This is an ICSR Insight written by Research Fellow, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens
On the ten year anniversary of 9/11 earlier this month ICSR published an authoritative report on Anwar al-Awlaki, As American as Apple Pie: How Anwar al-Awlaki became the Face of Western Jihad.
The demise of Anwar al-Awlaki, if reports of his death are accurate, represents a significant milestone in the fight against al-Qaeda. Despite his involvement with a number of both successful and abortive terrorist attacks against the West, it is Awlaki’s ability to project Salafi-jihadi ideology
. . . . . .
The story of Anwar al-Awlaki, and in particular his intellectual progression to jihad, reveals a unique
trajectory of jihadism in the West. This movement is not just confined to Muslim majority countries,
and through arguments he and others have provided, its message now resonates with a small section of
Western Muslims. The movement has achieved this level of resonance through a process which
includes the appropriation of contemporary Western political discourse about human rights, injustice
and foreign policy, interwoven with the history of Islam and the fostering a of global Islamic
consciousness which demands violent action in order to survive and expand.
As American as Apple Pie: How Anwar al-Awlaki Became the Face of Western Jihad PDF 96 Pages
The Obama administration has demonstrated once again, as it did in Libya and as it’s done in a variety of surveillance cases, that its view of executive power in the arena of national security is hardly any less expansive than Dick Cheney’s was. The fact that this was predictable makes it no less alarming.
U.S. President Barack Obama is piling up foreign policy disasters. In at least three areas, crucial for world peace and American interests — Arab-Israel, Afghanistan-Pakistan and Yemen-Somalia — he is pursuing a course which can only be described as foolhardy. The anger and hate towards the United States which he is generating could take a generation to dispel.
. . . . . . .
Is it not time to enquire whether U.S. policy has not created more terrorists than the CIA has managed to kill? Would it not be better if the United States were simply to declare victory in Afghanistan — and indeed in all the other places where its Special Forces operate — bring its troops home as soon as possible and turn its attention to tending the wounds in its own broken society?
Phi Beta Iota: The assumption that US foreign policy is somehow focused on peace or prosperity is evidently not correct. The people who make policy and give orders are not stupid–they are achieving the outcomes they desire. What is different is that a much greater percentage of the public than ever before can now use public intelligence to determine that these policies are not in the public interest, and therefore, are much more likely to be associated with treason–high crimes and misdemeanors that yield personal profit and public pain.
Phi Beta Iota: On the one hand, NYPD's capabilities are vastly exaggerated. They're still feeling their way, wasting enormous human and financial resources, “because they can.” On the other hand, NYPD's efforts are precisely where the rest of the world needs to go, where Stephen Cambone said we need to go, down to the neighborhood level of granularity. One thing NYPD has going for it is the wicked combination of officers fluent in over one hundred key languages, and not having to deal with the idiocy of the federal classification and security clearance systems. What they do not have going for them is a complete loss of perspective–this is a force that spends $75 million a year putting mostly black people in jail for possession of marijuana….NYC is the marijuana arrest capital of the planet.
President Obama's craven performance at the UN has both humiliated the United States and made a mockery of what little remains of America's pretensions to the principles of freedom, democracy, fair play, and simple human decency. Like Colin Powell, he made the wrong turn at the “to be” or “to do” fork in the road; he put career and short-term ambition ahead of common sense and personal honor; and ironically, he made the same faustian bargain publicly on the same world stage for all to see. For a men of such great promise to stumble so miserably is not only a personal tragedy of Shakespearian proportions: their pusillanimity under pressure opens the door to unpredictable grand strategic* ramifications that menace the wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people at home and abroad.
Below is one thoughtful observer's exploration of some of these ramifications; there will be other assessments … and very few of them will be pretty.
At least LBJ, who tried to do some things, recognized when his time was over, and left gracefully. But in the Hall of Mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac at the dawn of the 21st Century, that won't happen again, and Mr. Obama's ultimate disgrace will be to prove that the easy being was far more important than the hard doing when engineering the moral and material decline of a nation.
________
* The criteria underpinning a sensible grand strategy are explained here.
[CS Note: I reformatted this insightful essay to highlight important points, but did not change any text or the order of presentation]
BOSTON — It remains to be seen what actually changes on the ground in the months ahead following the Palestinian initiative to ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state in the 1967 Israeli-occupied territories as a UN member or observer state. The move could be a substantive gain for the Palestinian people, a symbolic victory only, or a measurable setback if the United States and Israel translate their vindictive rhetoric into hard policies. While we wait for the impact of the UN move to become clearer, we should acknowledge nevertheless that this has been a historic week in several ways.
I.The most important new development that future historians will record is that this last week in September represented the moment when the Arab-Israeli conflict structurally transformed into the Arab-Israeli/American conflict, because of the profound and explicit manner in which the U.S. government has come down on the side of Israel. The United States historically has tried, without much success but with visible endeavor nevertheless, to express its support for Israel’s survival and security while also trying to mediate a resolution of the conflict that sees the birth of a Palestinian state in much of the 1967 occupied lands. That balancing act, unconvincing as it was, is formally dead for now — repeatedly shot in the heart by a firing squad of American politicians who have unleashed volleys of shotguns at the weak and doomed phenomenon that was once called “American mediation”.
Elaborate, expensive sting operations by the FBI are based on the premise that true terrorists will take the bait. This is not the same thing as preventing an actual attack.
By Petra BartosiewiczLos Angeles Times, September 18, 2011
Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, FBI Director Robert Mueller issued a memo to his field offices detailing “one set of priorities” for the agency: Stop the next terrorist attack. This directive marked a new “preemptive” style of law enforcement that has since become the hallmark of our domestic front in the war against terrorism.
Under this system, catching an actual terrorist would constitute a failure because the perpetrators would have committed the act. Instead, we are in effect seeking “pre-terrorists” — individuals whose intentions, more than their actions, constitute the primary threat.
Taking stock of the major “terrorist” prosecutions that this approach has yielded, however, it's not at all clear we're safer from another attack.
After weeks of interrogation, Glenn Carle concluded that the man in front of him was not the al-Qaida terrorist the CIA accused him of being. In a candid new book, he asks what happens when a government allows it fears to compromise its values.
Phi Beta Iota: This is not about fears. No one in the US Government actually believes the greatest threat to America is terrorism (which is a traffic accident at best). This is about keeping the corruption going. It is about the complete loss of both intelligence and integrity across the entire US Government, but particularly the national security bureacracy, the Congressional boosters, the White House Goldman Sachs mafia, and the mindless media. All of this is a betrayal of the public trust richly deserving of public scorn and vengeance.
