it’s been forever, but if you go back, a lot of the stuff [Cleland] was saying no on was the stuff the unions were having a problem with…. And the thought was that the ruins were practically still smoking and this guy is politicizing these votes.

You have to remember the world we were living in. We had guys fighting in the Hills of Afghanistan at that point trying to find bin Laden. It was a top of mind issue for everyday voters, that we look back and retrospect and it’s like bellbottoms. We don’t get it. But it was definitely there.

So no one was hesitant at all?
When the ad came out, Scott Howell, who was the initial media consultant on the campaign, was so scared of it he went out and denounced it. He was like, ‘I didn’t do that ad, no way, didn’t have anything to do with it.’ There is a Chris Cillizza story about it. I think Cillizza did a story years ago saying Howell renounced the ad. And everyone around the table was like: ‘Pussy.’

The Washington Post story Wilson referenced is here. Howell did not immediately return a request for comment.

Describe what you were trying to do with the spot.
The ad was built ugly. The ad was built to look like it was primitive and quick and knocked off instantaneously. It is an ugly ad. It is a hideously looking ad because we wanted people to focus on the votes.

The mechanism itself is pretty simple and basic. We knew back then that saying the words ‘against the president’s vital homeland security efforts’ [would work]. At the time, George Bush had about a 68 or 64 percent approval rating in Georgia. Solid gold, OK? We were lining up Senate candidates and House candidates to go to the White House to get the two-second walk down the White House portico to get the piece of videotape because it was worth its weight in platinum.

Could you run a DHS-themed attack ad in the current climate?
Well, here’s the thing. Back then, we thought DHS was on the front line against Osama bin Laden. Now we think DHS is fondling my junk in the airport … and it has become this metastasized federal behemoth that no one likes and no one trusts and no one thinks is doing the actual job of protecting us.

I know it will be hard for you to do this, but play the role of Democratic ad-maker. What would you do with the DHS funding showdown?
I would be very cautious if I were a Democrat because you push this button and Republicans have a counter ad that says ‘We wanted this and they filibustered. They did the Washington D.C. thing they do. They blocked progress.’ There is a rejoinder on this one that didn’t exist in 2002.

Former U.S. astronaut Buzz Aldrin urged members of Congress on Tuesday to establish a human colony on Mars and to “combine the mission” with China.

While testifying before the Senate’s Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, Aldrin said “there is no more convincing way to demonstrate American leadership for the remainder of this century than to use 20 July 2019, to commit to and execute a permanent presence on Mars.”

NASA plans to send astronauts to Mars by the 2030s.

Aldrin said, “American leadership is inspiring the world by consistently doing what no other nation is capable of doing. We demonstrated that for a brief time 45 years ago. I do not believe we have done it since.”

“I envision a program of settlement that schedules most of the crews who go to Mars will remain and establish a permanent settlement there,” Aldrin said.

Aldrin also urged lawmakers to work with China’s space station in the near future. The 85-year-old space veteran said, “Do we have a relationship with China? It’s very significant if we’re going to deal with leadership.”

“China needs the things we can build. We need to exert leadership by working with them in the lower orbit. … They got a lot of things to do with the moon, we can help them in their permanence because it helps us with our permanence at Mars,” he said.

Aldrin along with fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong were the first humans to land on the moon on July 20, 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission.

Watch Buzz Aldrin above.

Islamists, defined by AP as those who favor, “reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam,” view their interpretation of Islam as Islamic, often to the exclusion of other point of views. In the West, an amalgam of ideologues, from the far-right conservatives to the libertarian atheists, also insist that any and all bad action by Muslims are derived from Islam and thus Islamic. Several years ago, I wrote an article questioning the authenticity of using the label “Islamic” to characterize otherwise secular functions such as politics, art or finance. Labels such as, Islamic Republic, Islamic Finance, or Islamic State, are an exercise in hubris arrogantly suggesting that whatever takes place under such banners is sanctioned by Islam. Islamic Finance, for example, may reflect certain values of Islam, but in practice it often violates the spirit of Islam, if not its letter.

