New Vigilance Needed in Wake of Healthcare Vote
by David Silverberg
Monday, 22 March 2010
Violent domestic extremism poses a real threat.
In the wake of the divisive 219-212 House vote passing healthcare reform, authorities need to heighten vigilance against extremist violence against government facilities.
The year-long healthcare debate was emotional and divisive and while the vote may have resolved the issue legislatively the passions it aroused are unlikely to die down soon.
In such an atmosphere extremist violence is a real possibility, particularly directed against government installations or symbols of government authority. Coming on top of a census process that has also been infused with extremist charges, homeland security officials at all levels of government should be especially vigilant against potential attacks from domestic sources.
Domestic extremist terrorism has long been on the homeland security radar. In 2009 a report by the Office of Intelligence & Analysis in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), titled, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment noted that while there were no specific plots under way, "rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues." These included the election of the first African-American president and the economic downturn. It also reported that extremists were recruiting returning Iraqi war veterans. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano later disavowed the report as having been released prematurely without proper vetting.
More recently, on March 2 the Southern Poverty Law Center released its own report, Rage on the Right , reporting that "The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation." According to this report, 363 new "Patriot" groups formed in 2009, with 127 of them being militias and the formation of 136 new anti-immigrant groups.
As though to underscore the volatility of the current situation, yesterday, as the House of Representatives voted on healthcare reform legislation, tens of thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington to demand comprehensive immigration reform, an issue that may prove even more passionate and divisive than healthcare.
Read the rest here, at Homeland Security Today
Showing posts with label Terrorists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terrorists. Show all posts
Monday, March 22, 2010
Friday, September 11, 2009
The Requisite Post
September 11, 2001: I was in the hospital, having just had hip replacement surgery. I weasled my way into getting discharged, and went home via ambulance. Never will I forget the sky, the blue, blue sky (in the general area of Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in Tête de Hergé), that was perfectly framed by the back window of the ambulance. It took several minutes to realize what was so strange. Despite being within miles of one of the world's busiest airports, there was not a plane in the sky. No vapor trails. Nothing.
It seemed that even the birds had stopped flying.
I have the same feeling of emptiness today --
Along with a well-developed sense of anger and outrage (the two being significantly different), tempered by a life spent travelling the world, including the Islamic one, and participating in the belief that a liberal general education based on western ideologies was a superior education.
In other words, this day finds me feeling like a pressure cooker, and the repressed energy pounds inside my head, an inchoate staccato.
That is, I have a predictable headache.
I've read the 9/11 Commission's report, two biographies of Bin Laden, scads of thought-pieces and well-informed analysis. What still comes to me first, though, is a piece written by an old friend, which I am reposting below. Written as part of a campus dialogue following the attacks on September 11, 2001, and published as a conversation within the "Faculty Forum," its author is a stellar philosopher and even finer human being. Matthew was once a great friend; He probably still is -- he's steady that way -- but I don't circulate in that world any longer, and we don't get to Maine very often (where he currently edifies the yutes of America).
Marlinspike Hall can be quite insular, and La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore doesn't always travel well.
Anyway, I suspect that he is pretty busy with hearth and home, and probably is hanging out with some wild lefties -- like Margaret Schmechtman, of Margaret and Helen fame -- she lives up there, too -- fomenting dissent.
The Search for Just Arab Grievances Does Not Mean Moral Relativism
By Matthew Freytag - Mellon Lecturing Fellow
Five days after the crashes I found myself talking to 12 Quaker kids: solid citizens all, more hard-working, serious, and responsible than 13-to-16-year-olds ought to be. But pacifists, mostly, and to a person they were worried, even scared. Bush had not yet delivered his "either with us or against us" speech, I think, but the message was abroad: school friends and others had given the teens to understand pretty clearly that criticism of the U.S. amounted to support for the terrorists. To their credit, few of the teens actually had kept silent, but they were closer to being intimidated than I would have imagined this formidable group of kids could be. Having aligned themselves with evil in their school's eyes, they felt that they could not speak safely.
