Canadians Remember Better, Misogny edition

One of the differences between Canada and the US is that Canadians tend to remember stuff better and longer.  I always note this on November 11th, as poppies and ceremonies here remind folks of World War I far more clearly and directly than either Veterans Day or Memorial Day in the US.  Today is another one of those days. 

On December 6th, 1989, a man killed these 14 women in very cold blood. 

Today we remember 💕
Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz#16Days

— Celina Caesar-Chavannes (@iamcelinacc) December 6, 2020

He separated out the men from the women and then executed the women.  It was the biggest massacre since the 1800s until this past year (the Nova Scotia spree).  The guy killed himself.  He might have been the first incel terrorist.  Certainly, the violence was misogynist as he declared he was attacking feminism.  He went to a school and systematically killed the women.

Every year, this day is marked across Canada, not just in Quebec.  Violence against women was not new then or now, but this is the largest attack by a misogynist in Canada.  This summer's attack in Nova Scotia was a bit more complex, but the perpetrator had a history of "domestic violence" as well.  I put that in quotes since the phrase, to me, sanitizes the beating of women (yes, it applies more broadly).  

Anyhow, I can't help but notice that the US does not have national remembrance of its various massacres.  Maybe because there are so many, maybe because 14 women is small compared to Tulsa Race Riots (which were lost to history for most Americans until the past few years) or Las Vegas or Orlando.  Columbine?  Well, we know it is April 20th (Hitler's birthday and all), but we don't mark it.  Nor do we mark Sandy Hook, which we damn well should.  

Anyhow, I am sad and angry that women face so much violence and other forms of abuse.  Today, we are reminded of the toll it has taken.  Remember the women who paid the price.  And let's not give the man any additional attention or notice.  That is what these guys want, so let's deny them that.  It is the very least we can do.

Nearly 20 Years And Yet

In past 9/11 anniversary posts, I have discussed my anger for the wasted national unity and lost opportunities.  Last year, I noted my anger that the Trump Administration has been doing awful things.  This year?  We are losing a 9/11 of people every couple of days due to the bungled response to the pandemic AND the economic hardships of this disaster vastly outweigh the damage done 19 years ago.

While there were mistakes made that prevented the US from stopping the terrorist attack, those were mostly mistakes inherent in bureaucratic politics and dealing with an adversary that learns.  COVID doesn't think and try to out-strategize the US government.  Instead, the US government under Trump acts as the virus's best ally, politicizing masks, denying the realities, and not doing what it takes to minimize the spread of the disease.

The recent revelations in the Woodward book fit into the typical Trump category of appalling but not surprising.  Of course, Trump knew this disease was nasty and spread via air.  Of course, Trump decided to downplay it so that he would not have to do anything costly to manage the crisis.  Of course, he ignored the scientists.  Of course, he cared more the stock market than about the American people. Of course, his government is now siphoning money meant for those firefighters harmed on 9/11 because he hates NYC.

I have been trying to focus on hope, on the optimism that that Trump will be gone soon.  But the next two months are going to be brutal with more Americans dying unnecessary, with more damage done to American institutions, America's place in the world, and so on.  I really look forward to not noticing the White House or the President for day's at a time.  Well, if there is an election.

So, what is the meaning of 9/11 this year, 19 years later?  It is a generation, after all.  Perhaps after next year (because we like round numbers), we can focus on the greater threat to the American people, which is ...  us.  The threats we face--white supremacy, out of control police departments, climate change, and disease--all require Americans to take action.  To put pressure on politicians to take these threats seriously as Americans are threatened far more by these challenges than Islamist inspired terrorism. 

It is time to move from 9/11.  The pandemic combined with the realization that most police departments are beyond civilian control should make us realize that the problems are at home.  I am not suggesting that we need to be isolationist.  The pandemic proves that American leadership in the world is in American interests.  But the pandemic also proves that American strength in the world depends on having its act together at home.  And to do that, we have to undo some of the reactions to 9/11, such as creating the Department of Homeland Security.  Along with disbanding ICE, DHS needs to be broken up. 

