Last week the New York Timespublished an article detailing the Pentagon’s plan to shift focus away from international terrorism, known under the previous administration as the Global War on Terror, towards larger strategic threats to the United States such as destabilized governments and mass refugee crises provoked by climate change. Most in the defense establishment welcome this shift in strategy, but the threat from terrorism still remains.
This time, however, there is a difference. The terror threat comes largely not from foreign nationals but from Americans.
In 2009 almost 70 Americans, including police officers and medical personnel, have been killed by domestic terror attacks. This is a breathtakingly sharp rise from 2008, when only two people lost their lives, both of whom died at the hands of anti-Liberal terrorist Jim D. Adkisson in Tennessee. The first attack in 2009 was in Samson, Alabama, when Michael McLendon went on a cross-county shooting rampage that killed 11 people including himself. The most recent was on June 10, when James von Brunn opened fire inside the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, killing one guard and wounding several others.
While each of these attacks is unique, they can be roughly broken down into a handful of categories. In this piece, we will explore these terrorist archetypes, the ecosystem that produced them, as well as common tactics, both harmful and helpful, used to counter them. The intention is to provide students, analysts and researchers, with a sound and coherent image of the domestic terror threat facing the United States.
On Sunday President Obama delivered a speech notable for domestic politics rather than foreign policy. Notre Dame is the most famous Catholic university in the United States. In the run-up to the address, protestors and some in the media tried to label the President as an unacceptable speaker because of the abortion issue and, more broadly, the idea of “culture wars”.
Obama’s response drew from established sources, including his books, and the standard of an exceptional “America”. Still, as a statement of values — in the context of not only domestic issues but also his recent decisions on issue from war to torture — I found it well worth consideration.
OBAMA: Please, be seated. Before we begin tonight, I just want to provide everyone with a few brief updates on some of the challenges we’re dealing with right now.
First, we are continuing to closely monitor the emergency cases of the H1N1 flu virus throughout the United States. As I said this morning, this is obviously a very serious situation, and every American should know that their entire government is taking the utmost precautions and preparations. Read the rest of this entry »
I have avoided the political car crash of radio demagogue Rush Limbaugh (pictured) featuring himself as the standard-bearer of the post-Bush Republican Party, primarily because any comment just Feeds the Beast.
I was taken down memory lane, however, when Crooks and Liars brought back this Rush-ian success from 1990. It comes from his short-lived and ill-fated television show. Limbaugh’s formula of reducing a complex issue (abortion) to a simplistic bashing of an “enemy” group (the “FemiNazis” of the National Organization for Women) works well with his radio Dittoheads. However, here it goes badly awry with an audience ready to challenge him until we’re left with Rush’s ultimate solution: Clear the Audience.
This week President Obama exercised for the first time a policy decision that shares a trait held in common with Adolf Hitler….
President Obama is moving policy on public health into the direction of doctors being forced to act against their conscience….
President Obama wants them performing abortions, whether they believe it to be an immoral thing or not. And while the comparisons to Hitler are made either on eugenist or racist grounds–but you cannot escape the impact. Read the rest of this entry »
6:45 p.m. An intriguing development, but one which will need some detective work to assess its significance. President Obama “asked Saudi King Abdullah for support in halting weapons smuggling into Gaza and underscored the importance of U.S.-Saudi ties” in a Friday phone call.
The call takes on added significance because an influential member of the Saudi Royal Family, Prince Turki al-Feisal, launched an attack against the Bush Administration’s “poisonous legacy” in a newspaper article on Friday morning, warning, “If the U.S. wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact — especially its ’special relationship’ with Saudi Arabia — it will have to drastically revise its policies vis-a-vis Israel and Palestine.”
So the first message in Obama’s call was not to get active Saudi participation in the naval blockade of Gaza but assurances that Riyadh would not try to undermine it by moving cash and material to Palestinian groups in the area. The second message, however, is more important and hard to decipher:
Do those US-Saudi ties mean that Obama will accept Saudi ideas for Israel-Palestinian negotiations, for example, a revival of the 2002 Mecca proposals that the Bush Administration flagrantly rebuffed? Or is Washington expecting the Saudis to follow the lead of a yet-seen approach that will be unveiled in the visit of George Mitchell to the region? (cross-posted from Israel-Palestine-Gaza Updates)
I have avoided the political car crash of radio demagogue Rush Limbaugh (pictured) featuring himself as the standard-bearer of the post-Bush Republican Party, primarily because any comment just Feeds the Beast.
Less than 24 hours 
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