The War on Terror: Ten Years After 9/11, How Far Have We Gone - Research Paper Example

? The War on Terror: Ten Years After 9/11, How Far Have We Gone? This paper seeks to answer the question: a decade after 9/11, how far have we gone and what have we done wrong? The author attempts to look at three possible elements of the War on Terror strategy and identify possible miscalculations in the said strategy. Firstly, it argues that the disregard for human rights and international humanitarian law has made the United States lose its credibility, at a time of heightened global awareness on human rights principles. