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Digital World War: Islamists, Extremists, and the Fight for Cyber Supremacy
RSVP
When
December 1, 2017
1:30 pm – 3:00 pm
Where
New America
740 15th St NW #900
Washington, D.C. 20005
Social media has reshaped the way societies engage in politics and war across the Muslim world. From ISIS’ use of social media to recruit to its role in the Arab Spring the Internet has become a site of conflict. In his new book, Haroon Ullah examines the unprecedented impact of social media across the region addressing both its democratic revolutionary impact as well as how it has been co-opted by religious conservatives and extremists.
Dr. Haroon Ullah is Chief Strategy Officer for the Broadcasting Board of Governors. A former senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State, with a special portfolio on digital transmedia strategy and countering violent extremism, he is a Peabody TV Award recipient, an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Follow the discussion online using #DigitalWorldWar and following @NewAmericaISP.
Participants:
Haroon Ullah, @haroonullah
Author, Digital World War: Islamists, Extremists, and the Fight for Cyber Supremacy (Yale University Press)
Moderator:
Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President, New America
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Understanding Proxy Violence in the Arab World and Beyond: The Role of State and Non-State Actors
Monday, November 20, 2017
7:00pm – 8:00pm
✚ gCal ✚ iCal
UNDERSTANDING PROXY VIOLENCE IN THE ARAB WORLD AND BEYOND: THE ROLE OF STATE AND NON-STATE ACTORS
A panel discussion moderated by Peter Bergen
Featuring Tricia Bacon, Ambassador Gerald Feierstein & Assaf Moghadam
Monday, November 20, 2017 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Light Refreshments Will Be Served
Fordham Law School, Costantino Room (2nd Floor)
150 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023
The program will serve as the launch event for an eighteen month project on Proxy Warfare CNS is working on with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
RSVP
Peter Bergen is a print and television journalist, documentary producer, think tank executive, and the author of five books, three of which were New York Times bestsellers Bergen is Vice President, Director of the International Security, Future of War, and Fellows programs at New America; Professor of Practice at the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University; CNN’s national security analyst; and a Fellow at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law. Bergen is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal in the field, and has testified before multiple congressional committees about Afghanistan, Pakistan, ISIS, al-Qaeda, drones and other national security issues. He is a member of the Homeland Security Project, a successor to the 9/11 Commission, and also of the Aspen Homeland Security Group. He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy and writes a weekly column for CNN.com. Bergen’s newest book, United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists, was published in February of 2016. Director Greg Barker adapted the book for the HBO film Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma.
Tricia Bacon is an Assistant Professor at American University’s School of Public Affairs. She earned her PhD in International Relations at Georgetown University. Prior to her employment at American University, Dr. Bacon worked on counterterrorism for over ten years at the Department of State. Her work on counterterrorism in the intelligence community received numerous accolades, and she conducted research and analysis on counterterrorism in South Asia, North Africa, East Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia.
Ambassador Gerald Feierstein is the director for Gulf affairs and government relations at the Middle East Institiure. He retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in May 2016 after a 41-year career with the personal rank of Career Minister. As a diplomat he served in nine overseas postings, including three tours of duty in Pakistan, as well as assignments in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Lebanon, Jerusalem, and Tunisia. In 2010, President Obama appointed Amb. Feierstein U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, where he served until 2013.
Assaf Moghadam is Associate Professor and Director of the MA Program in Government at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel. He is Director of Academic Affairs at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT); a fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC); an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at Columbia University; and a Research Affiliate at the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland. He is a Contributing Editor for the journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism and the Book Review Editor for the journal Democracy & Security. He has authored or edited five books on terrorism and political violence.
Justice was served in the Bergdahl case
Peter Bergen
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Bowe Bergdahl avoids prison time 00:51
Story highlights
Peter Bergen says the sentence will not satisfy many in the military and it’s been attacked by President Trump
But given the mitigating factors that the judge had to consider, his decision was right, Bergen says
“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University and chairman of the Global Special Operations Foundation. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” ”
(CNN)The case of Bowe Bergdahl, who deserted his US military outpost in eastern Afghanistan in 2009 and was then captured by the Taliban, stirs strong emotions.
For many in the military, the fact that Bergdahl deserted and subsequently endangered the lives and the limbs of a number of soldiers who went hunting for him meant that he should have faced a lengthy prison sentence.
At Berghdahl’s trial, prosecution witness Shannon Allen said her husband Mark was severely wounded on a mission to find Bergdahl and is today largely paralyzed and unable to care for himself.
