It is rare that a foreign policy issue takes center stage over domestic policy in the USA. But due to the weakness in policy of sitting President Obama, there is a natural vacuum that looks to be filled by the field of presidential contenders. The big toss about question is are any of the positions of the candidates actually helping ISIS recruit new people.
Over the last several posts Connecting the Dots has taken a deeper look into what Islam is. We have dug deeper than what most people would find time for, and what we saw in the information provided by historic scholars was very different than what is being said in public about the true nature of Islam. So when accusations are being tossed about that some positions by presidential contenders may be promoting ISIS recruitment, we felt compelled to connect the dots and see what is just political spin to get elected, or comments rooted in fact.
Unfortunately what we have discovered over the past several entries Islam is not the warm and fuzzy thing that is being portrayed by many moderate Muslims. The fact is there are several verses in the Quran that discuss dispatching people who are non-believers and administering punishment to what today is termed as moderate Muslims for not being completely immersed in Islam.
It is clear that Donald Trump has taken an Alpha Male approach to dealing with ISIS and terrorism in the United States. However perhaps his most directly outspoken critic is Hillary Clinton who has vocally said that Donald Trump is dangerous and that his behavior would inspire people to join ISIS. Now considering the way things are looking at the moment they are the top contenders in their respective parties, it may come down to just the two of them in November 2016.
Now Hillary Clinton’s position is clearly more politically correct and her view point seems to be some tweaks to what is already in place. Tighten this, adjust that and replace this one with a new one. So looking at what is going on and where America is, for the most part it sounds like adjusting the rabbit ears antenna on your TV to get a bit better reception. The logic of that thinking is it assumes ISIS and their supporters actually care about politics and not just being focused on killing people who they do not see as pure Muslims.
When you consider Donald Trump and his approach, it sounds a whole lot more like the approach of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and less like United States President Barack Obama. So with this there is actually a working model of sorts that more or less eliminates some of the guess work as to what will actually work. Now granted Russia is not banning Muslims as Trump has suggested, and at the moment neither has the United States. So for the moment we have a balance between both models being the US model and the Russian model.
So in this case if Hillary Clinton’s accusation that a hard line approach will actually support ISIS recruitment, the number of ISIS recruits from each country adjusted for population should show it. That is found here. In this example it shows that for every million people in the US only one has joined ISIS. In Russia there are twelve for every million.
Now that is only the first screen in the filter and the answer can be deceptive. A second filter must be added to consider the percentage of the population of each country that is Muslim. That information can be found here and here. According to that 6.5% of the people or 9,520,435 in Russia are Muslim. In the US 0.9% of the people or 290,194 are Muslim. Crunching those numbers you come up with there being for every Muslim in the US, there are 32.4 In Russia. Now if your head is not spinning from all this statistical information, for every 1 person from the US that joined ISIS, there should be 32.4 from Russia. But the fact there are only 12 says Russia’s approach is 2.7 times more effective than the US approach. Now considering this is all statistical information, the difference is significant enough that suggests Donald Trump’s position is more effective than Hillary Clinton’s approach despite it pissing off a lot of Muslims.
Now when you consider that, it all makes sense. ISIS will be more influenced by an Alpha than a Beta. So in reality a hard line dominant Alpha approach towards Muslims as it implies action is better than a Beta approach that relies mostly on persuasion. With the goal being to bring an end to domestic terrorism, Donald Trump’s politically incorrect approach is far more effective than any politically correct approach.
Though it was not intended to be part of this entry, this is just another example of how political correctness make people weak. With foreign policy taking center stage in this election cycle, it can be easy to see people are getting fed up with the results of being politically correct. Clearly Alpha is better than Beta.