But something odd is going on when national political leaders and people on the street respond to the September 11 attacks by repeating "They're wrong and we're right," and "This is no time for moral relativism - they are evil and we represent good." Did FDR, for example, need to point out that in opposing the Pearl Harbor attack we were right? Did Lincoln need to spell out his opposition to moral relativism? If not why are Bush, Giuliani et al. making such points so determinedly now? Is some broad U.S. public constituency arguing that the terrorists were right, or morally good? I've kept my ears open, and I have not heard one participant in the U.S. debate make that claim - not one. So who are the we're-right-they're-wrong-ers talking to? Well, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that they're addressing folks who make the following sort of argument: "We have to ask why the terrorists did this. And when we ask that question we come up with a list of U.S. policies, from the deadly embargo on shipments to Iraq to our alliance with an Israeli state that has kept Palestinians homeless. Whatever response we make to the terrorist attacks should include a revision of those policies."
Why on earth does this look like the claim that the terrorists were right? Well, because it looks like the claim that we're wrong, about something. Apparently the inference is this: "If our policies were wrong, then the terrorists were right, and their acts were justified." Note the ironic convergence: none of the critics of U.S. policy make this inference, only (1) the new patriotic absolutists and (2) the terrorists themselves.
Why does the critic of U.S. policy look like a moral relativist? That's harder to explain, but I think the reasoning must be roughly this: "Some critics are trying to get us to understand the terrorists, to see things from their point of view. But to do this would be to acknowledge that they're right from their point of view, just as we are from ours." Note that this doesn't in fact amount to moral relativism: you can maintain that someone's right in their own eyes without granting that they actually are right about anything whatsoever - certainly without granting that they're right to crash airplanes full of helpless people into occupied buildings. But to acknowledge that the terrorists and their sympathizers were right from their own point of view might suggest that we should try to make sense of and imaginatively occupy it. And that would suggest in turn that we should forego the pleasure of crying "evil" and shooting, and instead persist in conversation - if not with al-Qaida, then with their broad base. We should listen and talk: find out their concerns, consider which seem reasonable, accommodate those, and with respect to the rest: persist in conversation, with those who will converse. Use force to protect ourselves, but never to avoid this sort of conversation - not with foreign critics and certainly not with domestic.
But I do want to close with my own attempt at flag- and fist-waving moral declamation, on a different issue. I am fed up with lamentations that the violence threatens America's spirit. The U.S. is a nation of risk-takers and free thinkers. The late sodden, burping suburban comfort never represented America, not the America I came to love as a patriotic elementary schooler. If the attacks reawaken us to the bracing fragility of our endeavors, they will have "awakened the spirit of America" in a way those recommending patriotic credit card spending do not imagine.
Matthew Freytag, Charter Member of The He's-A-Very-Good-Boy Club
It seemed that even the birds had stopped flying.
I have the same feeling of emptiness today --
Along with a well-developed sense of anger and outrage (the two being significantly different), tempered by a life spent travelling the world, including the Islamic one, and participating in the belief that a liberal general education based on western ideologies was a superior education.
In other words, this day finds me feeling like a pressure cooker, and the repressed energy pounds inside my head, an inchoate staccato.
That is, I have a predictable headache.
I've read the 9/11 Commission's report, two biographies of Bin Laden, scads of thought-pieces and well-informed analysis. What still comes to me first, though, is a piece written by an old friend, which I am reposting below. Written as part of a campus dialogue following the attacks on September 11, 2001, and published as a conversation within the "Faculty Forum," its author is a stellar philosopher and even finer human being. Matthew was once a great friend; He probably still is -- he's steady that way -- but I don't circulate in that world any longer, and we don't get to Maine very often (where he currently edifies the yutes of America).
Marlinspike Hall can be quite insular, and La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore doesn't always travel well.
Anyway, I suspect that he is pretty busy with hearth and home, and probably is hanging out with some wild lefties -- like Margaret Schmechtman, of Margaret and Helen fame -- she lives up there, too -- fomenting dissent.