The intensity of the anger directed at Bergdahl by some in the military is amplified by the fact that his freedom was gained by a 2014 prisoner swap for five mid- and high-level Taliban leaders who had been imprisoned at Guantanamo.
The prosecution in the case asked the judge, Army Col. Jeffery R. Nance, for 14 years of imprisonment. Nance opted for no prison time and a dishonorable discharge for Bergdahl.
Why? Col. Nance had to weigh a number of mitigating factors as he determined Bergdahl’s sentence. (Note: I have met with members of Bergdahl’s family.)
The first factor, of course, is the five years Bergdahl spent as a prisoner of the Taliban.
Bergdahl mounted a number of escape attempts after which he spent years confined in a cage suitable for an animal.
He was also tortured, beaten with thick rubber hoses and copper wire.
The second, is Bergdahl’s diagnosis of schizotypal personality disorder.
According to the Mayo Clinic, “People with schizotypal personality disorder are often described as odd or eccentric… the person with schizotypal personality disorder responds inappropriately to social cues and holds peculiar beliefs.”
Given this diagnosis, it’s not clear why Bergdahl was allowed into the military in the first place. Some evidence for Bergdahl’s strange mindset is provided by his observation to the podcast “Serial” after he was released by the Taliban that when he had left his base in Afghanistan he believed he was embarking on some kind of “Jason Bourne” mission. Moving around alone in Taliban areas in Afghanistan, Bergdahl proved an easy target for Taliban foot soldiers, not some kind of action hero.
A third factor that the judge likely weighed in his decision was that Bergdahl provided useful information about the Taliban to US intelligence agencies when he was debriefed.
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Finally, the judge said he would also weigh prejudicial statements made by President Trump about the case as a mitigating factor. The military is very sensitive to the issue of undue “command influence” in the military justice system.
When he was a candidate, Trump often called Bergdahl a traitor who should be executed, and just last month when he was asked about Bergdahl, the commander in chief said, “I think people have heard my comments in the past.”
Even though his own comments proved to be a factor in the judge giving Bergdahl leniency, Trump didn’t hold back in criticizing the decision Friday. On Twitter, Trump said the judge’s decision is “a complete disgrace to our Country and to our Military.”
Of course the sentence will not satisfy many in the military (as it hasn’t the commander in chief who is supposed to uphold the military justice system), but given the mitigating factors that the judge had to consider in the case, justice was served.
America’s unyielding plague of gun violence
Peter Bergen
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Story highlights
Peter Bergen: America is exceptional in many ways — including its rate of gun violence
But until Americans work to change lenient gun laws, tragedies like the ones in Texas and Las Vegas will remain a serious risk, writes Bergen
“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” This is an updated version of a story that appeared last month.”
(CNN)Americans often think of themselves as belonging to an exceptional nation, and in many ways they do. They belong to a tolerant, multicultural society that has led the world toward a more innovative and more inclusive future through new technologies and a unique embrace of diverse cultures.
But the United States also leads the world in other ways that don’t match the often complacent self-conception that many Americans have of their own country. The United States locks up more of its population proportionally than any other country in the world, including authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies.
It also leads in another dubious statistic: More Americans are killed by fellow citizens armed with guns than in any other advanced country, according to the Small Arms Survey.
In 2011 alone, according to FBI statistics, more than 11,000 Americans were killed by firearms in the United States (a figure that excludes suicides).
Despite all the reasonable concerns in the United States about jihadist terrorism, in any given year Americans are almost 2,000 times more likely to be killed by a fellow American armed with a gun than by a jihadist terrorist. Since the 9/11 attacks, 103 people have been killed on US soil by jihadist terrorists, according to data collected by New America. Just last week, in fact, eight people were killed in a terrorist attack in lower Manhattan.
By contrast, in the United Kingdom, a country which is similar to the United States in terms of its laws and culture, Britain suffers around 50 to 60 gun deaths a year in a country where the population is around a fifth the size of the United States. In other words, you are about 40 times more likely to be killed by an assailant with a gun in the United States than you are in the United Kingdom.
To be sure there are occasional mass-casualty attacks in Europe by murderers armed with guns, such as the assaults by the neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, who killed 77 in Norway in 2011, and the attack in Dunblane, Scotland, at a school where 16 children were killed in 1996, but these are exceptions to the rule.
We still don’t know the motivations of Stephen Paddock, who last month carried out the worst mass shooting in modern American history, killing at least 59 and injuring more than 500 in Las Vegas, but what we do know, so far, is that he had 23 rifles in the room from which he launched his rampage.
