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A groundbreaking history of how the decades-long war on terror changed virtually every aspect of American life, from the erosion of citizenship down to the cars we bought and TV we watched—by an acclaimed n+1 writer“Richard Beck, like many people alive today, has spent his adult life living in the shadow of 9/11, and Homeland is a devastating inquiry into the new world that day created.”—Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of AmericaA PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEARFor twenty years after September 11, the war on terror was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. With all of the military violence occurring overseas even as the threat of sudden mass death permeated life at home, Americans found themselves living in two worlds at the same time. In one of them, soldiers fought overseas so that nothing at home would have to change at all. In the other, life in the United States took on all kinds of unfamiliar shapes, changing people's sense of themselves, their neighbors, and the strangers they sat next to on airplanes. In Homeland, Richard Beck delivers a gripping exploration of how much the war changed life in the United States and explains why there is no going back. Though much has been made of the damage that Donald Trump did to the American political system, Beck argues that it was the war on terror that made Trump's presidency possible, fueling and exacerbating a series of crises that all came to a head with his rise to power. Homeland brilliantly isolates and explores four key issues: the militarism that swept through American politics and culture; the racism and xenophobia that boiled over in much of the country; an economic crisis that, Beck convincingly argues, connects the endurance of the war on terror to at least the end of the Second World War; and a lack of accountability that produced our “impunity culture”—the government-wide inability or refusal to face consequences that has transformed how the U.S. government relates to the people it governs. To see American life through the lens of Homeland's sweeping argument is to understand the roots of our current condition. In its startling analysis of how the war on terror hollowed out the very idea of citizenship in the United States, Beck gives the most compelling explanation yet offered for the ongoing disintegration of America's social, political, and cultural fabric.

This volume contains nine chapters that focus on terrorism. Chapter One deals with the scourge of terrorism in the society of information. Chapter Two discusses the cutting-edge role of technology in the struggle against terrorism. Chapter Three focuses on the ethical limitations of technologies, when they are subordinated to the ideals of zero-risk society. Chapter Four continues a much deeper discussion ignited in the author's previous book, The rise of Thana Captialism and Tourism (2017 Routledge). Chapter Five deals with HBO Saga, Westworld, a futurist and dystopian world where Robots (hosts) are subjected to torture, violence and even sadist practices by the hands of rich tourists (guests). The formula in “Robots We Must Trust” is placed under the critical lens of scrutiny. Chapter Six explores the philosophical dilemmas of the lone-wolf as well as its psychological motivations. Chapter Seven deals with the long-lasting effects of terrorism in western day-to-day life as well as our ways of understanding the alterity, with a focus on the HBO Saga Westworld. Chapter Eight further interrogates the epistemological dilemma of terrorism. Lastly, Chapter Nine explores the future of tourism in light of recent technological innovations, contrasted with the realities of the global risk of international terrorism.

After two decades and trillions of dollars, the United States'fight against terrorism has achieved mixed results. Despite the vast resources and attention expended since 9/11, terrorism has increased in many societies that have been caught up in the war on terror. Why have U.S. policies been unable to stem the tide of violence?Harrison Akins reveals how the war on terror has had the unintended consequence of increasing domestic terrorism in U.S. partner states. He examines the results of U.S.-backed counterterrorism operations that targeted al-Qaeda in peripheral regions of partner states, over which their central governments held little control. These operations often provoked a violent backlash from local terrorist groups, leading to a spike in retaliatory attacks against partner states. Senior U.S. officials frequently failed to grasp the implications of the historical conflict between central governments and the targeted peripheries. Instead, they exerted greater pressure on partner states to expand their counterterrorism efforts. This exacerbated the underlying conditions that drove the escalating attacks, trapping these governments in a deadly cycle of tit-for-tat violence with local terrorist groups. This process, Akins demonstrates, accounts for the lion's share of the al Qaeda network's global terrorist activity since 2001.Drawing on extensive primary sources—including newly declassified documents, dozens of in-depth interviews with leading government officials in the United States and abroad, and statistical analysis—The Terrorism Trap is a groundbreaking analysis of why counterterrorism has backfired.

Some argued it would save the U.S. after 9/11. Instead, the CIA's enhanced interrogation program came to be defined as American torture. The Forever Prisoner, a primary source for the recent HBO Max film directed by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney, exposes the full story behind the most divisive CIA operation in living memory.Six months after 9/11, the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah and announced he was number three in Al Qaeda. Frantic to thwart a much-feared second wave of attacks, the U.S. rendered him to a secret black site in Thailand, where he collided with retired Air Force psychologist James Mitchell. Arguing that Abu Zubaydah had been trained to resist interrogation and was withholding vital clues, the CIA authorized Mitchell and others to use brutal “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would have violated U.S. and international laws had not government lawyers rewritten the rulebook.In The Forever Prisoner, Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy recount dramatic scenes inside multiple black sites around the world through the eyes of those who were there, trace the twisted legal justifications, and chart how enhanced interrogation, a key “weapon” in the global “War on Terror,” metastasized over seven years, encompassing dozens of detainees in multiple locations, some of whom died. Ultimately that war has cost 8 trillion dollars, 900,000 lives, and displaced 38 million people—while the U.S. Senate judged enhanced interrogation was torture and had produced zero high-value intelligence. Yet numerous men, including Abu Zubaydah, remain imprisoned in Guantanamo, never charged with any crimes, in contravention of America's ideals of justice and due process, because their trials would reveal the extreme brutality they experienced.Based on four years of intensive reporting, on interviews with key protagonists who speak candidly for the first time, and on thousands of previously classified documents, The Forever Prisoner is a powerful chronicle of a shocking experiment that remains in the headlines twenty years after its inception, even as US government officials continue to thwart efforts to expose war crimes.Silenced by a CIA pledge to keep him imprisoned and incommunicado forever, Abu Zubaydah speaks loudly through these pages, prompting the question as to whether he and others remain detained not because of what they did to us but because of what we did to them.

