“We Are Not Your Enemy” President Obama offered friendship to the Islamic world in a televised interview on Al-Arabiya this week saying, “We are not your enemy.” This came on the heels of two other important actions by President Obama: using his middle name “Hussein” when he took the oath of office, and calling for a “new way forward” directly to the Muslim world in his inaugural speech.Is there any such thing as the Muslim world? Probably not. There are however, a billion or more people who practice the Islamic faith in the world, and the fact that the western world lumps them together and blames them for terrorism is a huge problem. Developing a New Relationship with the Islamic World Actions like the President’s interview,  even when accompanied by critical steps like the closing of Guantanamo and the renunciation of torture by the U.S., still will not win the hearts  of the Islamic world over to the U.S. These acts are but a drop in the bucket where it really counts: ending the scourge of terrorism. What needs to happen here is not a reconciliation with the Muslim world but a new kind of relationship that has never existed before—a partnership based upon respect.

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 Killing Bin Laden Continues Disastrous Bush Policies President-elect Obama stated on his recent 60 Minutes appearance that he was committed to “capturing or killing Bin Laden”. I agree that Bin Laden, and his second in command Al Zawahiri, should be captured, but they should not be killed. Killing them would be a continuation of the disastrous policies of the War on Terror which so isolated us from the rest of the world. It is a dangerous policy and one which the Obama administration should carefully re-examine. Victims of Terrorism Not Just American I have been studying the terrorism issue since 1998 when the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Al Qaeda. The victims of those bombings were overwhelmingly African citizens.  Although the target was the U.S., the reaction of the U.S.

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 Taxi Driver Missing in the Fog of War                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    On December 5, 2002 an Afghan taxi driver took three passengers for a ride and never returned home. He was brought to Bagram Air Base where he was detained by U.S. military forces, then in action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.  Bagram had been turned into a prison to hold and interrogate people captured in this first aggressive action in the War on Terror. Five days after his arrival Dilawar was dead. From Victim to Victimizer Taxi to the Dark Side, a searching, and meditative film, is a thoughtful inquiry by documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (director of Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room), of the route the U.S. took after 9/11 from attack victim to torturer.

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Nightmare Portends the Future? Two days after Election Day I awoke from a terrible nightmare.  A torturer had just cut off my legs and was forcing me to walk on the stubs of my legs. I woke up screaming.  Who was my torturer? Why this dream? Why now? In August 2001 I experienced repeated waves of doom that something dreadful was coming.

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 Book Review: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.  Jane Mayer. Doubleday: New York, 2008. Prepare to be shattered. This is a difficult book to read. Mysteries of Bush Administration Response Post 9/11 Revealed Jane Mayer’s meticulous dissection of the actions of the Bush administration post 9/11 is an extraordinary service to Americans and to the world. Many of us have been trying to understand how this presidency went so wrong.

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 To Catch a Terrorist The lead article in the New York Times on June 22nd, Inside the Interrorgation of a 9/11 Mastermind, is a great piece of journalism. In the frightening days and months after 9/11 the CIA worked desperately to capture the terrorists responsible for it and to prevent another such attack on the US. They were very successful, capturing both 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, logistics manager for Al Qaeda. This article reveals the operations of the CIA and ordinary people trying to do their work under extraordinary circumstances. Both these men were interrogated at a secret black site where they were subjected to harsh treatment and waterboarding before being moved to Guantanamo.                                                                                                                   Good Cop/Bad Cop The fascination of this article is in the interrogation details.

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