USA Today’s lead paragraph captures the mission well, while also serving as the best recruiting pitch for the Navy’s Sea, Air, and Land teams that I’ve seen a newspaper run:

The same U.S. Navy SEAL unit that killed Osama bin Laden parachuted into Somalia under cover of darkness early Wednesday and crept up to an outdoor camp where an American woman and Danish man were being held hostage. Soon, nine kidnappers were dead and both hostages were freed.

The hostages, two aid workers who had been kidnapped three months earlier, were victims of an expanding land-based kidnapping enterprise engaged in by Somali pirates in response to the growing difficulty of hijacking ships in the Gulf of Aden.

“The same U.S. Navy SEAL unit that killed Osama bin Laden,” of course, refers to the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), also known as SEAL Team Six, though as with all JSOC operations there were almost certainly representatives from other services involved as well (possibly Air Force aircraft, and certainly joint terminal attack controllers and pararescuemen from the Air Force special mission unit organic to JSOC).

As with the bin Laden raid, it is worth noting that what sets this mission apart from any other JSOC or DEVGRU operation is not the fact that it took place, but the publicity it is receiving. Hostage rescue is a core component of JSOC’s special mission units’ capabilities, as are counterterrorism, direct action, and strategic reconnaissance. Further, the operational tempo for special operations units as a whole – both “white” and “black” (with JSOC falling in the latter category) – continues to be incredibly high, making this highly publicized mission just another one of hundreds being carried out around the world every month (according to ISAF, for example, 1,879 special operations raids were carried out in Afghanistan alone in the first eight months of 2011).

Aside from results the raid itself – two hostages rescued unharmed, and nine heavily armed “tangoes” dead – this mission is being highly publicized because of the high psychological importance of its success, a position which it holds for two main reasons.

THE GHOSTS OF ‘BLACK HAWK DOWN’

Make no mistake: this raid, and its publicization, sends a powerful message about America’s willingness to put boots on the ground in Somalia nearly two decades after the withdrawal of US forces from that country in 1994.  Though this mission neither took place in “Mog” (Mogadishu) nor in daylight, the success of JSOC’s effort will go a long way to exorcise the lingering demons of 1993’s ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident that left 18 American Rangers and Delta Force operators dead and many more wounded.

This isn’t America’s first action in Somalia since then. As Bill Roggio notes, at least three direct action missions or campaigns have been carried out in Somalia in the last half-decade:

First, US forces (CIA and special operations forces) are known to have engaged the Islamic Courts Union several times in late 2006 and early 2007 when the Ethiopians invaded Somalia in December 2006.

Second, a US Navy warship and US personnel targeted al Qaeda leader Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in June 2007 off the coast of Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Puntland. After the USS Chafee opened fire on their speedboats, 35 Islamic Courts fighters were killed.

Third, US special operations forces killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in September 2009 during a daring helicopter raid in the southern Somali town of Barawe. Nabhan’s body was recovered during the raid.

Additionally, at least nine drone strikes have been carried out between 2006 and the present month.  However, there is no question that this is the highest-profile and most-publicized American mission to have taken place on Somali soil since our 1994 withdrawal, which convinced Osama bin Laden “that the American soldier was just a paper tiger.”  As such, it sends a clear, if indirect, message that the lingering demons of the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident won’t prevent our forces from operating on the ground in Somalia if there is a mission there that needs to be done.

BOUNCING BACK FROM THE TANGI TRAGEDY

Though special operations forces conducted upward of 2,000 missions in Afghanistan alone in 2011, two JSOC missions in general – and DEVGRU missions in particular – made more headlines than all of the others combined.  The first, both chronologically and in terms of overall attention, was the DEVGRU-led May 1 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan that resulted in the death of the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden.

The second, and more recent, was entirely different.  On August 6, when entering an objective area to support a Ranger element on the ground, an Army National Guard CH-47 helicopter carrying JSOC operators, Afghan commandos, and an interpreter was shot down in the Tangi Valley in Wardak Province, eastern Afghanistan.  Not only was it was the deadliest incident and deadliest day of the ten year war in Afghanistan, but the primary force on board was a troop from DEVGRU’s Gold Squadron – different operators than those who had carried out the Abbottabad raid, but members of the same SEAL Team.

If the bin Laden raid had reaffirmed the legendary (some might say “mythic”) status of the Navy’s premier special mission unit, the Tangi Valley disaster acted as a chemical stripper to these commandos’ hard-earned and carefully crafted veneer of invincibility.  Among the 38 killed in that crash were fifteen DEVGRU SEALs and three Air Force special tactics personnel – eighteen operators from Tier One units.

Until last night, that tragedy had been the last highly publicized event involving JSOC in general, and SEAL Team Six in particular, despite hundreds of missions having been carried out between then and the present.  Now, JSOC and DEVGRU are back on Americans’ radars for a positive reason.

On the surface, last night’s successful rescue, which exemplifies the work that special operations forces do on a nightly basis, left nine pirates dead and put two hostages on the road home after a three month ordeal.  Taking a wider view, though, this mission and the publicity it is receiving will go a long way toward exorcising the demons of Mogadishu 1993 and Tangi 2011 that have haunted the American psyche, for similar reasons but in differing amounts, ever since.

“Here’s How the U.S. Could Invade Iran”

“U.S. Said Set to Attack Iran”

“Does [the U.S. President] Plan to Invade Iran?”

“Saudis Deny U.S. Planned to Attack Iranian Oilfields”

“U.S. May Attack Iran Missiles: White House Mulls Ways to Protect Gulf”

“[U.S.] Navy Denies Plan to Attack Iranian Ships in Persian Gulf”

“U.S., Allies Setting Stage to Attack Iran, Says Paper”

“Chavez Warns Against U.S. Attack on Iran”

“Iran’s Top Leader Warns of U.S. Attack”

“Iran: U.S. Attack May Mean ‘Slaughterhouse’”

“Sharon on the Warpath: Is Israel Planning to Attack Iran?”

“Israel Has Plans to Attack Iran, Says London Times”

“U.S. Planning Nuclear Strike on Iran”

“The Coming War with Iran”

“Report: Israel Asks for ‘Air Corridor’ to Attack Iran”

“News from Israel: [U.S. President] Wants to Attack Iran Soon”

“Iran in U.S. Crosshairs”

Do those headlines sound familiar? Judging by the recent deluge of print, web, television, and radio reports and discussions, America and Israel have responded to a growing “drumbeat for war,” as some have put it, and are on the brink of launching an overt military attack on Iran. As the real newspaper and web headlines cited above clearly show, the U.S. and its ally in the Levant have failed to learn the proverbial dangers of a land war in Asia, and are furiously building toward another engagement with another Islamic country.

But wait. The dates on those headlines are, respectively, November 1979, December 1979, August 1980, August 1980, June 1984, June 1987, March 1988, November 1992, November 1993, December 1996, June 1997, August 2004, March 2005, April 2006, July 2006, February 2007, May 2008, and February 2009.

That’s right: the claim that America or Israel is on the cusp of attacking Iran is as old as the Islamic Republic itself. Such assertions have peppered media reports, op-eds, and other commentary for three decades and change at this point – a fact which should give folks pause about taking such claims any more seriously now than at any point in recent history.

Yes, Iran is hostile to the U.S. and its interests, and yes, it is almost certainly working as quickly as it can on the development of a nuclear weapon. However, despite growing hysteria on the part of media and analysts, and despite public debates like that being hosted by Foreign Affairs (the best piece among which is this one by Colin Kahl, former head of Middle East policy at the Pentagon), a western-initiated war with Iran is little more likely now than at any point in the last three decades, if not altogether less so.

HOW MANY LINES IN THE SAND?

This isn’t to minimize Iran’s nuclearization effort as an issue.  President Obama clearly has a decision to make when it comes to dealing with Iran’s apparently inexorable march toward becoming a nuclear weapons state, as will the next president should Obama be defeated in this year’s election. Thus far, the administration has issued firm statements while consistently moving its “red line” of acceptable nuclear progress backward in response to each Iranian action. As Pepe Escobar noted at CBSNews Online:

Let’s start with red lines. Here it is, Washington’s ultimate red line, straight from the lion’s mouth. Only last week Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said of the Iranians, ‘Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.’

How strange, the way those red lines continue to retreat. Once upon a time, the red line for Washington was “enrichment” of uranium [Auth. note: As Olli Heinonen has recently noted, the Fordow plant is currently producing 20% enriched uranium – an important step in producing weapons-grade uranium] . Now, it’s evidently an actual nuclear weapon that can be brandished. Keep in mind that, since 2005, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has stressed that his country is not seeking to build a nuclear weapon. The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran from the U.S. Intelligence Community has similarly stressed that Iran is not, in fact, developing a nuclear weapon (as opposed to the breakout capacity to build one someday).

Why does the standard U.S. response to Iran’s advancement past each impassable line-in-the-sand ultimatum appear to be to shrug, take ten more paces backward, draw a new line, and demand that Iran not cross that one?  The two-fold answer to that is as simple as it is frustrating for those who prioritize non-proliferation (particularly to state supporters of terror like Iran) very highly.

WHY AN ATTACK WON’T HAPPEN: REASON I

First, it is highly unlikely that an aerial campaign would be able to successfully eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, which is made up of deeply buried, hardened targets spread across multiple sites (though Matthew Kroenig has argued in Foreign Affairs that the majority of sites that serve as the most critical targets are within reach of conventional airborne munitions).  Further, attempting to strike these sites would have a net negative effect on the U.S.’s interests; as President Bush’s Director of Central Intelligence Michael Hayden reiterated just this week,“ When we talked about this in the government, the consensus was that [attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent — an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon and that would build it in secret.”  A certain effect of striking or even eliminating the program (if that were possible) but leaving the regime intact would be to double their resolve to establish a nuclear weapons capability, in no small part because success in that pursuit would provide it the security of deterrence (and the freedom to continue its effort to be a bully in the region and beyond), as North Korea has repeatedly demonstrated.

