Democracy and Society » terrorism

Friends

Barak — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 22:38:10 +0000

All else equal, it’s harder to win a fight when the guy who can help you the most appears to want the other side to win.

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I am not sure I agree with Caroline Glick

Barak — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 02:23:32 +0000

Caroline Glick, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, believes one problem with the war or terror is that the US has been insufficiently aggressive in fighting it. In particular, she would like the US to expand its efforts to countries such as Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. Although she doesn’t directly call for US-led regime change in these countries, it seems to me that at a minimum she would like the US to do something to make these countries more unstable than they already are. After carefully considering her point of view, I have come to the conclusion that she is totally nuts. Let’s leave the merits of the policy aside (of which I think there are few) and look at the US record on regime change in the broader Middle East over the past decade. We have tried it in two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the record is, to put it charitably, mixed at best.

Don’t get me wrong – I very pleased that Glick has such confidence in the US’s capacity to get other countries to govern as we wish they would through a policy of military aggression. The problem is that I find it really hard to believe that the world would be a safer place if the US provoked more instability in the Middle East. Perhaps in a future column Glick will outline why she thinks the US military would be more successful in Iran, Lebanon, and Syria than it has been in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Until that day comes, I hope that our joint chiefs of staff don’t read her work and think, “hmm…she’s got a point. Lemme run it by Obama.”

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Complicated Relationships in the War on Terror

Imara — Fri, 06 May 2011 03:30:23 +0000

To be blunt, the governments of the United States and Pakistan are far from kindred spirits. Our national relationship with Pakistan is largely strategic in nature and is at best a unity of mutual benefit. The Pakistani regime has been challenged throughout the war on terror by a need to balance its relationship with the United States with its own sovereignty and has suffered in the eyes of its people as a result. Thus it strikes as particularly amazing to see pundits who weeks ago bemoaned our government’s failure to support our authoritarian allies in the Middle East, now questioning Pakistan’s commitment to the war on terror in the wake of the death of Osama Bin Laden.

This strange policy of public antagonism seems illogical from just about any point of view- assuming we aren’t looking to broaden our current conflicts to include previous allies. The termination of the United States’ most wanted target is an achievement to be pleased with, and however crass some of the week’s celebrations may seem it’s hard to be too judgmental of a jubilant US populace. But parties at ground zero or outside the White House are much more understandable than “off the cuff” accusations of terrorist complicity from government officials.

It’s a relative rarity for me to agree with John Boehner on much of anything, but the current antagonism toward Pakistan’s government strikes me as genuinely mind-boggling. Of our varied allies in the war on terror, few have been as critical as Pakistan. In my ever increasing hopes that the recent death of a terrorist leader might lead to an eventual end to this costly pursuit the recent commentary of Leon Panetta certainly wasn’t reassuring.

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Terrorism and religious freedom in Egypt

Barak — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:36:29 +0000

MA in Democracy and Governance student Samuel Tadros argues that lack of religious freedom in Egypt lies at the heart of the New Year’s Eve terrorist attack on a Coptic Church that killed 23 Copts:

The current attack is attributed to Islamist anger over the alleged kidnapping by the Coptic Church of a Priest’s wife whom they claim converted to Islam. The general context is Islamist anger at what they perceive as the humiliation of Islam at the hands of Copts by asking to build churches…In all of this there is no alternative provided. There is no argument for the right of an individual to choose his religion, there is no defense of the right of people to build churches, and there is no public sphere opened to Christians.

This seems like a pretty solid argument to me. Placing the communal feelings of the followers of a state’s dominant religion above the ability of an individual to practice the religion of his or her choice is only a small step away from legitimizing oppression of those who don’t adhere to the dominant religion.

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Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide

Barak — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:18:38 +0000

Apropos of a recent post on nonsensical gibberish about terrorist threats US government travel warnings, Bill Easterly gets the award for Best Title:

Government warns against global travel and/or staying at home

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This is just ridiculous

Barak — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 22:08:41 +0000

Thanks mom Secretary Clinton, but I think I’ll take my chances and still travel to Europe. It’s hard to know how to respond to such nonsense. I appreciate that the government wants to warn us against the risks we encounter in a dangerous world, but how am I to react when the chance that I will die in a terrorist attack is far lower than the chance I will die by riding in a vehicle or being near a police officer? I guess the administration wants to cover itself in case an attack does happen. While there is nothing wrong with this per se, it clearly demonstrates that the politics of fear has made us a completely irrational polity.

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The Shadow War

Barak — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 21:41:49 +0000

The Obama administration apparently is conducting a covert war on al Qaeda:

In roughly a dozen countries – from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife – the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy [al Qaeda] using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.

Perhaps I’m jaded, but nothing in this article surprised me.

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Israeli leader endorses terrorism

Barak — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:54:52 +0000

Tzipi Livni, Head of the Opposition Kadima Party in Israel and former Foreign Minister:

Both of [my parents] were in the Irgun. They were freedom fighters…they robbed a train to get the money in order to buy weapons.

Perhaps I am reading this wrong, but it sure sounds like an endorsement of terrorism to me (even the Government of Israel said the Irgun was a terrorist organization – it did, you know, blow up stuff and kill people). Maybe her parents were the good kind of terrorist, while today we only have the bad type.

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New kids on the Kush

Barak — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:05:03 +0000

One problem with the war in Afghanistan is that its getting increasingly difficult to determine who is on what side.

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Sympathy for the decider

Barak — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:14:42 +0000

J. Scott Carpenter and Dina Guirguis take the Obama administration to task for not fulfilling most of the promises Obama made in his Cairo speech one year ago, specifically on democracy, economic development, women’s rights, religious freedom, and countering terrorism. While they are correct in the narrow sense that the administration has not made much progress on these issues, I think its perhaps an unfair criticism. The administration is dealing from a host of difficult problems, from Afghanistan to the economic crisis to the largest oil spill in the history of the US. The administration has largely been in reactive mode since it took office, not by choice, but because of a non-stop series of crises. The administration appears to have more fires than fire trucks. Its not as if Obama is sitting around the White House playing solitaire on his computer. I can understand why the administration has made little progress in advancing a lot of its goals and find it difficult to fault them in many of these areas.

Michael Allen at Democracy Digest is less sympathetic.

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