A Guide To Islamic Extremist Groups

Organization	Location	Mission	Links to other organizations
Al  Qaeda	Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Somalia, Indian subcontinent (recently announced)	According to the writings of Sayyid Qutb, a vanguard movement of righteous Muslims is needed to establish "true Islamic states", implement sharia, and rid the Muslim world of any non-Muslim influences	In February 2014, Al Qaeda announced that it was cutting all ties with Islamic State for its brutality.
Islamic State	Iraq and Syria	Sunni extremist group. As a self-proclaimed caliphate, it claims religious authority over all Muslims worldwide and aims to bring most Muslim-inhabited regions of the world under its political control.	Formed from the consolidation of Al Qaeda Iraq with other Sunni insurgent groups
Khorasan	Syria	Not clear.  It seems to comprise a dozen Afghanistan veterans who are all wanted by the U.S.	Cell backed by Jabhat al-Nusra; “affiliated” with Al Qaeda (according to our State Department)
Jabhat al-Nusra	Syria	Sunni movement that calls for overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad’s government.	Has declared allegiance to Al Qaeda; has fought with IS but at least one al-Nusra branch has pledged allegiance to IS.
Boko Haram	Nigeria	Sunni movement that seeks the establishment of an Islamic state in Nigeria. Kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls, most of whom are still missing.	Declared support for the IS caliphate.  The Obama administration does not consider Boko Haram to be affiliated with central al Qaeda leadership.

I created the table above for my own knowledge.  Since the United States has committed to military involvement in Syria and Iraq, I should at least know who we are fighting and what they stand for. So I compiled some information in papers released by the Congressional Research Service on the organizations that pose a threat to the United States. 

America's ambassador to the UN, Samantha power, argued that Iraq had asked our country to assist in defending itself from Islamic State; that the group was staging attacks from Syria; and that the government of Syria was either unable or unwilling to prevent this.  But rather than striking Islamic State, our first round of attacks were against the Khorasan group, which seems to be one cell of the Jabhat al-Nusra.  As I have discussed previously, the U.S. use-of-force declaration authorizes military force for the threat posed by Iraq.  Islamic State arguably fits that definition.  Although I have only a cursory understanding of the groups involved, Khorasan seems to be distinct from Islamic State.  So our strikes may not have been authorized under our own use-of-force declaration. 

Should all extremist Islamic groups be treated as one? Or should we pay more attention to the differences between groups in deciding who to strike?  

Little Sisters vs. Big Government

Last week, the government announced that it would continue to fight over contraceptive coverage with the Little Sisters of the Poor.  The Little Sisters filed suit to obtain injunctive relief from a federal mandate requiring employers to provide contraceptive coverage for their female employees.  I say “federal mandate” because this requirement was not part of the text of the Affordable Care Act.  Rather, the ACA required  any “group health plan” to provide coverage for certain “preventive care” without “any cost sharing.” 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-13(a).  A federal agency, the Health Resources and Services Administration, defined “preventative care” to include FDA-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling, including abortifacient “emergency contraception” such as Plan B (the “morning-after” pill) and ella (the “week-after” pill).

The Little Sisters maintain that this mandate would require them to violate their religious beliefs, since they cannot appear to condone practices that they view as life-ending. So they asked the court in Denver to declare that applying the contraceptive mandate violates their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment.  The government has offered them a couple of avenues of accommodation, rather than providing the contraceptive coverage themselves: the Little Sisters can notify their third-party insurance administrator, they can fill out a federal form notifying HHS that they are objecting on religious grounds, or they may write a letter to HHS. In January, the Supreme Court ruledthat during litigation on the merits, the Little Sisters need not use the government form or notify their third-party administrators directly: they could simply notify HHS.  But HHS has since promulgated interim rules that dictate exactly what must be in the Little Sisters’ letter to HHS: their name, the basis of their objection, what they object to, the insurance plan name and type, and the name and contact information for any of the third-party plan administrators.

