No, Afghanistan Is Not Really Vietnam All Over Again

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 251-268
Author(s):  
Aaron O'Connell

On February 29, 2020, the United States and the Afghan Taliban signed an agreement in Doha, Qatar, bringing the United States potentially closer to ending the war in Afghanistan than at any point in the conflict's eighteen-year history. After months of military escalations, negotiations, and recriminations, the United States agreed to a token withdrawal of several thousand forces by August 2020 and to remove all remaining forces by May 2021. The Afghan government had been cut out of the talks, but the United States also vowed to encourage it to release thousands of Taliban prisoners and to enter into its own negotiations with the Taliban in order to pave the way to a permanent ceasefire agreement. For its part, the Taliban agreed to negotiate with Kabul after the troop withdrawals began and to halt cooperation with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Author(s):  
Amy Wenxuan Ding

In the war against terrorist enemies, the United States currently is using a traditional defensive approach: engaging in formal military ground battles with adversaries such as al-Qaeda. By conducting a formal military operation, powerful military forces ideally should defeat terrorists, break up terrorist cells, remove their home bases, disperse leaders, and severely degrade the terrorist groups’ ability to wage attacks against the United States. A traditional military war normally involves two parties with known geographical locations and concentrated battle areas. A victory occurs when an enemy is defeated. However, the war on terrorism represents an opposite situation: without geographic concentration. Modern terrorists operate across national borders and have access to funding and advanced technology with global reach. Terrorists such as al-Qaeda lack geographic homes, which mean the battlefield is geographically dispersed. Furthermore, in addition to using conventional weapons, they increasingly use modern information technology, particularly the Internet, to wage their battles. They ride the back of the Web and use advanced communications to distribute their thoughts or views, gather support, recruit new members, and move immense financial funds from one place to another. According to Weimann (2006), many terrorist groups have their own Web sites on the Internet, which they use to teach their members to prepare computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, sniffers, and other malicious programs that multiply and cause potentially severe damages. They thus consider the capabilities of the Web as offensive mass weapons that can undermine worldwide actions. The modern Internet penetrates all levels of society, such that information flows continuously and seamlessly across political, ethnic, and religious divides. Because of the global nature of cyberspace, it provides a new platform on which terrorists can wage battles. In this chapter, we examine the role of the Internet as a battlefield and analyze the course of war in cyberspace. We model the Internet structure and determine that the Internet needs a self-immunization mechanism that can self-detect illegal or criminal activities online.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eko Wahyono ◽  
Rizka Amalia ◽  
Ikma Citra Ranteallo

This research further examines the video entitled “what is the truth about post-factual politics?” about the case in the United States related to Trump and in the UK related to Brexit. The phenomenon of Post truth/post factual also occurs in Indonesia as seen in the political struggle experienced by Ahok in the governor election (DKI Jakarta). Through Michel Foucault's approach to post truth with assertive logic, the mass media is constructed for the interested parties and ignores the real reality. The conclusion of this study indicates that new media was able to spread various discourses ranging from influencing the way of thoughts, behavior of society to the ideology adopted by a society.Keywords: Post factual, post truth, new media


Author(s):  
Raymond J. Batvinis

Counterintelligence is the business of identifying and dealing with foreign intelligence threats to a nation, such as the United States. Its main concern is the intelligence services of foreign states and similar organizations of non-state actors, such as transnational terrorist groups. Counterintelligence functions both as a defensive measure that protects the nation's secrets and assets against foreign intelligence penetration and as an offensive measure to find out what foreign intelligence organizations are planning to defeat better their aim. This article addresses the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) foreign counterintelligence function. It briefly traces its evolution by examining the key events and the issues that effected its growth as the principle civilian counterintelligence service of the U.S. government.


