As the House of Representatives prepares to embark on renewed efforts to repeal and replace outdated war authorizations, it will need to grapple with a fundamental question: who decides against whom the country goes to war. The Constitution’s Declare War Clause entrusts this power to the legislature, but for the two-decade long U.S. war on terror, that authority has been effectively delegated to the president through the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001 AUMF). Proponents for broad delegation of this war power to the executive branch might argue that the president needs flexible authority to respond to unpredictable and emergent terrorist threats.… Seguir leyendo »
On September 20, 2001, as rescue workers combed through the smoldering remains of the World Trade Center, U.S. President George W. Bush stood before a joint session of Congress and put the world on notice. “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make”, Bush declared. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”. Despite the Bush administration’s subsequent attempts to frame the “war on terror” as a battle for Muslim hearts and minds, the U.S. approach to counterterrorism would, over the ensuing 20 years, increasingly default to hard power. Today, force has become so ingrained as Washington’s reflexive response to twenty-first-century threats that soft-power tools have all but disappeared from discussions of how to head off possible catastrophe.… Seguir leyendo »
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Grassley and members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today about the United States’ use of force in countering terrorism and more broadly as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. It is a privilege to be speaking before this distinguished committee.
I am currently the Chief of Policy for the International Crisis Group, an international non- governmental organization dedicated to conflict prevention; we currently cover more than 50 conflict situations around the world. From 2002 until 2017, I worked for the U.S. government in a variety of roles including as the Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council, where I helped to develop U.S.… Seguir leyendo »
Injustice takes many forms. After 20 years in US custody, most of that time spent in Guantánamo, you could say I am an expert.
It may surprise you to know that I think America has a very good justice system. But it is only for Americans. In the cases of those like me, justice is not something that interests the US. I wish that people understood how Guantánamo is distinct.
In Guantánamo, the torture we are exposed to is not isolated to the interrogation rooms; it exists in our daily lives. This intentional psychological torture is what makes Guantánamo different. There is interference in every aspect of my existence – my sleep, my food, my walking.… Seguir leyendo »
Twenty years after the worst terrorist attack in history, there hasn’t been “another 9/11.” By one count, 107 people have been killed in jihadist attacks in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, and nearly half of those were in one attack — the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. Any deaths are tragic, but more Americans are dying of covid-19 every two hours than died of Islamist terrorism in the United States during the past 20 years.
You would think this counterterrorism success would be celebrated. Instead, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the “global war on terror” — as it was once called — is widely reviled.… Seguir leyendo »
Outside the headquarters of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum stands a monument to the unit, the one most frequently deployed in the years since the attacks of 9/11. Two wiry soldiers, frozen in bronze, help each other ascend a crag with the help of a rope. Etched around the monument is the unit’s motto: “Climb to Glory.”
I walked around the stone and bronze, in the frigid darkness of upstate New York, for a good 20 minutes last month, as my old friend Capt. Richard Murphy stood just out of earshot and spoke on his phone about his looming deployment to Afghanistan and about suicide.… Seguir leyendo »
What do we do with Westerners who fought on behalf of, or at least traveled to and joined, the Islamic State? Some like Hoda Muthana, who left college in Alabama to join the Islamic State in Syria, have expressed the desire to return to their native country.
As the Islamic State loses its last safe havens in eastern Syria and policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic confront the question of what to do with the Western “foreign fighters,” I thought I could add my voice and unique experiences to the discussion.
I was the first American foreign fighter for Al Qaeda after Sept.… Seguir leyendo »
President Trump may be a controversial and disruptive president. But in regard to Afghanistan, his frustration with the 17-year war differs little from the sentiments of President Barack Obama or most of the rest of us. Reportedly, he has asked for a precipitous cut of up to half the 14,000 American troops serving there, early this year.
That would be a mistake. There is still a strong case to sustain America’s longest war — especially if we redefine it, away from nation-building and toward something more like an enduring partnership with the Afghan people against regional and global extremism. Indeed, Washington should stop looking for an exit strategy and view Afghanistan as one pillar in a broader regional web of capabilities against Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and related movements that show few signs of dissipating.… Seguir leyendo »
The United States is at risk of another “Mission Accomplished” moment. On Wednesday, President Trump declared by tweet, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency”. President Trump is right that the United States has made tremendous progress against the Islamic State, and we’ve been honored to support that mission from the White House across two administrations as senior counterterrorism officials. But the Islamic State has not been “defeated” — and our mission in Syria has not been fully accomplished.
The recent Christmas market terrorist attack in Strasbourg that left five dead and at least a dozen injured serves as an all-too-vivid reminder that the threat posed by the Islamic State persists.… Seguir leyendo »
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump made a pledge to fill the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay with “bad dudes.” He brought up Guantánamo again on Nov. 1, a day after the Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov was arrested on a charge of killing eight people in a terror attack in New York. Mr. Trump said that authorities should send the suspect to the prison because the American justice system is a “laughingstock.”
But the next day Mr. Trump apparently changed his mind, indicating a preference for trying Mr. Saipov in New York. He said in a tweet that he’d “love” to send him to Guantánamo but “that process takes much longer than going through the federal system.”… Seguir leyendo »
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks — 16 years ago on Monday — President George W. Bush declared a war on terrorism that he pledged would not end until every terrorist group of global reach was defeated. Bush drew a line in the sand, telling every nation, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists”. The Bush administration was more flexible than this rhetoric suggested, but it still evinced a strong willingness to act unilaterally.