The Little Sisters say that this “accommodation” changes nothing in their appeal—they are still forced to comply with the mandate in violation of their religious beliefs.  According to them, the government could have given them a religious exemption (as it does for churches, but not Catholic hospitals or schools).  The government could have exempted church insurance plans, like the one carried by the Little Sisters.  It could have simply provided contraceptives to women itself, through Title X, tax incentives, or allowing the Little Sisters’ female employees to purchase subsidized coverage on the government’s own healthcare exchanges. Rather than do any of this, though, the government requires a letter identifying the third-party administrators, which the government will use to “offer those entities incentives to take action contrary to the terms of the plan and religious beliefs of the Little Sisters.” The government responds that the Little Sisters don’t need to notify their plan administrators of their objections; after they send the letter to the HHS, the government will do all of the notification for them. The government is also fighting against any injunctions during litigation, since it is imperative that female employees of the Little Sisters receive contraceptive coverage without delay.

First, fighting against the injunction seems disingenuous to me.  While so many parts of the Affordable Care Act have been delayed in their implementation, why is contraceptive coverage for the employees of the Little Sisters of the Poor such an urgent need? 

Second, I was familiar with this fight earlier, but I did not know that the contraceptive mandate was not in the statutory text.  This speaks to the vast administrative power that was delegated by the Affordable Care Act.  We should be especially wary of this, since the people promulgating these regulations were not elected.

Third, I tend to err on the side of religious freedom.  So what if it’s a one-page form?  Or a letter that names plan administrators?  If the government wants to force a religious group to violate their beliefs, it better be for a compelling interest and the law better be narrowly tailored.  As the Little Sisters point out, there are several different ways of serving the interest of providing contraceptive coverage to their employees that do not require them to provide it themselves. 

Letter to Congress

Welcome back from summer recess, Congress! I hope you're well-rested and reinvigorated. You have so much to do to improve our country! Here's what you should focus on:

1. Islamic State
President Obama is likely to ask you for funds to arm and train pro-Western Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State militants. This action would be narrower than a use-of-force vote, which we have discussed earlier. Islamic State is still threatening to quash democracy in Iraq.  It has beheaded two American journalists.  And it will continue its genocidal persecution of Yazidis and Christians.  The U.S. must continue to stabilize the region, for moral as well as national security reasons. 

2. Government Funding
Yes, I realize that this is an election year, so it's important for candidates to take memorable stands. But little, if anything, was accomplished by last year's shutdown. Pass the continuing resolution to keep the government running beyond the end of this month.  The same goes for the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Whether it is a job creator, free-market distorter, or both, the uncertainty of its short-term fate discourages transactions and destabilizes U.S. business interests abroad.

3. Immigration

President Obama told NBC recently that he will not pursue action on immigration until after the November elections. he admitted that politics shifted midsummer due to the influx of undocumented migrant children.  Shouldn't this influx mean something should be done?  That the status quo isn't working? President Obama's reluctance to take unilateral action creates an opportunity for Congress to create a bipartisan coalition and come up with thoughtful, durable legislation to address immigration.  As I have written earlier, I don't know what the solution is.  But shouldn't congresspeople want to start throwing ideas out for debate?

Now that we've identified priorities, here's what you shouldn't spend time on this week:

1. Militarization of local police forces in response to Ferguson

This is a matter of local concern. You work for the federal government. You have enough to deal with on a national and international level right now. I learned recently that the Department of Justice has the power to oversee local police practices, including patterns of stops, arrests, and use of force.  But creation of a "federal police czar," as some progressives are calling for, would simply mean greater federal intrusion into purely local matters.

2. Campaign finance constitutional amendment 

House Democrats are expected to introduce a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC. This amendment would restrict political speech by allowing aggregate caps on political contributions.  As Ted Olson argues in today's WSJ, "Voters, whatever their political views, should rise up against politicians who want to dilute the Bill of Rights to perpetuate their tenure in office." Well said.

Good luck! Let me know if you need any help.

The U.S. should lead the fight against Ebola

As I read about the various international crises currently going on—the rise of Islamic State, the Russian invasion of East Ukraine, the Syrian Civil War, Gazan ceasefires  that may or may not hold—it’s difficult to judge when and how the United States should get involved.  On which side should we intervene?  Are economic sanctions enough?  Do airstrikes in Iraq support the Assad regime in Syria?  This recent WSJ graphic highlights the strange alliances that the threat of the Islamic State has created.  Who should we be cautious of supporting now, should it come to haunt us in the future?