The Search for Just Arab Grievances Does Not Mean Moral Relativism
By Matthew Freytag - Mellon Lecturing Fellow
Five days after the crashes I found myself talking to 12 Quaker kids: solid citizens all, more hard-working, serious, and responsible than 13-to-16-year-olds ought to be. But pacifists, mostly, and to a person they were worried, even scared. Bush had not yet delivered his "either with us or against us" speech, I think, but the message was abroad: school friends and others had given the teens to understand pretty clearly that criticism of the U.S. amounted to support for the terrorists. To their credit, few of the teens actually had kept silent, but they were closer to being intimidated than I would have imagined this formidable group of kids could be. Having aligned themselves with evil in their school's eyes, they felt that they could not speak safely.
But something odd is going on when national political leaders and people on the street respond to the September 11 attacks by repeating "They're wrong and we're right," and "This is no time for moral relativism - they are evil and we represent good." Did FDR, for example, need to point out that in opposing the Pearl Harbor attack we were right? Did Lincoln need to spell out his opposition to moral relativism? If not why are Bush, Giuliani et al. making such points so determinedly now? Is some broad U.S. public constituency arguing that the terrorists were right, or morally good? I've kept my ears open, and I have not heard one participant in the U.S. debate make that claim - not one. So who are the we're-right-they're-wrong-ers talking to? Well, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that they're addressing folks who make the following sort of argument: "We have to ask why the terrorists did this. And when we ask that question we come up with a list of U.S. policies, from the deadly embargo on shipments to Iraq to our alliance with an Israeli state that has kept Palestinians homeless. Whatever response we make to the terrorist attacks should include a revision of those policies."
Why on earth does this look like the claim that the terrorists were right? Well, because it looks like the claim that we're wrong, about something. Apparently the inference is this: "If our policies were wrong, then the terrorists were right, and their acts were justified." Note the ironic convergence: none of the critics of U.S. policy make this inference, only (1) the new patriotic absolutists and (2) the terrorists themselves.
Why does the critic of U.S. policy look like a moral relativist? That's harder to explain, but I think the reasoning must be roughly this: "Some critics are trying to get us to understand the terrorists, to see things from their point of view. But to do this would be to acknowledge that they're right from their point of view, just as we are from ours." Note that this doesn't in fact amount to moral relativism: you can maintain that someone's right in their own eyes without granting that they actually are right about anything whatsoever - certainly without granting that they're right to crash airplanes full of helpless people into occupied buildings. But to acknowledge that the terrorists and their sympathizers were right from their own point of view might suggest that we should try to make sense of and imaginatively occupy it. And that would suggest in turn that we should forego the pleasure of crying "evil" and shooting, and instead persist in conversation - if not with al-Qaida, then with their broad base. We should listen and talk: find out their concerns, consider which seem reasonable, accommodate those, and with respect to the rest: persist in conversation, with those who will converse. Use force to protect ourselves, but never to avoid this sort of conversation - not with foreign critics and certainly not with domestic.
But I do want to close with my own attempt at flag- and fist-waving moral declamation, on a different issue. I am fed up with lamentations that the violence threatens America's spirit. The U.S. is a nation of risk-takers and free thinkers. The late sodden, burping suburban comfort never represented America, not the America I came to love as a patriotic elementary schooler. If the attacks reawaken us to the bracing fragility of our endeavors, they will have "awakened the spirit of America" in a way those recommending patriotic credit card spending do not imagine.
Matthew Freytag, Charter Member of The He's-A-Very-Good-Boy Club
Monday, September 7, 2009
"What Torture Never Told Us"
By ALI H. SOUFAN
Published: September 5, 2009
PUBLIC bravado aside, the defenders of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are fast running out of classified documents to hide behind. The three that were released recently by the C.I.A. — the 2004 report by the inspector general and two memos from 2004 and 2005 on intelligence gained from detainees — fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism.
