"I'm struck by how Clinton went straight for the hawkish view of ISIS (they're just a bunch of nihilistic, backward people who crave power)..."

"...and passed up the opportunity to urge us to have a greater understanding of the "root causes" of terrorism," writes my son John, after last night's debate. Clinton was asked whether we need to "understand" ISIS:

This is a politically tricky question, but she gives a clever response: she first says it's "very difficult to put ourselves in their shoes," but then proceeds to do just that by describing ISIS's worldview as one of "nihilism," "a lust for power," and "rejection of modernity and human rights....

Clinton sounded much like the conservative Charles Krauthammer, writing in the month after the September 11 attacks:

It turns out that the enemy does have recognizable analogues in the Western experience. He is, as President Bush averred in his address to the nation, heir to the malignant ideologies of the 20th century. In its nihilism [the same word used by Clinton], its will to power [similar to the "lust for power" mentioned by Clinton], its celebration of blood and death, its craving for the cleansing purity that comes only from eradicating life and culture, radical Islam is heir, above all, to Nazism. The destruction of the World Trade Center was meant not only to wreak terror. Like the smashing of the Bamiyan Buddhas [in Afghanistan earlier in 2001], it was meant to obliterate greatness and beauty, elegance and grace. These artifacts represented civilization embodied in stone or steel. They had to be destroyed [that would be an example of the "rejection of modernity," as Clinton put it].

Why won't French President François Hollande have dinner with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Rouhani's trip to Europe.

Because Rouhani insists that no wine be served.

This has something to do with the French love of wine and something to do with a French "domestic culture war, with its right wing raising alarms over 'Islamification' that has spilled into its deep national relationship with food."

The federal government just stopped serving pig products in federal prison — no more pork, ham, or bacon for 206,000 inmates.

You might instinctively cry: Must all go without because some have a religious scruple against eating pork?!

But the government says it's because a survey shows the prisoners don't like pork.

“Why keep pushing food that people don’t want to eat?” asked Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the prison bureau. “Pork has been the lowest-rated food by inmates for several years"...

“I find it hard to believe that a survey would have found a majority of any population saying, ‘No thanks, I don’t want any bacon,'” said Dave Warner, a spokesman for the Washington-based trade association, which represents the nation’s hog farmers.... 

Warner said pork is healthy and economical.... "Not to throw beef under the bus, but we cost a lot less than beef.”

Why don't they just admit they're doing it to accommodate religion and it's easier to have one rule that works for everyone than to bother with the complexity of alternative meals for the minority who must avoid pig products?
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