The American Spectator : Terrorism's Tangles

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Terrorism's Tangles

By George H. Wittman on 8.14.09 @ 6:07AM

Meet John Brennan, formerly of the CIA, who's assistant to the president on matters of terrorism -- and on board with a sociological interpretation of jihad's roots.

In its effort to distance itself from the previous administration's foreign policies, the Obama stalwarts have twisted themselves into knots to redefine terrorism. John Brennan, the White House expert on international terrorism, has averred that the term is best described as merely a means to al Qaeda's goal of "Islamic domination by an Islamic caliphate… By focusing on the tactic we risk floundering among the terrorist trees while missing the growth of the extremist forest."

Aside from Brennan's odd sense of forestry, by overly intellectualizing "terrorism" in this manner, he seeks to lay the basis for a political theme that separates al Qaeda and akin groups from the great mass of Islam. To do this he also rejects the concept, as he explained at a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), of a battle against "jihadists."

Brennan, a former high ranking CIA analyst, now holds the position of Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. He seems to believe there is no integral philosophical, and thus structural, support for the ambitions of Islamic extremists within the Islamic community as a whole. To pose that thesis Mr. Brennan has to ignore the admonition accepted for centuries in reference to jihad in the Koran, IV, 45: "…God has promised reward to all who believe but He distinguishes those who fight, above those who stay at home, with a mighty reward." Similar urgings can be found elsewhere in the Koran.

Undoubtedly for political purposes Brennan prefers to emphasize the current liberal interpretation of jihad in a spiritual and moral sense. His purpose in all this is to preserve the Obama ambition of ruling out the Bush "war on terror" so as to focus on a political line wherein the great mass of Moslems abhor holy war, defined as jihad, and thus create the perception of isolating the extremists among them.

From a propaganda standpoint this is not unreasonable: the Bush Administration also did as much as it could to preserve a separation between Moslems and "jihadists." But it was then and is now a political device. What is interesting is that Obama's terrorism brain trust is trying to sell this emphasis on "peaceful Islam" as if it's a new concept.

Simplistically, Mr. Brennan and the Obama left-wing establishment wants -- for their own anti-war political purposes -- to place the root cause of terrorism at the foot of socio-economic deprivation. Brennan's own words describe the White House philosophy best: "…when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, the people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death." Brennan's explanation of the Obama team analysis includes a "political, economic and social campaign to meet the basic needs and legitimate grievances of ordinary people."

It would appear that John Brennan and President Obama have confused South Waziristan and the many other sites worldwide of radical Islamic ambition with community organizing issues of South Chicago. This in spite of earlier Obama rhetoric calling Afghanistan "the right war."

The White House can't have it both ways: In one instance they say al Qaeda is using terrorism as a device in its aim to create an Islamic caliphate; In the next they suggest that terrorism is a phenomenon that thrives on governmental indifference to the people's needs. The implication, therefore, is that if governments would pay more attention to people's needs, al Qaeda would not have been formed to establish an Islamic caliphate and would not be in the business of terrorism.

Mr. Brennan and his WH staff are striving hard to pretend global murder and mayhem done in the name of all causes has socio-economic roots and thus can be countered by education and economic aid. Does anyone really think the IRA would have been deterred by British aid programs? It might be well to remember al Qaeda grew out of international Islamic volunteers against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and was originally funded by the wealthy Osama bin Laden. No deprivation there.

Nor has there been a socio-economic root to terrorism as practiced by the Basque separatist group, ETA, or other similar groups employing indiscriminate violence and class warfare to gain political independence. The European terrorist groups of the Red Brigade and Bader-Meinhof gang may have used Marxist rhetoric, but certainly didn't evolve from poverty and lack of education. The violence and wanton destruction that characterize terrorism in all its forms undercut the legitimacy of the White House argument. Mr. Brennan would do well to take a long look at narco-terrorism on our own Mexican border.

If France's Georges Clemenceau was right about war being too important to be left to generals, terrorism is too important to be left to former CIA desk-bound career Middle East analysts lofted by their political connections to be presidential assistants.

topics:
Terrorism, Al Qaeda

About the Author

George H. Wittman writes a weekly column on international affairs for The American Spectator online. He was the founding chairman of the National Institute for Public Policy.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (34) | Leave a comment

S.L. Toddard| 8.14.09 @ 11:41AM

"Simplistically, Mr. Brennan and the Obama left-wing establishment wants -- for their own anti-war political purposes..."

Only a cynical hack, willingly blind to reality, could call Obama "anti-war". He's every bit the blood-thirsty warmonger George W Bush was. He cares just as little - which is to say not at all - about our soldiers and, like George W Bush, is more than happy to have them die by the hundreds or thousands on nation-building crusades and conquests. Like George W Bush, Obama is a Liberal Internationalist Crusader - a Wilsonian stooge - a fact proven by his escalation of the still-failing Afghanistan conquest.

How many hundreds of thousands of soldiers has Obama torn from their families, friends and communities to maintain and escalate this idiotic war, the cassus belli of which ceased to exist long, long ago? Divorce rates and delinquency are substantially higher in military families for precisely this reason - fathers are torn from their children and sent far away, sons are taken from their families, farms and communites.

You pro-war, anti-family types should LOVE Obama. He's giving you plenty of reasons to talk tough about jihadis, wave your little flags and cheer as our soldiers are taken from their families and sent to the other side of the globe to have their arms, legs and heads blown off.

Oh - and whatever happened to speaking no ill of a War President? Don't you people know there's a War on? How dare you question our Commander In Chief in Wartime?!

