AUDIO: ‘Left, Right & Center’: On the Post-Paris Era

In this week’s “Left, Right & Center,” security expert Juliette Kayyem, National Review editor Rich Lowry and Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer give their take on the world after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, engaging in a spirited debate over the origins of Islamic State, what to do about the refugee crisis and how to tackle terrorism on a global scale.

Although the three contributors, along with moderator and New York Times correspondent Josh Barro, appear to agree about rejecting the extreme nationalistic attitudes displayed by far-right figures like Donald Trump regarding Syrian refugees in the wake of the Paris massacre, that’s where the similarities end.

For his part, Scheer takes issue with Lowry’s argument that the West’s response should involve less of what he has called “hashtag heroics” and more action — that is, military action. Here’s an excerpt from Scheer’s rebuttal during the show:

If you’re going to start killing, what about the leadership of Saudi Arabia? And Kuwait and other places that have financed the most extreme of Muslim movements? Where’s the money flow, you know, going back to the original 9/11 attack – 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, the leader of the whole thing came from Saudi Arabia. We can trace the whole money thing. So if Rich is right and you want to go just kill people, who you gonna kill?

There’s only 30,000 people, as I understand it, in ISIS. OK, do you really think that if you eliminate all 30,000 you’ve solved this problem?

And it seems to me … Bernie Sanders gave a great speech at Georgetown yesterday tracing our involvement in this region and in the world, and showing how a great deal of mayhem has come from it.

And it … only recently, let me conclude, on this show, you know, the big enemy [was] the Shiites of Iran. Now suddenly, oh, it’s the Sunnis backed by Saudi Arabia. Well, why is Saudi Arabia our biggest buddy? And so if you don’t get into the historical antecedents of this event and then try to talk about how you deal with them, you’re just doing feel-good politics — what you’re advocating is random murder.

Lowry argues that he isn’t promoting “random murder.” Meanwhile, Kayyem draws upon her experience in refugee circles to warn against taking the “outrageous” advice of those who’d channel Americans’ anxieties about terrorism into xenophobic policies toward refugees. “I have no doubt that we’ll look back on this moment and regret it,” she says.

Listen here.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson