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Category: Terrorism
Terrorism
Iran Threat Reduction Act Actually Enhances Threat of War
Huffington Post & Commondreams.org, November 14, 2011 Congress is taking up dangerous legislation which appears to be designed to pave the way for war by taking the unprecedented step of effectively preventing any kind of U.S. diplomatic contact with Iran.
The Legacy of 9/11 and the War on Intellectuals
Truthout & Huffington Post Sept. 10-11, 2011: Ten years after 9/11, for the first time, a plurality of Americans recognizes that US policy in the Middle East played a major role in the attacks. As a Middle East specialist, I engaged in scores of interviews and wrote a number of widely circulated articles in the days, weeks and months following the terrorist strikes arguing this very point…
Netanyahu’s Speech and Congressional Democrats’ Embrace of Extremism
Truthout June 3, 2011:
As Israeli opposition parties, peace and human rights activists, and editorialists denounced their prime minister’s intransigence in the face of President Barack Obama’s peace initiative, Congressional Democrats here in the United States have instead joined their Republican counterparts in lining up to support the right-wing Israeli leader’s defiance…
The Killing of Bin Laden and the Threat of Al Qaeda
Huffington Post May 5, 2011
The killing of Al-Qaeda founder and leader Osama bin Laden is not likely to have a profound impact… the organization has decentralized in the ten years since the U.S. and allied forces drove them from their sanctuaries in Afghanistan and terrorist cells operate independently… [source].
60 Second Expert: The U.S. in Yemen
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies,
January 15, 2018 by Stephen Zunes and Gabriela Campos.
Much attention has recently been focused on the poverty-stricken country of Yemen. The planning of the Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight by al-Qaeda members in Yemen and other incidents have revealed that al-Qaeda cells in Yemen represents a genuine threat. However, if the U.S. yet seeks a military solution to a complex political, social and economic situation, however, it could prove disastrous to both Yemen and U.S. security interests.
Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world. Forty percent of Yemenis are unemployed and live on a per capita income of $600 per year. As a result, though there is much need for sustainable economic development in the country, most U.S. aid has been military particularly since the growing prominence of al-Qaeda in the country.
As Washington contemplates whether to increase its military role in Yemen, it must keep in mind that Yemen is one of the most complex societies in the world with considerable tribal divisions and political rivalries, including two other major insurgencies unrelated to al-Qaeda. Thus, sending U.S. forces or increasing the number of U.S. drone strikes carries serious risks. Such actions could result in the expansion of armed resistance, and the strengthening of Islamist militants and anti-American sentiment.
Any military action against al-Qaeda and Islamists should be Yemeni-led. Washington should also press Yemen’s increasingly autocratic government to become more democratic and less corrupt. There should also be a significant increase in development aid for the poorest rural communities that have essentially served as havens for radical Islamists and the growth of al -Qaeda’s presence in Yemen.
Read Zunes’s full article.
Yemen: The Latest U.S. Battleground
Huffington Post, January 8, 2010
The United States may be on the verge of involvement in yet another counterinsurgency war which, as is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, may make a bad situation even worse. The attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight by a Nigerian man was apparently planned in Yemen. There were alleged ties between the perpetrator of the Ft. Hood massacre and a radical Yemeni cleric, and an ongoing U.S.-backed Yemeni military offensive against al-Qaeda have all focused U.S. attention on that country. [source]
Interview: The Afghanistan Mess (audio)
CourageToResist.org May 10, 2009: “Middle East scholar Dr. Stephen Zunes talks about how U.S. imperial hubris helped create, and continues to deepen and intensify the deadly chaos in Afghanistan. “The war not only was raised some moral and legal questions, but it has not resolved the situation, it has made matters worse. The problem is that there has been a gross oversight on the military side of the equation. The really important issues have been overlooked…”
The U.S. and Afghan Tragedy
Foreign Policy In Focus, February 18, 2009 [source]
By Khushal Arsala, Emily Schwartz Greco, Stephen Zunes
One of the first difficult foreign policy decisions of the Obama administration will be what the United States should do about Afghanistan. Escalating the war, as National Security Advisor Jim Jones has been encouraging, will likely make matters worse. At the same time, simply abandoning the country — as the United States did after the overthrow of Afghanistan’s Communist government soon after the Soviet withdrawal 20 years ago — would lead to another set of serious problems…
Operation Enduring Freedom: A Retrospective
Foreign Policy In Focus, By John Feffer, Stephen Zunes | October 17, 2006
It has become a given, even among many progressive critics of Bush administration policy, that while the U.S. war on Iraq was illegal, immoral, unnecessary, poorly executed, and contrary to America’s national security interests, the war on Afghanistan–which was launched five years ago last week–was a legal, moral, and a necessary response to protect American national security in the aftermath of 9/11…
Afghanistan: Five Years Later
Foreign Policy In Focus, October 13, 2006
By John Feffer, Stephen Zunes
On the fifth anniversary of the launch of the U.S.-led war against Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the offensive, much of the countryside is in the hands of warlords and opium magnates, U.S. casualties are mounting, and many, if not most, Afghans are actually worse off now than they were before the U.S. invasion…
The Taliban is Back
Foreign Policy In Focus, October 13, 2006
by John Feffer, Stephen Zunes [source]
On the fifth anniversary of the launch of the U.S.-led war against Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the offensive, much of the countryside is in the hands of warlords and opium magnates, U.S. casualties are mounting, and many, if not most, Afghans are actually worse off now than they were before the U.S. invasion.
