Fighting freedom or freedom fighting: Newt Gingrich & Palestine

Meagermind (c) DonkeyHotey

Originally published in full here on The Pryer.

Republican frontrunners vying for the Presidential nomination for next year's election, including Cain, Romney, Perry and Bachmann have all dined at the dunce's trough over the last few months. 

The Guardian reports that Newt Gingrich referred to Palestinians as an “invented” people and “terrorists” last weekend. 

Originally populated by Native Americans, then European colonists, the United States of America (USA) of today has been transformed by further migrations of peoples from Latin America, Africa and elsewhere. Borders and boundaries have been redrawn, so that what constitutes the USA now looks different to how it did 200 years ago.

Each nation, and the nationals within it, is/are invented. What Gingrich says is true, but it is the way that he uses this idea that bothers me. Would he also agree that terrorism and the 'war on terror' is invented too?

The notion of a Palestinian homeland has been at the very heart of the 'war on terror' since 9/11. Osama Bin Laden refered to it in the second of his fatwas.

Gingrich's use of an “invented” people, and his association with ideas of terrorism is somehow meant to make the justification for a homeland less deserving. However, it is precisely this issue, still as yet unresolved, and rarely cited as an imperative for bringing the 'war on terror' to an end, that makes Gingrich an ignoramus.

The USA suffered a terrible loss on 9/11. This superpower and (self-appointed) arbiter of international justice since World War II, had an opportunity to reflect, re-imagine and re-construct itself and what it stood for in the 21^st Century.

Why had this happened? Had the USA harmed anyone? If so who, and what steps should it take to get it right? What would be the best means of securing justice and a future security?

For many of us, it appears that the USA concluded that that this was the deed of irrational terrorists solely intent on destroying the American freedom and its way of life. The most effective means of dealing with this threat and effecting justice, it seems, was to use its military power.

The 'war on terror' began. In truth, terror was merely being exported.

Montage War on Terror (c) poxnar/US Army/Navy

According to the latest report from the National Counterrorism Center:

• Over 11,500 terrorist attacks occurred in 72 countries in 2010, resulting in approximately 50,000 victims, including almost 13,200 deaths. Although the number of attacks rose by almost 5 percent over the previous year, the number of deaths declined for a third consecutive year, dropping 12 percent from 2009...

• Attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq rose in 2010. Almost a quarter of worldwide attacks occurred in Iraq, a slight increase from 2009, although deaths fell for the fourth consecutive year...

• The fewest incidents in 2010 were reported in the Western Hemisphere, where both attacks and deaths declined by roughly 25 percent. Western Hemisphere attacks fell from 444 in 2009 to 340 in 2010 and deaths fell from 377 in 2009 to 279 in 2010...

• Muslims continued to bear the brunt of terrorism based on the fact that most terrorist attacks occurred in predominantly Muslim countries.

What is evident is that terrorist incidents are on the increase. By focusing its 'war on terrorism' in Afghanistan and Iraq, the USA has used its military power to enforce a transfer of terror on civilians who previously neither suffered from it, and are less able to withstand it.

They may have had less freedom, if you define freedom in its politico-democracy cloak, but equally, they have less freedom to walk around safely; they have less life security. A by-product of the 'war on terror' is that it has wrought more terror, not less.

Terrorism has not gone away, just because the US government has relocated it, and it will not necessarily remain relocated. Current ideas of western citizenship come with responsibilities, as well as rights. Gingrich's comments are irresponsible.

It is a shame that those in power talk about freedom so vacantly as to mock those that those do not have it. If Islamic Jihadists hate us for our freedom and our way of life, then Gingrich is adding fuel to the fire. 

The Newburgh Four: labelling and terrorism in the U.S.A.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Seal (c) United States Department of Justice

I write this in the knowledge of an attack that has just taken place in Belgium. Regardless of whether it be termed a terrorist incident, or for the reasons behind it, this post is even more relevant for it. My sympathies go to those affected by the attack.