To invoke one of my "laws," just because you made a bad decision in the past does not mean it has to bind you in the present and future.  Much of the work of the Biden Administration* will be undoing Trump's damage, but he should go back further to undo Bush's.  9/11 was an awful day, and Islamist terrorism is still a problem in the world.  But it is time to move on.  Fix the overreactions, be more humble about what the US can achieve, and get one's own house in order.





* If there is no Biden Administration, everything will be so fucked up that the question will be how Americans handle autocracy.  Not a post for today.

Internet Trolls are Like Terrorists

How is that for a clickbait kind of title?  My point is not that internet trolls kill people or cause lots of damage.  No, the point is that both are highly asymmetrical.

The Guardian studied its own blocked comments and determined many things, including the possibility that most of the most obnoxious stuff was posted by a small number of people.  The toxicity that is on the internet is not representative of the broader public, but of smaller groups of people who post a lot and are obnoxious a lot.  They can do a lot of damage, quickly and cheaply, and can create an environment which makes it seem like there is a very large community of awful people.

To be sure, there are more awful people than we'd like to have out there. And I am not trying to write a #notallmen kind of post.  But the point is that if these people who are doing the damage are actually rather small, it makes it both easier and harder to deal with.

Easier?  Because if this is true, we can realize that it is a few people causing the problems, and then we don't have to develop broad approaches aimed at entire publics.  Although, yes, trying to get rid of rape culture and other broadly problematic dynamics are worthy in and of themselves. 

Harder?  Because if this is true, we cannot aim policies at entire publics but have to figure out who the potential folks are and aim policies at them.  Discrimination in the sense of hitting the target is hard.  It requires intelligence (identifying the problematic people) and developing targeted policies.  Not easy.

The parallel to terrorism is instructive in this sense.  The aim of terrorists is to terrorize.  If we don't overreact, we can limit the gains the terrorists make when they successfully launch an attack.  The aim of internet trolls is to piss people off and, for some, to indeed terrorize.  Perhaps we can support the folks who are attacked but not in ways that reward the the trolls.  For the latest example, see the helicopter parent hoaxer who turned out to be an internet troll of the worst kind.

Of course, there are internet trolls and then there are internet trolls.  Some do more than just troll but dox, swat and in other ways endanger people.  And we do need law enforcement to take that stuff far more seriously.  So, maybe my metaphor is breaking down, but I guess the point is that we need to figure out how to live in a world where some people have outsized effects.

I don't have any answers, and this post is just part of thinking through this stuff.  I also realize that this is all easy for me to say as a white man.  I have gotten some threats, but the internet is far less abusive to me than it is to people of color and to women, as the Guardian piece makes abundantly clear.

So, any thought would be most appreciated.

Responding to Militia

Lots of folks are angry on my twitter feed that US government is not doing more to confront the miltia folks who have occupied a federal building housing the offices of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.  They note the contrast between black kids getting shot within two seconds of police arrival and the patience the government has with white folks bearing arms while threatening federal officers.

My first reaction was to post this:

My second reaction is to welcome the patience, I guess.  I think the most successful part of the US government's handling of the white supremacist insurgency is to treat it like crime and not like terrorism. This denies the militias legitimacy as a political movement AND reflects the lessons of the 1990s.  That is, Waco, Ruby Ridge and the like did not work out so well for the federal government, so a more patient approach made more sense.  The irony here is that we realized domestically that using a heap of force against a domestic terrorist movement can backfire but have not realized the same internationally.

Maybe it helps that the political dynamics in the US, where the right wing shuts down serious consideration of the radical right as a threat to US security, buttress this approach, but again the question foes of the militias have to ask is this: do we want to give the militias what they want?  That is, violence?

Like many of reactions to the international hotspots where the demand is for more, I am always confused about what is more and about the tradeoffs.

And for those noting the hypocrisy between how blacks and Muslims are treated versus white militia folks, the right answer is not more violence against the latter, but less violence against the former.

Oh, and if it is not clear from my previous writings on this, I found these militia folks to be deluded, dangerous, and deranged.

Pretty Proud Adviser Post-Paris

One of the upsides of supervising students whose work is outside my expertise is that I get to be mighty proud when they contribute to debates in ways that I cannot.

