The theological justification for al Qaeda’s wholesale slaughter of civilians was provided by Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl, one of the founding fathers of al Qaeda. Because the murder of innocents is forbidden in Islam and the murder of Muslims in particular, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden required some sort of theological framework for justifying terrorism. This was provided by al-Sharif, who essentially argued in his book, “The Compendium of the Pursuit of Divine Knowledge,” that apostates could be murdered, and that approach, takfir (which has come to be known as takfirism) allowed al Qaeda to, for all intents and purposes, kill anyone they wanted without violating the laws of Islam by declaring them to be apostates. In other words, Dr. Fadl helped provided a theological justification for something that everyone involved knew was wrong.
The legal memos justifying torture aren’t very different in terms of reasoning–it’s clear that John Yoo and his cohorts in the Office of Legal Counsel saw their job not as binding the president to the rule of law, but to declare legal any tactic that the executive branch believed necessary to fight terrorism. They worked backwards from this conclusion, and ethics officials at the Department of Justice, we now know, decided that they they had violated professional standards in doing so. Whereas al-Zawahiri and bin Laden turned to al-Sharif for a method to circumvent the plain language of the Koran, Bush and Cheney went to Yoo and Jay Bybee to circumvent the plain language of the law. Most Islamic scholars, just like most legal experts, reject their respective reasoning as unsound.
This interview is not as useful as that on ABC News, which we posted and analysed earlier. There’s very little beyond the Administration spin. (The duo were also interviewed on CBS News, but frankly I can’t be bothered to post the same rhetoric thrice over.)
It’s what is missing that is most interesting. How many words in this transcript concern non-military measures?
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.
The centrepiece of the Obama Administration’s Afghanistan-Pakistan sales pitch this weekend is not one but two appearances by General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, who showed up on “Fox News Sunday” before moving to CNN for “State of the Union”.
CHRIS WALLACE: Joining us from U.S. Central Command in Florida is General David Petraeus, who oversees American military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia.
And, General, welcome back to “FOX News Sunday.”
PETRAEUS: Good to be with you, Chris. Thanks.
WALLACE: General, let’s start with Pakistan. The military there has launched a new offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley. Is there any sign that this is different from earlier Pakistani military campaigns, which have not been effective?
8 p.m. Red Alert of the Day. Isaac Ben Israel, a Member of the Knesset, has declared that Israel has a year in which to attack Iran before Tehran has a nuclear bomb: Ben Israel, a former general and senior defence official, said, “Last resort means when you reach the stage when everything else failed. When is this? Maybe a year, give or take.”
Meanwhile, Prime Ministerial candidate Benjamin Netanyahu told a conference that Iran poses “the gravest challenge Israel has faced since the War of Independence in 1948. We will work on all levels to neutralise this danger.” (cross-posted from Israel-Gaza-Palestine thread)
3:25 p.m. We’ve posted a separate entry on the reports of an Obama proposal to reduce US and Russian warheads by 80 percent.
2:50 p.m. Carrots and Sticks. Only a day after Moscow’s provision of incentives helped persuade Kyrgyzstan to end the lease on the US airbase in that country, the Russian Foreign Ministry has stated:
We positively reacted to the request of the United States for the transit through Russia of goods and materials to Afghanistan. We will be flexible in many other ways which will support our joint success in Afghanistan — that would be the basic school of thinking from which we will proceed.
Our demands are clear and they are that house searches of Afghans, arrests of Afghans and civilian casualties must cease. And they (U.S. and NATO countries) are naturally putting on pressure to make us silent and retract from this claim. This is not possible.
Karzai’s comments follow a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who expressed his concern at the civilian death toll. The UN said on Tuesday that 2100 civilians had been killed in 2008, a 40 percent rise from the previous case, and added that 700 had died at the hands of Afghan and foreign forces. Last week NATO claimed only 90 civilians had been killed by Afghan/foreign military action.
12:45 p.m. Relatively quiet on both military and diplomatic fronts — not expecting much out of any United Nations discussions — so we’re off for some downtime.
Tomorrow should offer some clues on the political direction of the conflict. With Hamas as well as the Palestinian Authority and Israel going to Cairo for negotiations, there may be some indication as to whether Tel Aviv and Washington will accept a settlement that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza or whether they try to isolate the organisation.
Meanwhile, on the military front, we may get some indication — given the reports of Israeli moblisation around Rafah and warnings to residents — of whether Tel Aviv is going to take the ground offensive into the cities.
11:30 p.m. Gazan medical sources say 700 Gazans killed in conflict, 219 are children and 89 are women. More than 3000 wounded: 46 percent are women and children.
11:25 p.m. Jabaliya Doubled: The Daily Telegraph of London is reporting the discovery in Zeitoun by a paramedic of between 60 and 70 bodies of the al Samouni clan (initial reports had put the death toll at 13), killed by Israeli shelling.
In today’s Washington Post, Richard Clarke, formerly Counter-terrorism Coordinator under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, takes on the War on Terror in a different way: instead of considering the present, he projects the future.
Clarke, who left the Bush Administration in 2002, later said — in publication and before the 9-11 Commission — that Bush and advisors paid little attention to the terrorist threat before September 2001 because they were focused on a showdown with Iraq. After 11 September, they got that showdown in part by creating a fantasy alliance between Iraq and Al-Qa’eda.
So it is hyper-ironic that Clarke, to advise the US where to strike next, creates a fantasy alliance between Al-Qa’eda, the Taliban, other Pakistani insurgent groups, and elements of the Pakistani Government:
Adam Serwer writes in The Atlantic:
The legal memos justifying torture aren’t very different in terms of reasoning–it’s clear that John Yoo and his cohorts in the Office of Legal Counsel saw their job not as binding the president to the rule of law, but to declare legal any tactic that the executive branch believed necessary to fight terrorism. They worked backwards from this conclusion, and ethics officials at the Department of Justice, we now know, decided that they they had violated professional standards in doing so. Whereas al-Zawahiri and bin Laden turned to al-Sharif for a method to circumvent the plain language of the Koran, Bush and Cheney went to Yoo and Jay Bybee to circumvent the plain language of the law. Most Islamic scholars, just like most legal experts, reject their respective reasoning as unsound.
The centrepiece of the Obama Administration’s Afghanistan-Pakistan sales pitch this weekend is not one but two appearances by General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, who showed up on “Fox News Sunday” before moving to CNN for “State of the Union”.
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