Edward Rhymes
The past few days we have heard a great deal about radical Islam and the supposed radicalizing of the Tsarnaev brothers. Much has been said, for example, about the influence of “radical Islam” in Chechnya in the evolution of these two young men from laid-back characters to alleged killers. There has even been speculation that this was part of a much broader plot.
The elements and motivations that may be involved in any crime or infraction of the law are vitally important. Nevertheless, when will we begin to call the actions of the State radical; when do we say that a government is radicalized?
By definition, a terrorist is, in part, defined as an enemy that attacks without regard to damage done to the civilian population in pursuit of a radical ideological or religious agenda. Couldn’t that, just as well, be applied to the State; to a government?
If the torture shoe fits…
The irony is not lost on this writer that the recent events in Massachusetts and this talk about radicalization comes on the heels of the recent findings regarding the American government and torture.
An independent panel of experts made up of retired generals, former leading politicians from both parties and ethics scholars concluded a two-year study stating:
“It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.”
The report also calls for the closing of Guantanamo Detention Facility by the end of 2014 calling the indefinite detention of prisoners there “abhorrent and intolerable.”
Several practices were identified as “torture,” including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and chaining prisoners in painful positions. The report also stated that the government “publicly acknowledging this grave error, however belatedly, may mitigate some of those consequences and help undo some of the damage to our reputation at home and abroad.”
Couldn’t one consider this radical behavior on the part of our government? And yet, where are the prosecutions? It has been stated many times over, including by this writer, that there will be no prosecutions of those who broke U.S. and international law when they tortured in the name of counterterrorism.
The radical lies and legacy of the Iraq War
When other nations indulge in the sort of activities that many independent, bi-partisan and non-partisan reports have found America guilty of, we call them war crimes and insist that the perpetrators be charged as war criminals.
So, the democratic platitudes that are espoused fade into the darkness of the duplicitous U.S. practices and policies.
Who calls a government radical when they lie and deceive a nation into war? It may be well-traveled territory, but in times like these when we are tempted either by pain, anger or fear to forget our recent history of creating havoc and destruction in other nations, it bears repeating.
Yes, it is worth recounting not only the falsehoods that had their genesis in Washington, D.C., but the aiding and abetting of the lies by other nations as well.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was “solidly” behind U.S. plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion’s legality and despite the absence of a second U.N. resolution, according to an account of the build-up to the war published in February 2006.
A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on Jan. 31, 2003 — nearly two months before the invasion — reveals that Mr. Bush made it clear the U.S. intended to invade whether or not there was a second U.N. resolution and even if U.N. inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons program.
Bush even thought of “flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colors” – a clear violation of international law by the way — to draw Saddam into a fight that would justify the invasion of Iraq.
Isn’t that, shall we say … radical? How many bullets were fired as result of the deceptions that led us into war? How many bombs dropped; how many missiles fired; how many bodies mangled and mutilated and how many lives lost and families torn apart beyond repair, because of the radicalization of an administration?
Drones not above being radical
Who deems the State radical when, without judicial review or the presentation of evidence, they, by drone, kill thousands of civilians? On Tuesday, the Senate held its first-ever public hearing on the U.S. secret drone program, 12 years after the United States launched its first deadly drone strike.
By some estimates, more than 4,000 people have been killed in drone strikes since then. The Obama administration refused to send anyone to testify at the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing, despite President Obama’s promise to be more forthcoming about the drone program.
The first reported targeted killing of a U.S. citizen in Yemen under Bush was in November 2002. In December 2009, President Obama authorized a series of missile strikes, not just drone strikes. The most deadly strike that we know about was on Dec. 17, 2009 — a cruise missile attack on the Yemeni village of al-Majalah, killing 46 people, three dozen of whom were women and children.
In the pursuit of one person that the administration said was an al-Qaeda operative, they, essentially, wiped out an entire Bedouin village. Adding insult to the devastation, the Yemeni government originally claimed responsibility for the strike and the Obama administration released a statement praising Yemen for the attack. The problem with that assertion is that Yemen doesn’t have cruise missiles; Yemen doesn’t have cluster bombs.
There are many examples of the human toll of this drone war; however, the most gripping (and well publicized) stories may be that of Anwar al-Awlaki and, his son, Abdulrahman Awlaki. The U.S.-born cleric died in a U.S. drone strike in September 2011, along with American citizen Samir Khan. Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was also killed in a separate drone strike just weeks later.