Aisha Ahmad was interviewed and said this on the reactions to Paris and our next steps.  Just an excellent perspective.  And there will be more of it as I go to Toronto on Friday to sit on a panel with her and some other folks to talk about the event and the aftermath.  So, if you are in the Toronto area on Friday, November 20th, check it out at the Munk School at U of T.  I will say a few things about NATO's relevance/reactions while Aisha will continue to say far smarter stuff about ISIS, Islamist politics and such. 

Bad Math = Fear

Does bad math lead to fear or does fear lead to bad math?  Hmmm.  I saw online last night folks arguing about the 25,000 refugees that Canada has promised to take in, that one might be bringing in terrorists along with them.  The line was: if one percent of these folks are terrorists, then you are importing 250 terrorists.  Wow! Scary!  Bad math!

How so?  Because the patterns of Islamist terrorism, like that of Buddhist terrorism, Jewish terrorism, Christian terrorism, etc, is that it is not a 1% problem but far smaller than that (see the pic to the right).  These folks are the outliers of the outliers on the very far end of the bell curve.  This is not behavior of the average Muslim.  One has to do more than just worship in a particular way before willing to kill.

There, of course, are expected utility/utilitarian calculations one could make.  Let's say that of the 25000 refugees that Canada would take in, 1% will die if we don't: 250.  Let's say that of the 25000 refugees, .01% or 2.5 (still a historically high number) would become terrorists that end up killing 100 Canadians.  Are the lives of 100 Canadians worth more than 250 refugees?  Of course, I am just playing with numbers and I am not a philosopher who is an expert in the trolley problem.

What this does seem to be is an outsized fear that might cause us to do what is against our values, against our character.  We already see American politicians dancing to the tune of fear: Trump threatening the first amendment by offering to close mosques, governors saying that they will not take in refugees, etc.  The aim of the terrorists is to cause us self-inflicted wounds--like rendition, torture, Abu Grhaib (the whole Iraq invasion), Guantanamo, etc.  The way to defeat the terrorists is not to ignore their attacks but not to over-react to them and not to change who we are and what we do as a result of their attacks.

Canada and the U.S. are countries that have self-images (mostly but not entirely accurate) as countries built on offering refuge.  It is a selective history, but still key to the identities of both countries.  It makes no sense to sell that out now because of some fear.  Both countries have had less damaging homegrown attacks precisely because they are far better at absorbing those who are different.  This is a core strength of what it is to be American and what it is to be Canadian.  To reject the refugees based on the fear of the .1% or the .01% or the .001% is to be un-American, to be un-Canadian.  And to be really bad at math.

Both countries are resilient enough to handle the refugees and all that they bring with them.  It sounds trite that we would be letting the terrorists win if we don't accept the refugees and if we given in to our fears, but it will still be true.

Islamophobia is for the weak, xenophobia is handy for politicians if we support their efforts to divide.  We are better than that.  We make mistakes, but we are better than that.  Perhaps my math is tainted by a bit of wishful thinking in the form of hope, but my understanding of ethnic conflict tells me that Yoda was right.

Why No Posts on Paris?

I have not written about the events in Paris here.  I did tweet some, but no blogging.  Why?  Not sure what I have to say.  While I am appalled at the attacks, I am not surprised or even shocked as terrorism is not going away, as Europe has experienced similar attacks recently.  The scale is slightly bigger than other European attacks, but the choice of "soft targets" is not new.  These folks wanted to do maximum amount of carnage, which makes it appear more AQ-ish than ISIS, but I will let the experts sort this out.

Lots of quick reactions by everyone, mostly demonstrating the power of confirmation bias.  This event has not changed most people's policy prescriptions.  And, yes, me, too, as my focus has been on humility, the theme of 2015 at the Spew.  That whatever we do, we should not over-react, that our past responses have not been especially successful, so doing more may not produce more security. 

More attention, of course, to Paris than to Beirut, Baghdad or elsewhere.  Why?  For all kinds of reasons: racism, familiarity, identification (the west feels attacks on western places more directly than those elsewhere as we identify more with the victims), connections (victims include Americans, folks from other European countries, etc).  One can focus on the ethnocentrism dynamic, but that too is confirmation bias.  Events like these resonate for all kinds of reasons, and the media seem to be able to focus on one event at the time, so this has crowded out the other attacks, the coverage of the college protests, the bombing of the Russian plane, and everything else.

