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197 CHAPTER TWELVE RETHINKING THE RESPONSE: NEW WORLD ORDER IDEOLOGY AND “DEMOCRA-CIDE” Today the global corporate system constitutes an ominous threat to both human and nonhuman life, an exploitative, repressive, and unsustainable juggernaut that treats all living beings as resources within a swollen production and marketing regime, as disposable commodities far removed from any moral status. This is theoretically myopic in that such addictive human behavior can seem to justify an impulse to ignore the moral and political consequences of such behavior; some of the worst human crimes across history were rooted in longstanding habit and custom, later to become the targets of resistance and change. Critical reflection implies a willingness to reconsider any personal or institutional practice known as harmful to others or to the common good. In the case of natural relations, barbarism rooted in human convenience and monetary profit not only thrives but is legitimated within the media and popular culture. To use just one simple illustration of such theoretical myopia, in the latemorning hours of July 7, 2005, then British Prime Minister Blair emerged from the G8 meetings he was hosting in Gleneagles, Scotland, to read a brief statement in reaction to the four bombs that had ripped through the London transport system earlier that morning. In his words, “Our determination to defend our values and our way of life,” he said, “is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.” Like President Bush after 9/11, Blair was the picture of unwavering resolve. But the bombing in Sharm el-Sheik two and a half weeks later underscored how such utterances, while politically useful, have distorted the nature of the threat. Tony Blair, “The Prime Minister’s Statement on the London Explosions,” (statement, Gleneagles, Scotland, July 7, 2005), available at www.number10.gov.uk/output/page7853.asp. The Sharm el-Sheikh bombing, like the 2003 Casablanca bombing before it, makes two important points. First, attacks like 9/11 and 7/7 are not attempts to destroy Western civilization or democracy. Were such terrorist acts the immediate motivation of radical Islam, there would be no point in bombing non-Western targets. Rather, they are protests against the Western military presence in many Muslim countries; against support for selected corrupt, dictatorial Muslim governments; and against Western exploitation of 198 Middle Eastern oil reserves. Second, which is corollary to the first and underscored by the diversity of radical Islamist activity taking place in Africa, the world is facing a global Islamic insurgency that is growing more diffuse and widespread by the day. London highlights at least three reforms necessary to counter this challenge in Africa: first, redefinition of the essential nature of and international response to the global war on terrorism; second, clarification of the principles and legal instruments governing the apprehension of suspected international terrorists; and third, greater scrutiny on the evolving means of terror financing and document trafficking in Africa. In mid-2003, not long after the U.S.-led coalition successfully toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld circulated an internal memo - the most famous of all his many memos, nicknamed “snowflakes” in the Pentagon--in which he asked whether, in effect, the U.S. approach to countering terrorism was creating more terrorists than it was killing. The answer, many conclude from the insurgency in Iraq, may be yes. Rumsfeld’s question has prompted a vigorous reevaluation inside the Pentagon about how best to confront a spreading ideology rather than combating a monolithic enemy. The Defense Department has been at the forefront in the attempt to redefine that “global war on terror” as “the global struggle against violent extremism.” Although much of this redefinition is driven by a desire to narrow the scope of the war, at least one important question lies within: rather than ask, “Why do they hate us?” why not ask, “What causes radicalization?” The redefinition also invites a profound reshaping of the global response to terrorism away from a strict and ill-suited conventional warfare approach toward the kind of broader, counterinsurgency approach that has, for example, worked well in Afghanistan. This is precisely the aim of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative, a new plan involving nine African partner states and, in Washington, the Pentagon, State, Justice, and Treasury Departments, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The list alone suggests the breadth of the approach: joint military training programs, which have already started...

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