November 2009 Archives

On Tuesday night, President Obama will lay out his new strategy for Afghanistan. How long do you think U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan, and how long do you think they should be in Afghanistan?

12 responses: Michael Brenner, Jim Phillips, Paul Sullivan, Daniel Serwer, Daniel Gouré, Michael F. Scheuer, Joseph J. Collins, Wayne White, Ron Marks, Michael Brenner, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Dov S. Zakheim

Updated at 10:45 a.m. on Nov. 16.

Conventional wisdom has held for some time now that Muslims in the United States integrate better into society than do Muslims in France, Britain or other European countries, and that's why we haven't had many homegrown terrorist plots. But perhaps in light of recent events, that is just so much self-delusion. Some 20 Somali-Americans -- all young men mostly born here, the FBI says -- have gone to Somalia in the past 18 months and joined Al Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated group trying to seize that Horn of Africa country. One of those Somali Americans, Shirwa Ahmed, died in an apparent suicide attack targeting government offices in northern Somalia in October 2008. Najibullah Zazi, an American born in Afghanistan but raised in the United States since the age of 7, was plotting to blow up trains in New York City before he was recently arrested in Colorado. And now Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, an American Muslim born and raised in Virginia, stands accused of shooting to death 13 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas.

Are we as good at integrating Muslims into U.S. society as we think we are? Or is it that Muslims worldwide are inevitably getting fed up with America's two wars against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a global war on terror that is perceived to be attacking Muslims in about two dozen countries? Or is it that Al Qaeda -- which had connections to Zazi, Al Shabaab and the Somalis, and perhaps through a cleric to Maj. Hasan -- is still the force we need first to be reckoning with?

15 responses: Paul Sullivan, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Michael F. Scheuer, Michael Brenner, James Jay Carafano, James Kitfield, Dov S. Zakheim, Michael F. Scheuer, Ron Marks, Joseph J. Collins, Paul R. Pillar, Brian Michael Jenkins, Michael Brenner, James Jay Carafano, Daniel Byman

The Obama administration wants to keep Afghanistan from becoming a base of operations for terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, and the expected troop buildup there will almost certainly involve a heavy reliance on counterterrorism operations. But recent evidence suggests that terrorist networks have found much safer bases in countries where there isn't a large U.S. military presence, such as Somalia, Yemen and Algeria.

How should the Obama administration broaden its counterterrorism strategy to include these burgeoning terrorist havens? Should it increase the use of Predator drones in these countries? Or the kind of commando raids that killed a key Al Shabaab leader in Somalia recently? Should the president consider lifting the ban on assassinations in order to more freely target terrorist figures in countries where we're not at war? And what are the options the president has for focusing on the "upstream" factors, as his chief counterterrorism adviser has called them, that lead people to commit terrorist acts in the first place?

12 responses: Michael F. Scheuer, Michael Brenner, Wayne White, Michael F. Scheuer, Shane Harris, Dov S. Zakheim, Paul Sullivan, Col. Douglas Macgregor, Daniel Gouré, Joseph J. Collins, Ron Marks, Michael Brenner

The idea of a binding interdependence between China and America as the linchpin of a new global economic and political order has become a trendy one in geopolitical circles. There is much talk, for example, about Zachary Karabell's new book, Superfusion: How China And America Became One Economy And Why The World's Prosperity Depends On It. So, first of all, is the premise of the so-called Chi-America (or Chimerica) thesis a well-grounded one? What is true and not true of this premise? Why not, at least, "Amer-Chi," given that the U.S. remains, by far, a bigger and wealthier economy, and a weightier global political actor?

In any case, how should Washington try to manage the Sino-American relationship -- the political as well as the economic dimension? Given the global rise of China, was President Obama right, for example, recently to postpone a meeting in Washington with the Dalai Lama -- until after a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao? Or did this step express too much deference towards a China that still has a long way to go before rivaling the U.S. in global influence?

10 responses: Paul Sullivan, Richard Hart Sinnreich, Michael Vlahos, Paul Starobin, Dov S. Zakheim, Ron Marks, Christian Caryl, Michael Vlahos, Michael Brenner, James Mann