Anyhow, take everything everyone says with a giant grain of salt... as my students do:

Student art from Poli 244, circle 2008

Threat Countdown: Right Wing Terrorism

Didn't Colbert have a bit about counting down the threats?  Well, the Canadian security folks, CSIS, have counted the threats and found that:

“Lone wolf” attacks more often come from white supremacists and extreme right-wing ideologies than from Islamic radicalism, internal CSIS documents say.

Citing recent academic research, the unclassified documents note extreme right-wing and white supremacist ideology has been the “main ideological source” for 17 per cent of so-called lone wolf attacks worldwide.

Islamic extremism accounted for 15 per cent of such attacks, the document noted, while left-wing extremism and “black power” groups followed with 13 per cent. Anti-abortion activism (8 per cent) and nationalism/separatism (7 per cent) rounded out the list, while in 40 per cent of cases there was no clear ideological motivation.

Of course, the non-lone wolf variety is probably tied to Islamist groups, like Al Qaeda.  Still, we panic so much at Islamist terrorism that we forget that the white supremacists/right wing types are as or more violent.  Indeed, what about Oklahoma City?  What about the spate of attacks in the US tied to white supremacists?

We have seen more of this with a black President and with whites declining relative to other ethnic groups in terms of relative size.  We will see more of this.  I remember that a US intel estimate with similar kinds of findings got squashed a few years ago, so it is nice to have a reminder of this basic reality.   Indeed, Homeland Security had a report last month that didn't get too much play on "right wing sovereign citizens" and the violence they are generating.

All this should serve as a reminder that terrorism is a tactic and not a movement.  There are terrorists in all kinds of movements, and that North America has as much to fear from the right as from anywhere else.

Daesh, not ISIS/ISIL/IS

Thanks to a persuasive former student, I am going to join others in referring to the group claiming to be the Caliphate as Daesh and not the Islamic State, ISIS or ISIL. 

Why?  First, it keeps practice consistent--we don't call Hamas the Islamic Resistance because we use their acronym in Arabic  Daesh apparently is the acronym if we use the Arabic name. 

Second, it is insulting to them since daesh has other meanings:

Daesh sounds similar to the Arabic words Daes ("one who crushes something underfoot") and Dahes ("one who sows discord")

Third, I feel bad for all of the girls named ISIS and all of the Institutes with this acronym.

But mostly, we should use it because it pisses off those who belong to Daesh. 

Colbert on Canada

Stephen Colbert says it quite well in the aftermath of the shooting in Ottawa:


and unlike most Colbert stuff, it actually plays in Canada!*

*Yes, I know that one can watch episodes at the Comedy Network, but most linked clips don't play here.

Meme Busting, Canada Edition

We all have many reactions to yesterday's event in Ottawa.  The one that is currently driving me crazy is that Canada lost its innocence this week.  As if Canada was a baby or a virgin.  It tweeted thusly:

This Canada losing its innocence meme should die now. Canada has had terrorism, has been at war. Canada, in short, is no babe or virgin.
— Stephen Saideman (@smsaideman) October 23, 2014

To be innocent means one of two things: either Canada had never engaged in anything bad or violent or whatever OR it means that Canada had not been attacked before.  Both are wrong.

Canada has a history of going to war with its allies.  Indeed, yesterday's attack was at the National War Memorial dedicated to the memory of those soldiers who perished in World War I.  This moving cartoon illustrates the reality quite well:

Bruce MacKinnon, Chronicle Herald

World War I, World War II, Korea, multiple peacekeeping episodes that were more violent than advertised, and then Afghanistan, Libya and now Iraq.  Canada is not new to the experience of having its soldiers die, nor is it new that their soldiers have killed.  So, Canada lost its innocence under that definition a long, long time ago.

And Canada has experienced terrorism.  Indeed, the Air India bombing had far more casualties than any American brush with terrorism before 9/11 (pretty sure about that).  Parliament had been attacked before, Islamist groups had planned attacks like this, and there are other examples of political violence.

My hope is that because Canada has experienced such stuff before, that it will not overreact.  My colleague, Jeremy Littlewood, has a nice post on that. 