Given these limitations and first-order effects, the next-best option would seem to be to carry out an operation that simultaneously eliminated Teheran’s nuclear sites and deposed the regime.  This is akin to what FPI’s Jamie Fly and AEI’s Gary Schmitt have suggested, with one major difference: Fly and Schmitt appear to be calling for an solely aerial campaign (augmented, almost certainly, by other conventional standoff weaponry), but with a target list that is expanded beyond sites that are directly related to the nuclear program. They write:

A limited strike against nuclear facilities would not lead to regime change. But a broader operation might. It would not even need to be a ground invasion aimed specifically at toppling the government. The United States would basically need to expand its list of targets beyond the nuclear program to key command and control elements of the Republican Guard and the intelligence ministry, and facilities associated with other key government officials. The goal would be to compromise severely the government’s ability to control the Iranian population. This would require an extended campaign, but since even a limited strike would take days and Iran would strike back, it would be far better to design a military operation that has a greater chance of producing a satisfactory outcome.

With all due respect to Fly and Schmitt, it’s  a very good thing that this suggestion will never come to fruition, in large part because it is one of the worst suggestions that has been put forth to date for dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue.  If simply bombing those sites which can be identified and reached with conventional weapons is an ineffective way of dealing with Iran’s program, then attacking those sites and striking Teheran’s “key command and control elements” from 30,000 feet AGL or from up to 1,000 nautical miles away, then leaving the resulting chaotic mess for the Iranian people (and those still remaining in the military-governmental complex) to clean up and rebuild from is an exponentially more effective way of ensuring that whatever does emerge from the rubble will not in any way be positively disposed to the U.S. and its interests.  In other words, the idea that the best possible option on Iran would be to fly in, break everything (in hopes of prompting regime collapse), and then immediately leave is, quite simply, mind-boggling.

WHY AN ATTACK WON’T HAPPEN: REASON II

This brings us to the second reason why an attack on Iran is as unlikely now as it has been at any time in recent history, if not more: the fact that the only option to truly ensure that the existing program is done away with, and to create the most favorable odds that Iran’s efforts at nuclearization would not be reconstituted in greater secrecy at the earliest possible moment, would be to mount an air-and-ground invasion that deposed the regime; disbanded the Revolutionary Guard; and manually searched for; reported, and destroyed all weapons of mass destruction and WMD production facilities that it found; and trusted that freeing the people from the tyranny of their government and the punishment it had brought, and meted out, upon them would immediately win them to America’s side and its cause.

Does that sound familiar? If not, then George Santayana would like to have a quick word with you, because I’ve just basically described the 2003 coalition invasion of Iraq, and that is precisely why no such invasion of Iran is in the offing at any time in the near future.  Had America not had the experience of “breaking” Iraq, and learning the hard way just how difficult it is to put such a Humpty Dumpty together again, then a campaign against Iran might not be such a far-fetched idea.  However, with Iraq planted firmly in our short-term memory (despite the withdrawal of uniformed troops this December, that effort is still far from over), and with Afghanistan still so unstable that the coalition is once again stepping up peace and power-sharing talks with the Taliban, the simple and unavoidable fact is that there will not be even a fraction of the public, expert, or official governmental support for an invasion of Iran that there was for the action taken against Afghanistan and Iraq last decade.  Additionally, Iran’s geographic location virtually guarantees that militants will stream into the Persian state from every direction in massive numbers, augmenting an organic insurgency and waging a low- and medium-intensity conflict and domestic terror campaign that could well make both  Afghanistan and Iraq seem relatively tame in comparison.

These facts argue very convincingly for the risk of an attack on Iran being as low as it has been for the preceding decades, despite the constant media speculation and hype about a supposedly impending attack that has been a feature of reports and analyses across that period.

WHAT ELSE CAN BE DONE?

This isn’t to say that nothing can or should be done to hinder Iran’s efforts.   As General Hayden recently reinforced, the Bush administration recognized the folly of waging war on Iran (despite the decrepit Seymour Hersh’s repeated – and breathless – claims to the contrary), and moved to focus its overt efforts at counterproliferation on Iran’s economy in hopes of convincing the government to change course and fomenting civil unrest. Though the current president missed an opportunity to side with a budding revolution against Teheran in 2009, this Congress, the Obama administration, and the EU have only strengthened the sanctions on Iran, at grave economic cost to the Islamic Republic (though the effort to prevent Iranian oil from being purchased abroad is being short-circuited by China to its own end, as it is reportedly using the distress sanctions have caused in Iran’s oil market to negotiate a lower price for themselves on Iranian crude).

Sanctions, too, have potential downside.  They can cause a targeted people to become more galvanized or a targeted regime to further tighten its grip on its subject population (just to name two), and to date they certainly haven’t convinced Teheran to give up its nuclear ambitions.  However, between sanctions and a military attack that simply cannot have any guarantee of mission success or positive outcome, but which is almost certain to carry with it massively negative effects (of the first order, as well as second-, third-, and beyond) , the former has to be the preferred option, at least for the time being.  Those sanctions will continue to be augmented by covert operations wherever and whenever possible, but there is almost zero chance that overt military action will also be  added to the mix – again, despite the almost constant media claims to the contrary.

Where we go from here is a very big, very important question.  As Kenneth Pollack put it, “if the Obama administration’s forward progress is clear enough when it comes to its Iran policy, its ultimate destination is not.”  The best outcome, as Hayden and the Bush administration recognized last decade, is regime change within Iran.  “It’s not so much that we don’t want Iran to have a nuclear capacity,” Hayden said, as it is “that we don’t want this Iran to have it … Slow it down long enough and maybe the character [of the Iranian government] changes.”  While sanctions and covert actions have managed to slow Iran’s nuclear progress, short of war only a positive regime change (which is no guarantee) are likely make a real difference in the status quo.

Given the wide-ranging support for the coalition invasion of Iraq leading up to the 2003 start of that war, it is telling that the current debate over Iran includes hawkish voices as well as calls for the U.S. to accept the inevitability of a nuclear Islamic Republic, and to prepare its containment strategy accordingly.  Because of the uncertainty of military success (and the extremely high likelihood that the cost of overt military action would be very steep), and because of the length and general messiness (for lack of a better term) of America’s recent experience with military-led regime change and counter-WMD efforts in Iraq, striking Iran simply will not be considered  an acceptable option by policymakers or the general public.  Sanctions and other non-military efforts will continue, but the likelihood that Iran will become a nuclear weapons state in the not-too-distant future should dictate that the current administration, and the next if the current president only serves one term, develops the most comprehensive possible plan for containment, deterrence, and fomenting positive regime change at the earliest possible opportunity.

While that is a grave future concern, though, the massive guaranteed cost of attacking Iran not only means that such action is not the “least-worst option” that we have for dealing with Teheran’s nuclear ambitions, but it also means that it remains highly unlikely that such action will be taken   again, media hype notwithstanding.

TEN YEARS HAVE passed since terrorists hijacked airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  In that period, America has fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, carried out hundreds armed drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen (among other locations), and conducted covert operations around the world, all in the name of what President George W.  Bush termed the “Global War on Terror.”  Terror plots and attempted attacks have been foiled, terrorist leaders have been killed or captured in massive numbers – including the world’s most wanted terrorist himself, Osama bin Laden.  All of this has combined, in the words of President Barack Obama, to “put al Qaeda on the path to defeat.”

Given all this, is it possible that America is actually losing the war on terror? In Bin Laden’s Legacy: Why We’re Still Losing the War on Terror, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argues not only that we are losing, but that we as a nation still fail to understand what kind of a war we are fighting, and what our enemies’ actual goals are.  This is a powerful indictment, and Gartenstein-Ross painstakingly lays it out in a book that is both sharply analytical and accessible to any audience.

A KEY PROBLEM with America’s attempt to wage a War on Terror while safeguarding itself from future attack, Gartenstein-Ross writes, is that our ignorance of the enemy we are facing has allowed us to pursue both goals in a profligate fashion that plays right into the hands of an enemy that sees America’s economy as the long-term target.  To understand the reasoning behind this, we must look to the Soviet Union.  Though myriad factors contributed to the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., its collapse so shortly after its withdrawal from a decade-long quagmire in Afghanistan helped convince Osama bin Laden and other former mujahedeen that they had been the cause of its ultimate defeat.

Now, al Qaeda has taken this strategy of embroiling a much larger and wealthier enemy in a long and costly war of economic attrition and has aimed it at the United States, with no small measure of success gained over the last decade.  “Even though it has lost Osama bin Laden and its safe haven in Afghanistan,” the author writes, al Qaeda’s “fight against America is broader, and al Qaeda and its affiliates are key players in more regions than they were engaged in a decade ago…Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is shattered, it faces an almost unthinkable debt burden, and its policy makers have largely been consigned to arguing with each other on the sidelines while the country’s traditional allies…are overthrown or see their power erode” (p. 200).

IN BIN LADEN’S  Legacy, Gartenstein-Ross frequently employs an Ali-Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” analogy, suggesting that America’s post-9/11 counterterrorism strategy, such as it is, has taken on the character of a superpower exhausting its expansive but finite resources in a fight against an enemy that is largely resting against the ropes and waiting for the opportune time to strike.  One area in particular in which this strategy can be seen is airline and airport security, an area in which the U.S. has made massive expenditures over the last decade.