An inside look at al-Qaeda from 9/11 to the death of its founder—told through the words of Bin Laden and his closest circle As seen on 60 Minutes “A comprehensive, meticulously constructed and eye-opening look at bin Laden as husband, father and leader-in-hiding.... An engaging and persuasive read.”—Karen J. Greenberg, Washington Post “Never less than gripping.... [Offers] an extraordinary insight into the inner workings of al-Qaeda, both before and after 9/11, and lays bare the terrorist organisation's closely guarded plans, ambitions and frustrations.”—Saul David, Sunday Telegraph Usama Bin Laden's greatest fear was not capture or death but the exposure of al-Qaeda's secrets. At great risk to themselves and the entire mission, the U.S. Special Operations Forces, who carried out the Abbottabad raid that killed Bin Laden, took an additional eighteen minutes to collect Bin Laden's hard drives and thereby expose al-Qaeda's secrets. In this groundbreaking book, Nelly Lahoud dives into Bin Laden's files and meticulously distills the nearly 6,000 pages of Arabic private communications. For the first time, al-Qaeda's closely guarded secrets are laid bare, shattering misconceptions and revealing how and what Bin Laden communicated with his associates, his plans for future attacks, and al-Qaeda's hostility toward countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan. Lahoud presents firsthand accounts of al-Qaeda from 9/11 until the elimination of Bin Laden, in his own words and those of his family and closest associates.

The state bounds politics: it constructs and enforces boundaries that separate what it controls from what lies outside its domain. However, states face a variety of threats that cross and challenge their geographical and conceptual boundaries. Transnational violent actors that transcend these boundaries also defy the state's claims to political authority and legitimacy.Mark Shirk examines historical and contemporary state responses to transnational violence to develop a new account of the making of global orders. He considers a series of crises that plagued the state system in different eras: golden-age piracy in the eighteenth century, anarchist “propagandists of the deed” at the turn of the twentieth, and al-Qaeda in recent years. Shirk argues that states redraw conceptual boundaries, such as between “international” and “domestic,” to make sense of and defeat transnational threats. In response to forms of political violence that challenged boundaries, states developed creative responses that included new forms of control, surveillance, and rights. As a result, these responses gradually made and transformed the state and global order. Shirk draws on extensive archival research and interviews with policy makers and experts, and he explores the implications for understandings of state formation. Combining rich detail and theoretical insight, Making War on the World reveals the role of pirates, anarchists, and terrorists in shaping global order.

A New York Times Critics'Top Book of 2021'An impressive combination of diligence and verve, deploying Ackerman's deep stores of knowledge as a national security journalist to full effect. The result is a narrative of the last 20 years that is upsetting, discerning and brilliantly argued.'—The New York Times'One of the most illuminating books to come out of the Trump era.'—New York MagazineAn examination of the profound impact that the War on Terror had in pushing American politics and society in an authoritarian directionFor an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, the era pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance; weakened the rule of law through indefinite detentions; sanctioned torture; and manipulated the truth about it all. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized feature of American politics and national security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home, as the summer of 2020 showed. A politically divided and economically destabilized country turned the War on Terror into a cultural—and then a tribal—struggle. It began on the ideological frontiers of the Republican Party before expanding to conquer the GOP, often with the acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today's nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era. And that door remains open. Reign of Terror shows how these developments created an opportunity for American authoritarianism and gave rise to Donald Trump. It shows that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. By the end of his tenure, the war had metastasized into a bitter, broader cultural struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it. Reign of Terror is a pathbreaking and definitive union of journalism and intellectual history with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on civic life.

This book analyzes the paradox that despite being a national security state, Pakistan has become even more insecure in the post-Cold War era. It provides an in-depth analysis of Pakistan's foreign and security policies and their implications for the overall state and society.The book identifies the immediate security challenges to Pakistan and charts the distinctive evolution of Pakistan's national security state in which the military elite became the dominant actor in the political sphere of government during and after the Cold War period. By examining the national security state, militarization, democracy and security, proxy wars, and the hyper-military-industrial complex, the author illustrates how the vanguard role of the military created considerable structural, sociopolitical, economic, and security problems in Pakistan. Furthermore, the author argues that the mismatch between Pakistan's national security stance and the transformed security environment has been facilitated and sustained by the embedded interests of the country's military-industrial complex.A critical evaluation of the role of the military in the political affairs of the government and how it has created structural problems for Pakistan, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of South Asian Politics and Security, South Asian Foreign and Security Policy, International Relations, Asian Security, and Cold War Studies.

Americans responded to the deadly terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, with an outpouring of patriotism, though all were not united in their expression. A war-based patriotism inspired millions of Americans to wave the flag and support a brutal War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, while many other Americans demanded an empathic patriotism that would bear witness to the death and suffering surrounding the attack. Twenty years later, the war still simmers, and both forms of patriotism continue to shape historical understandings of 9/11's legacy and the political life of the nation. John Bodnar's compelling history shifts the focus on America's War on Terror from the battlefield to the arena of political and cultural conflict, revealing how fierce debates over the war are inseparable from debates about the meaning of patriotism itself. Bodnar probes how honor, brutality, trauma, and suffering have become highly contested in commemorations, congressional correspondence, films, soldier memoirs, and works of art. He concludes that Americans continue to be deeply divided over the War on Terror and how to define the terms of their allegiance--a fissure that has deepened as American politics has become dangerously polarized over the first two decades of this new century.

The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 were a local event that nevertheless elicited strong reactions throughout the world. The unprecedented strike on the continental United States, its instantaneous broadcast, and its global stakes placed 9/11 at the centre of ideological debates that still rage today. The impact was especially felt in France.Chronic Aftershock looks at the significance of 9/11 in France as documented by prominent politicians, public intellectuals, journalists, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, novelists, and conspiracy theorists. In his comprehensive account Jean-Philippe Mathy addresses the rise of a small but influential group of self-described “anti-anti-Americans” who shared the views of American neoconservatives in support of regime change in Iraq; the media controversy involving French Evangelical churches'response to the religious views of George W. Bush; the widespread “I am Charlie” movement following the attacks against the offices of Charlie Hebdo; and the unending French national debate on the place of the Muslim community in a secular, universalist republic. The book also considers the November 2015 Islamist attacks in Paris, often described as “the French September 11.”Combining approaches from intellectual history, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Chronic Aftershock explores the legacy of 9/11 and recent instances of transatlantic divide to provide an innovative and timely assessment of the radicalized violence that remains a major threat in today's world.