What is truly annoying is that this almost makes me sound like Glenn Greenwald who wrote an utter piece of crap that came out just before yesterday's attacks, almost celebrating the attack on Monday.  I agree that Canada was not "innocent" before these events.  But that is not the same thing as saying Canada "deserved" it or taking a perverse delight as Greenwald seems to do in his piece.  I attack that dreck in my CIC post.

Anyway, I would like to kill this meme, but know that is impossible.  And there are more important things that deserve our focus--figuring out how to deal with these lone disturbed people who become attached to extremists.

A Tough Day in Ottawa

Today, Ottawa, my adopted hometown, faced a mighty difficult test and performed quite well.  There were much rumors about multiple attacks that didn't take place at a nearby hotel and mall, just like that day in DC where the media reported that there was a car bomb at the State Department (and I had just told my wife that I was headed there). 

I followed it on twitter rather than TV, which might have been a mistake since the TV coverage turned out to be great. But the media folks on twitter were also sharp.  I have met more than a few during my time here, and I have much respect for them. 

There was much uncertainty for quite some time with a press conference producing no new insights at all.  I am getting ready to watch the Prime Minister's address.

There will be much criticism of the security folks since this guy got into the building, but he was killed before he could do much damage.  By whom?  By the guy responsible for security, the Sergeant at Arms, apparently.  Former Mountie and all that. 

I am going to run now, but I had two tweets that went pretty viral today, and I feel pretty good about them now:

in my next book, I argue that I study Canada during A-stan because pressure reveals character. Today, Canada is revealing its character
— Stephen Saideman (@smsaideman) October 22, 2014

this day is revealing Canada is chock full of heroic govt workers, determined and professional media, and a calm, patient public. Not bad
— Stephen Saideman (@smsaideman) October 22, 2014

I will have more thoughts tomorrow as we learn more about this event and how it relates to Tuesday's attack (or not).

Canada's Half-Full/Empty Glass

Yesterday, an apparently radicalized recent convert drove his car into a couple of Canadian Forces soldiers.  This is the first successful attack by a "homegrown" Islamist extremist.*

* I had a quick conversation this morning with my colleague, Jez Littlewood, who is our terrorism expert, that informs this post.  One should go to him for an informed take on these events. 

The good news is that only one person was killed.  The second soldier was not as seriously hurt. 

The bad news is that a guy who only converted in the past year or so decided to engage in violence. 

The good news is that he was apparently "known" to the authorities. 

The bad news is that this attack might have been inspired by "Inspire" magazine, which is an Islamist extremist publication that has encouraged their readers to engage in such attacks. 

The good news is that this might represent progress in counter-terrorism--that Inspire and its kin are pushing for low level violence because the organizations have been pressured enough by a variety of efforts that they cannot plan and stage bigger attacks. 

The bad news is that this event was first known across Canada via a planted question in Question Period, quickly politicizing it.  Perhaps this is because an election is less than a year away, perhaps it is because the government wants to pass some counter-terrorism legislation.

The good news is that the reports indicate that the opposition did not really bite, that Mulcair treated the story well.

The bad news is that this is not the first example of this kind of low level attack, with Australia and UK having very small scale attacks in the past year by knife-wielding extremists.


The challenge in all of this is that governments and publics need to react but not overreact to these events.  Any loss of life is a tragedy, but we need to have some perspective on all of this.  My good news/bad news list illustrates this reality--concern is required but let's not give into the terror that ISIS, Al Qaeda and other groups want to create.

Terrorist or Not?

I have been engaging in a discussion on twitter about whether the Santa Barbara killer was a terrorist or not.  My basic starting point is: is the violence aimed to produce a political effect?  Or it just aimed to kill people?  Perhaps all violence is political, but I tend to see terrorism as an effort to alter a political context--to cause a government to overreact and over-reach (9/11), to compel a government to bargain (terrorist kidnapping, for instance), to spark/inspire a political movement, and so on. 

There is apparently much twisted stuff in the misogynist's manifesto, including reference to ideology.  He apparently did associate with those who shared his sense of grievance, focusing strangely enough on those tricksters that promise to offer tips to pick up ladies. 

At this early juncture, I don't think this guy is the Timothy McVeigh of the misogyny movement.  But it is early.