The inspector general’s report distinguishes between intelligence gained from regular interrogation and from the harsher methods, which culminate in waterboarding. While the former produces useful intelligence, according to the report, the latter “is a more subjective process and not without concern.” And the information in the two memos reinforces this differentiation.
They show that substantial intelligence was gained from pocket litter (materials found on detainees when they were captured), from playing detainees against one another and from detainees freely giving up information that they assumed their questioners already knew. A computer seized in March 2003 from a Qaeda operative for example, listed names of Qaeda members and money they were to receive.
Soon after Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in 2003, according to the 2005 memo, he “elaborated on his plan to crash commercial airlines into Heathrow Airport.” The memo speculates that he may have assumed that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a fellow member of Al Qaeda who had been captured in 2002, had already divulged the plan. The same motivation — the assumption that another detainee had already talked — is offered to explain why Mr. Mohammed provided details about the Hambali-Southeast Asia Qaeda network.
Mr. Mohammed must have likewise assumed that his interrogators already had the details about Al Qaeda’s organizational structure that he gave them. When I testified in the trial of Salim Hamdan, who had been Osama bin Laden’s personal driver, I provided many unclassified details about Al Qaeda’s structure and operations, none of which came from Mr. Mohammed.
Some of the information that is cited in the memos — the revelation that Mr. Mohammed had been the mastermind of 9/11, for example, and the uncovering of Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber — was gained from another terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, by “informed interrogation,” conducted by an F.B.I. colleague and me. The arrest of Walid bin Attash, one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted messengers, which was also cited in the 2005 C.I.A. memo, was thanks to a quick-witted foreign law enforcement officer, and had nothing to do with harsh interrogation of anyone. The examples go on and on. [....]
The author of this NYT op-ed piece served as an F.B.I. special agent from 1997 to 2005.
Published: September 5, 2009
PUBLIC bravado aside, the defenders of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are fast running out of classified documents to hide behind. The three that were released recently by the C.I.A. — the 2004 report by the inspector general and two memos from 2004 and 2005 on intelligence gained from detainees — fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism.
The inspector general’s report distinguishes between intelligence gained from regular interrogation and from the harsher methods, which culminate in waterboarding. While the former produces useful intelligence, according to the report, the latter “is a more subjective process and not without concern.” And the information in the two memos reinforces this differentiation.
They show that substantial intelligence was gained from pocket litter (materials found on detainees when they were captured), from playing detainees against one another and from detainees freely giving up information that they assumed their questioners already knew. A computer seized in March 2003 from a Qaeda operative for example, listed names of Qaeda members and money they were to receive.
Soon after Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in 2003, according to the 2005 memo, he “elaborated on his plan to crash commercial airlines into Heathrow Airport.” The memo speculates that he may have assumed that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a fellow member of Al Qaeda who had been captured in 2002, had already divulged the plan. The same motivation — the assumption that another detainee had already talked — is offered to explain why Mr. Mohammed provided details about the Hambali-Southeast Asia Qaeda network.
Mr. Mohammed must have likewise assumed that his interrogators already had the details about Al Qaeda’s organizational structure that he gave them. When I testified in the trial of Salim Hamdan, who had been Osama bin Laden’s personal driver, I provided many unclassified details about Al Qaeda’s structure and operations, none of which came from Mr. Mohammed.
Some of the information that is cited in the memos — the revelation that Mr. Mohammed had been the mastermind of 9/11, for example, and the uncovering of Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber — was gained from another terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, by “informed interrogation,” conducted by an F.B.I. colleague and me. The arrest of Walid bin Attash, one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted messengers, which was also cited in the 2005 C.I.A. memo, was thanks to a quick-witted foreign law enforcement officer, and had nothing to do with harsh interrogation of anyone. The examples go on and on. [....]
The author of this NYT op-ed piece served as an F.B.I. special agent from 1997 to 2005.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Rendition to Continue
This marks the first major disappointment I've experienced in President Obama's performance. The second major disappointment is in the works -- I expected something vastly different from him as part of the national conversation (or rabid ranting) on healthcare reform. (I expected him to carry out his mandate and not to pander to numbnut extremists.)
