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By Richard English
Nobody should doubt the importance of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Whether one thinks that al–Qaida had been destroyed as an organization and had become merely an inspirational brand, or holds the view that they had regrouped and still offered a coherent threat, bin Laden’s importance to the movement was centrally irreplaceable.
In this sense, the United States administration and military are right to be so jubilant. The fact that bin Laden had so long evaded the world’s remaining superpower had been a matter of gloating celebration for jihadists. So his brutal killing is as much a morale boost for the US and her counter-terrorist allies as it is a sharp blow to the confidence and morale of America’s terrorist enemies.
And the mode of operation involved is one duly celebrated too. Even those, like myself, who have argued repeatedly against an over-militarization of response to terrorism, have also stressed that military action – ‘kinetic’ methods – on occasion have their place. This killing was based on precise intelligence, it targeted an important foe and removed him from the war, it did so with striking efficiency, and it managed to avoid weighty and counter-productive collateral damage in the process.
Yet broader lessons also emerge, and celebration should not be the only reaction. First, the lethally effective use of such precisely targeted military means in May 2011 raises questions about the kind of militarized response which the US and her allies have deployed since the atrocity of 9/11. To kill Osama bin Laden so clinically can indeed be seen as an effective step forward in fighting terrorism. To invade Iraq in 2003 was not. Indeed, the deployment of supposedly counter-terrorist military might in the post-9/11 period has very often missed the mark. Had greater military force been directed at catching or killing bin Laden in late 2001 – when he was indeed nearly killed at Tora Bora – then he might very well not have survived so damagingly for ten subsequent years.
Again, had military attention not been devoted from 2003 onwards to Iraq – as noted, an adventure of limited value in the fight against terrorism – then the job in Afghanistan would have been easier to pursue efficiently and successfully, as many military voices have made clear.
And, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan were and are important in the fight against jihadist terrorism. This is another, less comfortable, lesson to emerge from the events of early May 2011. Whether the Pakistani authorities did not know that the world’s most famous villain was living near one of their major military bases, or did know but decided not to act decisively on it, the reality remains depressing. Understandably, there are those in Pakistan whose view of al – Qaida and of the priorities in international relations in the region differ starkly from those of Washington. But the janus-faced role of sections of the Pakistani establishment remains a crucial problem, and likely a lasting one. As many US soldiers on the Afghan – Pakistan border have themselves painfully noted, the US has been facing something like a war from Pakistan for some years, but has been unable or unwilling to do much about it. The deep problem of Pakistan, and of rival political forces and imperatives within it, is one of the reasons that we will have to learn to live with terrorism for some years to come.
But, thirdly, we need to keep that threat in perspective. There has been much talk of revenge attacks in the wake of bin Laden’s death, and doubtless there will be both the desire and the labelled actions to follow, on occasion. But the truth is that jihadi terrorists represent a largely limited threat to the west, in practice. They certainly show no signs of succeeding in their central war aims.
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By: Lauren,
on 3/2/2011
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Michael Scheuer was the chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999 and remained a counterterrorism analyst until 2004. He is the author of many books, including the bestselling Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terrorism. His latest book is the biography Osama bin Laden, a much-needed corrective, hard-headed, closely reasoned portrait that tracks the man’s evolution from peaceful Saudi dissident to America’s Most Wanted.
Among the extensive media attention both the book and Scheuer have received so far, he was interviewed on The Colbert Report just this week.
Interested in knowing more? See:
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By: Lauren,
on 9/9/2010
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By Sharon Zukin
Of all the mosques, in all the towns, in all the world, why did this mosque cause a furor in this town? I’m speaking about Park51, an Islamic “community center promoting tolerance and understanding,” as its website says, which is being planned to replace an old five-story building in Lower Manhattan that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory store with a modern, thirteen-story multi-service facility modeled on Jewish community centers and the YMCA. The burning issue of course is that this location is two blocks from the World Trade Center site where nearly 3,000 men and women died in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. A terrorist attack planned and carried out by…Muslims.
But this is New York, for goodness’ sake, which prides itself as – and is often excoriated for being – the most cosmopolitan city in the United States. And it’s not even a mosque, or not exclusively a mosque; it’s a cultural center mainly for Muslims but with an interfaith board of directors, outreach programs for members of the surrounding residential community and a small memorial to the victims of the World Trade Center attack, as well as space for prayer. Park51 is projected to be a place for learning, recreation, and, oh yes, preserving the religious identity of the one million Muslims who live in New York City and the many Muslims who work in Lower Manhattan, some of whose co-religionists—bond traders, street vendors, computer technicians, restaurant workers—were 9/11 victims too.
The plan for Park51, as yet undeveloped and with uncertain funding, won approval this summer from a series of public authorities who have jurisdiction on the matter. From the local community board, an advisory commission that must give its opinion on every change of land use in its district, to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Committee, the city council, and the mayor, every public official declared the project has a right to build in its chosen location. After the controversy broke and the Anti-Defamation League declared its opposition—but before the construction workers’ union said they would not work on the project and President Obama supported American Muslims’ right to worship where they choose (within unspecified political limits), the governor offered to mediate talks about choosing a different location. Apparently a new location might be less insulting to those who feel an Islamic center would defile the “sacred ground” where victims died.