Why does this matter?  As a non-expert on terrorism, I would still think this has practical implications and not just an academic exercise.  If it is terrorism, then that affects how one thinks of prevention and of response.  If it is just a crazed individual trying to go out in the most spectacular way possible (was Columbine terrorism? I don't know), then one does not have to trace who supported the effort, who benefited from the effort, how to diminish the "spark", and so on.  If it is terrorism, then governments would want to do serious work to reduce the impact, deal with any networks of support, and perhaps even engage in information operations (propaganda) to offset the messaging. 

Of course, I am just spitballing since I am not very well read on this stuff, and I only teach a week or so of terrorism in my Contemporary International Security course. 

Your take?

Resiliency FTW

I am chock full of cheer today, as I see pics tweet by on my twitter feed and on my facebook page of folks participating in the Boston Marathon.  The efforts by two terrorists to sow fear have apparently failed.  Yes, they caused grievous harm, including killing three people and injuring far more.  But if they are/were self-styled terrorists, their goal was to more than maim and kill but to create a reaction, to create fear.

Instead, what we see today, albeit with amped up security presence, are people embracing the special day in Boston and celebrating their ability to run, to ride, to walk, to observe the event.  The usual mantra is "we have to do x or the terrorists will win."  Well, here, we see the terrorists losing.  Why?  Because Bostonians and Americans more generally are resilient.  More than folks have generally thought.  This is important because anti-/counter-terrorism efforts can never been 100% as much as we would like.  Stuff is going to happen.  That we can overcome it and move on is key.

Today, we are getting a very visible illustration of this resiliency that is so important.  So, we should not only enjoy the reality that the Tsarnaevs failed (yes, we can call them losers), but also take much pride in knowing that such nihilists can be overcome by people just enjoying what they do.

From RunnersWorld.com

Bad Op-Ed, Good Social Science?

There was a piece in today's NYT that attracted the ire of my twitter friends who are veterans/care about veterans: it associated white supremacists with the US military.  Ouch.  The piece itself presented some broad generalizations that are pretty problematic  (as explained well here), but it raised a question that I do think is worth thinking about: what role does the US military play in the development of white supremacist movements in the US?

I am not saying all vets or most vets or even some vets are radicalized by war and become crazy, racist criminals/terrorists.  What I am curious about is:

• whether military experience is over-represented in the white supremacist movement(s), 
• whether future supremacists join the military to gain skills that they intend to deploy as part of the movement, 
• whether young white folks who have no experience of "others" become more radicalized once they interact with perhaps the most integrated workforce in the U.S.--the US armed forces,
• whether the military serves as a networking experience.

Lots of ink has been spilled over the various webs that connect Islamist extremists, but much less attention has been directed to white supremacists who have killed many, many Americans (some say the KKK has killed more Americans than Al Qaeda has).  

To be clear, in my one year at the Pentagon, I was amazed at how diverse the workforce there was, and it remains the most integrated of any workplace I have ever experienced.  I do not think that the military or war causes many people to become white supremacists, but we do have examples of former military folks becoming terrorists--Timothy McVeigh comes to mind.

I am not a military sociologist so I do not know what has been done in this area, but I would imagine that some folks react to the military experience in ways that are not so positive.  It may or may not have anything to do with combat.  The twitter discussion today produced several testable hypotheses--can we assess whether white supremacists are more or less likely than the average American of the same race/class/background to have military experience?  To have combat experience?  I have no idea, but it is something that we should consider even as we ought not generalize and consider all veterans to be potential extremists.

Is The Prison Half-Full or Half-Empty?

So, folks are reporting that 30% of released Guantanamo inmates are returning to a life of terrorism. Is this good news or bad?  People make it seem like bad news, but I look at the prison and think it is half full?  Given that Gitmo does not seem to be a place where much effort when into turning the prisoners into model people, why should we expect that those who faced significant stress while in our guest villas in Cuba would then go home and become tax collectors or boy scout leaders?

Indeed, this news almost suggests that the US had caught the right folks, something that is never guaranteed.  Of course, one could counter that by suggesting that innocent people could be turned into terrorists after experiencing a place like Guantanamo and the enhanced interrogation procedures (torture). 