In yesterday's Guardian, Paul Harris reported on the Newburgh Four who were convicted of a terrorist plot in June. According to the report, the four men had been entrapped by an FBI informant who had offered the men life-changing amounts of money in return for carrying out the attack. Quite apart from the rather shady way that the FBI went about their “investigation”, there was little supporting evidence that these men would ordinarily have carried out the attacks, had the FBI not acted as a catalyst for it. Judge Colleen McMahon is reported as saying:

"Only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr Cromitie, a man whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope," she said in court. She added: "I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition."

In criminological thought, entrapment, or to use a more law enforcement friendly version of this term, stings that target problem people and problem places are associated with ideas of repeat victimisation and the prevention of future crimes. Targeting problem people and problem places relies on knowing who these people are and where they congregate. In this case, the sting involved targeting prospective “terrorists” who congregate in mosques. It might be a fair assumption to make that this type of sting is an obvious means of deterring future “terrorist” attacks, based on what we read, see and hear in the mainstream media. However, to understand “terrorism”, we need to rewind.

The devastating and tragic events of 9/11 broadcast the idea that “terrorists” and “terrorism” are largely associated with extremists, notably Islamic extremists. Further attacks have taken place in Indonesia, Spain and the UK. Every now and again, we are warned of impending “terrorist” attacks. Hence, three distinct words, Islam, extremism and terrorism, seem to be harnessed together to the extent that even a prospective President of the U.S.A. can't help but label Palestinians as terrorists.

Mandela on Israeli Apartheid (c) Carlos Latuff

Consider the term “convicted terrorist.” What do they look like? Coming from the UK, I am immediately minded of the once convicted, since proven innocent, Irish “terrorists” including the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four. In terms of the U.S.A., I think of John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid and Timothy McVeigh. Regardless of whether justice was enacted correctly, all were tried in a court of law.

In fact, McVeigh is called an “American Terrorist” in the biography of his life. Why the need to label him differently? What purpose does it serve? Surely, it matters not whether he is American, and ethnically white, yet it seems that the authors felt the need to qualify McVeigh to their audience; he is not any “terrorist”, he is different. Different to “others.”

The U.S. government chose to kill Osama Bin Laden rather than try him. It has failed to try any of those it holds responsible for the “terrorism” committed on 9/11, choosing instead to detain inmates at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely, awaiting affirmation of their label. It is difficult to see how we have come to one particular view of “terrorists” and “terrorism”, when those that have been convicted of “terrorist” attacks represent such diverse ethnic, cultural and economic backgrounds.

As stated above, entrapment/sting operations are associated with repeat victimisation and crime prevention. Considering that the vast majority of the 9/11 pilots came from Saudi Arabia, it makes little sense in terms of repeat victimisation to target Muslim communities within the U.S.A.. Meanwhile, Muslim communities in the U.S.A. continue to be labelled and perceived as “terrorists.” They have to put up with being targeted in sting operations, and then losing family to long term prison sentences for dubiously constructed “crimes”.

By taking a hardline stance against these communities, based on little fact, the government threatens to create further division within the U.S.A. over its tactics. In turn, it may create extremist sympathisers within these communities that see the U.S.A. as Islamphobic. Far from preventing crime and “terrorism”, the U.S.A. might be fuelling internal “terrorist” acts of the future, thereby ensuring that the dominant idea of who “terrorists” are comes true.

Terrorism in Norway: Did Breivik commit a terrorist act?

Self-portrait (c) Anders Breivik

I am a little confused.

Whilst reading through my news reader, in the pursuit of blogging manna that was my last post, I noted that many major UK media outlets are now referring to the Norwegian tragedy as an attack or massacre. Breivik is now described as a gunman, killer or attacker.

Is there a particular reason why this tragedy is now being referred to as anything but terrorism, and why Breivik is not a terrorist, as originally reported?

Further to my post yesterday, I hope that this change in media reporting is not tied to the construction of the modern folk devil, that is the stereotypical “terrorist” i.e. Muslim.


Anyone have any thoughts on this?