The global terrorist threat is diversifying. After embracing al Qaeda tactics and ideology, more local groups seek to emulate al Qaeda. Groups are planning domestic and international operations to cause mass casualties.
Boko Haram has morphed from a local radical Muslim group to one that is more broadly Nigeria-focused. Its goals cannot be reconciled with the existence of the secular Nigerian state.
Proof of concept programs are, by their very nature, cutting edge experiments funded to enhance the efficiency and morality of the warfare the U.S. Army is charged with conducting. It is unreasonable to assume that these programs will come out of the box perfect.
The 2011 Conference needs to make clear that the Afghan government and people, and their international partners, are united in their efforts to make tangible and sustainable progress towards a more stable Afghanistan in a more stable region.
Memogate reveals that Pakistan’s politics is as dysfunctional as ever. American policymakers and pundits have become so vehement about Pakistan’s failure to cooperate on counterterrorism that more pressing problems in the country have been overlooked.
The Arab Spring’s impact on the Global Jihad Movement is ironic. Al Qaeda, its associated groups and home-grown cells are no longer the agents of change. In the eyes of the people, this most powerful grouping of violent entities remains marginalized.
Throughout the last decade, news photography has re-presented the ‘war on terror’, in the form of military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, in ways consistent with military strategy. Much photojournalism exists within and reproduces an ‘eternal present’, obscuring the frames that narrow its perspective, rendering casualties and context as absent.
Hatred is a current ‘cool’ fad, but a terribly dangerous one. As with Holocaust deniers, evidence does not deter those Islamophobes who smear all Muslims. Since Muslims are roughly 1/5 of the world’s population, they would be wrecking massive worldwide havoc if their nefarious goal was domination and destruction of all non-Muslims. It clearly isn’t.
On both ‘sides’ of the war on terror, unrealistic assessments of the possible combined with controversially broad and value-laden conceptions of ‘self-defence’ look a lot like ideological warfare.
We are routinely presented with the image of an angry bearded man, possibly a clip from a video linked to Al-Qaeda, and then an unspecific warning of an imminent threat. We are asked to be concerned, but not allowed to be informed. The implicit equivalence of margin with radical and radical with violence makes for perpetual insecurity in modern societies.
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