Foreign Policy Commentary Updates

Of War, Peace and the Distant Memory of a Christmas Truce
by John Nichols

NATO: Taliban Video Not Proof That Captured US Soldier Is Alive

Have We Traded Freedom For Security?

Yes, says Paul Craig Roberts

  Good job bringing in the new year with radical dribble and the same cast of haters and ....

TIME Magazine: Should the U.S. Destroy Jihadist Websites?

TIME Magazine has published a new article on the simmering debate over whether the U.S. government should be aggressively shutting down and destroying jihadist Internet websites. This debate has received added attention in recent weeks from a series of unrelated incidents, including the Ft. Hood massacre and the arrest of several would-be American Al-Qaida recruits in Pakistan. In each of these cases, Internet websites and "virtual radicalization" have played a significant role in either persuading someone to carry out an act of violence--or even by providing the apparent contacts necessary to join a real terrorist group.

In reflecting on this series of events, some well-intentioned observers have suggested that the appropriate remedy for the Internet being used as a recruitment machine by terrorist networks is to methodically take apart the underground jihadi social networking forums, one after the next. While I understand where those sentiments come from, I personally don't agree with them -- and I don't believe I'm alone. From TIME:

"But Arquilla's logic doesn't add up, counters Evan Kohlmann of the non-profit NEFA Foundation, created following 9/11 to track Islamic terrorism. Shutting down jihadist web sites "would be like firing cruise missiles at our own spy satellites," he argues, referring to the intelligence the U.S. and its allies glean from such sites. Besides, it can't be done. "If you shut down one of their websites today, they have a complete copy elsewhere and can put it up on a new server and have it up tomorrow," Kohlmann says. Such websites are the only window the rest of the world has into al-Qaeda and other such groups. "If you start shutting down the websites," he adds, "it's like chopping up a jellyfish — you end up with lots of little pieces that are very difficult to monitor." Kohlmann believes that the websites are a treasure trove of valuable intelligence, most of which is being overlooked by the U.S."

And this, of course, does not even take into account the myriad of freedom of speech and civil liberty issues that would inevitably arise if the U.S. government was to start blacking out independent websites on the basis of content. And what about YouTube, which allegedly has served as the point of contact for Taliban recruiters looking for American volunteers -- are we planning on shutting them down, too? In this case, perhaps it is a wiser policy to walk softly and carry a big stick -- as opposed to swinging it around wildly in hopes of randomly hitting something.
December 23, 2009 09:57 AM   Link 

A Bad Year by The National Interest 2009 was the worst year for American foreign policy since the Carter administration.

The Al-Qaeda Fallacy  by Paul R. Pillar Our obsession with al-Qaeda is blinding us to the real threat: decentralized groups of already radicalized individuals attacking American targets on their own. Escalating conflicts in the Muslim world won’t solve the problem—it will only make the U.S. a bigger target.

As the World Turns
Matthew Yglesias

Obama's foreign policy approach could hardly be called radical, but it has noticeably improved America's global position all within the short span of a year.

BARACK OBAMA DOES THE WORLD
by Philip J. Cunningham

It’s official. US President Barack Obama, long suspected of being the type of person who wanted to have his cake and eat it too, wine and dine with Wall Street while tossing rhetorical crumbs to the poor, dispossessed and hungry, all the while hobnobbing with the rich and famous and amassing draconic executive privilege, has, in his Nobel speech, just proved himself to be the world’s biggest phony.

The two-faced master of the mellow sound-bite has just outdone himself in trying to convince a jaded world that war is peace, that imperialism is liberation, that down is up and two plus two equals five. Even at this most international of events, in a world that desperately needs some leaders willing to look beyond their own narrow self-interests of the nation state, he preaches America the good, America the beautiful, America the just. Music to the ears of a stateside schoolchild or your died-in-the-wool Yankee xenophobe, perhaps, but hardly cosmopolitan in spirit.

Rather, his speech is mean-spirited. He goes out of his way, and beyond the bounds of decency, in his effort to show that war is necessary and American warfare is especially just. His argument is lame and conflicted. He says war’s been around for a long time so, hey, get used to it. If he was making a speech in favor of legalization prostitution or opium, there might be some point in making the “oldest profession” kind of argument, but surely that flimsy line of thinking has no place coming from a man who has unique and unparalleled access to the world’s most deadly nuclear arsenal. Surely that pale logic doesn’t justify a war, any war, the war of the moment, the Af-Pak War of Obama’s design, just because there have been wars in the past.

Obama gets shockingly narrow and parochial at times, saying in effect that America is good and anyone who opposes America is bad. He pins war crimes on the other guys, but doesn’t begin to address war crimes of his own nation. Suspicion of American is not justified, it’s “reflexive.”


Read more on this article...

http://icga.blogspot.com/2009/12/barack-obama-does-world.html

War on Al-Qaeda inflames Afghanistan, Pakistan -- AFP
Spirit of America in Afghanistan -- Jim Hake, Wall Street Journal
Leaving Afghanistan -- Sayeed Hasan Khan & Kurt Jacobsen, Dawn
We Have Strategy, Kit and Leadership. Let’s Go -- Richard Beeston, The Times
Afghanistan strategy should also focus on improving quality of life -- Stanley A. Weiss, L.A. Times
The moment that changed Afghanistan -- Stephen Kinzer, The Guardian