“After the 9/11 attacks, the United States poured enormous sums of money into bolstering aviation security,” Gartenstein-Ross writes.  “Yet time and again, terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda have shown how just a bit of technical ingenuity can thwart these expensive defenses” (p.  4).  Examples of this span the post-9/11 period, from the 2001 ’shoe bomber,’ Richard Reid, to the 2007 sports drink suicide plot in the U.K., to ‘underwear bomber’ Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s 2009 attempt to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit.  This ability of “al Qaeda’s operatives…to find vulnerabilities in aviation security, which has been hardened far more than any other set of targets,” speaks to the impotence of America’s current strategy of throwing money and technology at our problems (p.  203).

THAT THIS PLAYS right into our enemies’ hands can be seen, for example, in the aftermath of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP) successful attempt to slip bombs disguised as printer cartridges past airport security and onto FedEx and UPS cargo planes bound for the U.S.  Though the bombs were found before reaching their destination and being detonated, Gartenstein-Ross writes, AQAP still considered the effort a success, as their mere $4,200 investment (a number that was splashed across the cover of a special issue of the group’s English language magazine Inspire) would likely cause Europe and America billions in additional security technology and manpower to ensure such an attempt did not succeed again.  As AQAP itself acknowledged, their current strategy against the West is the “strategy of a thousand cuts,” each of which costs them very little to produce, but provokes a massive and costly response.  In sum, the author writes, “al Qaeda’s strategy is…to make the United States collapse under the weight of its own defenses” (p.  203).

However, Gartenstein-Ross cautions, understanding that strategy and coming to grips with America’s misjudgment of al Qaeda’s goals in its fight against the West is only the beginning.  “Al Qaeda is an adaptive organization,” he writes, whose leaders not only believe that “relatively small and inexpensive adaptations will continue to thwart its enemies’ defenses,” but that “each time it slips an operative past the security measures designed to detect him – even if that operative doesn’t succeed in killing a single ‘infidel’ – it will force costly and intrusive adaptations upon its adversary” (pp.  202-3).

Beyond his evidence-based analysis of al Qaeda’s strategy against the U.S., Gartenstein-Ross deserves significant credit for including proposed solutions for the issues currently facing America in the War on Terror, particularly at a time when so many articles, books, blog posts, and tweets are dedicated only to identifying, describing, or repeating problems.  Many of his prescriptions are quite solid, and address specific shortcomings that the author has previously identified in America’s planning and execution of the War on Terror.  Examples include understanding al Qaeda’s strategy and its adaptability; reducing the expense of national security through common-sense but difficult-to-implement measures like profiling, analytic reform, and civil service reform; avoiding involvement in military engagements of uncertain scope and purpose, like the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which the author believes severely crippled our efforts in Afghanistan, and the 2011 Libya no-fly zone; and reducing our dependence on foreign oil, though this is obviously easier said than done, and some issue may be taken with the specifics of the author’s recommendations.

However, if Bin Laden’s Legacy has a shortcoming, it is in the real-world practicality of the recommendations made in the longest of these sections, on “Address[ing] the Politicization of Terrorism” (pp.  203-210).  There is no question that, as the author notes, terrorism and security have been used to various ends by both political parties, and that such politicization of the issue has led to what may best be described as a spending contest in the name of being strong on terror while perpetuating the myth of a “zero-risk” paradigm, part because to not do so would be to open oneself up to ruthless attack from the political opposition.

While the current (and historical) “hotly contested partisan atmosphere” makes sober reevaluation of our strategy and priorities in the effort to defeat terrorists abroad and prevent terrorism at home, though, the likelihood that any type of “strong moderate center” brought together to “bring sanity and a sense of purpose to…discussions” on America’s counterterror efforts would be able to actually influence policy is, to put it mildly, very low (pp. 208-9).  Blue-ribbon and academic panels are not in short supply, and very few come out with recommendations that are both sound policy-wise and politically viable. Furthermore, the emergence of moderates does not necessarily drive centrist compromise; instead, it can have the effect of pushing the debate toward one or the other extreme, as those who gravitate toward that center are countered by a political opposition that sees an opportunity to be taken advantage of.

This weakness, though, is a tiny chink in the book’s otherwise solid armor.  Bin Laden’s Legacy is a book which should be read not only by private citizens seeking to learn about the goals that drive al Qaeda and its allies, but also by the strategists and policymakers who have, to date, misjudged and misread our enemies in the War on Terror.  Through all of Gartenstein-Ross’s evidence and analysis, the chief lesson that should be learned from Bin Laden’s Legacy is just how important it is to understand the goals and nature of our enemies, so that we don’t end up playing right into their hands by responding to threats in a way that is natural for us, but inappropriate for the situation.  Though this lesson may seem obvious, as Bin Laden’s Legacy clearly demonstrates, that which should be obvious is definitely not always so.

Bin Laden’s Legacy by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross (ISBN 978-1-1180-9494-5; $25.95) is published by John Wiley & Sons.

WHAT ROLE DO culture myths – the stories civilizations tell about the beginning of law, medicine, arts and sciences, and civilization itself – have in defining a group’s legitimacy within society? In Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths from Antiquity to Islam, Will McCants, a Middle East expert at CNA’s Center for Strategic Students and adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University, addresses this issue with an emphasis on explaining the unique development of Muslim cultural beliefs and traditions in the wake of the Arab conquest.

Rather than a dry, linear history, the author presents his study in a comparative format, contrasting the competition for social relevance through control of cultural heritage in three periods of Ancient Near Eastern history: the Hellenistic period following the Alexandrian conquest; the hegemony of imperial Rome; and, of course, the Arab conquest and subsequent Islamic period.

THE CORE COMPARISON that drives Founding Gods is the difference between the existing “high culture” possessed by Greeks and Romans alike from the beginning of their hegemony and the lack of such a culture on the part of the conquering Arabs, and how that difference influenced the cultural actions of conquered elites seeking to role in the new post-conquest society.  At the time of Alexander’s conquest, the Greeks had a centuries-long history of philosophical, medicinal, legal, and other cultural knowledge, which was well-known and well-respected in the Near East (in no small part because of the centuries of close communication and exchange between the Near East and the Aegean, which took place during the period of – and played a significant role in – that culture’s development, as Greek protographers acknowledged).  Because of this, the local reaction to the Greek conquest consisted in part of the composition of etiologies which, while necessarily crediting the Greeks with the high culture they were known to possess, attributed the origin of key elements of that ‘Greek’ culture to predecessors of the indigenous elites themselves.  The coming of the Romans, who in many respects also adopted Hellenic cultural heritage as their own, spurred a similar response on the part of indigenous elites who needed once again to secure their place in the new order created by the latest conquering power.

The indigenous response to the Arab conquest, on the other hand, was very different from that sparked by the Alexandrian conquest and by the advent of post-Hellenistic (but still largely Hellenized) Roman domination that preceded it.  Unlike the Greeks, McCants writes, the conquering Arabs were not associated by native Near Easterners with any specific, respected culture prior to their arrival.  As a result, when seeking to solidify their cultural place the new order that followed the Arab conquest, native elites did not concern themselves with who was responsible for the high culture brought by the conquerors (there was none, so responding to the Arab conquest in the same way that their forebears responded to the Greek conquest would have been very cart-before-horse).  Instead, they concerned themselves with that which would constitute the new culture that had to be developed in the wake of the conquest – a process that took four centuries to complete.

IN FOUNDING GODS, McCants stresses the value to a conquered people of both an umbilical cord to the past and an understanding of the audience to whom cultural connections most need to be communicated.  As might be imagined, that value is greatest during periods in which a culture’s legitimacy and status as an accepted part of society was being called into question.  One specific example of this (out of the many provided in the book) can be seen in the Alexandrian Jewish population living under Roman rule, whose combination of peculiar religious beliefs and success at converting Roman citizens to Judaism led some in the intellectual and legal hierarchy to lash out in an effort to drive a wedge between the Jewish population and the rest of Roman society.  “Since their new overlords had adopted the cultural history and sensitivities of the Greeks,” McCants writes, “the response to these charges by Jews living under Roman rule was similar to that of their earlier coreligionists: stress the antiquity of biblical heroes; emphasize the dependence of the Greeks on these heroes for scientific and philosophical knowledge; and downplay the cultural contributions of the Egyptians, their primary cultural competitors” (pp. 130-31).

The utility of such a defense, and the vehemence with which it needed to be conducted, varied with audience, situation, and desperation, of course. In the case of the 1^st century Alexandrian Jews, the defense employed was “sharper because of the denigration of their cultural contribution to humanity, the depiction of them as outsiders, and the suspicion that their doctrines were undermining the state” (p. 131) by authors like Lysimachus and Apion of Alexandria, who cast the Jews as “misanthropic lepers” who were “foreign and seditious” (p. 130).  The Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo lashed out at the Greeks in response, accusing philosophers, scientists, and lawmakers alike – including Plato and Pythagoras – of “copying” and taking “like a thief” principles, concepts, and rules that had originated with Moses, who obviously antedated classical Greek civilization, and whose gifts to society had been handed down through generations unchanged and still in their perfect original form (p. 131).

This line of attack demonstrates the power of a direct line to antiquity and the importance of being able to lay claim to the past when seeking to secure one’s place in a social order run by those who have an existing respected high culture.  Philo’s specific goal was to cut off the Roman writers at the proverbial knees by eliminating the legitimacy they derived from being the cultural heirs of the inventors of law, philosophy, and science: the Greeks – something he sought to accomplish by claiming, in McCants’s words, “that Greek knowledge was built on the teachings of Moses, who was the first lawgiver,” and that “the Greeks were just mimics” (pp. 130-133). This defense, that the Jewish people and their philosophical heritage were more ancient than the Greeks, and that the pagan latter “had stolen philosophy from the Jews,” was also used by early Christians, who “were stigmatized as outsiders who had embraced an alien religious tradition of no account or achievement compared with Greco-Roman civilization” (p. 133-136).