Most New Yorkers would prefer to move Park51 farther from the WTC site but keep it in Lower Manhattan. But they also believe that Muslims have a right to build a mosque wherever they choose; they want Muslims to compromise, not yield their constitutional freedom to worship.
This ambivalence is not surprising. You would think a Muslim center that promotes tolerance would find a home in this most ethnic, most tolerant, most global of cities. But we know from all the controversies that have erupted around rebuilding the World Trade Center site that nothing about this location is either local or normal. Especially not a mosque and not when thousands of Americans are rallying against immigrants of all kinds and “Arabs,” whatever their religion or looks may be, are portrayed as terrorists in both popular films and high-class novels.
Just two weeks ago in midtown a Muslim taxi driver from Bangladesh was slashed by a passenger, an und
So a woman-hating, American terrorist has struck again. Murdering Dr. George Tiller, a healer, in his Wichita, Kansas, church. The alleged murderer, Scott Roeder, a so-called “pro-life” advocate, has taken a life. Some anti-choice spokespersons quickly rushed to condemn Dr. Tiller’s murder, express their “shock” and attempt to disassociate themselves from this heinous crime. But they drool hypocrisy. Over the years, the antiabortionists’ inflammatory rhetoric has incited the most extremist, perverse, and maniacal among them to break the law and commit crimes.
Linking abortion to murder, genocide, and the holocaust, the anti-choice movement has done more to incite domestic terrorism against women and the medical profession than any other home-grown group.
Yes, there are many well-meaning, nonviolent people who oppose abortion. Although I disagree with their position, they have a right to their opinion. But they do not have the right to impose their views on everybody else. They do not have the right to harass women seeking medical services. They do not have the right to bomb clinics and murder doctors. While calling for “peaceful protests,” many of the movement’s leaders speak with forked tongues. Even as Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry issued a statement of shock and grief, he implied that Dr. Tiller’s murder was justified. After all, Terry said, Tiller was a “mass murderer.” It was Operator Rescue that coined the term “Tiller the killer,” which was taken up like a mantra and endlessly repeated as “Tiller the baby killer” by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.
One group, calling themselves the Army of God, are celebrating Scott Roeder as an “American hero” on their toxic website. With a variety of Biblical quotations and a ribbon of animated “hell fire,” this website condones murder and has links to several articles, such as “Why Shoot an Abortionist,” by Paul Hill, who was executed September 3, 2003, for murdering Dr. David Gunn and his bodyguard outside a women’s clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Hill is also portrayed as a hero on the Army of God’s website.
But Dr. Tiller was no killer. For three decades, he was a compassionate physician, a practitioner of family medicine, a protector of women’s legal right to control their reproductive biology.
Terrorist attacks on women and their doctors have been waged for decades in the United States. According to the National Abortion Foundation, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, there have been 10 murders, including that of Dr. Tiller, 41 bombings, 173 arsons, 619 bomb threats, and 1264 incidents of vandalism. In addition, there have been 383 death threats and 655 bioterror threats. Dr. Tiller survived an assassination attempt in 1993 and his personal information, including his address and names of family members, was posted on antiabortion websites. Such invasion of privacy is a favorite tactic of the some antiabortion groups.
The terrorism must stop. Congress must take the antiabortion terrorists as seriously as it takes Al Queda for they are no less dangerous. Like other religious extremists, the antiabortion terrorists claim they are carrying out “God’s will,” that they are on “holy” missions. George W. Bush made the same claim in leading this nation into a disastrous and unnecessary war in Iraq. One should always be wary of any movement or politician that justifies violence as the will of any god. The founding fathers, fresh from the terrors of Europe’s theocracies, provided for the separation of church and state in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Of course, the ultimate goal of the anti-choice zealots is to take away a woman’s freedom and her right to control her own body. By murdering, intimidating, and assaulting doctors, these extremists aim to terrorize doctors into closing their clinics, making abortion inaccessible. These modern-day terrorists are in line with centuries-old male-dominated efforts to control women. Incredibly, some women also support these efforts that go against their best interests.
As I have written in the new update to my book, Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Their Mates, “Although we now live in the 21st century, superstitions, practices, and attitudes from a prescientific era are still with us. Even in technologically sophisticated countries like the United States, women’s reproductive autonomy is threatened by fanatical groups that would turn back the clock on contraception, ban abortion and, in effect, make women’s bodies property of the state. . . . In line with male subversion strategies in other species, the antiabortion movement is driven largely by fundamentalist religious groups led predominantly by men.”
Unfortunately the terror tactics are working. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, the number of abortion providers has declined almost 40 percent since the peak of 1982. Eighty-seven percent of U.S. counties have no abortion provider and some women are forced to travel long distances to obtain an abortion. Yet Americans support reproductive choice. A recent Gallup Poll showed that 76 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or certain circumstances.
