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 “America is less safe” rhetoric of the former Vice President Dick Cheney has finally found a receptive ear in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday that bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to the US could pose some risks even if they were kept in maximum-security prisons. According to Mueller, these risks consist of “the radicalization of others” and “potential individual attacks in the United States”.
I’m hoping it’s me, and I’m hoping there’s a super-duper prize (which doesn’t involve rendition, detention, and/or “enhanced interrogation”). From USA Today:
The government’s terrorist watch list has hit 1 million entries, up 32% since 2007.
Federal data show the rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations….
“We’re continually trying to improve the quality of the information,” says Timothy Edgar, a civil liberties officer at the intelligence director’s office. “It’s always going to be a work in progress.”
“The ‘Obama Doctrine’ looks something like this: the United States will continue to use its military power as its premier tool in international affairs and may even act preemptively. However, it will not do so on issues it deems outside of reasonable American national security concerns, and it will act only with support and cooperation from the international community. To put it frankly, this is something like a cross between ‘walk softly and carry a big stick’ and the Buddy System. While still violent, imperial, and aggressive, it is a marked departure from the so-called Bush Doctrine and even the Global War on Terror.”
Yesterday Scott Lucas, in “Mr. Obama’s War: The Fantasy of the Pakistan Sanctuaries”, analysed US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ appearance on Meet the Press, pointing out the cognitive dissonance in Gates’ assertion that the US understands safe havens in Pakistan because it has previously used those same Pakistani safe havens so effectively. Lucas also raises some very interesting questions, particularly over Gates’ apparent non-answer to the question of the consequences for Pakistan of the US campaign. This is my attempt to answer those questions, as well as a proposal to parse out a broader US “grand strategy” from Gates’ appearance. Read the rest of this entry »
A Muslim family removed from an airliner Thursday after passengers became concerned about their conversation say AirTran officials refused to rebook them, even after FBI investigators cleared them of wrongdoing.
Atif Irfan said federal authorities removed eight members of his extended family and a friend after passengers heard them discussing the safest place to sit and misconstrued the nature of the conversation.
Irfan, a U.S. citizen and tax attorney, said he was “impressed with the professionalism” of the FBI agents who questioned him, but said he felt mistreated when the airline refused to book the family for a later flight.
Last night, I was chatting with guests at the US Embassy about an intriguing spin-off drama from Barack Obama’s election: who would be appointed by the Illinois Governor to fill his Senate seat for the next two years?
Federal authorities arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich Tuesday on charges that he brazenly conspired to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder….
“I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain,” Blagojevich allegedly said later that day, according to the affidavit, which also quoted him as saying in a remark punctuated by profanity that the seat was “a valuable thing – you just don’t give it away for nothing.”
I don’t believe that the same group who attacked Mumbai is capable of attacking New York, but last night’s events were a reminder of just how effective asymmetric warfare can be.
The “America is less safe” rhetoric of the former Vice President Dick Cheney has finally found a receptive ear in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I’m hoping it’s me, and I’m hoping there’s a super-duper prize (which doesn’t involve rendition, detention, and/or “enhanced interrogation”). 
“The ‘Obama Doctrine’ looks something like this: the United States will continue to use its military power as its premier tool in international affairs and may even act preemptively. However, it will not do so on issues it deems outside of reasonable American national security concerns, and it will act only with support and cooperation from the international community. To put it frankly, this is something like a cross between ‘walk softly and carry a big stick’ and the Buddy System. While still violent, imperial, and aggressive, it is a marked departure from the so-called Bush Doctrine and even the Global War on Terror.”
Entries (RSS)