What has me upset? In short:
This is so far from acceptable that I'm almost speechless at the audacity. Almost.
The United States of America needs to be as transparent as possible in its treatment of *all* criminal suspects in order to reestablish some of the trust that the Bush administration allowed to erode so egregiously. There can be no more claims that the one hand knows not what the other has done.
I'm inflexible on this issue, having been a thoughtful adherent to the views of Amnesty International for several decades now. It's amazing how easy it is to distinguish between right and wrong when the "rules" of the game are straightforward and fixed. (That's not to say that policy review should not be a constant, ongoing endeavor. Scrutiny should be welcomed.)
I stand with AI in the belief -- in the knowledge -- that "torture and ill-treatment are wrong, always and everywhere..."; That only accountability for US counter-terrorism human rights violations will allow us to really counter terror with justice.
It was a "pushmi-pullyu" moment when I first saw this headline about the continuation of renditions, for it was published just below a related article: U.S. Shifts, Giving Detainee Names to the Red Cross.
I would like to be able to extend to the Obama administration a measure of my trust -- and say that opening this population to the scrutiny and protection of the Red Cross should bolster my faith that future renditions will, of course, be free from torture and ill-treatment.
Sadly, I cannot extend that trust.
On a lighter note, look at the consternation and then the relief on this child's face at the National Spelling Bee -- as he contemplates numbnut.
What has me upset? In short:
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but pledges to closely monitor their treatment to ensure that they are not tortured, administration officials said Monday.
Human rights advocates condemned the decision, saying that continuing the practice, known as rendition, would still allow the transfer of prisoners to countries with a history of torture. They said that promises from other countries of humane treatment, called “diplomatic assurances,” were no protection against abuse.
“It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture,” said Amrit Singh, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who tracked rendition cases under President George W. Bush.
Ms. Singh cited the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian sent in 2002 by the United States to Syria, where he was beaten with electrical cable despite assurances against torture.
This is so far from acceptable that I'm almost speechless at the audacity. Almost.
The United States of America needs to be as transparent as possible in its treatment of *all* criminal suspects in order to reestablish some of the trust that the Bush administration allowed to erode so egregiously. There can be no more claims that the one hand knows not what the other has done.
I'm inflexible on this issue, having been a thoughtful adherent to the views of Amnesty International for several decades now. It's amazing how easy it is to distinguish between right and wrong when the "rules" of the game are straightforward and fixed. (That's not to say that policy review should not be a constant, ongoing endeavor. Scrutiny should be welcomed.)
I stand with AI in the belief -- in the knowledge -- that "torture and ill-treatment are wrong, always and everywhere..."; That only accountability for US counter-terrorism human rights violations will allow us to really counter terror with justice.
It was a "pushmi-pullyu" moment when I first saw this headline about the continuation of renditions, for it was published just below a related article: U.S. Shifts, Giving Detainee Names to the Red Cross.
WASHINGTON — In a reversal of Pentagon policy, the military for the first time is notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross of the identities of militants who were being held in secret at a camp in Iraq and another in Afghanistan run by United States Special Operations forces, according to three military officials.Both sides of the mouth, speaking at once? The eternal one-step forward, one-step back, the illusion of progress?
The change begins to lift the veil from the American government’s most secretive remaining overseas prisons by allowing the Red Cross to track the custody of dozens of the most dangerous suspected terrorists and foreign fighters plucked off the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is a major advance for the organization in its long fight to gain more information about these detainees. The military had previously insisted that disclosing any details about detainees at the secretive camps could tip off other militants and jeopardize counterterrorism missions.
I would like to be able to extend to the Obama administration a measure of my trust -- and say that opening this population to the scrutiny and protection of the Red Cross should bolster my faith that future renditions will, of course, be free from torture and ill-treatment.
Sadly, I cannot extend that trust.
On a lighter note, look at the consternation and then the relief on this child's face at the National Spelling Bee -- as he contemplates numbnut.
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