This book examines the ‘war on terror'and radicalization from an ontological, non-state centric perspective. Since 9/11, criminology has developed in its study of terrorism, utilising alternative non-state centric frameworks to uncover and make visible state-initiated harm. Although progress has been achieved, criminology has continued to privilege the state, thereby failing to uncover forms of state crime and how such crimes facilitate radicalization and terrorism. Ahmed aims to rectify this gap by demonstrating how crimes of the state have contributed to the existence of Islamist-inspired terrorism and the emergence of global Jihadist organisations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS.The ‘War on Terror'abandons the dominant socially-constructed discourse and application of the ‘war on terror'and instead favours a grounded approach whereby actors, actions and consequences are analysed according to the risk they represent. Ahmed achieves this groundedapproach through situating state practices in international human rights law and international humanitarian law. Through documenting the intersectionality of these practices with radicalization in the emergence of global Jihadist organisations, the book demonstrates how state crimes contribute to terrorism. Although the book sits at the intersections of critical criminology, state crime, international/transnational crime, it is relevant to all disciplines that are concerned with state crime, terrorism and radicalization.

Providing a study of US policy towards Afghanistan from the Soviet intervention of 1979 to the exit of US/International Security Assistance Forces combat troops at the end of 2014, this book examines how the United States'construction of its interests has shaped its long-term involvement with that country.Recognising that there is a particular focus on the United States'representation and justification of its Afghan policy, this work demonstrates how the intertwining of language and social practices provided policymakers'with a shared meaning on selling policy. In this way, Washington justified its practices – including covert operations, diplomacy, counterterrorism and war – as essential in ensuring that ‘good'prevailed over ‘evil'. Teitler's argument contrasts with the existing literature, which predominantly argues the United States has been motivated by self-interest in its dealings with Afghanistan. Teitler deploys a constructivist approach to elucidate US–Afghan relations in this critical historical juncture.Through its particular use of constructivism, the work aims to contribute more broadly to international relations and US foreign policy scholarship. This book will be of interest to academics and students in various fields, including US foreign and security policy, international relations theory, the Greater Middle East, Afghanistan, American exceptionalism, constructivism and discourse analysis.

This book historically maps and examines the evolving, contemporary geostrategic and geopolitical imperatives of the United States within Pakistan and the South Asian region, especially after September 11, 2001. It offers a detailed and theoretical account of the rapidly changing context of US foreign policy towards Pakistan after 2001. The history of the US-Pakistan relationship has been a complex and inscrutable mix of cooperation and conflict has turned even more challenging after 9/11. This book covers the latest developments and relevant themes from world politics as it discusses the impact of the unprecedented rise in religious extremism in Pakistan, stemming from the US War on Terror as well as Pakistan's economic vulnerability and military dictatorship, India's offer to support the US in its war in Afghanistan, Pakistan's nuclear capability, and the US administration's decision to end financial aid to Pakistan. The study highlights the fact that, from the receding of British influence in the region through the Cold War and post-Cold War phases to the post-9/11 period, US-South Asia policy has been informed by the theoretical paradigm of the grand strategy of primacy.This topical book will be useful to scholars and researchers of international relations, politics, political studies, strategic and defence studies, security and peace studies, foreign policy, area studies, and South Asian studies. It will also interest diplomats, politicians, policymakers, security experts, journalists, and think tanks interested in India, Pakistan, and the United States on issues of international politics, world affairs, and terrorism.

This book offers new insights into the excesses and uncanniness of the ‘War on Terror'via an engagement with the pleasures of risk.Engaging with the unconscious, the excess, the uncanny and the spectacular dimensions of the ‘War on Terror'– as made evident, for example, in the 2012 London Olympic Games and the 2013 manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers – leads this book to probe the so-called order of things that has made this war intelligible in both mainstream and critical approaches to Security Studies and International Relations. Specifically, this book brings to light and theorizes the obscene pleasures of the ‘War on Terror'and its supplementary precautionary risk logic. Coming to grips with this (i.e., the pleasures of risk), ultimately via an engagement with critical psychoanalytic theory, leads this book to argue that we may be other than we think we are within critical International Relations (IR) traditions. Furthermore, albeit without discounting the madness, if not desolation, of the present (extending from the ‘War on Terror'to the politics of Brexit and Donald Trump), it suggests there may be some relief in that yet.This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, critical security studies, political theory and International Relations broadly.

America's war on terror is widely defined by the Afghanistan and Iraq fronts. Yet, as this book demonstrates, both the international campaign and the new ways of fighting that grew out of it played out across multiple fronts beyond the Middle East. Maria Ryan explores how secondary fronts in the Philippines, sub-Saharan Africa, Georgia, and the Caspian Sea Basin became key test sites for developing what the Department of Defense called'full spectrum dominance': mastery across the entire range of possible conflict, from conventional through irregular warfare. Full Spectrum Dominance is the first sustained historical examination of the secondary fronts in the war on terror. It explores whether irregular warfare has been effective in creating global stability or if new terrorist groups have emerged in response to the intervention. As the U.S. military, Department of Defense, White House, and State Department have increasingly turned to irregular capabilities and objectives, understanding the underlying causes as well as the effects of the quest for full spectrum dominance become ever more important. The development of irregular strategies has left a deeply ambiguous and concerning global legacy.

The opening chapter helps readers to understand the ethnocentric discourses revolving around the would-be supremacy of the US and the UK –and Anglo-Saxons- over other cultures. This ethnocentrism, we probe, flourishes just after 9/11 and the War on Terror. The following chapter centers on a philosophical discussion that relates the international geopolitics with the sociology of terrorism. One can kill terrorists, one can take back the land they conquered, but how does one kill an idea? The authors delve into precisely that matter and attempt to demonstrate that, although winning the war on terror in a proper, physical sense, is conceivable, winning the war against the idea of terror may be impossible, because the circumstances that gave birth to that particular idea in the first place represent the very characteristics of the world we live in. The penultimate section aims to evaluate the role of sophisticated technologies in counteracting terrorism on the Internet, directly linked to the development of a civil society. The concluding chapter analyzes the European Union (EU) experience of countering terrorist propaganda, using the example of the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) on the Internet and especially via social media. The author considers the system of EU bodies responsible for countering terrorism in social networks, exploring cases of blocking terrorist content using the redirect method, campaign and message design.