Right now, we have a minority of hoodlums waging a terror campaign against a vital legal health service for women. It can be stopped if we the people bombard our members of Congress with calls to protect reproductive choice and treat domestic antiabortion terrorists with the same vigilance and vigor that our government exercises against foreign terrorists.
By: Rebecca,
on 6/17/2008
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James W. Jones is Professor of Religion and Adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology, at Rutgers University. His book, Blood That Cries Out From the Earth: The Psychology of Religious Terrorism, looks at what makes ordinary people evil. Jones argues that not every adherent of an authoritarian group will turn to violence, and he shows how theories of personality development can explain why certain individuals are easily recruited to perform terrorist acts. In the article below Jones argues that understanding people who turn towards terrorism is the first step to halting their violent acts. Check out Jones’s webpage here.
How much do we really know about terrorism? The short answer is “a lot” and “a very little.” “Terrorism” — as the cliché about one person’s terrorist being another’s freedom fighter suggests — is more often used as an epithet or a bit of propaganda than a category useful for understanding. There is general agreement that terrorism is not an end in itself or a motivation in itself (except perhaps for a few genuinely psychotic individual lone wolves). No movement is only a terrorist movement; its primary character is more likely political, economic, or religious. Terrorism is a tactic, not a basic type of group.
The first step in clarifying this topic of “understanding terrorism” is to become clear about the purpose of our attempts to understand terrorism. Part of the confusion over the understanding of terrorism results from the more basic confusion of not knowing what we want our explanations of terrorism to do for us. Before we undertake to “explain” terrorism, we should be clear as to what we want this “explanation” to accomplish? Many hope that understanding terrorism will help predict future terrorist actions. Others hope that it will help devise effective counter-terrorism strategies. Will a psychological, or political, or military, or religious understanding of religious terrorism aid in those goals?
I know from my work in forensic psychology that predicting violent behavior in any specific case is very, very complicated and very rarely successful. And dramatic acts of violence that change the course of history — the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand that lit the match on the conflagration of World War I, the taking hostage of the American embassy in the Iranian revolution, the 9/11 attack — are rarely predictable. We can list some of the characteristics of religious groups that turn to violence and terror. I have studied some of the themes common to Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist groups that have turned to terror. We can also outline the steps that individuals and groups often go through in becoming committed to violent actions. The NYPD has done exactly that in a recent study. But I remain skeptical that any model will enable us to predict with any certainty when specific individuals or groups may turn to terrorism. There are warning signs we should be aware of. But these are signs, not determinants or predictors.
As for counter-terrorism, it is an important strategic principal that one should know one’s enemy. We succeeded in containing the expansiveness of the former Soviet Union in part because we had a detailed and nuanced understanding of the Soviet system. Understanding some of what is at stake religiously and spiritually for religious groups that engage in terrorism can help devise ways of countering them. So a religious-psychological understanding of religious terrorists’ motivations can be an important part of the response to them.
In the months following 9/11 I often heard demagogues on the radio say that psychologists (like me) who seek to understand the psychology behind religiously motivated violence simply want to “offer the terrorists therapy.” The idea that one must choose either understanding or action — that one cannot do both — is an idea that itself borders on the pathological and represents the kind of dichotomizing that is itself a part of the terrorist mindset. Such dichotomized thinking, wherever it occurs, is a part of the problem and not part of the solution. I worked for two years in the psychology department at a hardcore, maximum security prison. But I never thought of that as a substitute for just and vigorous law enforcement. Understanding an action in no way means excusing it; explaining an action in no way means condoning it.
There is, however, a deeper issue here. Understanding others (even those who will your destruction) can make them more human. It can break down the demonization of the other that some politicians and policy makers feel is necessary in order to combat terrorists. The demonization of the other is a major weapon in the arsenal of the religiously motivated terrorist. Must we resort to the same tactic – which is so costly psychologically and spiritually – in order to oppose terrorism? Or can we counter religiously motivated terrorists without becoming like them?
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I'm excited to announce what will undoubtedly ring in a new era for Sugar Frosted Goodness.
The SFG Blank Book Project.
What is the Blank Book Project you may ask? It's an exciting new endeavor we're going to kick off on August 1st, 2007 involving 50 lucky SFG members from around the world. On that date a blank sketch book will be mailed out to the first participant who, after adding his or her mark to the book, will in turn forward it on to the next and so on. A traveling sketchbook if you will.
I've been so fortunate to have my good friend Steph Doyle helming this project. He's a talented designer and illustrator who has gone above and beyond the call of duty with all of the preparation needed to get this show rolling.
We've set up a blogsite where you can get additional information on the project and sign up. Sign up right away!
Hurry though, there are only 50 spots available, and unfortunately close to 250 SFG members currently. The good thing is this is the first of what we hope to become a series of Blank Book Projects! So if you don't get in this time, hopefully there will be many, many more opportunities in the future to take part.
Note: It is incredibly important that if you sign up, you are entirely committed and dedicated to keeping the process moving smoothly. Don't sign up if you aren't 100% sure you can participate and follow the directions as outlined on the website!
Looking forward to your participation, now go check it out!
Jeff