In keeping with their focus on other concerns within the various debates over etiology, and in contrast to the Alexandrian Jews from the example above,  early Muslims did not need to search for a way to credit their forefathers with the initial gifts of the sciences either “to instill a sense of national pride in past accomplishments after being conquered by a foreign power [or] to remind the conquerors of their dependence on the conquered people” (p. 85).  Some, in fact – like the Muslim protographer Ibn Qutayba – actually “encouraged [their] coreligionists to create a parallel cultural system” for the invading Arabs to “supplant” the existing Iranian system [pp. 81-84]).  Instead, McCants writes, they were free to engage in a debate that was less about which culture was responsible for the origin of the sciences and more about whether the knowledge of philosophy, metallurgy, law, medicine, and the hard sciences had been developed by humans (be they Greek, Persian, Babylonian, Jewish, or others) or whether they had been divinely revealed – and in what measure each.

The input into this effort to define the new Islamic culture and connect it to different native intellectual and religious traditions was widespread.  As McCants notes, “at the same time that authors living in Baghdad, Basra, and Kufa were creating genealogies and first that connected the Islamic empire to the Bible and Arabia, Iranians in the same cities were translating histories that connected it to Iran” (p. 108).  The central role played by those whom the Arabs conquered in helping debate and define the culture and culture myths that would, in turn, define Islamic culture itself is unique, and it sets this fascinating period apart from the aftermaths of the major Near Eastern conquests that preceded it.

THOUGH DESCRIBED AS a work that “traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization,” the text itself is more focused and methodically presented than the jacket summary might lead one to believe.  Founding Gods, Inventing Nations is divided into five chapters, most of which begin with a relatively brief discussion of ancient etiologies and culture myths, with an emphasis on the use and revision of these myths for their own ends by those living under Greek and Roman domination. Following this, the remainder of each chapter is dedicated to presenting key figures and positions in the post-Arab-conquest discussion about what aspects of existing culture myths and etiologies should and should not be a part of the new high culture going forward.  Copious footnotes and a comprehensive bibliography are provided, as is a useful index.

At under 200 pages including bibliography and index, Founding Gods, Inventing Nations is a short but dense work, though it would be incorrect to assume that necessary detail and argumentation have been sacrificed for the sake of brevity. Rather, McCants limits his discussion to only that which is directly relevant to the topic at hand.  In doing so, he wisely avoids a pitfall many others encounter, particularly when it comes to transforming dissertations into initial book-length publications: needlessly filling additional pages with comprehensive (and repetitious) translations of ancient material, much of which is already available elsewhere, and much of which is often only tangentially related to the core subject of the work.  McCants does quote from some ancient cultural myths – as might be expected, given the centrality of that genre to his work – but each translation is relevant to the discussion surrounding it.

Founding Gods, Inventing Nations is a solidly-researched and well-presented book that holds value for students, scholars, and other individuals who are interested in cultural history, culture myths, and the role of the conquered elites in their development.  Additionally, its comparative format gives it particular value for individuals who are seeking a compact introduction to the development of culture myths in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Islamic periods in the Near East.

Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths from Antiquity to Islam by William F. McCants (ISBN 9780691151489; $35) is published by Princeton University Press.

The particularly well-done infographic will convey more information than its surface-level appearance suggests. One particular example of such a graphic comes to us courtesy of the good folks at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Displayed below, this graphic purports to break down the membership of the U.S. Congress according to population-wide income brackets. On the surface, it’s pretty straightforward, and accurately conveys the very high percentage of sitting Senators and Representatives who fall into the top 10% of the American population in terms of wealth. Now, it’s no secret that there are some pretty wealthy people in Congress, and this graphic clearly demonstrates that. However, it also suggests something else, which astute political observers can probably quickly figure out:

The subtext is twofold, with both parts stemming from the authors’ color choices. First, that Republicans – represented in red on electoral maps with particular commonality since 2000 – are the wealthy, corporatist, out-of-touch representatives of “the 1%,” while Democrats – represented, of course, by the color blue – are the middle-class representatives of average Americans everywhere. Second, and in keeping with the narrative that both Congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama have been pushing at every recent opportunity (link | link | link, just for a few examples), the graphic suggests that Democrats represent a tiny minority in both House and Senate. Neither is true, of course; 29 of the 50 richest members of Congress are Democrats (as are 7 of the top 10), while the Senate is controlled by a Democrat majority. However, though the graphic itself does not purport to address party affiliation in any way, the dual subtexts are clear – and they serve to reinforce the dual narratives pushed from the Oval Office to the media, that Republicans both represent (and are members of) the evil 1%, and control both houses of our bicameral legislature. I personally assume that this is entirely intentional, though it is admittedly an assumption.

Here’s is a database of Congressional wealth. Feel free to search through it on your own, with the caveat that every listing of such wealth is an estimate based on publicly available information.

AT A TIME when so many books on politics, religion, and world events are little more than puffed-up pamphlets which are simultaneously high on hyper-partisanship and low on facts, J. M. Berger’s Jihad Joe, a treatment of the radicalization and actions of American Muslims who have dedicated themselves to “violent jihad” (the author’s chosen term), is a breath of fresh – and troubling – air. Painstakingly researched and heavily footnoted (the author, an investigative journalist, consulted thousands of pages of court records and documents obtained through FOIA request, as well as source material from the making of multiple documentaries on jihadi activities in Bosnia and in the U.S.), Jihad Joe does not couch opinion as fact, but instead makes use of often disparate stories and information sources to weave together a factual account of radicalized American Muslims, from their diverse motivations and processed of radicalization to their actions.

The bulk of Jihad Joe is a lesson in recent history, recounting the motivations and activities of Americans who have “go[ne] to war in the name of Islam” from the siege of Mecca in 1979, where two Americans were involved, to the present. It traces the heady days of the heavily-endorsed (by Islamic leaders and the U.S. alike) jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, when Muslims from America and around the world traveled to fight against the Russian invaders, to the founding of al Qaeda, where an American from Kansas City served as note-taker, through the Bosnian conflict, to the “war on America” that al Qaeda began in the 1990s (which included action in Somalia during the infamous “Black Hawk Down” incident), and which is currently ongoing. Among the major takeaways from this fast, engaging read (it can be comfortably read in a single weekend) is the realization that the radicalization of, and participation in what Berger refers to as “violent jihad” by, American Muslims is far from a new phenomenon.

Though violent jihadis have always made up a very small percentage of American Muslims, the total of 1,400 or more that Berger estimates took part in violent jihad over the last 30 years (p. xi) may come as a shock to those used to considering individuals like Adam Gadahn, John Walker Lindh, Jose Padilla, Nidal Hasan, and Anwar al-Awlaki as individual and unique cases within a largely unprecedented phenomenon. Other key current participants in jihadi and terrorist operations (two terms which, Berger notes, have become “inextricably linked” only in recent years [pp. 203-4]) include – among others – Washington, DC native Daood Syed Gilani, who performed reconnaissance in advance of the 2009 Lashkar e-Taiba attack on Mumbai, India; Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber who attended college in Bridgeport, Connecticut; and al Shabaab member Omar Hammami, a native of Daphne, Alabama native and an erstwhile rapper.

AMONG THE MOST interesting characters in a book full of them (Berger documented nearly 300 American citizen and legal resident jihadis for the book) is Ali Abdelsaoud Mohamed. A former Egyptian military officer who was recruited by the current head of al Qaeda, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Mohamed infiltrated the CIA in the early 1980s before being burned by another asset; after being declared persona non grata by the agency, he worked as a counterterrorism adviser to Egypt Air before, in 1986, successfully emigrating to the United States despite having been placed on a visa watch list as a result of his CIA double-dealing. Once in America, Mohamed successfully enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he was assigned to the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, the home to the Army’s special operations training command, and made assistant director of the Middle East Seminar for the school’s Special Operations and International Studies Department.

A brazen double agent, Mohamed not only regularly walked classified documents and manuals down to the local Kinko’s to make photocopies, but he traveled to Afghanistan while on leave in 1988 to join the jihad against the Soviet Union and to train the mujaheddin in military tactics, and traveled to New Jersey on weekends beginning in 1989 to train more aspiring jihadis. Only a few years later, Mohamed would move to San Francisco and infiltrate the FBI there, offering authentic information with “real intelligence value in exchange for access” (p. 101). Mohamed’s “illustrious terrorist career,” Berger notes, “would span at least three continents and encompass some of al Qaeda’s most deadly terrorist attacks – the 1993 world trade center bombing, the East African Embassy bombings, and perhaps even September 11″ (p. 27). He was finally caught in 1998, when an FBI raid in the wake of the embassy bombings found “a shocking collection of documents that showed just how sophisticated al Qaeda was: manuals describing surveillance techniques and tactics used by government intelligence agencies, instructions for creating improvised explosives, codebooks, coded letters, al Qaeda intelligence reports…., and reports on the activities of U.S. law enforcement” (p. 112).

ALSO NOTEWORTHY IS Berger’s comprehensive treatment of Anwar al-Awlaki, which spans portions of three chapters and chronicles the New Mexico-born cleric from his time at San Diego and Virginia mosques, where Fort Hood shooter and radical Islamist Nidal Hasan attended, to his current Yemen-based role with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Perhaps the most comprehensive and accessible account of Awlaki’s career, Berger follows the radical cleric’s path from carefully considered statements and sermons that at least bore the veneer of moderation, to his full-fledged coming out as a supporter of terrorism in 2009-10, while noting the preponderance of evidence (and the circumstantial nature of that evidence) for his involvement in some capacity with the 9/11 attacks.