So, I return to my original thought--if only thirty percent of these guys or so return to terrorism, that is a lower recidivism rate than I would have expected and signficantly lower than the average rate of recidivism in the US, which is something like 60% (H/T to Dan Murphy @bungdan).   I am ont suggesting that Gitmo worked in the sense that these guys are actually less likely to engage in terrorism because of their treatment at Gitmo (I would guess we will be raising the percentage over time as we learn about more cases of recidivism).  Just that we should not be surprised when these folks return to the use of violence. 

I don't think we should have anything but the lowest expectations for Gitmo--that it worked out quite poorly.  So, recidivism?  Not a surprise.

Under-reacting vs. Over-reacting

We are pretty familiar with the US efforts to deal with terrorism and that much security theater be over-reacting to the threat.  Yesterday, a person finally got a court decision to challenge the no-fly list as there might just be an absence of due process.  

Well, Canada seems to be under-reacting.  A guy is found with a pipe bomb as he tries to go through security at an airport.  The CATSA people take away the bomb and then let him board the plane and then don't call the police four days.  Um, oy!

I ask a simple question--isn't there some place in the middle between these two extremes that might make sense?

Feature or Bug? When We Consider Terrorists Criminals and Crazy

We do not know much really about yesterday's attack at LAX, so it is really too soon to speculate.  However, it is not too soon to think about a key dynamic that may play out here.  The first indications seem to be that the perpetrator affiliated himself with far-right wing extremist conspiracy theorists.  The Southern Poverty Law Center  puts the references to NWO and fiat currency* into context with the explosion of extremist groups that occurred at the same time as both an economic meltdown and the election of black President.  So, we might be considering this guy a terrorist, but given the reports that his family considered him to be potentially suicidal, it is more likely he will be seen as a crazy person than a terrorist.  That, and, well, we have tended to think of terrorists over the past ten or so years only being those who are Muslim.

*  Perhaps part of the reason we treat the far right folks with less seriousness is that their obsessions are so strange.  We have had "fiat currency"--paper money--for a hundred years.  Time to get over it, eh?

We know better than that--that there has been heaps of terrorism over the years in the U.S. by people who are not Muslim but are Puerto Ricans, African-Americans, Jews, Croatians, anarchists, Armenians, anti-abortionists, environmentalists, and, of course, white folks such as Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.  The strange thing is that we tend to code most of the non-Muslims folks not as terrorists but as crazy and as criminals.  The question is: is this a problem or is a feature of American democracy?

One take on this is: this is religious discrimination where Muslims have become viewed as the only "real" perpetrators of terrorism.  This, of course, would be a problem.  Another take on this is, when thinking about white supremacists and other far-right folks, that these acts are criminal acts and not political ones.  If we treat much of the crimes of these people, the white nationalists, anti-government folks, as political, then one could code the U.S. as facing an insurgency.  That there is a political movement in the U.S. using unconventional tactics to attack the political system, that we are in the midst of a civil war.  That would seem to be worse than treating the situation as a bunch of crazy people with crazy theories about the political system and treating the problem as a criminal one.

When we think about places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea was not to turn them into Norway but to reduce opposition to the government from insurgencies threatening the entire political order into lower levels of violence that could be considered a criminal problem rather than a major political crisis.  So, in this light, treating the radical right violence as a criminal problem is actually a feature, a positive thing, about the American political system--that they are so marginal that they are not treated seriously as a political movement.

Of course, the flipside of this is that we discriminate against Muslims and do diminish the threat of white nationalism and radical right movements.  So, I am conflicted.  I am not sure I want this latest violence to be seen as terrorism but I am not sure I don't want it to be seen as terrorism.

To paraphrase from the constructivists, violence is what we make of it.  So, what should we make of the LAX attack?  And of other attacks by folks with "crazy" far right leanings?