The Arabic for “Islamic” is “Islamiyyah,” a word that is not found in the Quran. When opining on the permissibility or the impermissibility of any action, classical scholars of Islam eschewed using “Islamic” or “un-Islamic” as a label. They often opted for legalistic terms such as “valid”, “accepted”, and “allowable” to determine Islamicity. This legal paradigm allowed for nuances and contextualization. For example, drinking alcohol is impermissible in Islam but if life depended on its consumption then an impermissible action becomes obligatory, as saving life takes precedence. Thus, the binary worldview of “Islamic” versus “un-Islamic,” does not find support in the sacred texts of Islam. Ironically, the proliferation of the label “Islamic” is traceable to the Islamist identity movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood or Jamaat-e-Islam, which sprang up in the post-colonial Muslim world.

In not labeling ISIS or ISIL as an “Islamic” group, President Obama was refusing to play into the narrative of the extremists, who are desperately trying to cloak their heinous actions with the legitimacy of Islam. To President Obama’s detractors, this was not viewed as either smart or strategic, but rather capitulation. If you cannot label the terrorists properly, how can you defeat them, so they howled? This argument over labels has distracted us from the real debate over ISIS – not what to call it but how to defeat it.

In a controversial article Atlantic’s Graeme Wood asserts that “The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic.” In the same article, Wood goes on to state that “nearly all” Muslims reject ISIS. How can something be “Islamic” if “nearly all” Muslims reject it? Wood’s main source to determine the religious authenticity of ISIS is Bernard Haykel, a Princeton scholar of Islam. The fact that Wood did not interview Muslim scholars of Islam to determine the authenticity of the “Islamic” credentials of ISIS, is a major omission. In addition, the only Muslims interviewed by Wood are fringe characters, such as the notorious British extremist Anjem Choudary, who despite claims that he motivated many British youth to join the Syrian war, remains free to give lengthy interviews to British newspapers and casually chat with American journalists in coffee shops. The Muslims interviewed by Wood who purportedly were providing the Islamic rationale behind ISIS, do not command any pulpit or lead any congregation. How can someone with no pulpit and no congregation become representatives of a religious faith practiced by 1.6 billion people?

Haykel notes that ISIS is reviving medieval interpretations of Islam. The fact that ISIS has to rely on anachronistic traditions of Islam certainly places them on the fringe of a modern-day Muslim, a fact that Wood does not adequately weigh when insisting that ISIS is Islamic. Thus ISIS is certainly not universally Islamic although it may rely on using words and images that suggests some tangential connection to Islam. ISIS is as much Islamic as the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda is Christian.

Despite glaring weaknesses in his article, Wood perceptively points out important differences between ISIS and its parent al-Qaeda. While al-Qaeda remains focused on hitting distant targets, such as the U.S., ISIS is mostly aiming to teach a lesson to “deviant” Muslims in the region and cleanse the land they control from any un-Islamic influence. In other words, ISIS is more of an existential threat to Muslims and Arabs in the region than they are to Western Europe and America. Moreover, ISIS unlike al-Qaeda espouses a brand of eschatology that favors an apocalyptic end-of-time clash between Islam and non-believers. Understanding this ideological underpinning is crucial, as Wood rightfully asserts. Thus, by avoiding characterizing ISIS as “Islamic,” President Obama is denying terrorists the comfort of thinking that the rest of the civilized world will indulge them in furthering their messianic visions. Any armed conflict with ISIS will have to be evaluated on the basis of security for the homeland and stability for the region, not on any messianic vision.

What ISIS wants is less important. They are a violent group that craves and revels in violence. No surprises. Defeating ISIS will depend more on understanding the factors that gave rise to them and less on how to label them. Without the US invasion of Iraq, there will be no ISIS. Without the disastrous post-war polices of de-Baathification, the Sunni minority would not have felt marginalized and gravitated towards their own Sunni devils (al-Qaeda) shunning the Shia devils, who as part of the government in Iraq, were just as brutal. Thus, the primary factor behind the rise of ISIS is a foreign occupation, a lesson that seems to be lost in the hullabaloo over how to label ISIS.

