Published for The New York Times, April 18th, 2011:
MANY in the West had taken comfort in Al Qaeda’s silence in the wake of the uprisings in the Muslim world this year, as secular, nonviolent protests, led by educated youth focused on redressing longstanding local grievances, showcased democracy’s promise and seemed to leave Al Qaeda behind.
Indeed, the pristine spirit of the Arab Spring does represent an existential threat to Al Qaeda’s extremist ideology. But Al Qaeda’s leaders also know that this is a strategic moment. They are banking on the disillusionment that inevitably follows revolutions to reassert their prominence in the region. And now Al Qaeda is silent no more — and is taking the rhetorical offensive.
In recent statements, Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command, and Qaeda surrogates have aligned themselves with the protesters in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere, while painting the West as an enemy of the Arab people.
In North Africa, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed that while protesters flooded the streets of Tunis and Cairo, it had been fighting in the mountains against the same enemies. Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, declared that in the wake of the revolutions, “our mujahedeen brothers … will get a chance to breathe again after three decades of suffocation” and that “the great doors of opportunity would open up for the mujahedeen all over the world.”
Mr. Zawahri has denounced democracy, arguing that toppling dictators is insufficient and that “justice, freedom, and independence” can be achieved only through “jihad and resistance until the Islamic regime rises.”
Full article here
Published for The Washington Post, February 20th, 2011:
In 1914, a terrorist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo – unleashing geopolitical forces and World War I. Today, while the United States rightly worries about al-Qaeda targeting the homeland, the most dangerous threat may be another terrorist flash point on the horizon.
Lashkar-i-Taiba holds the match that could spark a conflagration between nuclear-armed historic rivals India and Pakistan. Lashkar-i-Taiba is a Frankenstein’s monster of the Pakistani government’s creation 20 years ago. It has diverse financial networks and well-trained and well-armed cadres that have struck Indian targets from Mumbai to Kabul. It collaborates with the witches’ brew of terrorist groups in Pakistan, including al-Qaeda, and has demonstrated global jihadist ambitions. It is merely a matter of time before Lashkar-i-Taiba attacks again.
Significant terrorist attacks in India, against Parliament in 2001 and in Mumbai in 2008, brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. The countries remain deeply distrustful of each other. Another major strike against Indian targets in today’s tinderbox environment could lead to a broader, more devastating conflict.
The United States should be directing political and diplomatic capital to prevent such a conflagration. The meeting between Indian and Pakistani officials in Bhutan this month – their first high-level sit-down since last summer – set the stage for restarting serious talks on the thorny issue of Kashmir.
Washington has only so much time. Indian officials are increasingly dissatisfied with Pakistan’s attempts to constrain Lashkar-i-Taiba and remain convinced that Pakistani intelligence supports the group. An Indian intelligence report concluded last year that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate was involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and late last year the Indian government raised security levels in anticipation of strikes. India is unlikely to show restraint in the event of another attack.
Full article here
As published for The Edge, December 21st, 2010:
Just like it’s impossible to think of human interaction without secrets or intimate communications, it’s quite naïve to think that there will not be secrets within and between governments — at a minimum during war or in the context of sensitive diplomacy.
Secrets are not just useful for governments to operate with others around the world and to defend their respective citizens but morally necessary in certain instances, as in the case of secret negotiations to end a genocide or civil war or tracking a suicide bomber with the intent of saving the lives of innocent civilians.
Normatively, secrets can certainly be destructive and be used to hide the indefensible, but they can also enable good and moral events and developments.
If we accept there are scenarios in which secrets can be morally necessary and important, then there is no absolute, apriori rule of openness and transparency for information — unless one is purposely amoral or destructively relativistic. If so, we then need to create structures and systems as societies that allow for appropriate secrets, oversight, and revelation — all of which we’ve debated within American culture and politics since the founding of the republic.
A more relevant question in this context then — and for a democracy — is what that system looks like, who gets to divulge secrets, and how this works in a way to ensure there isn’t abuse. We have answered that as a society — perhaps not well enough and perhaps in need of more consistent review — but we’ve answered it. Assange may not feel a part of that debate or understand it, but he isn’t American and has no right to make these judgments for the American people.
Full post here
Published for National Review, October 4th, 2010:
The U.S.-led financial-sanctions campaign currently under way against Iran is biting, but it isn’t enough. To change the Iranian regime’s nuclear calculus, the administration and the international community need to act urgently to pressure Tehran along multiple lines.
To be sure, the latest escalation of sanctions and financial isolation is hurting the regime. Legitimate banks, insurance and shipping companies, and energy firms are abandoning business with Iran for fear of sanctions and risk to their reputations. The most recent round of sanctions — those set in motion by the United States, along with the European Union’s most severe measures against Iran since the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929 — increased the pressure on Iran’s economy by targeting its dependence on refined-petroleum imports and closing correspondent relationships between Iranian banks and those in other countries. And more nations are adding their voices to this chorus. Significantly, Japan and South Korea, two of Iran’s largest trading partners, just announced that they would impose harsh sanctions and target designated Iranian entities.
The U.S. Congress recently passed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act, which has created fear of secondary sanctions against non-American companies still doing business with Iran. Lloyd’s of London has announced it will stop insuring or reinsuring refined-petroleum shipments into Iran. European insurance giants Allianz, Munich Re, and Hannover Re have committed to ending business ties with Iran. Multinational firms including Total, Repsol, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Eni, Petronas, Reliance, Glencore, Trafigura, and Vitol have all ended their refined-petroleum trade or energy investments in Iran. In July, Iran’s gasoline imports were down 50 percent from May, according to the International Energy Agency, and according to Reuters they were down 90 percent in August from the previous year. The State Department estimates that $50 to $60 billion in upstream energy-development projects (i.e., exploration and production) have been terminated or put on hold over the last several years.
Full article here
Published for The Wall Street Journal, August 14th, 2010:
The ACLU says the administration has ‘institutionalized’ some of the former president’s most controversial policies. For this we should be thankful.
When President Obama took office promising to uphold the rule of law and ensure that our counterterrorism policies were consistent with our Constitution and core principles, his most devoted supporters took that to mean he would reverse a host of the Bush administration’s legal stances and counterterrorism practices. That has not been the case.
Mr. Obama has continued or allowed for preventive detentions, military commissions, renditions, aggressive financial data and intelligence collection, renewal of provisions of the Patriot Act, and the killing of al Qaeda operatives on the battlefield. Yes, the Obama administration rejected certain first-term Bush administration practices—like aggressive interrogation methods—but there has been fundamental continuity on most issues.
Most recently, Mr. Obama has defended in Europe the U.S. Treasury’s once-controversial Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, requested additional authorities for the FBI to obtain electronic data via national security letters, and is relying more heavily on targeted, lethal operations in Afghanistan.
The fact that these practices began under the Bush administration does not mean that Mr. Obama has abandoned his pledge to restore the rule of law, despite accusations to the contrary. The rule of law is not a static set of procedures. Instead, in the national security context, it is the appropriate and constitutional legal framework that balances the safety of society with the rights of individuals.
Full article here
