While the attempt to treat Juan Williams as some kind of martyr for free speech is ridiculous on its face, (and the use of the word “dissident” for a guy who just got a $2 million contract for his trouble is disgusting) I agree with Reuel Marc Gerecht that “We would all be better off — Muslim Americans first and foremost — if we could have a more open discussion about Islam, Islamic militancy and what Muslims, here and abroad, think it means to be Muslim.” I’m just not sure if we necessarily agree on what “more open” means, or on the role that the President of the United States is supposed to play in that discussion:

The firing of Williams, who is also a paid commentator with Fox News, sparked a heated argument over political correctness — and calls for the public “defunding” of NPR — that is, in part, obscuring a more necessary debate: How do you approach the problem of Islamic militancy in the West and in the Middle East? President Obama, who has had innumerable briefings on the threats posed by al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups, has chosen to dial down American rhetoric (it was actually pretty tame under President George W. Bush) in the hope that average Muslims, wherever they may be, will view the United States as more friend than foe, and help Washington combat “violent extremism.”

This friendly approach is probably, unfortunately, counterproductive. So far, it’s unlikely that Muslim self-criticism — our ultimate salvation from Islamic holy warriors — has improved under Obama. Judging by the satellite channel Al-Jazeera, a vibrant hodgepodge of all things Arab, the opposite current, fed by Western self-doubt, appears to be gaining force. By being nice, we suggest that nothing within “Islam” — by which I mean the 1,400-year-old evolving marriage of faith, culture and politics — is terribly wrong. By being kind, we fail to provoke controversy among Muslims about why so many Muslims from so many lands have called suicide bombers against Western targets “martyrs” and not monsters.

Obviously, Gerecht makes some claims here about the impact of Obama’s rhetorical approach that he doesn’t provide evidence for (note the strategic use of words like “probably,” “unlikely,” “appears”). Leaving aside whether Gerecht’s rendering of the trends in “Muslim self-criticism” is accurate, color me skeptical of his suggestion that Obama could make a more positive impact if only he would be ruder to the world’s Muslims. And I’m always a bit perplexed by warnings against “Western self-doubt,” as if Western liberalism’s tendency toward self-criticism and self-correction weren’t one of its greatest strengths. This is, after all, according to Gerecht, precisely what we’re supposed to be hoping for and cultivating in the so-called “Muslim world,” a sense of self-doubt and self-criticism about the trajectory of their faith and their societies.

In terms of self-criticism, as Marc Lynch showed in his book Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today, al-Jazeera provided an important forum for quite a bit of self-criticism among Arabs over why they had countenanced Saddam’s tyranny for so long. This is obviously anecdotal, but I get invited on al-Jazeera fairly regularly despite my habit of saying outrageous things about how democracy is good and how no, we’re not just doing it for the oil. This also gets at the fact that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to decouple America’s message to the world’s Muslims from the American policies that impact many of those Muslims, either directly or through media, which unfortunately involve a lot of people and things exploding.

As for the President Obama’s rhetoric, I don’t think it’s really the president’s responsibility to get into fine-grained discussions about Islamic doctrine, but to set a general tone for the debate. In my view Obama has, despite a few missteps, done this fairly well. To his credit, so did George W. Bush, even though his party has pretty much devolved into an endless game of Islamophobic one-downsmanship since he left office.

Carrying out the deeper public debate about the problem of violent Islamic extremism, and America’s response to it, is the job of scholars, pundits, and analysts like Gerecht, and like your humble narrator. And in that, I think it’s clear that we need to do a lot better. I don’t think anyone can look at the quality of the current mainstream media discourse around Islam, America, national security, particularly the persistence of the ridiculous and deeply stupid-making “war of civilizations” frame, and conclude anything other than that we have, despite some bright exceptions, collectively pretty much failed at promoting a discussion of these issues at a level of seriousness that they really merit, given what’s at stake. And that’s a problem.

It’s not a problem, however, that has much to do with Juan Williams, though I suspect that one of the consequences of Williams’ axing is that it will be used by Islam-bashers to continue to deny that there is actually a double standard in regard to what is permissible to say about Islam and Muslims versus other faiths and groups, or that this somehow righted the imbalance. What Williams said was stupid and offensive, but I don’t think he should’ve been fired by NPR in the way that he was. He should’ve been fired long ago for not having offered a remotely interesting political insight in years. But then they’d have had to fire Cokie Roberts, too. (Which they should do!)

The fact is that if Williams were an effective advocate for progressivism/critic of conservatism he wouldn’t have had a job at Fox News in the first place, but I hope that his new status as the world’s best remunerated, least oppressed “dissident” won’t serve to further cheapen the important debate around how best to confront Islamic extremism.

Last night, Oregon’s U.S. Senate candidates Sen. Ron Wyden (D) and Republican Jim Huffman debated a variety of issues. Highlights from the debate include Huffman’s advocacy for extending all the Bush tax cuts and Wyden arguing in favor of ending tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas.