There is one current crisis, though, that involves a clear-cut enemy, a true bad guy: Ebola.  The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has already killed more than 1,400 people.  The virus is mutating quickly, and risks rise as the epidemic continues to spread.  According to Charles Chiu, an infectious-disease physician at UC-San Francisco, “The longer we allow the outbreak to continue, the greater the opportunity the virus has to mutate, and it’s possible that it will mutate into a form that would be an even greater threat than it is right now.”

The World Health Organization has estimated that $490 million will be required to control the outbreak for the next six to nine months.  This is based on the estimate that 20,000 people will be infected.  WHO’s member states (194 members of the United Nations) have the opportunity to foot the bill. The agency’s three-part plan to fight Ebola involves the following: “First, governments and first responders must ensure that all affected geographic areas have adequate surveillance and health care in the next three months so that standard strategies for containment and tracking the spread of the disease will work. Second, countries need to contain any outbreaks in new regions within eight weeks; and finally, countries must strengthen their capacity to detect and respond to cases.”

This is a situation where the United States can and should intervene. Just as in our results-based cash influx for providing AIDS relief, our help is much more than just a humanitarian mission.  President George W. Bush described PEPFAR as a way of strengthening U.S. national security interests.  So, too, would our response to the Ebola outbreak.  If we assist West African nations not only when they are threatened by other countries, but also when they are threatened by disease, we build up international goodwill.  It is simply the right thing to do.  

Suing the Government over the Common Core

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is suing the Obama administration in federal court for its implementation of the Common Core academic standards.  Jindal claims that creation of educational curricula and assessment policy is the exclusive province of state and local government, and the federal government’s usurpation of this function violates federal law.  He bases his suit on several federal educational statutes: the General Education Provisions Act of 1965; the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965; and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. According to Jindal, these statutes add up to the proposition that state and local governments get to control academic curriculum, and the federal government doesn’t get a say.

Jindal says that the Race To The Top program and the Common Core impermissibly federalize education policy through economic incentives and duress.  Louisiana received over $17.4 million in education funding after it agreed to join a consortium of states and adopted the Common Core developed by those states.  Jindal argues that although the funding was greatly needed, “the loss of State and local authority over education curricula and assessment policy is unmeasurable (sic) and irreparable.”  He also says that the Tenth Amendment prohibits federalization of educational policy, and that the Spending Clause does not save it.

Will Jindal be successful in court?  Unlikely, in my opinion. The Spending Clause of the Constitution gives the federal government fairly broad discretion to condition receipt of federal funds on certain state actions.  A federal grant of funds need only be related to the particular national interest at issue.  Jindal says that educational curricula cannot be a national interest due to the statutes mentioned above.  But I’m sure the federal government will argue that having an educated workforce is in the national interest.  

Winning the lawsuit may not be Jindal’s motivation, though.  In fact, he might have won just by filing. A strong federalist stance would look pretty good on a Republican presidential candidate’s resume.  This lawsuit gives him the ability to campaign on a “keep the federal government out of our state affairs” platform later on.

This lawsuit says nothing about the outcomes of the Common Core curricula and assessments or whether students have benefitted.  Nor would I expect it to.  According to this line of argumentation, it doesn’t matter how good the outcome of a specific policy or program is.  If the federal government is not permitted to do something, it shouldn’t be done.  I’d love to hear from some teachers about their experiences with the Common Core, though. 

Freedom of Religion Across the Globe

Today's Wall Street Journal included this plea made on August 5th by Vian Dakhil to her fellow members of the Iraqi Parliament, on behalf of the Yazidi, a religious sect whose members are besieged on Mount Sinjar by the extremist group formerly known as the Islamic state of Iraq and al-Sham:

I beg you, Mr. Speaker, my people are being slaughtered, just like all the Iraqis were slaughtered: Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Turkmens, and the Shabak people. Today, the Yazidis are being slaughtered.
Brothers, despite all the political disagreements, we want human solidarity. I speak in the name of humanity. Save us! Save us! For the past 48 hours, 30,000 families have been besieged on Mount Sinjar, without food or water. They are dying. Seventy children have died so far of thirst and suffocation. Fifty elderly people have died because of the deteriorating conditions. Our women are being taken captive and sold on the slave-market.
Mr. Speaker, we call upon the Iraqi parliament to intervene immediately to stop this massacre. . . .
We are being slaughtered, annihilated. An entire religion is being wiped off the face of the Earth. Brothers, I am calling out to you in the name of humanity! In the name of humanity, save us! Mr. Speaker, I want to . . .
Vian Dakhil breaks down crying.

