Professional Soldiers ® - Obama’s War Over Terror

Professional Soldiers ® (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/index.php)

- Terrorism (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=42)

- - Obama’s War Over Terror (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27198)

Obama’s War Over Terror

An interesting background read on the evolution of our current national policy.

And so it goes...

Richard

Quote:

Obama’s War Over Terror
Peter Baker, NYT, 17 Jan 2010

<snip>

For all of the attention on the Nigerian underwear bomber, some experts say they believe the more insidious threat will be a new generation of homegrown extremists. In recent months, authorities have arrested a number of American citizens and legal residents, including Najibullah Zazi, an airport-shuttle driver who is suspected of plotting to attack New York after receiving training in Pakistan, and David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani-American accused of aiding terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Just a week ago, authorities arrested two associates of Zazi’s. And then there is the Fort Hood shooting rampage, as well as a group of Somali-Americans from Minnesota who reportedly wanted to fight in Somalia and five American Muslims from Virginia who traveled to Pakistan supposedly to join the jihad.

If they are the next wave, American extremists are going to be hard to track and stop. The Internet makes it possible for Al Qaeda and its allies to reach out from the dusty villages of Waziristan all the way to Illinois and Colorado. “Although no one wants to admit it, I think a watershed has been crossed in the terrorist threat in the United States,” Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University terrorism scholar, told me. “It’s way different than it was in the Bush years.”

The Obama administration has been trying to figure out how to counter it. In October, Obama secretly ordered a review of the ways different agencies track travels between the United States and places like Pakistan to look for holes to close. Napolitano told me: “We can’t operate in the paradigm that if they attack us, they would be coming from other countries into the United States. We have some that are homegrown. That is a change.”

After all the lawyerly focus on Guantánamo and the rules of war, the latest threats put more focus on Obama in the role of commander in chief. It did not go unnoticed that when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, he declared that “evil does exist in the world.” After the Christmas Day plot, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, consciously or not, used the term “war on terror.” The White House then dispatched Brennan for a blitz of four Sunday shows, the first such foray for the C.I.A. veteran.

Obama made almost as many statements about terrorism in the two weeks following Christmas as he did in the 11 months preceding it, not counting those focused on Afghanistan. “Our nation is at war,” Obama declared on Jan. 2. “We are at war,” he said five days later as he released reports on the Detroit plot.

The war goes on, abroad and at home.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/ma...gewanted=print

I wonder who they define as "American Extremists": Arab-Americans, Pakistani-Americans, Somali-Americans, etc or Republicans with military experience. Are you an extremist if you own several semi-automatic rifles? What is an extreme amount of stored center-fire ammo?

Quote:

“Although no one wants to admit it, I think a watershed has been crossed in the terrorist threat in the United States,” Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University terrorism scholar, told me. “It’s way different than it was in the Bush years.”

The Obama administration has been trying to figure out how to counter it. In October, Obama secretly ordered a review of the ways different agencies track travels between the United States and places like Pakistan to look for holes to close. Napolitano told me: “We can’t operate in the paradigm that if they attack us, they would be coming from other countries into the United States. We have some that are homegrown. That is a change.”

Mr. Hoffman acts as if readers of the New York Times do not also read Foreign Affairs. The May/June 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs featured Mr. Hoffman's blistering review of Marc Sageman's Leaderless Jihad. That review, available here, challenged Mr. Sageman's central premise that home grown terrorist networks pose the central threat to America in GWOT.

As the "Bush years" ended less than a year ago (unless one asks the incumbent administration's apologists about the current president's "inheritance"), one can only wonder if there has been a "watershed" event or if Mr. Hoffman is appropriating an argument he previously trashed in order to remain in the limelight.^

(And are homegrown terrorist networks really new to America? At times, it seems as if we Americans are allergic to own history.)

One last point. To put it bluntly, Secretary Napolitano's use of the word "paradigm" is another sad example of the proliferation of anti-intellectualism in contemporary American strategic culture. Words mean things.*

__________________________________________________ ___
^ Have you noticed how often of late words like "secret," "true," "myth," and "inside" are being used in the titles of books? Marketing decisions and rescue fantasies abound.
* Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (ISBN-13 9780226458083).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sigaba (Post 309141)

Words mean things.*

__________________________________________________ ___
^ Have you noticed how often of late words like "secret," "true," "myth," and "inside" are being used in the titles of books? Marketing decisions and rescue fantasies abound.
* Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (ISBN-13 9780226458083).

Yes, Yes ,Yes!!!