Berger rightly criticizes the significantly inflated role in al Qaeda that some media representatives and analysts have assigned Awlaki in declaring him “the next bin Laden” (which, he writes, is “based on a fundamental misunderstanding of each man’s role and capacity” [p. 149]), while carefully pointing out the differences between bin Laden and Awlaki, as well as the unique threat the latter poses: namely, in Berger’s words, that he “attracts lunatics, points them at America, and pushes” (p. 150), with most of the “lunatics” he has directed against America to date having been “miserable failures” (p. 148). The simplicity of that phrase should not be taken as evidence that Berger has underestimated Awlaki’s value to the conduct of violent jihad, not his threat to America; however, he credits the recent publicity that Awlaki has enjoyed – including the 2010 finding that made him the first American citizen to be added to the CIA’s target list – with playing a significant role in increasing the Yemeni-American’s profile and influence within the jihadi community.

As Berger notes, “the end of Awlaki’s story has yet to be written, and the American imam has prove[n] himself full of surprises” (p. 150). Indeed, it has recently come to light that bin Laden himself ultimately turned down a 2010 request by AQAP that the high-profile Awlaki be installed as head of the Yemen-based terrorist organization; further, the ranks of those Americans who have heeded Awlaki’s call to individual jihad against targets within the United States have continued to grow (most recently with Army Private and “peace activist” Naser Abdo), even if they have not improved their success-to-attempt ratio.

IT IS DIFFICULT to come away from Jihad Joe without having acquired a view of domestic radicalization as a problem that is a mile wide or more, even if it is only the proverbial inch deep in relation to the wider American Muslim population. It is likewise difficult not to be palpably frustrated by a law enforcement apparatus that seems, over the course of the last three decades of Americans participating in violent jihad, to have been utterly incapable of getting out of its own way when it came to tracking dangerous individuals and getting them off the streets. The story of Ali Mohamed, mentioned above, is the most dramatic example of this, but a recurring theme within the stories presented in Jihad Joe is an unwillingness or inability on the part of the military, law enforcement, and the nation’s political leadership to properly deal with the topic of religiously-based radicalization. During the Afghanistan conflict in the 1980s, this was largely understandable, as the U.S. was a supporter of the mujahedin, which drew Muslims from around the globe to fight the Soviet Union; however, the precedent set then and in the early 1990s carried over through the last years of the last millennium and beyond, resulting in an America which was unprepared for the guns, bombs, and rage of the violent jihadi minority to be turned from the “near enemy” – those threatening Muslims in Afghanistan and Bosnia – to the “far enemy” here in America, which was more accessible and more “realistic” to native jihadis (p. 77).

A particularly valuable contribution made by Jihad Joe is a survey of our increasingly web-based world’s impact on the radicalization and recruitment of young Muslims to violent jihad, including the phenomenon of “jihobbyists” who interact online with militants, sometimes getting their “fix” that way, and sometimes (in much smaller numbers) progressing in radicalization to the point where they too engage in violent jihad. The Internet has allowed the public at large access to unprecedented information, including radical Islamic literature, audio, and video; partly as a result of this, and partly as a result of the scattering and destruction of terrorist training sites and organizations in the War on Terror, the process of radicalization and engagement in violent jihad has been turned on its head, from the 20th century model of intensive, rigorous, and highly organized religious and military training to the 21st century model of potential radicals in any geographic location taking the “Wikipedia approach to expertise” and declaring themselves religious experts “capable of deciding religious questions that have life-and-death consequences” (p. 201). “Before 9/11 someone who selected himself for jihad usually did so because he was pretty damn tough,” writes Berger. “After 9/11 someone who selected himself was more likely to be a voracious reader” (p. 201).

This new world of individualized violent jihad, in which people anywhere in the world have access both to radical Islamist literature and media and to instructions on the construction and use of a wide range of weaponry, has allowed for violent jihad to be waged with less religious grounding and on a far more scattered – and potentially common – basis. Anwar al-Awlaki is perhaps the most noteworthy of those who have embraced this highly decentralized form of violent jihad, the effects of which can be seen in several incidents across the U.S., from Hasan’s rampage, to attempted attacks by Abdo on Fort Hood, by Faisal Shahzad on Times Square, to Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad’s killing of two soldiers at an Arkansas military recruiting center, among others. Berger points to the small overall number of American Muslims that has a proclivity for violent jihadi activity, and the probability that those inclined to act are also most likely to attract the attention of law enforcement, as dual reasons why there has not been a successful mass casualty attack on American soil since 9/11, though a terrorist attack does not have to produce a high casualty count to be effective. Though this scattering of far less skilled and professional jihadis across a far wider geographic area and target set has resulted in a lower percentage of successful attacks, the more “flooding the zone” that is done, the greater the chance that one or more Golden BBs will strike their targets, killing Americans and ratcheting up the level of national concern over our domestic security (see pp. 210-13).

AT A TIME when domestic radicalization is a hot but poorly understood (and highly partisan) topic, Berger’s book is timelier than ever. Though the New York Times found a significant component of Jihad Joe’s value to be in Berger’s “sharp caution[ing]” against “vilifying Muslim Americans” by “blur[ring] the line between Islam and terrorism” – a correct statement – the greater value it provides is to those seriously interested in the issue, and prevention, of radicalization (a subject the Times reviewer, like too many commentators, appears to have been far less interested in than he was in firing rhetorical bullets at individuals on the other side of the political divide).

Fortunately, Berger approaches this topic as he does the rest of Jihad Joe: soberly, and with an eye only for facts. He is as unafraid to note that “Americans of every race and cultural background have made the decision to take up arms in the name of Islam and strike a blow for what they believed to be justice” (p. 203) as he is to acknowledge the role of some Islamic centers in the radicalization of the earliest American jihadis, and the “meaningful ties to jihadist movements” possessed by organizations like the Council for Muslim-American Relations (CAIR; p. 205). In some cases, the definition of “justice” being observed by these jihadis was somewhat in line with what could be considered mainstream American beliefs and interests, such as the jihadi effort to repulse the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and to protect persecuted Muslims in Bosnia. However, Berger also correctly notes that some Muslims have chosen to engage in violent jihad “for base reasons – anger, hatred of the “other,” desire for power, or an urge toward violence” (p. 203), and provides examples of each within the text. He also demonstrates traits which tend to trend (in varying quantities) across radicalized Muslims, including idealism, violent tendencies, ideology, identity politics, alienation, and fetishization of sex and women (pp. 207-8).

Perhaps chief among the key stops Berger identifies on the road to radicalization is the “urgent feeling that Muslims are under attack,” an “urgent feeling” shared by “virtually all American jihadists” (p. 204). This can be seen in the response to Afghanistan and Bosnia, but it can also be seen elsewhere in the world – including in America. The desire to respond to perceived attacks on Islam and Muslims is directly fed by a victim complex which is “deeply entrenched in mainstream Muslim thought, both at home and abroad” (p. 205). As the author notes in his conclusion, extreme anti-Muslim rhetoric does exist, and it does contribute to the perception that Islam itself is under attack – and therefore to radicalization. “You cannot tell someone, ‘You are my enemy,’ and then blame them for believing you,” he writes (p. 216).

While true, the flip side of this coin, as Berger acknowledges, is the further entrenchment of the perception of America as anti-Muslim which is accomplished not only by Muslim groups like CAIR, but by other organizations which are quick, with or without supporting facts, to declare Americans “Islamaphobic,” to accuse any who mention Islam in relation to a jihadi terrorist an opponent of all Muslims, and to rail against the supposed persecution of mainstream Muslims within the U.S. Besides furthering the perception at home and around the world that Muslims are less welcome in American society than is accurate, such lashing out also, inadvertently or not, causes the vast majority of Muslims who are peaceful to be further associated with the minority that carries out violent attacks in the name of their shared faith. This, in turn, adds to the perpetuation of the cycle of victimization and radicalization, helping fuel the next generation of jihadis.

THE PROBLEM OF the radicalization of American Muslims is far from new, as J. M. Berger recounts with painstaking and engaging detail in Jihad Joe. Though there is no magic formula available to help understand why it is that a subset of Muslims currently seems prone to violent radicalization in larger numbers and in a wider geographic range than members of other major faiths, the noting of trends across those who have been radicalized is valuable for the insight it provides into what may make up a higher-risk individual. Likewise, though there is no silver bullet offered or available to prevent such radicalization, Berger soberly addresses some factors that should be taken into account when considering courses of action to reduce the likelihood that individuals without a proclivity for violence will engage in violent jihad.

Even above these important topics, the primary value of Jihad Joe in my opinion is its well-researched and incredibly accessibly presented history of American involvement in violent jihad. My primary critique of the book’s layout would be to note the value that would be added by a brief glossary of individuals, as a layperson can quickly become lost in a sea of foreign names spanning three decades of history. This may be possible in a second edition of this book; however, Berger does take care to include reminders about who various individuals are when they are encountered for a second time or more within the text, and the book is well-indexed, so the inclusion of such a glossary is more preferable than it is necessary.

Jihad Joe is a book that should be on the reading list of any individual – expert or layperson – who wants a detailed but readable introduction or quick-reference guide to the topic. Further, it would be a valuable addition to university courses on terrorism and American-Islamic relations, as its combination of information, accessibility, and engaging writing make it a unique and valuable contribution to the field.

Jihad Joe by J. M. Berger (ISBN 1597976938; $23.96) is published by Potomac Books.