The dramatic insider account of why we invaded Iraq, the motivations that drove it, and the frustrations of those who tried and failed to stop it, leading to the most costly misadventure in US history. A single disastrous choice in the wake of 9/11-the decision to use force to remove Saddam Hussein from power-did enormous damage to the wealth, well-being, and reputation of the United States. Few errors in U.S. foreign policy have had longer-lasting or more harmful consequences. Yet how the decision came to be made remains shrouded in mystery and mythology. To this day, even the principal architects of the war cannot agree on it. Michael Mazarr has interviewed dozens of players involved in the deliberations about the invasion of Iraq and has reviewed all the documents so far declassified. He paints a devastating of portrait of an administration fueled by righteous conviction yet undercut by chaotic processes, rivalrous agencies, and competing egos. But more than the product of one bungling administration, the invasion of Iraq emerges here as a tragically typical example of modern U.S. foreign policy fiascos.Leap of Faith asks profound questions about the limits of US power and the accountability for its use. It offers lessons urgently relevant to stave off similar disasters-today and in the future.

After Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush declared, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Bush's assertion was not simply jingoist bravado—it encapsulates the civilizationalist moralism that has motivated and defined the United States since its beginning, linking the War on Terror to the nation's settlement and founding.In Queer Terror, C. Heike Schotten offers a critique of U.S. settler-colonial empire that draws on political, queer, and critical indigenous theory to situate Bush's either/or moralism and reframe the concept of terrorism. The categories of the War on Terror exemplify the moralizing politics that insulate U.S. empire from critique, render its victims deserving of its abuses, and delegitimize resistance to it as unthinkable and perverse. Schotten provides an anatomy of this moralism, arguing for a new interpretation of biopolitics that is focused on sovereignty and desire rather than racism and biology. This rethinking of biopolitics puts critical political theory of empire in dialogue with the insights of both native studies and queer theory. Building on queer theory's refusal of sanctity, propriety, and moralisms of all sorts, Schotten ultimately contends that the answer to Bush's ultimatum is clear: dissidents must reject the false choice he presents and stand decisively against “us,” rejecting its moralism and the sanctity of its “life,” in order to further a truly emancipatory, decolonizing queer politics.

This volume examines the success of the 9/11 attacks in undermining the cherished principles of Western democracy, free speech and tolerance, which were central to US values. It is argued that this has led to the USA fighting disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to sanctioning the use of torture and imprisonment without trial in Guantánamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, surveillance and drone attacks. At home, it has resulted in restrictions of civil liberties and the growth of an ill-affordable military and security apparatus. In this collection the authors note the irony that the shocking destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11 should become the justification for the relentless expansion of security agencies. Yet, this is a salutary illustration of how the security agencies in the USA have adopted faulty preconceptions, which have become too embedded within the institution to be abandoned without loss of credibility and prestige. The book presents a timely assessment of both the human rights costs of the ‘war on terror'and the methods used to wage and relentlessly continue that war. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners and students in the fields of human rights law, criminal justice, criminology, politics and international studies.

A specter haunts America, the specter of Global Jihad, Islamic Holy War. This specter was never more horrific than on September 11, 2001, when nineteen fanatics hijacked four jetliners and used them as guided missiles to destroy the twin World Trade Towers, damage the Pentagon, murder nearly 3,000 people, and cause as much as several hundred billion dollars'worth of direct and indirect damage to New York City and the national economy. But Jihadists have periodically attacked Americans ever since November 1979, when mobs shouting death to America overran the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 officials hostage for 444 days. President George W. Bush responded to the September 11 atrocities by declaring a global war on terror. Now in its second decade, that war has cost the United States thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. Americans are haunted by horrific televised images from across a swath of the Muslim world of bomb-blasted cities, hundreds of slaughtered bodies, thousands of refugees huddled in squalid camps, and American journalists in orange jump suits kneeling in the desert before the black robed and masked men who will behead them. Americans increasingly question whether the global war on terror has been worth those costs for their own nation and the lands where it is fought. This book analyzes America's crusade against Jihadism. The key related questions it addresses are these: Looking back, what were the successes and failures of Washington's counter-Jihadist strategy before and after September 11? Looking ahead, should Americans stay the course or cut their losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere? Was the catastrophic September 11 attack a one-time event or could its equivalent or worse in death and destruction happen again? Renowned Harvard professor Samuel Huntington asserted that: “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is Islam, a different civilization, whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.” Is that true? Just what of Muhammad's words and deeds, if any, justifies the barbarism of al Qaeda, Islamic State, and other Jihadists? Finally, just how corporeal is that specter of global Jihad to the United States? A startling surprise awaits the reader in the final chapter as acclaimed expert William Nester weighs the specter of global Jihad against an array of other national security threats.

This book is a critical exploration of the war on terror from the prism of armed drones and globalization. It is particularly focused on the United States'use of the drones, and the systemic dysfunctions that globalization has caused to international political economy and national security, creating backlash in which the desirability of globalization is not only increasingly questioned, but the resultant dissension about its desirability appears increasingly militating against the international consensus needed to fight the war on terror. To underline the controversial nature of the war on terror and the pragmatic weapon (armed drones) fashioned for its prosecution, some of the elements of this controversy have been interrogated in this book. They include, amongst others, the doubt over whether the war should have been declared in the first place because terrorist attacks hardly meet the United Nations'casus belli – an armed attack. There are critics, as highlighted in this book, who believe that the war on terror is not an armed conflict properly so called, and, thus, remains only a law enforcement issue. The United States and all the states taking part in the war on terror are obligated to observe International Humanitarian Law (IHL). It is within this context of IHL that this book appraises the drone as a weapon of engagement, discussing such issues as personality and signature strikes as well as the implications of the deployment of spies as drone strikers rather than the Defence Department, the members of the U.S armed forces. This book will be of value to researchers, academics, policymakers, professionals, and students in the fields of security studies, terrorism, the law of armed conflict, international humanitarian law, and international politics.

In the years since the September 11th 2001 attacks, the al-Qaeda phenomenon has become one of the most written about, yet crucially misunderstood, threats of the 21st century. But despite the sheer volume of literature produced during the ‘war on terror'period, few studies have sought to consider the way this entity has been represented within the news media. The BBC, the War on Terror and the Discursive Construction of Al-Qaeda addresses this significant gap in knowledge by providing an original and much needed assessment of the various strategies used to depict ‘al-Qaeda', and thus make it meaningful for British television audiences. Drawing on the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, and focusing on Britain's most watched and trusted news programme, the BBC's flagship ‘News at Ten'bulletin, the book provides insight into both the visual and verbal nature of these representations and the way they have shifted over the course of a ten-year period, whilealso shedding light upon the broader political and social consequences of the BBC's portrayals. In doing so, the book not only helps to develop a deeper understanding of the complexity of the BBC's representations, and their various shifts and transformations, but also details the process through which ‘al-Qaeda'has been pieced together from a range of cultural parts. And how, ultimately, the dominant mode of representation used to portray this entity is one that closely resembles Britain's own, diverse multicultural ‘self'.