We will post later on President Obama's decision to authorize air strikes in Iraq to aid the families on Mount Sinjar, as well as on the group formerly known as ISIS's persecution of Christians.  For now, though, Ms. Dakhil's heartrending plea highlights the importance of our First Amendment.  

Yazidism is an ancient monothiestic religion. Yazidis believe in one god, who created the world and entrusted it to the care of seven holy beings. One of these beings was Tawuse Melek, the "Peacock Angel", who refused to bow to Adam after God created man. According to Yazidi tradition, God then made Tawuse Melek the leader of all angels and his deputy on earth. Followers of other religious traditions, such as Muslims, maintain that Tawuse Melek fell out of favor with God after the Adam incident and eventually became Satan. They therefore view Yazidis as devil-worshippers. 

Now, in A.D. 2014, Sunni Muslims are attempting to kill 30,000 Yazidis on Mount Sinjar because of THESE differences in belief. This is why we must zealously guard the religious protections in the First Amendment.  When the government burdens religious exercise, it implicitly derogates those beliefs and the people that hold them.  Its actions imply that a religion is unworthy of protection.  Taken to extremes, it creates an environment where genocide is possible. A child's belief in a Peacock Angel's fate should not earn her a death sentence. 

Abortion in Alabama

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that Alabama’s law requiring abortion-clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital is unconstitutional.  Although I admittedly only skimmed Judge Thompson’s 172-page opinion (cut me some slack, I’ve got a three-month-old at home), I want to share my reactions. 

First, many states enacted laws like the one at issue here in reaction to Kermit Gosnell's Philadelphia abortion-practice-of-horrors.  In 2013, Gosnell was convicted of first-degree murder of three infants who had been born alive during botched late-term abortions.  He was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter of a woman who had sought his care in 2009.  State Health Department officials had not stepped foot in his clinic in the past sixteen years.  According to the report of the federal agents who raided the facility, “[s]emiconscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets.”

To ensure that women seeking abortions weren’t placing their life at risk like they did at Gosnell’s clinic, states enacted Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. These laws regulated aspects of abortion clinics such as the size of the room or corridors (to allow for stretchers in the event of emergencies) and a doctor’s hospital admission privileges.  Most of these requirements apply the same standards to abortion clinics that ambulatory surgical facilities face.

Immediately, these laws were characterized as anti-abortion. This characterization baffled me.  When Wendy Davis donned her famous pink sneakers to filibuster Texas’s consideration of such a bill, she was hailed as a champion for women’s rights. But why? These laws were making it safer to undergo an abortion. They were ensuring that abortion providers were held to the same standard as other surgical facilities. They were providing for continuity of care if women experienced complications after an abortion.  How could it possibly be a victory for women’s rights to prevent or overturn these laws?

Judge Thompson reasoned that Alabama’s law would shut down three of five clinics in the state, thus placing an undue burden on women seeking an abortion. Yet again, laws that promote the safety of women are struck down as conflicting with the all-important availability of abortion.  Abortion is legal.  But it is not an unregulated right.  Not every law regulating abortion is designed to prevent access to it.  Some just attempt to make it safer.  Just because a law is introduced by a Republican or someone with a pro-life record does not mean that it will harm women.  Lawmakers need to read these regulations and consider their actual effect on women before denouncing them.

I do want to note that Judge Thompson’s opinion opened with a chronicle of the violence abortion providers in Alabama have faced—bombings, arson, and threats against their spouses and children.  While it is important for views against abortion to be expressed on the sidewalk and in the legislature, resorting to violence is abhorrent.  Regardless of one’s view on abortion, terroristic threats are always wrong.  For more on this, keep an eye out for Krysten Connon’s forthcoming Oxford University Press book based on her research into the targeted harassment of abortion providers.   

The Bloody Business of Executions

Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit granted a conditional stay of the execution of Joseph R. Wood III based upon his claimed First Amendment right to government information.  Wood faced execution for murdering his ex-girlfriend and her father in 1989.  He wanted to know the manufacturer of his lethal injection drugs; the qualifications of those who will administer the execution; and the documents relied upon by the state to adopt its newest execution protocol. Normally I love a good First Amendment discussion--and this case would certainly provide one, with its novel right-to-information argument--but that's not what caught my eye.  Rather, it was Chief Judge Alex Kozinski's dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc. Kozinski eloquently and compellingly stated what is wrong with capital punishment today: "If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf."