I thought guns were fun. Then my loved ones became victims
I thought guns were fun. Then my loved ones became victims
Paddock also hailed from Nevada, a state that allows “open carry,” which enables its residents to openly display weapons in public. Which other civilized country allows its citizens to show up, say, at a Starbucks carrying semi-automatic guns?
Texas is another open carry state whose citizens can carry rifles and handguns openly. While many details are at this point unknown, at least 26 people were killed when a shooter opened fire on Sunday at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
A man who lives near the church used his own rifle and shot at the gunman, said Freeman Martin, a Texas public safety official. “The suspect dropped his rifle, which was a Ruger AR assault-type rifle and fled from the church,” according to Martin.
The Second Amendment, of course, is the Second Amendment, so certainly American laws allow the possession of weapons by its citizens. But it’s unlikely that the Founders’ intention was to let troubled American citizens acquire arsenals to kill as many as their fellow citizens as possible.
With each new outrage — from the Sandy Hook massacre to the attack on the gay nightclub in Orlando — there follows a certain amount of soul-searching by the American public and policy makers about the distinctive American gun culture that has developed in recent years, where pretty much anyone can acquire an arsenal of weapons. But each time the moment of self-reflection seems to pass.
book
This is a tribute to the political muscle of the National Rifle Association which embraces a Second Amendment absolutism that allows even the dangerous number of less than 1,000 Americans who are on the “no fly” list to legally purchase semi-automatic weapons.
One can only hope that the tragic events in Las Vegas and Texas may change this. However, given that previous tragedies have not changed this deadly equation, there is really little reason for hope.
That resigns us to a dystopian future where Americans attending something as innocuous as an office holiday party in San Bernardino in 2015, or partying at a nightclub in Orlando the following year, or attending a country music concert last month in Las Vegas, or church on Sunday in Texas have to live with the lethal reality that they may become the innocent targets of their well-armed fellow citizens.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the shooter in Norway as Andres Breivik.
Leidos
Reston,
Speech to take place from 9:30am-10:30am 45 minute speech plus Q+A
Making Sense in a World of Trouble.
2017 Annual Security Conference
150 security professionals and Leidos employees
Leidos Office
11955 Freedom Drive Reston, VA 20190
In New York, terrorists’ tactic of choice strikes near scene of 9/11
Peter Bergen
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Updated 7:57 AM ET, Wed November 1, 2017
Witnesses: Driver yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ 00:35
Story highlights
Peter Bergen says the once a rarely used tactic of vehicle attacks has become tactic of choice for terrorists in the West
Fifteen such attacks in the West, including Tuesday’s in New York, have killed 142 people in the past three years
“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University and chairman of the Global Special Operations Foundation. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” ”
(CNN)On Tuesday, a 29-year-old Uzbek national committed the first deadly terrorist attack in Manhattan since two planes, hijacked by members of al Qaeda, destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
The attacker, identified to CNN by law enforcement sources as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, is accused of renting a truck and using it to mow down bicyclists in lower Manhattan, a few blocks from the rebuilt trade center. Eight people were killed.
Terrorists, like school shooters, learn from other attacks. And no tactic has spread more quickly among terrorists in the West than the use of trucks and other vehicles to carry out mass casualty attacks.
What was once a rarely used tactic has now become a tactic of choice for terrorists who are living in the West, because these attacks simply require the rental or purchase of a suitable vehicle and access to crowds of people.
Since 2014 there have been 15 vehicular attacks in the West by jihadist terrorists, including Tuesday’s attack in Manhattan, according to a count by New America, a nonpartisan research institution. Such vehicular attacks have proven quite lethal, killing 142 people in the West since 2014, including the eight who died in Tuesday’s attack.
Witnesses on Tuesday heard the alleged perpetrator shouting “Allahu Akbar!” “God is Great!” during the attack, a slogan that jihadist terrorists often use when they are carrying out an operation.
Saipov, the suspect in the Manhattan attack, is from Uzbekistan. He came to the United States in 2010. According to a law enforcement source, a note was found near the truck used in the attack claiming that it was carried out in the name of ISIS.
Since late January, the Trump administration has proffered three versions of the travel ban for citizens coming from a total of 10 countries. Uzbekistan is not one of these 10 countries and none of the lethal terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11, nor 9/11 itself, was carried out by the citizens of the countries targeted by the travel ban.
ISIS called for vehicle attacks
While al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, had called for vehicle attacks in the West beginning in 2010, it was really only when ISIS leaders called for such operations three years ago that they began to occur frequently.
