Archives for January 2010

As any regular reader here knows, one of my favorite subjects is the intersection between the war on drugs and the war on terror. And as we now get sucked into the lawlessness of Yemen, it provides another subject matter. Qat (also spelled ‘khat’) – a plant that can be chewed for its stimulant effects – is extremely popular in Yemen, among all strata of their society from rural villagers to government officials. I’ve even read one report out of Yemen that much of the country shuts down in the early afternoon as many people use qat as a daily ritual. I’m not sure how much of an exaggeration that is, but it’s safe to say that chewing qat is a fairly significant part of daily life in that country.

Here in the United States however, and even here in Seattle, qat is an illegal substance. This has caused a significant backlash from this area’s Somali immigrants, who feel they should have the right to partake in a custom that was commonplace in their homeland and does not harm others.

With that in mind, I noticed this passage from a blog specifically devoted to dealing with Yemen:

The US must be much more active in presenting its views to the Yemeni public. This does not mean giving interviews to the Yemen Observer or the Yemen Times or even al-Hurra, which is at least in Arabic. It means writing and placing op-eds in Arabic in widely read Yemeni newspapers like al-Thawra. I detailed a golden opportunity that the US missed with the Shaykh Muhammad al-Mu’ayyad case in August in a report I wrote for the CTC Sentinel (which is available on the sidebar). This also means allowing US diplomats to go to qat chews in Yemen – and even, perish the thought, chew qat with Yemenis. The US should be honest about what qat is and what it does and not hide behind antiquated rules that penalize a version of the stimulant that does not exist in Yemen. Whether or not the US knows it, it is engaged in a propaganda war with al-Qaeda in Yemen and it is losing and losing badly. US public diplomacy is all defense and no offense in Yemen, this has to change or the results of the past few years will remain the roadmap for the future. And that future will witness an increasingly strong al-Qaeda presence in Yemen.

As we’ve already seen in Afghanistan, an overzealous drug war can severely undermine attempts to combat Islamic radicalism when we’re not realistic about both cultural differences and economic realities when it comes to drugs. It’s definitely something to keep an eye on in Yemen because if we deal with qat there the way we’ve been dealing with it here, it has the potential to really blow up in our face.

Last week’s contest was won by Gman. It was Columbus, Ohio (thanks to Daniel K for posting the link).

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Luke 14:26

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

Family values? Discuss.

Penny Coleman in AlterNet writes about the growing awareness among Iraq and Afghanistan war vets about the efficacy of marijuana in treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). A recent study out of Israel confirms what many returning American soldiers are finding out on their own.

In a column in the Seattle Times today, the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer explains exactly how to appease al-Qaeda and then excoriates President Obama for not doing it:

The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face.

This is so far beyond false, I don’t even know where to begin. Obama has not only expanded the war in Afghanistan, he’s also broadened the scope of our international fight against terrorism to Pakistan and Yemen. His approach to terrorism has been just as bellicose as his predecessor’s.

Obama reassured the nation that this “suspect” had been charged. Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an enemy combatant — an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no uniform, direct attack on civilians — and now to prevent future attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have about al-Qaida in Yemen.

Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point — surprise! — he stops talking.

What? When Abdulmutallab was arrested, he did spill the beans on the connections he had to al-Qaeda in Yemen. He didn’t need to be waterboarded or denied due process. And giving him a lawyer didn’t all-of-a-sudden cause him to clam up and refuse to cooperate.

There are a few more inaccuracies and examples of bad logic, but I want to cut to the heart of Krauthammer’s fallacy:

The president said that this incident highlights “the nature of those who threaten our homeland.” But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as “extremist(s).”

A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and are openly pledged to war on America.

This is a distinction without a difference. In fact, it may not even be a distinction at all, considering that environmental extremism exists throughout the world. A jihadist is an extremist, just a particular flavor of extremist. And there’s no rationale for treating them – and their movement – any differently than we treat eco-terrorists or the way we treated Timothy McVeigh and his movement.

Al-Qaeda is not a single organization with a heirarchy. It’s a movement based upon extreme views about America’s power in the world. And it thrives whenever America’s actions play into certain paranoid stereotypes about us. But Krauthammer argues that we should be doing exactly the kinds of things that play into those stereotypes. It’s hard to imagine a worse way to deal with the problem of jihadism.

The root of what makes people like Abdulmuttalab into willing jihadists is a feeling of powerlessness. To overinflate the reality of their own potency is to appease that desire. In the past, we’ve dealt with Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui by trying them in criminal court, treating them just like any other criminal, and that properly squashed their desires to be seen as some special kind of threat that America needs to treat differently.

The goal of radical Islamic extremists is to have a war between the Muslim world and the United States. It’s not a rational goal by any stretch, but that’s what makes them extremists. The worst thing we can do is to convince ourselves that these small groups of nutjobs are sufficiently powerful enough to force us to change our own way of life and our own customs. But Krauthammer is arguing just that. He’s asking us to change the way we handle criminals simply because he’s as afraid of them as they want all of us to be. His attempts to overinflate their importance is nothing more than appeasing them, making them into the powerful people they aspire to be.

The Seattle Times editorial board endorses the new Seattle-Tacoma International Airport contract with Yellow Cab, for amongst other things, improving the quality of the cabs serving the airport:

To the credit of the Port and other entities working on taxi policy, cabs serving the airport are no longer grungy and filled with house pets and cookery. A big improvement.

“House pets and cookery”…?  Um… did the Times editorial board just make some sort of ethnic slur against the Sikh cabbies who dominate STITA, the taxi association that previously held the Sea-Tac contract?

I’ve been in my fair share of STITA cabs, and while I guess you could describe a few as grungy, they were no more or less so than other Seattle cabs, let alone those I was familiar with from New York and Philadelphia. And I certainly don’t remember any cabbies cooking curry in the front seat, with or without a four-legged companion.

Considering how closely the public associates STITA cabs with our region’s growing Sikh community, “house pets and cookery” just strikes me as an odd and inappropriate turn of phrase coming from the Times… the kinda rude hyperbole more at home on, say, a lowly blog, than the editorial pages of a major daily newspaper.

Not that I don’t welcome the competition.

Media Matters has more about the revelations that the Tea Party Express bus tour this summer was little more than a scam to separate fools from their money. As Glenn Beck repeatedly demonstrates, it’s pretty damn easy to do.

Oops… other Washington.