War on Terrorism

Remi Brulin writes: More than a decade after the 9/11 attacks, we are finally getting a clearer picture of the ways in which the United States is waging what it calls its “war on terrorism.” At the center of the government’s strategy has been the decision to shift the focus away from capturing and interrogating [...]

Remi Brulin writes: Imagine a world where the security forces of several non-democratic states “coordinate intelligence activities closely,” “operate in the territory of one another’s countries” and have established a program “to find and kill terrorists” anywhere around the world as part of a “war” against “terrorism.” Such a dystopian reality appears to be precisely [...]

Rosa Brooks writes: When a government is accused of activities that stretch or violate the law, it has three choices: 1) change the activities to conform with the law; 2) change the law to conform with the activities; or 3) lie (about the nature of the activities, the meaning of the law, or both). Option [...]

Fareed Zacharia writes: As we debate whether the two parties can ever come together and get things done, here’s something President Obama could probably do by himself that would be a signal accomplishment of his presidency: End the war on terror. Or, more realistically, start planning and preparing the country for phasing it out. For [...]

Adam Curtis writes: At the beginning of this year one of the weirdest characters ever to become involved in the present Afghan war died. He was called Jack Idema and he was a brilliant con-man. For a moment, during the early part of the war, Idema persuaded all the major TV networks and scores of [...]

Peter Maass writes: The phrase “war on terror” is rarely heard these days. Our fight in Iraq ended last year with the pullout of the remaining troops. Combat forces are set to be withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2014, and their fade-away has been highlighted by the fact that more private contractors are getting killed in [...]

Fareed Zacharia writes: Whatever you thought of President Obama’s recent speech on Afghanistan, it is now increasingly clear that the United States is winding down its massive military commitments to the two wars of the last decade. We are out of Iraq and we will soon be largely out of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is [...]

Gareth Porter writes: A few days after US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a “senior intelligence official” briefing reporters on the materials seized from bin Laden’s compound said the materials revealed that bin Laden had, “continued to direct even tactical details of the group’s management.” Bin Laden was, [...]

Gary Younge writes: Last week,

Jack Goldsmith writes: When Michael Ratner argued in a February 2002 lawsuit that British citizen Shafiq Rasul had a legal right to challenge his detention at Guantanamo Bay, there was little reason to believe he and his colleagues at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) would play any role in shaping America’s national security landscape. [...]