In a statement this afternoon, President Obama took credit on NATO’s behalf for playing a significant role in this development, and called on Libya to pave a way forward that is “peaceful, inclusive, and just,” and which relies on a peaceful settling of differences rather than on reprisals for justice. Though these admonitions will likely make little difference to those on the ground in North Africa, they are correct: Libya’s future will hinge on how the aftermath of Qaddafi’s overthrow, and its accompanying unifying euphoria, is handled by the citizenry and by those who are currently carrying the guns.

Though I’m admittedly not an expert on Libya itself, I’d like to address a couple issues of note (out of many).

The quick end to what had been a protracted civil war was in part the result of NATO’s increased ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) effort, offensive operations, and the placing of (non-American) boots on the ground. It should be no surprise that more assets and effort provided the largely disorganized, inexperienced rebels with a boost, and the addition of ground forces even in the smallest of numbers provided training (and likely targeting) opportunities that simply weren’t there when NATO’s entire share of the campaign was being conducted from the air. The results of this NATO push have, in turn, led some to question why such allied involvement did not come sooner, and in far greater force, than it originally did (others, as might be expected, have championed Qaddafi’s toppling as vindication of President Obama’s knuckleheaded “leading from behind” strategy). This is a delicate issue, and one which can only be addressed as a hypothetical.

While the timing of the UN’s and NATO’s involvement likely could not have been changed due to the lack of political will for intervention that existed prior to Qaddafi’s move on Benghazi itself, the dictates of the UN resolution, which called not for regime change but for the protection of civilians, put NATO on shaky ground from the beginning. The result was extremely muddled communication about operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector, as well as a lack of clarity about what exactly NATO was trying to accomplish in Libya. Was it solely the protection of civilians, as the UN resolution expressly stated, or was it the removal of Qaddafi’s regime? For the past several months, NATO has appeared to be trying to have it both ways, with the result being – as may be expected – that neither task was being done well. Even a willingness to deploy a force of forward observers (primarily Air Force JTACs, working as members of small special operations teams, such as Special Forces ODAs, the French equivalent of which may have been present later in the conflict) could have made a big difference in target selection and accuracy, as well as in protecting civilians on the ground – the raison d’etre of NATO’s involvement in Libya.

Though a lack of ground involvement by NATO forces for much of this civil war inarguably increased its duration, and arguably led to more civilian deaths than there may have been had ground forces been present (bearing in mind that the UNSCR authorizing action in Libya did not authorize the deployment of an “occupation force), there is a case to be made that the way the civil war played out was positive in its own right (in the macro, of course, and excepting such obvious negatives as the significant civilian deaths that resulted from the fighting, as well as the atrocities committed by members of the rebel coalition). First, five months of fighting allowed members of the coalition, the vast majority of whom were thoroughly green when the battle began, to become relatively seasoned fighters who learned resilience in the heat of combat (if not the discipline and tactical knowledge that accompanies – and defines – professional soldiery). Second, the lengthy battle and the peripheral participation by NATO has allowed the Libyans to own this victory, and to own its aftermath as well. The “Pottery Barn Rule” applies here to a degree, particularly on the part of the European states that provided the most military support for the rebels (and who are the most economically dependent on Libya’s oil resources), but there is a significant difference between steamrolling through a foreign state, toppling its regime, and then asking for thanks while leaving much of the cleanup to its residents, and allowing the domestic opposition to do much of the “breaking” itself. The central role the Libyan opposition played in the overthrow of Qaddafi will hopefully encourage them to take complete ownership of the results and the aftermath, and compel them to build a state in the image of that which they desired under Qaddafi, rather than that in which they lived under Qaddafi.

Finally, the length of the engagement allowed the opposition time to grow from a disorganized hodge-podge of Libyans who were bound only by their opposition to Qaddafi and his murderous regime, into a more organized, cohesive body that was able to promote and adopt more a more strategic outlook on the conflict itself, while also laying a foundation for its aftermath. Had NATO intervened in force, ending Qaddafi’s reign in the “days, not weeks” that President Obama foolishly promised when advising the American people of his decision to take part in this “kinetic military action” a week after the first Tomahawks had been launched, the result may well have been far more chaotic. Instead, months of stalemate provided the succeeding coalition with time to become more of a coalition, and to lay the groundwork for what comes next. Whether that groundwork, and the coalition which laid it while fighting with NATO support to oust Qaddafi, is sufficient to hold up in the aftermath of this war remains to be seen. Below, I discuss in very brief detail some (but by no means all) of the issues which will bear watching during that “what comes next” phase of Libya’s quest for liberation and autonomy.

One of the initial issues to look for going forward in Libya is, as Joshua Tucker termed it, the “Insiders vs. Outsiders” dynamic. This begins in the immediate aftermath of the governmental overthrow: how will the conquering force and the public at large treat regime officials, Qaddafi family members, and those who are viewed as being guilty by association with, or are suspected of supporting, the ousted regime? History provides plenty of examples of how not to handle a transition, with the de-Ba’athification of Iraq serving as a recent example, and others coming from elsewhere in time an geography (thanks to Mr. Dickens’ illustrative writing, the Reign of Terror which capped the events of the French Revolution come to mind as a particularly visual example of how not to handle a popular transition). Will the eager, victorious rebels and their popular supporters spend time, treasure, and what goodwill they’ve presently amassed in an effort to track down and punish those who supported (or who they suspect to have been supporters of) the previous regime, or will they exercise judicious restraint in the aftermath of their success, offering second chances to those who had been on the wrong side of the civil war, and providing due process to those who held out? Additionally, what other scores will be seen as ripe for settling once the common enemy has been completely eliminated?

This underscores the need to create institutions equipped to handle grievances and other legal matters – just one of countless basic state apparati and services which will have to be rebuilt or, more frequently, constructed from scratch in the wake of a government that existed solely for the benefit of the dictator and those in his circle. This could make those who served in the previous regime all the more valuable to the new Libya, as they may be some of the only people in the country with significant relevant experience with management and administrative affairs.

Additionally, including those formerly associated with Qaddafi’s regime could decrease the risk of an armed insurgency conducted by those who are clinging either to their support for the vanquished dictator, or to the belief that their fight against the new regime is literally a fight for their lives. Though the relative ease with which Tripoli appears to have fallen suggests that Qaddafi’s base of support was much smaller than previously thought [Note: Fighting has since picked back up in Tripoli, which suggests that Qaddafi's remaining loyalists are choosing to fight rather than to vanish into society only to fight again another day, which is potentially a positive development] – and therefore that the risk of a meaningful insurgency by Qaddafi loyalists relatively low – a willingness on the part of the new government to include those who were a part of the previous regime, including those who were a part of Qaddafi’s army, is likely preferable to the Iraq-style “de-Ba’athification” that may be more appealing to those who are finishing a five-month fight against the regime and its erstwhile enforcers.

The system of government which follows Qaddafi’s autocratic regime will obviously bear watching. As noted above, the rebel coalition used the months of combat and stalemate to lay the groundwork for this moment: to date, the TNC claims to have done everything from drafting a constitution that places significant stock in the rule of law to planning for the transition of power from Qaddafi’s regime to the new coalition (and the restoring of order that would necessarily accompany that transition). With the removal of the common enemy (now that Qaddafi has been deposed, and ultimately once he is found and captured), will the unity that bound together a rebel coalition consisting of former regime officials, Islamists, and members of various disparate tribes hold (allowing for differences to be worked out diplomatically and parliamentarily, to coin a term), or will violence fracture and fragment those who fought together to remove their longtime oppressor? Additionally, what role will the Islamist faction of this coalition play, and what power will its members wield? There have already been concerns raised about the role of Sharia law in the TNC’s draft constitution, though very little substantiation for those concerns has actually been presented to date; further, this column by jihadi expert Will McCants is very worth reading when considering the political and parliamentary savvy of the Islamists who are successfully riding the wave of the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa, and how that may factor into the coming Libyan government. Another question – of many – will be how representatives of areas that were under regime control to the very last are incorporated into the Transition Council’s coalition government, and what input they have into the proposed constitution and other documents and institutions that are established in the wake of Qaddafi’s departure.

There are many, many more questions to be answered going forward, from the present handling of the security situation in Tripoli, to the humanitarian situation across the country, to whether or not a “stabilization” force is required or requested (or whether such a force turns out, in hindsight, to have been necessary), and on and on. In brief, we should hold out hope for a Libyan move in a positive direction, while also being mindful of the pitfalls that threaten a state and its peoples as they attempt to emerge from the ashes of what will hopefully come to be seen as a past that was far worse than that which followed it.

Bow your heads…

This weekend saw the deadliest day in the almost ten years of America’s war in Afghanistan, as well as the deadliest day in the history of the U.S. Navy’s Special Warfare community, when an Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter and crew carrying Navy SEALs and direct support personnel, Air Force combat controllers and pararescuemen, Afghan commandos and an interpreter went down in Wardak Province in eastern Afghanistan, apparently after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The Associated Press is reporting that the helicopter carried an immediate reaction force that arrived on the scene to support an Army Ranger force that was engaged with the enemy on the ground, and that the crash happened during exfiltration after the fight had ended and the objective secured (ISAF has refuted this, saying that the chopper was shot down on ingress rather than on egress). As with last week’s New Yorker article on the bin Laden raid, people should only believe half at most of what they read or hear about this event and the circumstances surrounding it.

Naturally, the media – who pay attention to special operations once in the bluest of moons, and then proceed to get almost every detail wrong – are hyperventilating even more than usual about this tragedy because the helicopter was carrying operators from “SEAL Team Six,” more correctly known as the Navy Special Warfare Development Group, or “DEVGRU.” They’re also quick to report that no operators lost in this tragedy were participants in the famous May 1 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, as if (1) the tragedy is any less because the operators were different individuals than those, (2) those who took part in the bin Laden raid should be granted immunity from peril and death in perpetuity, and (3) these two missions were the only time SEALs or any other special operators had ever encountered risk or gone outside the wire. Points one and two are self-explanatorily ridiculous, while point three simply reinforces the drive-by nature of today’s media, and their pervasive attitude of treating anything that they didn’t find worthy of reporting at the time as though it never happened.