At one point during the debate, the moderators asked the nominees about their stance on funding the National Guard and other defense programs. Both agreed that giving adequate funding to the National Guard was important to the state of Oregon. Interestingly, Huffman criticized members of Congress for “constantly lobbying to keep bases open or military installations open or [military] funding in their states just because it’s funding in their state.” He added that he has “no doubt there’s a vast amount of money wasted in defense” and advocated for taking “a very sharp pencil to looking at the defense budget,” because he believes “Dwight Eisenhower was right when he said there was a military industrial complex, and this continues to be a problem we have to deal with”:

HUFFMAN: I, too would be a strong supporter of the National Guard, I think it’s a very critical part of the community and of the state. As for funding I think it has to be part of a larger examination of military funding in this country. I think it’s a mistake as we found way back we found before the base closure act to have members of Congress constantly lobbying to keep bases open or military installations open or funding in their states just because its funding in their state, it needs to be part of a comprehensive national review of how we spend money in defense. I have no doubt there’s a vast amount of money wasted in defense, but at the same time I think it’s the most important thing the federal government does, and it has to be something it does all over the country. So I would be a very strong supporter of the National Guard but I’d also take a very sharp pencil to looking at the defense budget, because I think Dwight Eisenhower was right when he said there was a military industrial complex, and this continues to be a problem we have to deal with.

Watch it:

Huffman’s statement makes him at least the fifth Republican running for Senate who has gone on the record as saying that defense cuts are necessary in order to deal with the budget deficit and tackle waste in government. Earlier this week, Pennsylvania candidate Pat Toomey criticized Congress for voting for “programs the Pentagon doesn’t even want.” Last week, Illinois candidate Mark Kirk said we need “across the board” reductions in defense spending. Earlier this month, Sen. Johnny Isakson (GA) told a local news station that reducing the deficit “begins with the Department of Defense.” A few days later, Kentucky candidate Rand Paul criticized Republicans for exempting the military from waste-trimming, telling PBS’s Gwen Ifill that cutting defense spending “has to be on the table.” All of these candidates are stating positions in direct opposition to the GOP’s much-touted “Pledge To America,” which explicitly exempts the Department of Defense from waste-cutting.

If these Republicans are really serious about reining in the defense budget, they can look to The Sustainable Defense Task (SDTF) report released earlier this year. The SDTF — which comprises Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and some of the nation’s leading defense and budget experts — identified nearly $1 trillion in waste that can be cut from the defense budget over the next ten years simply by eliminating outdated Cold War-era programs. They could also reference a recent report by CAP experts Lawrence Korb and Laura Conley that lays out $108 billion in defense cuts in the current 2015 budget forecast.

A couple weeks ago, I reported that the chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Hispanic Caucus and Sharron Angle (R-NV) spokesperson, Tibi Ellis, criticized her own candidate’s immigration ads on Spanish-language radio. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Ellis told 1060 AM Spanish radio host Edwin Saldarriaga “I condemned this type of propaganda, no matter who is running them, where they blame Mexicans as the only problem and where they attack them as the only source of illegal immigration.”

Yesterday, Ellis told progressive radio host Mario Solis Marich that the Las Vegas Sun misrepresented her remarks. In an attempt to set the record straight, Ellis began to tepidly back away from her criticisms of Angle’s ads and defend the conservative movement:

HOST: Are you okay with Sharron Angle’s ads that have been condemned nationwide as anti-immigrant?

ELLIS: I am okay with Sharron Angle’s ads that condemn anti-illegal immigration, yes.

HOST: So you’re okay with those ads?

ELLIS: No no no! Your question is about the anti-illegal immigration ads, yes, because I am an anti-illegal immigration policy person. I am not okay with having only the face of a Mexican immigrant as the representation of illegal immigration because illegal immigration has many colors. [...]

HOST: So you’re okay with Sharron Angle’s ads, we established that. Okay, so now we can move on. You’re set, okay? [Silence] [...] Does the anti-immigrant movement in this country — is it based within the conservative movement?

ELLIS: I disagree with that.

Listen:

Ellis may not be aware of the fact that Angle told a group of Latino students that they have been “misinterpreting” her commercials. “I’m not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial. What it is, is a fence and there are people coming across that fence. What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through,” she said.

Ellis also accused Angle’s opponent, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) of “scapegoating” Latinos by using an image of a Latina to represent the undocumented students that Reid is trying to help via his support of the DREAM Act. Solis Marich explained to Ellis that there’s a difference between pandering and scapegoating and that while Reid may be guilty of pandering to Latinos, he can’t be accused of scapegoating them. In fact, the two words are logical opposites in politics.

When asked about the controversial ads telling Latinos not to vote which almost aired in Nevada, Ellis denied they had any connection to the conservative movement. Instead, she tried to argue that they were funded by the Latino Coalition, which she described as a bi-partisan organization. However, the Latino Coalition explicitly condemned the ads.

Curiously, Solis Marich opened the segment explaining that Ellis had agreed to go on his show to talk about politics, but changed her mind at the last minute and would not be appearing. Apparently, Ellis was under the impression that his show was in Spanish and shortly after finding out it was actually in English, she sent Solis Marich’s producer an email saying that it was her birthday and she no longer wanted to participate. Apparently, she had a change of heart and ended up calling in anyway. You can listen to the full interview here.