President Obama stated shortly after Anwar al-Awlaki’s assassination that “the death of Awlaki is a major blow to al-Qaeda’s most active operational affiliate. Awlaki was the leader of external operations for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In that role, he took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans. He directed the failed attempt to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day in 2009. He directed the failed attempt to blow up U.S. cargo planes in 2010. And he repeatedly called on individuals in the United States and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda.”
To be sure, al-Awlaki, after the invasion of Iraq, used a lot of inflammatory rhetoric in regard to the United States, even going as far as encouraging more U.S. Muslim soldiers to follow Hasan’s example of committing fratricide – that was committed at Fort Hood in November of 2009.
The al-Awlaki dilemma
Nevertheless, no evidence was ever presented that al-Awlaki played an operational role in any of these attacks. As a matter of fact, there are some things that make Obama’s assertions all the more specious.
After the 9/11 attacks, Awlaki was a leading Muslim voice, if not the leading voice, in the U.S. media in regard to understanding the experience of American Muslims in the aftermath of the attacks.
Anwar al-Awlaki passionately denounced the 9/11 attacks – al-Qaeda’s signature achievement – saying that the United States had a right to hunt down those responsible and bring them to justice.
Al-Awlaki’s transformation was accelerated after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and cemented after spending 18 months in a Yemeni prison, at the behest of the American government. An imprisonment, by the way, that the United Nations investigated and deemed as unlawful imprisonment.
Even in light of all of this, Anwar al-Awlaki, a man who wasn’t shy about stating where he stood, never claimed to be a member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
So, why would al-Qaeda, even if it had a change of heart, trust such a person with operational or tactical oversight of any organization? The Obama administration’s rationale for the killing of his 16-year-old son, American citizen Abdulrahman Awlaki is even less compelling. This was an American teenager born in Denver, Colo., in 1995, just hanging out with his cousin at an outdoor restaurant, assassinated by the CIA — by the U.S. government.
U.S. officials, originally, leaked stories to the press saying that he was 21 years old. Then, they said that he had been with Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So, then the prevailing story became the U.S. was trying to kill al-Banna and Abdulrahman Awlaki who just, coincidentally, happened to be next to him. What sinks this account is that the CIA claimed that al-Banna wasn’t on their kill list. To this day, they have failed to give a complete or coherent rendering of why Abdulrahman was killed.
Robert Gibbs, former White House press secretary and Obama surrogate, did, however, have this explanation to offer: “I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father. If they’re truly concerned about the well-being of their children, I don’t think becoming an al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.”
Now, how can that view be considered anything less than radical? Isn’t the rationale for this continuing and misguided “war on terror,” is that the terrorists have no regard for the lives of the innocent; that they indiscriminately and callously kill and their enemies deserve what they get? Gibbs’ statement is dangerously close to that perspective, some might say identical. When did he become … radicalized? Or, when was he called radical?
Conclusion
It is a near certainty that there will be those who will, in viewing this piece, say, in regard to counterterrorism, that those who cause death and destruction ought to be brought to justice.
Exactly. There will be some who will say that the suffering of those impacted by those with no consideration for life or the law must be stopped. Exactly. And yes, radicalization has to be challenged and there is no excuse for the violence visited upon innocent men, women and children.
Exactly, exactly, exactly. If it is wrong for al-Qaeda; the Tsarnaev brothers and others to engage in such acts, then it must be wrong for the CIA and the U.S. government as well.
I was a professor and administrator at the same university where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student. This writer has enough tears to go around; this heart can ache just as passionately for those in Yemen, Palestine, Iraq and Somalia, as it does for those in, the state that it called home for six years, Massachusetts.
The question still remains, however, who calls the State radical? When do we talk about the radicalization of a government?
Six days after the U.S. bombed his village, Yemeni activist Farea al-Muslimi testified on Capitol Hill about the U.S. drone wars:
“In the best, what Wessab’s villagers knew of the U.S. was based on my stories about my wonderful experiences here. The friendships and values I experienced and described to the villagers helped them understand the America that I know and that I love. Now, however, when they think of America, they think of the terror they feel from the drones that hover over their heads, ready to fire missiles at any time. What the violent militants had previously failed to achieve, one drone strike accomplished in an instant. There is now an intense anger against America in Wessab.”
Isn’t it time, when it comes to radicalization, for this nation to take a long look in the mirror?