According to the AP, which cites a NATO source for the statistic, 2,832 special operations raids were carried out between April and July of this year alone. Regardless of its precision, that number should provide a general idea of just how common and routine these missions are for special operations units whose bread and butter is direct action and counterterrorism operations. In other words, just like high-value target (HVT) missions of the type that brought bin Laden to justice are daily occurrences for deployed special operators, so are the risks so horribly seen this weekend encountered on a daily and nightly basis for the entirety of military special operators’ careers. Over the course of ten years of special operations in Afghanistan, our enemies have had plenty of time to observe our tactics and to plan countermeasures. Conspiracy theories aside (such as the Admiral Ackbar-ish media claims that this was a “trap” set by Taliban), it’s entirely unsurprising that enemy fighters would have observed the routes used to infiltrate various sites and set up RPG-wielding fighters at points along them, hoping to catch a troop-carrying aircraft with a well-placed shot.

Additionally, helicopter crashes are far too common overall – let alone in the dangerous topographic and human terrain that make up Afghanistan – having claimed the lives of a significant number of crews and soldiers/sailors/airmen/Marines alike (I frequently say that I’ve lost more friends and former colleagues to helicopter crashes than to enemy fire, though this case appears to qualify as both). The eye-opening aspect of this incident is the sheer number of deaths, not the fact that a helicopter was apparently taken down while approaching what was evidently a hot LZ. It is interesting that the helicopter and crew were conventional, rather than from the 160 Special Operations Aviation Regiment that normally transports and supports Tier One special mission units, and the possibility – as yet unconfirmed – that the chopper and crew may have been from the Army National Guard raises further questions about the effect that an underpowered aircraft and a crew lacking experience in this type of direct action mission may have had on its tragic result. However, at this time this is simply an aspect of the case that bears watching and consideration; there is no evidence at this point that would support casting aspersions on chopper and crew for the tragedy that befell the military community as a whole this weekend. Evidently among the other augmentees on the mission were SEALs from one of the “white” Teams, which is not at all uncommon; the units the Air Force special operators came from have not been reported, though the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, which is incorporated into JSOC, usually provides the combat controllers and pararescuemen that operate as members of the command’s special mission units.

In their effort to conform to the scoop-outweighs-precision culture that our 24 hour media have created, numerous outlets ran to press and television without most (if any) facts about this incident. It took a full day for the public to have access to a narrative with any level of accuracy at all, an account by Navy Times reporter Sean D. Naylor which still stands as one of the best accounts available of the incident, albeit a brief and preliminary one. The rest of the story will eventually come out, likely in bits and pieces over the course of days, weeks, and months, though it will as usual be augmented with heavy doses of media chattering and speculation, most of which comes from a place of total ignorance on the subject.

In the interest of not contributing to that cacophany of ignorant chatter, I won’t offer any other up front comment on his situation, though I’ll be happy to update this post in response to questions posted in the comments, provided (1) I know the answer, and (2) doing so doen’t violate OPSEC in any way. I’ve also been addressing some questions and issues on Twitter since Saturday.

JE

CH-47 Chinook helicopter preparing for a night Air Assault in 2007. Photograph first published by Jeff Emanuel, September 3, 2007.

A second terrorist attack on soldiers stationed at Fort Hood, Texas in under two years was discovered last week, and its plotter, Private First Class Naser Jason Abdo, was arrested before the attack could be carried out. The latter fact, of course, differentiates this plot from the successful attack carried out by Major Nidal Hasan in November 2009, when the Army officer and Islamist radical gunned down thirteen people – including a pregnant woman – and wounded thirty-two more, while yelling “Allahu Akbar!” after receiving counseling and religious justification for the attack from the Yemen-based, American-born al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

Abdo was formally charged in federal court Friday with possession of an “unregistered destructive device.” The plot that was foiled last week, allegedly inspired by Hasan’s rampage (Abdo reportedly yelled “Nidal Hasan, Fort Hood 2009!” in court Friday), involved attacking a popular (and still unspecified) off-post restaurant with pipe (pressure cooker) bombs, and then using a handgun to shoot any who survived the blast. According to law enforcement officials, the attack was planned for Thursday – the day after Abdo was arrested. His next appearance in court is reportedly scheduled for 2 pm on August 4, at the Waco Federal Courthouse.

This is an interesting case for many reasons, and Abdo is an interesting central figure; as such, it deserves significant attention from the public, counterterrorism experts, and the media. For our purposes, Abdo’s story begins last year. After enlisting in the Army as an infantryman and being assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Abdo decided on the eve of his unit’s deployment to Afghanistan that he was a “conscientious objector” (CO) whose Muslim faith was incompatible with service in the military in general, or with combat in particular. “I [had been] under the impression that I could serve both the U.S. Army and my God simultaneously,” he told CNN in one of several interviews with major news media outlets that highlighted his claim of conscientious objector status last fall.

During the period between his enlistment and infantry training, and the completion of the pre-deployment readiness process, Abdo said his impression changed. “I don’t believe that Islam allows me to operate in any kind of warfare at all, including the U.S. military and any war it partakes in. I believe that our first duty as a Muslim is to serve God.” He told ABC that “a Muslim is not allowed to participate in an Islamicly [sic] unjust war. Any Muslim who knows his religion or maybe takes into account what his religion says can find out very clearly why he should not participate in the US military.” ABC, in turn, reported that Abdo sought to dedicate his life to combating “Islamophobia” and serving as a vocal advocate of Islam as a peaceful religion, while other news organizations also provided Abdo with a platform and aided him in becoming a face of an Islamic peace movement that is woefully lacking in public participants, and anti-war groups championed Abdo and his story as the “missing story of a Muslim peacemaker” (more discussion of Islam’s perception problem below). “I want to use my experience to show Muslims how we can lead our lives,” he told ABC, “and to try and put a good positive spin out there that Islam is a good, peaceful religion. We’re not all terrorists, you know?”

“Free Naser Abdo” Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts, as well as a personal website, were established to support Abdo’s CO application and to take donations for his “legal defense fund” (content has not been added to these accounts since last year, and the personal website is no longer online [404 error]), and the leftist organization Courage to Resist highlighted Abdo as an exemplification of “the missing story of Muslim peacemaking.” After initially being recommended against, Abdo’s conscientious objector application was approved in May of this year, and he was put on the path toward discharge from the U.S. Army. However, his discharge was delayed for an unrelated issue: child pornography (reportedly 34 pictures on his government-issued computer), for which Abdo had been under investigation since November, and with which he was charged in May and arraigned June. His CO discharge was put on hold pending his court-martial. Then, after the four-day 4th of July weekend, Abdo failed to return to duty at Fort Campbell, instead going AWOL (absent without leave) from the post until turning up in Killeen, Texas this week, “in possession of a large quantity of ammunition, weapons and a bomb inside a backpack.”

Abdo’s arrest came about as the result of an alert gun store clerk and the child pornography charge, for which a military warrant had been issued. Greg Ebert, a retired Killeen policeman working at the gun store Guns Galore (infamous for being the place Nidal Hasan purchased the firearms used in the November 2009 shooting spree), said Abdo’s arrival at the store in a taxi, combined with his “rude” attitude and questions which suggested he wasn’t familiar with some of the explosives he was purchasing, combined to raise his suspicions. “He stands here and asks the manager, ‘what is smokeless powder?’” said Ebert. “Well, my God, if you don’t know what it is, why would you buy six pounds of it?” Ebert called the police to report his suspicions (“We felt uncomfortable with his overall demeanor and the fact he didn’t know what the hell he was buying,” Ebert said; “I thought it prudent to contact the local authorities, which I did”), and Abdo was arrested at 2pm on July 27 at a traffic stop.

As J.M. Berger has briefly noted, several aspects of this arrest suggest that the authorities – federal, local, and military – were entirely unaware of Abdo’s plot, and therefore that his attack would have been successful to at least some degree had he ultimately decided to carry it out. The arrest was made during a traffic stop by the Killeen Police Department, after Ebert alerted authorities to Abdo’s suspicious behavior and questions. Abdo was taken into custody not because of his firearms purchase or because of intelligence about his planned attack, but because of an outstanding warrant on the child pornography charge which had been filed against him earlier this year. It was only during a search of his room at America’s Best Value Inn that authorities found the materials he planned to use in the attack: “a .40 caliber handgun, ammunition, …as well as bomb making components, including six bottles of smokeless gunpowder, shotgun shells, shotgun pellets, two clocks, two spools of auto wire, an electric drill and two pressure cookers,” and “Jihadist materials.” Just what the latter consisted of remains to be seen, th0ugh Fox News quoted a “counterterrorism source” as saying that Abdo’s bomb-making materials and methodology came “straight out of Inspire [al Qaeda's English-language magazine] and an Al Qaeda explosives course manual,” and the New York Times reports that Abdo had in his possession the Inspire article “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom.”

The question of whether Abdo was actually affiliated with al Qaeda has obviously come up. While it is important to note that a significant amount of information remains unknown and unreleased, if Abdo was in fact affiliated with al Qaeda, it seems likely that to have been a recent development – or, at least, one which was unrelated to his initial decision to enlist in the U.S. Army. The chief justification for this assertion is the target and methods chosen by Abdo for the attack, none of which required Army access or affiliation to obtain or carry out: he purchased weapons and ammunition from a civilian gun store, uniforms with Fort Hood-based unit designation patches from an off-post surplus store, and was targeting a restaurant located outside Fort Hood, but which is heavily trafficked by soldiers and post employees.