Solo| 8.15.09 @ 8:34AM

S L Toddard Wrote:

"Divorce rates and delinquency are substantially higher in military families for precisely this reason - fathers are torn from their children and sent far away, sons are taken from their families, farms and communites. "

No one is being "torn from their children" or "taken" from anywhere, Toddard.

I don't know if you've been keeping up with current events but we now have an all volunteer military.

Spare us your hysteronics.

Paul Kotik| 8.15.09 @ 9:36AM

So, by Brennan's definition, Barack Obama is a jihadist. Not so?

Richard Baker| 8.15.09 @ 12:38PM

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals could believe them.

--George Orwell

Egorich| 8.16.09 @ 3:55AM

Абсолютно с вами согласен, терористы должны исчезнуть из нашего мира!

Liberal Reader| 8.16.09 @ 6:03PM

This article is riddled with illogical assumptions and weak surmise.

The notion that the very act of thinking about the "sociology" of terrorism makes us weaker characterizes perfectly the know-nothings and brazen ignoramuses who seek to dismantle rational public discourse in this country.

If you eschew a "sociology" of terrorism, in what frame would you choose to examine it?

The answer, it seems, is that you want to argue that terrorists are united in a cartoonish Legion of Doom, which meets in Castle Greyskull and plots in unison to "take away our freedoms." This sounds pretty good -- if you're 12, or if you're a conservative -- but it won't help us actually defeat terrorism.

As for your overall assumption that Democrats don't care about Islamic terrorism or believe it can be wished away, I'd ask that you think a little more carefully about that. The 9.11 terrorist attacks were most devastating in New York City, the real home of millions of Democrats -- and the Spiritual Home for those of us condemned to live in exile (i.e. outside of NYC).

RFK, one of our great heroes, was assassinated by an Islamic terrorist, and we send sons, brothers, and husbands to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, just like conservatives do.

So in all honest, I'd like to offer that you go off someplace and shove your weak assumptions and your lame reasoning up your ass.

Ted Kelly| 8.16.09 @ 6:22PM

Your right, and wrong. The terrorism definition should relect the truth, but not the one that you are trying to sell, schill.
In the 1980's, the Regan White House decided to back the Afghan people fighting a war against the Russians. They did this to achieve a political goal of creating unity behind their president. This led to the training by the CIA of the Afghan jihadists to carry out terrorism and other attacks on the Russians. This Leo Straussian vision, that they hoped to inspire, was an attempt to drag compassionate Americans into the "good fight" at the cost of the Afghan People. This myth of transformation came from a flawed view of the world as good and evil, which fortunately always seems to be the downfall of these types of plans. What happened on September 11th is the fault of this Billion dollar propaganda effort led by the Regan White House. There would have been no other way that the terrorists could have been so organized in 2001 except that they were the same terrorists that were trained under the supervision of the CIA's former leader, William Casey. The definition, ...my definition of terrorists, is a group of people that the powers-that-be lost control of.

JimE| 8.16.09 @ 6:52PM

Toodard Anus,
Why then did you vote for obama? Are you afraid he'll reinstate the draft and you'll have to leave your mother's basement?

Ken (Old Texican)| 8.16.09 @ 7:36PM

Ted is our newest ACORN plant. He is fairly comical to read though.
Toddard is as silly as usual which is why he is getting reinforcements like Ted. Heh!

Ted Kelly| 8.16.09 @ 7:53PM

Oh, that's right, Ken. I didn't vote for Obama, Jim. I am an indie. I am just an observer.

Ted Kelly| 8.16.09 @ 7:55PM

You guys are prolly glad to have an ACORN vote modifier here instead of all the spam-bots. At least I am a real person that you can...how did you put it..."read through".

Ted Kelly| 8.16.09 @ 8:35PM

...oh, and to Richard: my god man, will you all stop quoting Orwell. That shit's for the conspiracy theorists.

How can you reconcile constantly quoting Orwell with the actions of the party? Many other independents are laughing you off the stage because you continue to cry wolf whilst ripping the flesh from the sheep. If you are trying to be ironic, you have succeeded at becoming the liberal (too much) party. Orwell's 1984 warned against torture, and we all know what happened at GTMO. Orwell warned against Big Brother, and now there is large-scale wiretapping. Orwell's dark vision came to fruition during the tenure of your party, not the Dem's. It would be very easy to say that some from the prior administration ripped it's cues directly from the burning pages.

Rich Rostrom| 8.18.09 @ 8:29PM

The Reagan administration had the CIA provide arms (e.g. Stinger SAMs) and training in the use of them to the Afghans fighting the Soviet invasion. At the same time, a number of Moslems (many from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States went to Afghanistan to fight for fellow Moslems. These
"Arab Afghans" had their own funds and were not connected to the U.S. effort, except indirectly through ISI (Pakistan's intelligence service) which controlled both operations.

Neither the CIA nor the Arab-Afghans wanted any contact with each other; the notion that Osama bin Laden was personally trained by the CIA is a conspiracist fantasy.

It is rooted in the deeply engrained racist bigotry of so much of the Left - they know as an absolute fact that Arabs are pathetic, helpless, and incompetent: far too stupid, ignorant, lazy, and unstable to carry out a major terrorist attack - unless trained by white people.

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Sam Smith| 12.8.09 @ 10:27PM

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ahmet| 12.18.09 @ 8:27AM

The definition of terrorism is very broad, so that I agree with author that we can't focus on a terrorist tree but miss out the forest.

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Undoubtedly for political purposes Brennan prefers to emphasize the current liberal interpretation of jihad in a spiritual and moral sense.

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