‘Global War on Terrorism'or Global War over Terra Africana?: How Imperial Powers Seek to Occupy Africa Militarily is a long, onerous academic voyage of the demystification and demythologization of the Global War on Terror former US presidentGeorge W Bush and former UK premier Tony Blairconceived, envisaged and declared for their hidden personal and national interests. It is a hidden and untold story of the other side about the GWOT which is but the GWOTA. Major arguments presented gyrate around the deconstruction; and overhaul of the GWOT so that it can be equally formulated and fought by all nations for the interests of all but not the interests of some as it currently is. Also, the book repudiates the pontification the pontifices maximus of the GWOTA have always made ex nihilo while concealing their drive[s] for perpetually exploiting poor countries. Terrorism is a world phenomenon everybody must fight provided it is collectively agreed, decided and declared for the collective good and interests of the world but not the interests of a few hegemonic countries that usurped the power of declaring who is a terrorist and who is not. Although terrorism is real, the manner it is fought is a little bit knotty. This tome acts as an eye opener and a wake-up call for Africa to start interrogating and excavating the hidden truths about the GWOT chiefly the way it was enacted, declared, presented and now fought with essentialist and controversialist modus operandi and rationale. Other major questions asked and answered are: Why exporting military and military hardware guised as fighting terrorism without underscoring the terror military incursion will, inter alia, cause to Africa especially? If truly the aim of the GWOT is to wage war on terror, why doesn't the West want to empower African armies? Why did the US appoint itself to lead the war conceived and declared without meeting the requirements of the just war or international standards? Why hasn't the world learned from Iraq and Libya whose governments were toppled under the façade of the GWOT? Is it the GWOT or the GWOTA?

This volume is a collection of articles that critically examine the efficacy, ethics, and impact of the War on Terror as it has evolved since 9/11. During the decade and a half of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), numerous books have considered the political, psychosocial, and economic impacts of terrorism. However, there has been little systematic effort to examine the effectiveness of the GWOT in achieving its goals. Furthermore, there is virtually nothing that presents a comparative analysis of the GWOT by the people most directly affected by it—citizens and scholars from conflict zones in the Middle East. There is, therefore, great need for a book that analyzes the strategies, tactics, and outcomes of the GWOT and that also presents facts and ideas that are missing or underrepresented in the dominant public narratives. The contributions in this volume were chosen to specifically address this need. In doing so, it uniquely provides not only Western perspectives of the GWOT, but also importantly includes perspectives from the Middle East and those most directly affected by it, including contributions from scholars and policy makers. Overall, the contributions demonstrate how views differ based on geographical location, and how views have changed during the course of the still-evolving War on Terror.The book will be of much interest to students and scholars of terrorism and counter-terrorism, foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics, security studies and IR, as well as policy makers.

Is the West to blame for failing Uganda?In this powerful story of Uganda and its war-torn neighbors in eastern and central Africa, journalist Helen Epstein chronicles how America's naïve dealings with African strongmen and single-minded focus on the War on Terror have themselves becomes sources of terror, short-circuiting the power Ugandans might otherwise have over their own destinies.More than 20 years ago, Epstein set out for Uganda to work as a public health consultant. The $20 billion in Western aid poured into the country since then has done little to improve the well-being of the Ugandan people, whose rates of poverty, illiteracy, and mortality remain staggeringly high. Instead, much of this money has been used to shore up brutal and dangerous dictatorships in the region. ANOTHER FINE MESS offers a new way of thinking about the crises that have ravaged Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan and Somalia and suggest the true heart of darkness lies not in Africa, but in Western centers of power.

This book assesses President Barack Obama's counterterrorism policy as it evolved throughout his presidency, from the expanded use of drones to the controversial decisions regarding the Syrian conflict. President Obama has achieved the dubious distinction of having been the longest continuous war president in American history, and this title explores how Obama pursued and expanded executive war power in key areas, simultaneously committing to a light footprint approach for U.S. military forces and emphasizing the use of drones, targeted killing of terrorists, and training, advising, and assisting local forces to defend themselves from militant groups such as ISIL. It also provides an in-depth analysis of the defining issue of the Obama counterterrorism strategy: Syria, and his refusal to militarily commit to defeat Bashar al-Assad and support Syria's insurgency. The work concludes with a consideration of counterterrorism policy post-Obama.

The perspectives of academics and practitioners are brought together in this insightful work, which examines the war on terrorism, the Iraq war and the roles of NATO and the EU. The book analyzes the new threats posed by terrorist strikes and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction despite the total failure of Cold War conceptions of deterrence. It also delineates the key issues and problems that have arisen from the NATO and EU double enlargement and from the new NATO-Russian relationship. Casting light on the global and regional ramifications of the crisis, as well as the tensions in the transatlantic relationship caused by the war with Iraq, NATO and the European Union addresses the key policy questions that concern the maintenance of global peace and security.

A startling spotlight on the darkest corners of America's “War on Terror,” where nothing is quite what it seems.The Convenient Terrorist is the definitive inside account of the capture, torture, and detention of Abu Zubaydah, the first “high-value target” captured by the CIA after 9/11. But was Abu Zubaydah, who is still being indefinitely held by the United States under shadowy circumstances, the blue-ribbon capture that the Bush White House claimed he was? Authors John Kiriakou, who led the capture of Zubaydah, and Joseph Hickman, who took custody of him at Guantanamo, draw a far more complex and intriguing portrait of the al-Qaeda “mastermind” who became a symbol of torture and the “dark side” of US security. From a one-time American collaborator to a poster boy for waterboarding, Abu Zubaydah became a “convenient terrorist”—a way for US authorities to sell their “War on Terror” to the American people.