Although the vast majority of these vehicle rammings since 2014 have been the work of jihadist terrorists, the tactic has also been used by far-right terrorists. For instance, a terrorist rammed his car into an people protesting white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, killing a woman. Palestinian terrorists have also used vehicle attacks frequently against Israeli targets.
For terrorists, vehicular attacks have a number of advantages: They don’t need to draw attention to themselves by buying weapons or chemicals suitable for bomb-making or by going overseas for training.
These attacks are also simple to mount and largely unstoppable, because closing access to vehicles to anywhere there are crowds would be an impossible task in crowded Western cities.
Among the other victims of vehicular attacks were the 14 people killed in August when a van mowed down people in a popular tourist area in Barcelona, Spain; the June attack on London Bridge that killed 8, the April attack in Stockholm, Sweden, that killed five; the March attack on London’s Westminster Bridge that killed five, and the December 2016 attack at a Christmas market in Berlin, Germany, that killed 12.
The most lethal attack occurred in Nice, France, on July 14, 2016, when a terrorist rammed his truck into crowds celebrating the anniversary of the French Revolution, killing 84 people.
What can be done?
One way to defend against car and truck attacks is to restrict traffic around high profile, crowded events. The New York Police Department already does this around events such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. But this wouldn’t have prevented Tuesday’s attack, because the victims were ordinary New Yorkers traveling through the city on an ordinary day.
Another approach is to try to enlist peers and family members to come forward, since they are the most likely to see signs of radicalization and also, even, attack plotting.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect the note claiming the attack was made in the name of ISIS was found near the truck.
national Security Events An Evening with the Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP, U.K. Home Secretary
An Evening with the Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP, U.K. Home Secretary
RSVP
When
November 9, 2017
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Where
New America
740 15th St NW #900
Washington, D.C. 20005
As ISIS’ physical caliphate in Iraq and Syria crumbles, the propensity of the group to shift resources further into ensuring the strength of its virtual caliphate is top-of-mind for policy makers and technologists working in the CVE and counterterrorism spaces.
New America is pleased to welcome the Rt Hon Amber Rudd, UK Home Secretary and Member of Parliament for Hastings and Rye, for a discussion on these and other topics.
The Home Secretary will be joined by Joshua Geltzer, an ASU Future of War Fellow at New America and previously the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council staff from 2015-2017; Evanna Hu, a technologist and partner at Omelas, a firm at the intersection of P/CVE/CT and technology that aims to prevent and eradicate violent extremism by working with clients, including civil society, corporations, and governments in Europe and the Middle East on the integration of data analytics tech to make their work more efficient.
Additional panelists will be announced in the coming days.
Schedule:
6:00-6:30pm: Registration and Reception
6:30-6:40pm: Introduction and Welcome
Anne-Marie Slaughter, @SlaughterAM
President and CEO, New America
6:40-7:00pm: Remarks from the Home Secretary
The Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP, @AmberRuddHR
Secretary of State for the Home Department
Member of Parliament for Hastings and Rye
7:00-8:00pm: Conversation and Audience Q&A
Participants:
The Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP, @AmberRuddHR
Secretary of State for the Home Department
Member of Parliament for Hastings and Rye
Kevin Bankston, @KevinBankston
Director, New America’s Open Technology Institute
Joshua Geltzer
ASU Future of War Fellow, New America
Executive Director, Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection
Evanna Hu, @evannahu
Partner, Omelas
Mary McCord
Senior Litigator from Practice, Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection
Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security, U.S. Department of Justice
Jason Pielemeier, @pielemeier
Policy Director, Global Network Initiative
Moderator:
Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President, New America
Register Today: CEP Event to Probe Solutions to Online Extremism
Press Contact:
Media at CEP
media@counterextremism.com
Contact Us
November 13 panel discussion to feature Dr. Hany Farid, Peter Bergen, and Fran Townsend
(New York, NY) – The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) will bring together a distinguished group of experts on November 13 in Washington, D.C., for a public discussion of the challenges of extremism and terrorism in an online world.w:
CEP will be sponsoring a panel discussion on the “rights and responsibilities of social media platforms in an age of global extremism” on Monday, November 13th from 3-5 p.m. at the Newseum. The event will bring together leading voices in the American legislative, national security and practitioner worlds to discuss solutions to the challenge of extremism and terrorism content online. The panel will break down the impact of extremist content through the lens of global communications technologies, highlighting its role in the radicalization process of American and Europeans who have subsequently joined extremist groups abroad or committed acts of domestic terrorism. The event participants will also highlight potential solutions to this critical issue, from technological to political action, that might serve to counter extremist propaganda more effectively.