Gitmo In the Rear View Mirror

I tweeted this morning the following:

.@JimmySky just curious.  While on Joint Staff, I was involved in the process that sent 6 Algerians from Bosnia yo Gitmo.
— Stephen Saideman (@smsaideman) July 29, 2013

It got picked up and discussed at Political Science Rumors while I was at a NPSIA retreat so I could not really put things into context.  So, let me try now.*

* I can talk about this because it has been discussed in the media elsewhere.  Indeed, it was the cover story for a Bosnian magazine in the aftermath (that is Uncle Sam pissing on the Bosnian constitution and the European Charter of Rights--or its equivalent. and then in Time and eventually the Washington Post.  Oh, and apparently Wikipedia

In the late fall of 2001 (a month or two after 9/11), the US got some intel that six Algerians were planning on engaging in terrorist attacks against US/NATO targets in Bosnia.  The US was still participating in the NATO Stabilization Force [SFOR] at the time.  The Americans informed the government of Bosnia, which then arrested these Algerians.  Two months or so later, the Bosnian government indicated that the Algerians would have be released because they did not have enough evidence, given the US's unwillingness to share intel.  The US had been trying to get Algeria to take these guys, but Algeria had refused, also citing the lack of intel.

So, in late January, the issue suddenly appeared in the US interagency.  The American commanders in Europe were seeking guidance from the interagency about what to do.  The choices were: let the Bosnians release the six suspected terrorists; give the Bosnians/Algerian the intel (actually, this was never discusssed as far as I can remember),* or have the Americans pick them up and hold them someplace.  At this point in time, the only people that had been sent to Guantanamo were those picked up in Afghanistan.

* One of the fundamental problems for the US in its war on terror was its refusal to share intel.  Like the tendency to over-classify stuff, the reluctance to reveal key bits of evidence cut against American interests.  But the intel folks fought hard to restrict access, citing the fear that it would reveal American "means and capabilities"--how the US gets its info.

The guidance cable that eventually went out (it was slowed by a day or so because the folks under Rumsfeld did not want to bother him after 7pm and also because the Office of the Secretary of Defense's lawyer was pondering whether this was good policy--which was not his job--and this gave the folks in Bosnia some time to organize a protest that could have turned into something far worse) that had the consent of State, National Security Council, OSD and the Joint Staff.  It gave the US military orders to act on their own and not part of NATO (the double hatted folks essentially took one hat off for the night) to pick up the six Algerians and drive them to Tuzla, where they could be put on a plane and flown to Guantanamo. 

At the time, sending these guys to Gitmo did not seem to be a horrible idea.  Yes, it did not help Bosnia's efforts to build a robust rule of law.  Nor did it play well among the Bosnian Muslims, but those folks still had a favorable position towards the US (they hated UN, liked NATO in general).  On Poli Sci Rumors, I tried to clarify that I was involved but not at the table.  This was not meant to indicate that I had no responsibility because I was just following orders but to clarify that I was not a decision-maker. Had I been one, knowing only what I knew in January 2002, I would have supported the decision that was made.  In fact, I did support the decision at the time.

What I did not know in 2002 was that detention without trial would be the norm.  I also did not know at the time about the rules that Rummy and others were sending out to detention facilities that essentially gave the green light for torture.  So, the relatively straightforward tradeoffs of 2002 were less straightforward with more information.  If I knew in January 2002 what I know now, I might not have been as supportive of the decision.  But given the tradeoffs, releasing six guys who we had good reason to believe were terrorists (I didn't see the actual intelligence since I had a Top Secret clearance which was not high enough to see the signals stuff--NSA stuff) seemed to be really problematic.

Anyhow for a better example of Steve just following orders: in the summer of 2002, the Bush Administration was trying to get all of the mandates of the US missions in the world, including the Bosnian mission, revised to exclude the US troops from being vulnerable to being tried by the International Criminal Court.  I was strongly opposed to this stance, not so much because I believed in the ICC, but because I knew that American allies really cared about ICC.  Given that a new war was on the horizon (Iraq), it seemed foolish to antagonize American allies in Europe over a symbolic issue (the ICC rules give the country of the troops the first chance to handle any suspicion of war crimes, so the Americans could always handle the cases themselves).  I argued with my superior officers and then went ahead and did the paperwork--that I was just following orders.  In the Gitmo case, I believed that the course of action was the best of a set of lousy alternatives--so I was not just following orders.

So, there you have it: my role in the sending of some suspected terrorists to Guantanamo.  I am not proud of it, and that is why I asked the question on twitter: to find out whether any of these guys were still left in Gitmo.