Pirates and Emperors, Old and New constitutes a collection of extended essays written between 1986 and 2001 which explore how'selected incidents of terrorism'are used as a cover for Western violence across the globe. Topics covered include the Lockerbie Bombing, the Second Palestinian Intifada and the attacks on the World Trade Centre. For those who want to understand the roots of American military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, recent interventions in Libya, and the on-going destruction of Palestine this collection remains invaluable. This edition first published 2002

How have the September 11th terrorist attacks and the subsequent U.S. led war on terrorism impacted American foreign policy at home and abroad? The consistent theme throughout this collection of essays is that September 11th was a watershed event, which sparked a redefinition and reassessment of U.S. foreign policy, governmental institutions, and the public's sense of internal and external security. The Bush Administration's endeavor to remake American foreign policy with an emphasis on a preemptive, first strike doctrine and its attempt to build an internal security apparatus are not only consequential in the war on terrorism, such efforts are challenging the very fundamentals of American political life and its perception throughout the world.

When the photographs depicting torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison were released in 2004, U.S. politicians attributed the incident to a few bad apples in the American military, exonerated high-ranking members of the George W. Bush administration, promoted Guantánamo as a model prison, and dismissed the illegality of the CIA's use of'enhanced interrogation.'By the end of the Bush administration, members of both major congressional parties had come to denounce enhanced interrogation as torture and argue for the closing of Guantánamo. What initiated this shift? In Talking About Torture, Jared Del Rosso reviews transcripts from congressional hearings and scholarship on denial, torture, and state violence to document this wholesale change in rhetoric and attitude toward the use of torture by the CIA and the U.S. military during the War on Terror. He plots the evolution of the'torture issue'in U.S. politics and its manipulation by politicians to serve various ends. Most important, Talking About Torture integrates into the debate about torture the testimony of those who suffered under American interrogation practices and demonstrates how the conversation continues to influence current counterterrorism policies, such as the reliance on drones.

Now available to the public for the first time, the Senate's landmark torture report delivers a damning indictment on CIA interrogation practices.Finally declassified and released after five years in the making, the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's torture program, which describes in excruciating detail what Obama has called “harsh methods... inconsistent with our values as a nation,” is now available to the American public—citizens who have a right to know the truth.Considered one of the most important government documents ever to be published, the torture report compiles the Senate committee's findings of the CIA's program to detain and interrogate terrorist threats in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, from 2001 to 2006 during the Bush administration. Among other controversial conclusions, the report has found that the CIA's “enhanced interrogation techniques” were not effective in acquiring intelligence to avert terrorist threats. The study also shows that the CIA misled the public, Congress, the Department of Justice, and even the White House on the effectiveness and the scope and severity of their interrogation techniques. The exhaustive and disturbing account also provides grisly accounts on horrific practices that occurred in CIA black sites: prisoners experienced sleep deprivation in stressful positions for up to 180 hours; being stripped and shackled, hooded and dragged down a long corridor while being punched; waterboarding; and “rectal feeding.”Based on six million CIA documents and requiring $40 million to complete, the entire 6,000-page report still remains classified. Only 525 pages of summary have been published, with 7 percent of its content redacted, and it is now at the disposal of American readers who have the opportunity to learn what occurred during this dark chapter in modern American history. The Senate report delivers a scathing, shocking, and controversial judgment, and gives us much to think about in terms of our longstanding position on freedom, democracy, dignity, and human rights.

On 15th February 2003, two million people marched in the streets of London to call on the British government not to go to war with Iraq. Though Britain did enter war, the movement did not rest in defeat. This book tells the story of what happened behind the scenes of this extraordinary mass movement, looking specifically at the political relationship between Muslim and leftist activists.Crisis narratives about Muslims assume that they are only engaged with sectarian communalist forms of identity politics or that their supposed religious and social conservatism is incompatible with progressive values. Through telling this story, Massoumi looks closely at the role of identity politics within social movements, considering what this means in practice and whether we can meaningfully speak of identity politics. Arguing that identity politics can only be understood within the context of a wider social and political structure, this book analyses the conditions through which Muslim and leftist engagement emerges within this movement, and highlights the decisive leadership of Muslim women.

In December 2014, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released a 500+ page executive summary of a 6,000 page study of the CIA's detention and interrogation of al Qa'ida terrorists. In early 2015 publishers released the study in book form and called it'the report'on'torture.'Rebuttal presents the'rest of the story.'In addition to reprinting the official responses from the SSCI minority and CIA, this publication also includes eight essays from senior former CIA officials who all are deeply knowledgeable about the program —and yet none of whom were interviewed by the SSCI staff during the more than four years the report was in preparation. These authors of the eight essays are George Tenet, Porter Goss, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, USAF (Ret.), John McLaughlin, Michael Morell, J. Philip Mudd, John Rizzo, and Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr.

This multidisciplinary edited volume explores how the spread of the'War on Terror'has entwined matters of state sovereignty and states of war into mutually affecting relations. Pre-emptive attacks on terrorist groups in ‘rogue'states, ‘outsourcing'of state militancy and the mutable state of armed conflict required to wage a ‘hybrid war'have increasingly been issues for the War on Terror. Moreover, such measures have seen the spread of this war to countries such as Israel, Russia, Ethiopia, and Uganda, all of whom have justified their own attacks in other nation-states as a war of ‘self-defence'against terrorism. States of War since 9/11 offers a timely, innovative analysis of how the War on Terror has taken on different modes of militancy and militarisation in spreading to different nation-states and regions. Featuring a multidisciplinary line-up of eminent contributors, the book ranges in reference from the early stages of the war up to France's 2013 intervention in Mali. Part One examines the various modes of war and militarisation that have been employed in particular nation-states, including Afghanistan, Russia and Chechnya, and Israel and Palestine. Part Two examines how the war's innovations have more generally involved ‘just war theory', biopolitics and sovereignty, networked battlespace, new military urbanism, citizenship, homeland security and surveillance. Overall, this book offers a fresh insight into how states have attempted to secure their own bounds by extending the boundaries of war itself. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, foreign policy and IR in general.