President Barack Obama sought to make U.S. counterterrorism efforts more sustainable, and thereby enable the United States to focus more on other challenges.… Seguir leyendo »
Europe is waking up to the need for change. We've been fighting the war on terror for a very long time, but we've recently seen an escalation. Tuesday, in France -- which is still in a state of emergency since the 2015 Paris attacks -- a man attacked police officers with a hammer, and officials have opened an anti-terror probe into the incident.
Britain, my country, has suffered three attacks in three months; in the last, at London Bridge, seven people lost their lives to terrorists. As we mourn these dead, the very last thing we expect or need is a US president to insult the mayor of London.… Seguir leyendo »
The leaking of sensitive information about the investigation into Monday’s terrorist attack on the Manchester Arena, including forensic images of bomb apparatus, to United States media caused dismay and anger among British officials. The prime minister, Theresa May, went so far as to raise the issue directly with President Trump when they met at Thursday’s NATO conference in Brussels.
To modify George Bernard Shaw’s maxim, Britain and America appear to be two countries divided less by a common language than by common secrets. While British investigators jealously guard detailed information about their operations, seeking to run their leads to ground before they are exposed to view, their American counterparts seem more willing to put what they know directly into the public domain.… Seguir leyendo »
The Trump administration has made it clear that the United States will take a more aggressive approach to battling al-Shabaab extremists in Somalia.
In March, President Trump granted the military expanded authorities to operate in Somalia, paving the way for an accelerated military campaign.
By declaring parts of Somalia an “area of active hostilities,” Mr. Trump gave the Department of Defense authority to approve strikes without going through an Obama-era vetting process, which potentially lowers the bar for tolerance of civilian casualties. And the head of American forces in Africa, who advocated the change, said this would “allow us to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion.”… Seguir leyendo »
With its 9 May announcement that it has decided to directly arm the Kurdish-dominated People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria, Washington has inserted itself even further into one of the region’s oldest and bloodiest conflicts: the 33-year-long fight between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is the mother organisation of the YPG and a group deemed a terrorist group by not only Turkey but by the US itself.
In fighting the Islamic State (IS), Washington has been supporting the YPG indirectly for several years and meeting with its commanders. But the decision to provide arms directly further elevates the PKK’s Syrian branch’s status.… Seguir leyendo »
For the last month, American and Afghan forces have been engaged in a new offensive against an Islamic State offshoot based in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. The Trump administration dropped what it boasted was the biggest non-nuclear bomb on the group’s hide-outs on April 13; a militant leader and two American soldiers have been killed in the operations. An American military spokesman claimed there was a “very good chance” that the group would be eradicated in Afghanistan in 2017.
But the United States obsession with the Islamic State in Khorasan — a minor group in Afghanistan — distracts attention from a more urgent task: negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban, which controls close to half of Afghanistan.… Seguir leyendo »
Since assuming office President Donald Trump has barely mentioned Afghanistan, a country where US forces have been engaged in the longest war in American history. Perhaps this is because, after more than fifteen years and $700 billion, the US has little to show for it other than an incredibly weak and corrupt civilian government in Kabul and a never-ending Taliban insurgency. Now Afghanistan faces a new horror—as a testing ground for what can only be called a US weapon of mass destruction.
Trump’s silence on Afghanistan was finally broken on the evening of April 13—not with the announcement of a new political strategy but with the dropping of a monster bomb, the GBU-43, nicknamed the “Mother of All Bombs,” on an ISIS base in a rural area of the country near the Pakistan border.… Seguir leyendo »
In the opening months of the Donald Trump administration, there has been little sign of a coherent foreign policy taking shape. What is happening, however, is a dramatic militarization of US policy in the Middle East—one that is occurring largely without the consultation of American allies, and with hardly any public scrutiny. In the case of the war in Yemen and the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, these developments could have extraordinary consequences for US security and even the stability of the Middle East itself.
The disastrous January raid on an al-Qaeda target in central Yemen, just days after Trump took office, resulting in the death of a Navy SEAL and two dozen civilians, has been widely discussed.… Seguir leyendo »
This week, we have seen reports that a former British inmate of Guantanamo Bay, Jamal Udeen al-Harith, carried out an ISIS suicide attack in Iraq.
Some will undoubtedly use this news to make the argument that Guantanamo Bay should remain open, that it should be increasingly used to house the current crop of jihadist terrorists and that no further inmates should be released.
Indeed, President Donald Trump has made some of these arguments, and Republicans have put pressure on him to expand the prison in Cuba.
No one is more outraged than me, a counter-extremism specialist, by the reports that a former Guantanamo prisoner joined ISIS and carried out this attack.… Seguir leyendo »
A finales de mayo de 2016 me invitaron a una tertulia en una residencia privada de Nueva York. La anfitriona, como tantos otros, estaba preocupada por la influencia creciente del islam en Europa y quería conocerme porque, en 2005 y 2006, yo había estado en el centro de la polémica de las caricaturas en Dinamarca, uno de los numerosos enfrentamientos entre el islam y los valores laicos de la libertad de expresión y el derecho a criticar y ridiculizar la religión.
De pronto entró un hombre desconocido que se sentó al otro lado de la mesa. Tenía más o menos mi edad, quizá un poco más, era corpulento, pero no obeso, y ligeramente rubicundo.… Seguir leyendo »
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