An Open Letter to my Danish Friends
Dear Friends,
Foreign Policy In Focus, February 20, 2006
By John Gershman, Stephen Zunes [source]
This is a letter of apology from an American who has witnessed in horror the extreme anti-Danish reaction in parts of the Islamic world. While the spark may have originated in your country, the tinderbox which caused that spark to explode in such a violent conflagration is largely a result of the policies of the United States…
Bombings and Repression in Egypt Underscore Failures in U.S. Anti-Terrorism Strategy
Foreign Policy In Focus/IPS, August 11, 2005
By John Gershman, Stephen Zunes [source]
The devastating bombings which struck the Egyptian city of Sharm al-Sheik on July 24 underscore both the extent of the threat from Islamist terrorists and the failure of the United States and its allies to effectively deal with it…
The U.S. and Iran: Democracy, Terrorism, and Nuclear Weapons
Columbia.edu & Foreign Policy In Focus, July 25, 2005 By Stephen Zunes
The election of the hard-line Tehran mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over former President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani as the new head of Iran is undeniably a setback for those hoping to advance greater social and political freedom in that country. It should not necessarily be seen as a turn to the right by the Iranian electorate…
Arms transfers to Pakistan undermine U.S. foreign policy goals
National Catholic Reporter, May 20, 2005
By Stephen Zunes [find source at TheFreeLibrary.com]
The Bush administration’s decision to sell sophisticated F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan raises questions regarding the administration’s stated commitment to promote democracy, support nonproliferation and fight terrorism and Islamic extremism. Pakistani Gen. Pervaz Musharraf, who overthrew the democratically elected government in 1999, continues to suppress the established secular political parties while allowing for the development of Islamic political groups…
Interview of Bush Reveals Dangerous Assumptions Behind U.S. Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies,
March 1, 2004, by Stephen Zunes [source no longer available]
A number of critiques have been written about President George W. Bush’s responses to Tim Russert’s questions in the February 8 edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” primarily regarding his shifting rationale for the invasion of Iraq. More problematic, however, was the fact that President Bush made a number of assertions that were patently false or–at the very least–misleading. The failure of Mr. Russert to challenge these statements and the ongoing repetition of such rationales by the administration and its supporters make it all the more imperative that such assertions not be allowed to go unquestioned. The implications of Bush’s statements are quite disturbing, since they involve such fundamental issues as international terrorism, the United Nations, weapons of mass destruction, and the policy of preemption…
U.S. Government Must Take a Consistent Stance Against Terrorism
Common Dreams September 2, 2003 by Stephen Zunes
[source link’s no longer available]
Last Friday’s terrorist bombing outside the Tomb of Ali in the Iraqi city of An-Najaf was the deadliest such attack against a civilian target in Middle East history. It recalls a similar blast in the southern outskirts of Beirut in March1985, which until last week held the region’s record for civilian fatalities in a single bombing. There are some striking parallels between the two terrorist attacks: both were the result of a car bomb that exploded outside a crowded mosque during Friday prayers and both were part of an assassination attempt against a prominent Shiite cleric that killed scores of worshipers and passers-by. There is a key difference, however…
A New Path to Peace
Alternet by Stephen Zunes, February 12, 2002
[Source] The tragic events of September 11 have created unprecedented challenges for the peace movement, anti-interventionist forces, and other progressive activists. For the first time in the lives of most Americans, the U.S. has found itself under attack. After more than fifty years of fabricated and exaggerated threats to national security put forward by the U.S. government, academia, and the media to justify military interventionism abroad…
Somalia as a Military Target
Foreign Policy In Focus by Stephen Zunes, January 11, 2002
[Source] The east African nation of Somalia is being mentioned with increasing frequency as a possible next target in the U.S.-led war against international terrorism. Somalia is a failed state–with what passes for the central government controlling little more than a section of the national capital of Mogadishu, a separatist government in the north, and rival warlords and clan leaders controlling most of the remainder of the country. U.S. officials believe cells of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network may have taken advantage of the absence of governmental authority to set up operation…