After 9/11/2001, gendered narratives of humiliation and revenge proliferated in the U.S. national imaginary. How is it that gender, which we commonly take to be a structure at the heart of individual identity, is also at stake in the life of the nation? What do we learn about gender when we pay attention to how it moves and circulates between the lived experience of the subject and the aspirations of the nation in war? What is the relation between national sovereignty and sovereign masculinity? Through examining practices of torture, extra-judicial assassination, and first person accounts of soldiers on the ground, Bonnie Mann develops a new theory of gender. It is neither a natural essence nor merely a social construct. Gender is first and foremost an operation of justification which binds the lived existence of the individual subject to the aspirations of the regime. Inspired by a reexamination of the work of Simone de Beauvoir, the author exposes how sovereign masculinity hinges on the nation's ability to tap into and mobilize the structure of self-justification at the heart of masculine identity. At the national level, shame is repeatedly converted to power in the War on Terror through hyperbolic displays of agency including massive aerial bombardment and practices of torture. This is why, as Mann demonstrates, the phenomenon of gender itself demands a four-dimensional analysis that moves from the phenomenological level of lived experience, through the collective life of a people expressed in the social imaginary and the operations of language, to the material relations that prevail in our times.

The role of the Far East is becoming increasingly important in global geopolitics. Japan's economic might and sphere of geographical influence, between China, North Korea and the US, means it has the potential to be a major ally in the War on Terror. While Japan's constitution does not allow for militarism or acts of war, in the post 9/11 world the use of the Japanese nation's'Self-Defence Force'has become increasingly normal - a result of the exploitation of legal loopholes and political double-speak that has been used to bypass Japan's pacifist ideology. Here, Michael Penn assesses the role of US diplomats and lobbyists in Tokyo, the politicians who see the War on Terror as a means of self-advancement and the influence of Washington in the unprecedented deployment of Japanese troops in Iraq. Written using a huge range of primary source material, including interviews with US insiders and Japanese policy makers, this is a scholarly and lucid account of Japan's relationship to the US and the Middle East from 9/11 to Barack Obama and the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Liberals and conservatives proclaim the end of the American holiday from history. Now the easy games are over; one should take sides. Žižek argues this is precisely the temptation to be resisted. In such moments of apparently clear choices, the real alternatives are most hidden. Welcome to the Desert of the Real steps back, complicating the choices imposed on us. It proposes that global capitalism is fundamentalist and that America was complicit in the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. It points to our dreaming about the catastrophe in numerous disaster movies before it happened, and explores the irony that the tragedy has been used to legitimize torture. Last but not least it analyzes the fiasco of the predominant leftist response to the events.

This interdisciplinary book explores how terrorism is meant to target a government's legitimacy, and advocates for sounder defensive measures when countering international attacks.The dramatic increase in global cooperation throughout the twentieth century—between international organisations and their state missions of diplomats, foreign officers, international civil servants, intelligence officers, military personnel, police investigators, judges, legislators, and financial regulators—has had a bearing on the shape and content of the domestic political order. The rules that govern all of these interactions, and the diplomats engaged to monitor and advocate for compliance, have undergone a mushrooming development following the conclusion of each world war. This dramatic growth is arguably the most significant change the international structure has experienced since the inception of the state-based system ushered in with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. International Law, New Diplomacy and Counterterrorism explores the impact of this growth on domestic legitimacy through the integration of two disciplines: international law and political philosophy. Focusing particularly on the cross-border counterterrorism actions launched by the United States, the author investigates how civil societies have often turned to the standards of international law to understand and judge the legitimacy of their government's counterterrorism policies reaching across international borders. The book concludes that those who craft counterterrorism policies must be attentive to defending the target of legitimacy by being wholly mindful of the realms of legality, morality and efficacy when exercising force.This book will be of much interest to students of international law, diplomacy, counterterrorism, political philosophy, security studies and IR.

This book provides a qualitative analysis of post-9/11 counter-terrorism strategy undertaken by the United Kingdom and United States of America.Since 9/11, both the UK and the U.S have significantly revamped their counter-terrorism approaches. The approaches apply, to varying degrees, three key policy instruments – intelligence, law enforcement and military force. However, the success or failure of these counter-terrorism strategies has never been satisfactorily validated. Analysts and policymakers alike have assumed success due to the inability of terrorists to conduct 7/7 and 9/11, respectively, scale attacks upon each state. This assumption has existed despite the fact that it fundamentally underestimates the impact of transnational terrorism.This volume provides an in-depth qualitative assessment of the three primary policy instruments implemented to counter the transnational threat of terrorism during the period 2001-2011; an approach somewhat neglected by the current body of literature which focuses on a purely quantitative methodology. Drawing upon previously unpublished data collected from interviews with policymakers, specialists and academics, the book fills this lacuna by ascertaining and analysing both the UK's and USA's counter-terrorism strategies and developing a holistic approach to understanding these strategies.This book will be of interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism studies, security studies and IR in general.

Whatever It Takes is a wide-ranging and highly entertaining read, in which Congressman J. D. Hayworth exposes the ongoing battle where terrorists seek ways to exploit our porous borders and attack our homeland as well as the hypocrisy, greed, and political correctness that could literally destroy our nation

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States declared war on terrorism. More than ten years later, the results are decidedly mixed. Here world-renowned author, diplomat, and scholar Akbar Ahmed reveals an important yet largely ignored result of this war: in many nations it has exacerbated the already broken relationship between central governments and the largely rural Muslim tribal societies on the peripheries of both Muslim and non-Muslim nations. The center and the periphery are engaged in a mutually destructive civil war across the globe, a conflict that has been intensified by the war on terror.Conflicts between governments and tribal societies predate the war on terror in many regions, from South Asia to the Middle East to North Africa, pitting those in the centers of power against those who live in the outlying provinces. Akbar Ahmed's unique study demonstrates that this conflict between the center and the periphery has entered a new and dangerous stage with U.S. involvement after 9/11 and the deployment of drones, in the hunt for al Qaeda, threatening the very existence of many tribal societies.American firepower and its vast anti-terror network have turned the war on terror into a global war on tribal Islam. And too often the victims are innocent children at school, women in their homes, workers simply trying to earn a living, and worshipers in their mosques. Battered by military attacks or drone strikes one day and suicide bombers the next, the tribes bemoan,'Every day is like 9/11 for us.'In The Thistle and the Drone, the third volume in Ahmed's groundbreaking trilogy examining relations between America and the Muslim world, the author draws on forty case studies representing the global span of Islam to demonstrate how the U.S. has become involved directly or indirectly in each of these societies. The study provides the social and historical context necessary to understand how both central governments and tribal

Contemporary Military Strategy and the Global War on Terror offers an in-depth analysis of US/UK military strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to the present day. It explores the development of contemporary military strategy in the West in the modern age before interrogating its application in the Global War on Terror. The book provides detailed insights into the formulation of military plans by political and military elites in the United States and United Kingdom for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Alastair Finlan highlights the challenges posed by each of these unique theatres of operation, the nature of the diverse enemies faced by coalition forces, and the shortcomings in strategic thinking about these campaigns. This fresh perspective on strategy in the West and how it has been applied in recent military campaigns facilitates a deep understanding of how wars have been and will be fought. Including key terms, concepts and discussion questions for each chapter, Contemporary Military Strategy and the Global War on Terror is a crucial text in strategic studies, and required reading for anyone interested in the new realities of transnational terrorism and twenty-first century warfare.