The panelists include: Dr. Hany Farid, Chair of Computer Science at Dartmouth; Peter Bergen, Vice President of the New America Foundation; and Fran Townsend, CEP President and former Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush. Greta Van Susteren will be moderating the panel.
In addition to the panelists, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin will be framing the panel discussion with 25-30 minutes of opening remarks.
Monday, November 13
3:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Newseum
555 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
Bergen: War against ISIS goes global
Peter Bergen
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Senators claim not to know of troops in Niger 01:17
Story highlights
Peter Bergen: The Niger battle in which four soldiers were killed has drawn attention because of a spat between Trump and widow of soldier
Bergen: But the incident also underlines how far the war on terror has spread across the globe since 9/11 attacks
“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University and chairman of the Global Special Operations Foundation. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” ”
(CNN)The battle in Niger in which four members of a US Army Special Forces team were killed by an ISIS-affiliated group has garnered a great deal of public attention, partly because of the spat between President Trump and the family of one of the dead soldiers, Sgt. La David Johnson, but the incident also underlines the extent to which the war on terror has truly globalized since the 9/11 attacks.
A US National Counter Terrorism Center map from 2016 shows 18 countries with official branches of ISIS and an additional six countries where there are “aspiring branches” of the terror group.
One of those official branches of ISIS is an offshoot of the notorious Nigerian terrorist group, Boko Haram, which operates not only in Nigeria but also in neighboring Niger, the country where the four US Army soldiers — two of them Green Berets — were killed on October 4.
It’s the increasingly globalized nature of ISIS and like-minded groups that is a key reason for the large number of countries around the globe where US Special Operations Forces are now deployed.
Deploying US armed forces in Niger is unlawful
Deploying US armed forces in Niger is unlawful
According to a Pentagon press release from July, about 8,000 Special Operations Forces are deployed in 80 countries around the world.
There are around 800 American soldiers now stationed in Niger, a number of whom are US Special Operations Forces, although their precise number isn’t clear.
President Obama — elected, in part, on his promise to end large scale wars in the Muslim world — increasingly turned to using Special Operations Forces and drones as a way to combat terrorist groups.
President Trump has continued this policy.
The classic role of Special Forces, including the Green Berets that are now deployed in Niger, is to work “by, with and through” local forces.
In practice, this means advising local military and paramilitary forces so that small teams of Green Berets working on the ground can act as force multipliers for the much larger units they are advising.
The classic example of how successful this approach can be was the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the winter of 2001, which was accomplished by some 100 US Green Berets on the ground calling in American airstrikes. The Green Berets also allied with many thousands of Afghan militiamen to defeat the Taliban.
The Obama and Trump administrations’ reliance on Special Operation Forces and drones in many ways is a sound policy. There is no desire from the American public for large-scale ground wars against groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda. Not only are these costly in blood and treasure, but such large-scale interventions are often not necessary to fight relatively small terrorist groups.
Take the fight against the hundreds of militants affiliated with ISIS who in May seized the city of Marawi in the southern Philippines. US Special Operation Forces provided assistance to the Filipino military forces that seized back control of the city this past week.
Similarly, in Syria, 300 US Special Operations Forces advised the Syrian Democratic Forces, which took control of Raqqa, ISIS’ de facto Syrian capital, earlier this month.
For all the advantages that special operations have in their light footprint and flexibility, there can also be a significant disadvantage as perhaps applied in the Niger case — that it may be harder for US forces to come to the aid of those in a firefight. While a full accounting of what happened in Niger may take many weeks, those are the kinds of questions the firefight raises.
Haley warns African conflicts becoming 'breeding ground' for terrorists
Haley warns African conflicts becoming ‘breeding ground’ for terrorists
The largely covert war fought by Special Operations Forces in countries around the world relies on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that Congress passed just days after 9/11 authorizing President George W. Bush to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, or harbored such organizations or persons….”
Today, two presidents later, this is the same authorization that is invoked to enable Special Operations Forces to conduct military operations in West Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Obviously, few of these operations have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks.
No one imagined that the post-9/11 AUMF would 16 years later be the legal authorization for numerous military operations against jihadist terrorist groups across the globe.
It would be wonderful if Congress would have a public debate about the scope of these operations, rather than handing the president effectively a blank check, but few in Congress have been willing to bring the matter to a vote and so America’s long wars grind on with little public discussion or congressional debate.
F