Also of note is the apparent method of attack planned by Abdo: explosives, followed by small arms used to kill any survivors of the blasts. This suggests motivation to leave behind a significant body count, but, interestingly, not a larger number of wounded. Abdo reportedly “admitted that he planned to assemble two bombs in the hotel room using gun powder and shrapnel packed into pressure cookers to detonate inside an unspecified restaurant frequented by soldiers from Fort Hood,” but his plan to follow up with small arms would seem to negate the impact of the shrapnel as a maiming agent. This intent to kill rather than kill and maim may suggest inexperience or a lack of clarity of purpose, or it may simply demonstrate Abdo’s intent to make a statement by killing every one of his victims. More information on his intent and his methodology will come out as this investigation progresses, and it will bear watching.

Even more relevant to Abdo’s case is his Islamic faith. This is not simply because he is yet another Muslim who has allegedly attempted to carry out a terrorist attack on the West, but because it is readily apparent that Abdo defined himself in large part by that faith. He initially identified himself as “a soldier who was a Muslim,” but in a year or less appears to have swung like a pendulum to two opposite, radically extreme points: first the claim of total pacifism, based on his Islamic faith, and then the attempt to commit mass murder of Americans, again apparently based on his Islamic faith. The pendulum swing is severe enough that Abdo went from penning an essay on the first anniversary of Nidal Hasan’s terrorist attack on Fort Hood in which he said the attack was “against his beliefs as a Muslim and were ‘an act of aggression by a man and not by Islam,’” to citing Hasan as an inspiration for his decision to attack Hood-based soldiers and shouting “Nidal Hasan – Fort Hood 2009!” while in court last week. Abdo’s attorney in the child pornography case has (perhaps predictably) distanced himself from his former client’s actions, saying “Abdo was ’stressed and anxious’ about the child pornography charges but “I didn’t see any indication he would do anything like this. … I would not have taken the case if I had any indication of this kind of mindset.’”

Another aspect of this case that will bear watching is who Abdo was in contact with during this period of radicalization, and whether his contacts were face to face (i.e., on post or in the greater Fort Campbell/Clarksville community) or online. The latter could obviously include a much wider geographic area, including perhaps Awlaki or someone similarly prone to instigation, incitement, and religious justification of terrorism. It is worth noting that Abdo reportedly “mentioned the name of al-Awlaki” at the time of his arrest, though again, what this means remains to be seen.

The ABC report which lauded Abdo as a face of nonviolent, peaceful Islam noted that he is the son of “a Muslim father and a nondenominational Christian mother,” a statement which on its face suggested that his father may have been the more serious and devout of the two, though brief histories of Abdo’s parents do not appear to support devout religiosity of any kind. Abdo’s father Jamal, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship and a convicted felon, was deported to Jordan from the United States in February 2010 – before ABC and the other news organizations featured his son Naser. Jamal Abdo was already a registered sex offender in the 1990s, and was caught in a 2003-4 Garland, Texas sting when he solicited an undercover police officer posing as a 15 year old girl. He spent 2006 through 2009 in a Texas state prison for solicitation of a minor, before being released into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and subsequently being deported to Jordan. Between 2001 and 2002, Abdo’s mother Morlan was convicted of two theft charges, three drug charges, and one count of prostitution, for which she either served time on probation or in jail.

Abdo himself apparently decided to commit to Islam at the age of 17. Perhaps self-taught in his Islamic faith, at least to a degree, Abdo may already have been a prime candidate for an “identity crisis,” which appears to have been what played out over the course of the last year. ABC additionally noted that Abdo did not make use of the Imam stationed at Fort Campbell, but instead relied on “his personal circle of Islamic advisers,” saying of military Imams, “In my experience, they don’t know their religion. They don’t know their faith.” Clearly Abdo thought that he did know true Islam, though once again it appears that his understanding of what it entailed shifted radically between fall 2010 and summer 2011. An interesting tidbit from the New York Times:

“Preparing for deployment made me investigate my religion,” he said. He said he had decided that “the price of refusing to go is much lower than facing my God,” adding that the only war justified by God is a just war. “If there is no divine inspiration, it is murder,” he said in the interview, one of several he had given to news organizations after he sought conscientious objector status.”

It remains to be seen just what and who influenced Abdo during his transition from Muslim infantryman who thought that fighting in the Army would “bring justice to those who were giving Islam a bad name,” to self-proclaimed conscientious objector who showed “a firm and fixed objection to participation in war in any form,” to would-be terrorist, but it seems clear that his view of “war justified by God” – something he believed did not characterize the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and which as late as 2010 did not include Nidal Hasan’s Fort Hood rampage – did include the attack on American civilians and servicemembers for which he was in the final stages of preparing when he was arrested last week.

The Islamic/Islamist aspect of Abdo’s case will remain controversial, and it remains to be seen how much it will factor into media reports about the case (more on media and Abdo below). Islam’s “perception problem” in the West is not a new topic or issue, but it is one which deserves both scrutiny and discussion in light of recent events. Killeen’s KCEN TV has quoted Baylor University Islamic Studies Professor Christian vanGorder as saying that Abdo’s terror plot shouldn’t be “linked to Islam.” Said vanGorder:

“The holy Quran does teach Muslims that they have the right to defend themselves if and when they’re attacked,” he says, “but the Quran also teaches that it’s forbidden to initiate any type of aggressive violence. …When we see these types of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Islam, they don’t represent Islam any more than say for example a Christian would feel represented by people killing in the name of Christ.”

This is a timely statement given last week’s tragedy in Norway, which saw Anders Behring Breivik – who blew up a government building and cold-bloodedly gunned down several dozen unarmed young people at a youth political retreat out of self-proclaimed nationalism – being associated with Christianity, and his motives with rightist, xenophobic ideology, in several hundred news reports (a quick Lexis/Nexis search of “Breivik” and “Christian” returns 398 results), including on the front page of the New York Times. By contrast, attempted attacks like Faisal Shahzad’s planned Times Square bombing, which was linked to the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Taliban, are repeatedly reported as having their “motives shrouded in mystery.” Shahzad is just one example of many in which media reports downplay the relation of Islamic actors’ actions to their faith and to their relationships with Islamist organizations like the Taliban, al Qaeda, and others.

This unwillingness to identify Islamists’ successful and unsuccessful terrorist attacks on western targets with the religion in whose name they are being carried out, combined with “Islamic Rights” groups like CAIR and like-minded individuals’ first reactions to terrorist attacks being not a condemnation of the act, but a warning to the greater public not to accuse or discriminate against Muslims, and the media’s apparent eagerness to associate the terms “Christian” and “right” with malevolent actors, has only further intensified the distrust of media and Muslims alike on the part of a growing segment of the American population which sees the nonviolent majority of Muslims as tacitly approving the actions of their radical co-religionists (two examples of many here and here).

The perception problem this creates is worsened by actions like last week’s effort to cast blame on analysts and experts like Will McCants who, simply doing their jobs, reported – with ample caveats – claims of responsibility for the Norway attack being posted on jihadi forums like Shmukh. The attempt to reverse the perceived effects of reporting on the Islamist connection to the Norway attacks that was claimed by Islamists themselves resulted in a whiplash-inducing 180° that did nearly as much damage to the public view of the media and “anti-Islamophobia” organizations and individuals as the other aforementioned attempts obfuscate the Islamic connection between terror attacks and those who carry them out.

One more aspect of the Abdo case that will bear watching is the media take on it – both the reporting and the self analysis. Whether it was intentional or not, the decision by CNN, ABC, and several other news outlets to feature Naser Abdo last year tied their credibility and their reputational fates to his. Their action helped make Naser Abdo one of the faces of non-radical, peaceful Islam – a fact which is very relevant to the story going forward, as this representative of the peaceful nature of Islam now stands accused of trying to carry out a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Additionally, they neglected to note (whether because they didn’t do their due diligence at the time, or because they found it un-noteworthy) that Abdo’s Jordanian/Palestinian father had been deported from the U.S. only months before. A responsible fourth estate would devote significant private and public time to introspection, to a reconsideration of what aspects of their stories and those featured in them are relevant and should be disclosed, and to honest investigation of the danger of radicalization, as well as of whether – and if so, how – they were hoodwinked into putting an aspiring terrorist on their air as the face of peaceful Islam (as noted above, I see Abdo’s radicalization more as a process – albeit an accelerated one – that had not been completed at the time he was preaching Islamic peace on American news networks).

The “anti-war” site Courage to Resist, which as noted above featured Abdo as the embodiment of “the missing story of Muslim peacemaking,” has already (and predictably) stumbled out of the gate, saying they are “very concerned that PFC Abdo’s arrest will be unfairly used against other Muslim military service-members and would-be Conscientious Objectors,” while the leftist organization Iraq Veterans Against the War, which also promoted Abdo last year, is now trying to disavow any association with him. It also remains to be seen what groups like the Fellowship for Reconciliation, which highlighted Abdo for his “deepened commitment to peace in Islam” and requested public support for him, will do in the wake of his arrest, but based on past actions it seems likely that the wider response to Abdo’s radicalization and attempted terrorist attack will not be an increase in media outlets and those who purport to represent Islam condemning his and others’ terrorist actions, or engaging in introspection, but instead a digging-in of their position that “Islamophobia” must be preemptively condemned – an action which, if taken, will simply exacerbate Islam’s “perception problem,” further widening the gap between mainstream Muslims and many in the West and further oiling and fueling the machine of radicalization.

Note: The intro music to the segment is 2:00 long, so you may wish to skip to the two minute mark before playing.