2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keir A. Lieber ◽  
Gerard Alexander

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many observers predicted a rise in balancing against the United States. More recently, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has generated renewed warnings of an incipient global backlash. Indeed, some analysts claim that signs of traditional hard balancing can already be detected, while others argue that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. grand strategy has generated a new phenomenon known as soft balancing, in which states seek to undermine and restrain U.S. power in ways that fall short of classic measures. There is little credible evidence, however, that major powers are engaging in either hard or soft balancing against the United States. The absence of hard balancing is explained by the lack of underlying motivation to compete strategically with the United States under current conditions. Soft balancing is much ado about nothing: the concept is difficult to define or operationalize; the behavior seems identical to traditional diplomatic friction; and, regardless, specific predictions of soft balancing are not supported by the evidence. Balancing against the United States is not occurring because contemporary U.S. grand strategy, despite widespread criticism, poses a threat to only a very limited number of regimes and terrorist groups. Most countries either share U.S. strategic interests in the war on terrorism or do not have a direct stake in the confict. As such, balancing behavior is likely only among a narrowly circumscribed list of states and actors being targeted by the United States.


2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (105) ◽  
pp. 40-51
Author(s):  
Osama Bin Laden

To the Americans:In this letter from 2002 Osama Bin Laden replies to unidentified American writers explaining why al-Qaeda is justified in attacking North American targets. The letter poses two questions: What are we fighting for? and What are we calling you to do, and what do we want from you? According to Bin Laden al-Qaeda is engaged in a fight responding to decades of Western aggression. Bin Laden presents a detailed account of the misdeeds that the United States are responsible for in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. The letter also denounces North American society as characterised by usury, debauchery, gambling, prostitution and environmental destruction. Finally Bin Laden provides the reader with a series of examples connected to the ‘war on terror’ where the United States does not live up to its own rhetoric: the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, the suspension of civil liberties in the Patriot Act and the rejection of the Kyoto Accords.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-165
Author(s):  
William J. Maxwell ◽  
Bill V. Mullen

William J. Maxwell, editor of James Baldwin: The FBI File (2017), interviews Bill V. Mullen on his 2019 biography, James Baldwin: Living in Fire, along the way touching on both Baldwin’s early internationalism and his relevance to the current wave of racial discord and interracial possibility in the United States.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Ida Susilowati ◽  
Nur Rohim Yunus ◽  
Muhammad Sholeh

Abstract: Terrorism is a crime committed by a group of people to frighten, terrorize, intimidate a country's government. In the case of the September 11, 2001 terror that occurred at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States accused the al-Qaeda group of being behind the attack. Furthermore, the United States attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. America considers the attacks carried out are legitimate because they are carried out to reduce world terrorism crimes. Whereas behind that there is another motive for controlling the oil in the country that it attacked.Keywords: Terrorism, Intervention, United States. Abstrak:Terorisme merupakan kejahatan yang dilakukan oleh sekelompok orang guna menakuti, meneror, mengintimidasi pemerintahan suatu negara. Dalam kasus teror 11 September 2001 yang terjadi pada World Trade Center dan Pentagon, Amerika Serikat menuduh kelompok al-qaidah di balik serangan tersebut. Selanjutnya Amerika Serikat melakukan penyerangan terhadap Afghanistan dan Iraq. Amerika menganggap serangan yang dilakukan adalah sah karena dilakukan untuk meredam kejahatan terorisme dunia. Padahal di balik itu ada motif lain untuk menguasai minyak yang ada di negara yang diserangnya.Kata Kunci: Terrorisme, Intervensi, Amerika Serikat


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-102
Author(s):  
Lance E Mason

The present sociopolitical environment in the United States is perpetually mediated and beset with information from innumerable sources. This paper argues that Dewey’s conception of communication as a mutual act of meaning-making holds insights for explaining the connections between pervasive mediation and political polarization, in addition to understanding why political discourse has become more degrading in recent years. It also points the way toward viable solutions by arguing for the reorientation of schools toward valuable living experiences that are becoming less pronounced in the broader culture, such as sustained face to face engagement on matters of social import.


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