Smoke-filled skies loom over a destroyed tank on the south side of Baghdad. (photo: Carolyn Cole/LA Times)
How US
Wars Have Bred Terrorism
By Ivan Eland, Consortium
News
25 June 16
The
Reagan administration inadvertently created Al Qaeda by arming the Afghan
mujahedeen in the 1980s, then George W. Bush’s Iraq War gave rise to ISIS. So,
one might draw a lesson about overusing military force abroad, says Ivan Eland.
The
mass shooting in Orlando, Florida at a gay nightclub, by a man pledging a
seemingly last-minute allegiance to the ISIS terror group, leads to questions
about whether the U.S. government has been adequately protecting its citizens.
Going
back in time, the U.S. government inadvertently created Al Qaeda by
encouraging, funding, and arming radical Islamist fighters against the Soviet
Union in faraway Afghanistan during the 1980s. After the 9/11 attacks by that
group, the U.S. government, by conducting an unrelated invasion of Iraq, then
unintentionally created an even more brutal group called Al Qaeda in Iraq,
which pledged allegiance to the main Al Qaeda group in Pakistan, and eventually
morphed into the even more vicious ISIS. ISIS then took over large parts of
Iraq and Syria, but began to attack Western targets only after a U.S.-led
coalition began bombing the group in those countries.
Directly
planned attacks by ISIS have occurred in Europe, but ISIS has had problems
recruiting people in the United States to go to Syria for military training and
return to the United States to attack, because its Muslim community has not
been radicalized. Thus, the group has had to rely often on spontaneous and
crude — but nevertheless sometimes deadly — attacks by relative amateurs
“inspired” by the group, such as the incidents in San Bernardino and Orlando.
In the
Orlando attack, the perpetrator, Omar Mateen, even may have been dressing up
anti-gay bigotry by pledging allegiance to ISIS shortly after he began his
dastardly act. Although the FBI had investigated his past statements and
connection with one of the few Americans who joined an Al Qaeda affiliate and
went to Syria in 2013 and 2014, respectively, they closed the investigation;
Mateen’s father and ex-wife have both dismissed religion and instead pointed to
anti-gay statements he had made. His father has even pointed out that the
shooting may have been triggered by Mateen’s outrage at his three-year-old son
recently observing two men kissing and touching.
Entrapping
‘Terrorists’
According
to a recent investigation by The New York Times, in two-thirds of prosecutions
of ISIS-related terrorism cases, the FBI is using once rare undercover sting
operations, such as going on the Internet and encouraging bloviating and bragging
individuals to do illegal things so that they can be arrested. Unbelievably,
the reason for such a high percentage is that such intrusive undercover
operations can be done without approval of judge, which is needed for searches
and wiretaps. Thus, the Congress and the public are largely in the dark about
such stings.
According
to Michael German, a former undercover agent with the FBI, who was quoted in
the Times, “They’re manufacturing terrorism cases. These people are five steps
away from being a danger to the United States.”
Such
furtive entrapment is good for the FBI, so that the agency can show that
funding the agency results in arrests in terrorism cases, but is bad for the
republic. Because talk is cheap and doesn’t necessarily coincide with action,
the FBI (and other law enforcement agencies) likely may be egging people on to
do things they wouldn’t do without such encouragement.
Even
more important, the FBI may be wasting time arresting relatively harmless
braggarts who have discovered ISIS on the Internet or on TV while ignoring
others — ISIS-related or not — who may be more dangerous. Most important, such
undercover operations alienate an otherwise cooperative American Muslim
community, which could quit providing the FBI intelligence on any really
dangerous people.
In the
panic that ensued after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI was transformed to focus on
terrorism cases rather than its traditional concentration on more “ordinary”
federal crimes. And since the advent of ISIS, the agency seems to have focused
like a laser on the group.
As the
San Bernardino and Orlando incidents seem to show, even an “inspired” lone wolf
can kill significant numbers of people, if not masses of people as on 9/11. Yet
the school shootings at Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook have killed about as many,
and anyone can now kill people for reasons of hate and simply dress up their
motivations by pledging allegiance to ISIS, which the Orlando murderer may well
have done.
Despite
the hysteria that occurs when ISIS is somehow associated with incidents like
San Bernardino and Orlando, Americans should keep in mind that their government
inadvertently created the group in the first place and is now hyping the danger
to get more resources for its agencies, such as the FBI and Department of Defense,
to combat the problem.
The
Orlando tragedy is horrendous, but Americans should put the threat from ISIS in
perspective and not allow the security agencies to run rogue and either stir up
more terrorism from overseas or undermine the republic by using entrapment
techniques that are counterproductive to protecting the public.
Ivan
Eland is senior fellow and director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the
Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and the author of Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the
Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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