This volume examines the lessons and legacies of the U.S.-led'Global War on Terror,'utilizing the framework of a political'moral panic.'A decade after 9/11, it is increasingly difficult to deny that terror has prevailed – not as a specific enemy, but as a way of life. Transport, trade, and communications are repeatedly threatened and disrupted worldwide. While the pace and intensity of terror attacks have abated, many of the temporary security measures and sacrifices of liberty adopted in their immediate aftermath have become more or less permanent. This book examines the social, cultural, and political drivers of the war on terror through the framework of a'political moral panic': the exploration of threats to particular individuals or institutions that come to be viewed as threats to a way of life, social norms and values, civilization, and even morality itself. Drawing upon a wide range of domestic and international case studies, this volume reinforces the need for reason, empathy, and a dogged defence of principle in the face of terror. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, human rights, U.S. foreign policy, American politics, and Security Studies and I.R. in general.

An exclusive inside account of how and why al-Qaeda is rebuilding in the unforgiving deserts of Yemen‘Exhausted and on the run, it looked like the end for the small band of men. Looking at the few who had followed him into the desert, Muhammad said, “When disaster threatens, seek refuge in Yemen”… Yemen was the last refuge.'Far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, in an unforgiving corner of Arabia, the US and al-Qaeda are fighting a clandestine war of drones and suicide bombers. The battles began in 2006, when twenty-three men tunnelled out of a maximum-security prison in Yemen's capital to their freedom. Later they were joined by a dozen men released from Guantánamo Bay. Together, they formed the core of al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula – and now they and their recruits stand ready to hijack the Arab Spring, from the streets of Syria to hotspots much closer to home. In The Last Refuge, al-Qaeda scholar Gregory D. Johnsen charts the rise, the fall, and the ultimate resurrection of al-Qaeda in Yemen – given new life through a combustion of civil wars, Afghan refugees, and Muhammad's prophetic teachings. Johnsen brings us inside al-Qaeda's training camps and safe houses as the terrorists plot poison attacks and debate how to bring down a plane on Christmas Day. Based on years of on-the-ground interviews and never-before-translated al-Qaeda battle notes, he delivers a riveting and incisive investigation of the state of the Middle East.

In this set of devastating essays, Gareth Peirce analyzes the corruption of legalprinciples and practices in both the US and the UK that has accompanied the‘War on Terror'. Exploring the few cases of torture that have come to light, such asthose of Guantánamo detainees Shafiq Rasul and Binyam Mohamed, Peirce arguesthat they are evidence of a deeply entrenched culture of impunity among thoseinvestigating presumed radicals among British Muslim nationals and residents,who constitute the new suspect community in the UK. Peirce shows that theBritish government has colluded in a whole range of extrajudicialactivities—rendition, internment without trial, torture—and has gone toextraordinary lengths to conceal its actions. Its devices for maintainingsecrecy are probably more deep-rooted than those of any other comparabledemocracy. If the government continues along this path, Peirce argues, it willdestroy the moral and legal fabric it claims to be protecting.

“This bold and readable book makes a powerful, if controversial, case against appeasing terrorists and those who support them.” —Alan DershowitzTen years ago, when radical Islamist terrorists used three U.S. airplanes to kill nearly three thousand of our countrymen, America was angry. It was a focused and justified anger—one that generated clear objectives and a willingness to meet them. But that resolve has deteriorated so much that many of our nation's top political and military leaders will scarcely utter the word that brought us here, “terrorism,” let alone the ideology that fuels it, “radical Islam.”In The Fight of Our Lives, William J. Bennett and Seth Leibsohn examine the devolution of America's post-9/11 tenacity and how this country's well-meaning culture of religious tolerance, coupled with soft and apologetic political leadership, has placed us squarely in the pocket of radical Islamists who have made clear their intention to obliterate everything we value.America's devotion to political correctness has crippled its ability to accurately interpret and respond to the motives of its fiercest enemies. Unless we change course and re-engage the fight, the costs of our tolerance will prove tragic and immeasurable.The Fight of Our Lives helps readers refocus, to reframe and understand the threats we face.By surveying and explaining the current scene, Bennett and Leibsohn point the way to a future in which our enemies are properly acknowledged and firmly opposed.“Many have forgotten the mortal threat to America that is radical Islam. Bennett and Leibsohn explain why we must wake up and what we need to do.” —Mark Levin, talk-show host and #1 New York Times–bestselling author

Introduction Chapter 1 - US and NATO-led Military Operations Chapter 2 - War in Afghanistan (2001–present) Chapter 3 - Iraq War Chapter 4 - Participants in Operation Enduring Freedom Chapter 5 - International Security Assistance Force

Liberals and conservatives proclaim the end of the American holiday from history. Now the easy games are over; one should take sides. Zizek argues this is precisely the temptation to be resisted. In such moments of apparently clear choices, the real alternatives are most hidden. Welcome to the Desert of the Real steps back, complicating the choices imposed on us. It proposes that global capitalism is fundamentalist and that America was complicit in the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. It points to our dreaming about the catastrophe in numerous disaster movies before it happened, and explores the irony that the tragedy has been used to legitimize torture. Last but not least it analyzes the fiasco of the predominant leftist response to the events.

This book provides an array of answers to the question, In the ten years since the 9/11 attacks, how has America responded? In a series of essays, RAND authors lend a farsighted perspective to the national dialogue on 9/11's legacy; assess the military, political, fiscal, social, cultural, psychological, and moral implications of U.S. policymaking since 9/11; and suggest options for effectively dealing with the terrorist threat in the future.