The second factor favoring the rise of ISIS is the repeated failures in governance. Without the failure of the Assad regime in Syria, there will be no space for ISIS to incubate. Not just Assad, but the dictators that have ruled across Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have by-and-large failed to provide their citizens with good life. The UN Arab Development Report makes it clear that most of the nation-states in the region failed to make a smooth transition towards the new world order, which required both strong national identities and adherence to international charters. The lack of clear national identities is the result of forced repression of “cultural, linguistic and religious heterogeneity” that was a fact of life in the region. Pluralism remains an idea too foreign across much of the MENA region. As successive iterations in socialism, capitalism, democracy, and authoritarianism failed (sometimes due to internal follies and sometimes due to undue interventions by America and its Western allies), a “medieval” and thus out-of-context interpretation of Islam began to gain currency among the dispossessed. Islam is the solution, sounded plausible. Lack of human development (economic, social and political) is the root cause of terrorism, a narrative too often ignored in discussions about terrorism in the name of Islam.

But can Islam itself be absolved? Islam like other ancient faith traditions is replete with multiple and even contradictory interpretations, particularly in the realm of social contracts. Taking stock of Islam’s history of development and progress, one can easily detect interpretations that range from accommodationist (accepting of differences) to separationist (positing Muslim exceptionalism and apartheid). The fact that a small band of thugs and criminals are banding towards a separationist camp, is hardly a revelation. However, the fact that thugs now control vast swaths of land and have the capacity to inflict so much violence cannot be trivialized either. Thus, Muslim scholars, leaders and activist should challenge ISIS on their core ideology and discredit their interpretations as invalid and out-of-context. So far, this has not been done at a sufficiently large scale to make any difference.

The Organization of Islamic Conference, a transnational body made up of 57 Muslim majority countries had instituted an observatory for Islamophobia but none to study and debunk extremism in the name of Islam. Muslim groups in the West routinely publish reports on Islamophobia, which is an important problem to be addressed, but so far have not researched and debunked the twisted ideology that undergirds the deranged violence of those who perpetrate violence in the name of Islam. While ISIS is producing slick magazines and engaging in impressive social media campaigns (one report suggested 45,000 Twitter accounts by ISIS supporters), the Muslim apex bodies either governmental such as the OIC or non-governmental civic advocacy groups such as CAIR in the US or MCB in UK have not developed any comparable campaign to discredit and marginalize the fallacious ideology that ISIS and their ilk propagate. Neither condemnations by Muslim groups nor dropping bombs by Western and Arab governments is sufficient to defeat ISIS. Security operations and statements of condemnations have to go hand in glove with exposing and discrediting the corrosive ideology being propagated by ISIS.

The debate over labels is thus a red-herring. The call for more condemnations by Muslims is often masks ugly stereotyping presuming that Muslims have a monopoly on religious violence. Furthermore, increased militarization as solution is being tone deaf to the lessons from history. The real solution remains the same today as it was after 9/11 – reversing the downward spiral of human development across MENA. President Obama has asked Muslims to do more and certainly more can be done to debunk the ideology of ISIS. But President Obama has fallen short of laying out how he and his Western allies will nudge governments across MENA to speed up reforms that are necessary to give people in the region hope thus giving them less reason to buy into the messianic apocalyptic vision of ISIS.

WASHINGTON — The Senate reached a deal on Wednesday on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, shifting the focus back on the House to prevent the agency from shutting down on Friday.

Senate Democratic leaders announced after a caucus meeting that they had agreed to an offer put forward Tuesday by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Under the arrangement, the Senate will vote to fund DHS without any measures to block President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive actions on immigration, which have stood in the way of getting through funding legislation in past votes.

After the DHS funding issue is resolved, the Senate will vote on a separate bill to block Obama’s executive actions, which would grant temporary deportation relief and work authorization to as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants.

The timing is yet to be determined, but leaders hope to pass the DHS legislation by the end of the day Friday.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.

Forget notifications, forget apps, forget all of the noisy little distractions masquerading as help — sometimes a wearable is at its best when it stays out of your way. As it turns out, that’s just what French hardware house Withings had in mind whe…