Many of the current challenges to death sentences focus on the method of lethal injection. The condemned prisoners argue that the drugs used to relax their muscles and stop their hearts will cause a painful death, and are thus cruel and unusual punishment. Kozinski concluded that "the enterprise is flawed."  These drugs were developed to help heal (or at least provide comfort to) sick people, not to kill people.  The state uses them to make executions seem peaceful, to mask the reality of death. Kozinski suggested bringing back the use of firing squads.  "If we, as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by firing squad, then we shouldn’t be carrying out executions at all."

I agree with his reasoning.  Death by lethal injection seems too much like an ordinary medical procedure.  It allows citizens like me to ignore what the state is doing--killing someone on my behalf.  If the end of the line of a death-penalty case involves a squad of men with shotguns, then perhaps states will rethink the need for executions at all.  There are plenty of other reasons to abolish the death penalty: moral opposition (which can be a basis for legislation, but it's falling out of favor these days), judicial economy (so much time and effort goes into deciding death-penalty appeals), effectiveness (does the possibility of execution really deter criminals more so than life without parole?), and error (how many innocent people has the state executed?).

As for Mr. Wood, the Supreme Court lifted the stay, and he was executed on July 22. Attorneys for Wood tried to file an emergency request to halt the execution because Wood was still awake an hour after drugs were administered.  He snorted and gasped many times, and after two hours, he died.

Thoughts on Immigration

On the front page of today's Wall Street Journal, a uniformed man (presumably a Border Patrol agent) leans over the bank of the Rio Grande, extending a hand to a boy, no more than 15, holding a girl, no more than 6, as they climb out of the river. "New approach to spare child migrants a perilous trek," the headline proclaims. I instinctively liked this image of U.S. border policy.  Not one of fences and guns, but of awareness and compassion. We cannot begin to help the tens of thousands of Central American refugee children that have arrived at our Southern border without awareness of their history (and our own) and compassion for their futures (and our own).

My formative trip to the border took place in 2006, as I spent my spring break meeting people and exploring issues facing El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (For my college roommate's perspective on how this trip and her subsequent experiences at the border shaped her view on immigration policy, read this article.) Even then, I learned that there are no clear-cut, easy answers when it comes to the people at the border. The reasons that people from countries like Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador make the dangerous journey north are multifaceted.  Their countries are poor.  Violent gangs abound.  The global drug market--fueled by U.S. consumption--pours money into those gangs' coffers.  Governments and police forces are corrupt.  Hope is hard to find.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick propose that the solution to "border disorder" rests on three pillars: returning these children to Central America, "aggressively remov[ing]" the incentives that cause them to come to our country, and creating a functional system for legal immigration.

 As to the first pillar, I do not see how we can return these children to Central America in a responsible manner. Will our government really expend the effort to reunite each child with his or her parents? Also, these children left their countries for a reason. Are we sending them back to an unconscionable fate? Their mothers made the heart-rending calculation that sending their babies on freight trains across thousands of miles--risking death, robbery, rape, and all sorts of other evils--provided more hope than staying at home. On the other hand, what can our government provide the children here? A childhood in a detention center? Intentionally lax supervision that allows them to eventually strike out on their own?

Next, removing the incentives that cause people to come to our country is not as simple as giving humanitarian aid to Central American countries. It would have to involve the drug market--reducing illegal consumption in the States to give less money and power to the gangs abroad. Clearly the war on drugs has not achieved this yet.  Perhaps education is the answer. Do people even know that their cocaine habit is funding femicides and gang wars in other countries?  Perhaps legalization is the answer. Take away the black market and the funding is cut off.

Finally, I agree with Bush and Bolick that a functioning path to legal immigration is key. The administration seems to be taking this step by allowing Hondurans to apply for refugee status from home. But this creates new questions--whose applications for immigration are granted? People who have relatives here? People who can pay their own way? People with college degrees who can encourage innovation and entrepreneurship? Young children? Single mothers? People who have no hope of success in their home countries? Will this be just another way to leave the defenseless behind?

I have no answers. That is hard to admit. I've been thinking and praying about these issues for the better part of a decade, and I cannot see a clear way forward. I would love to hear your thoughts on the issue.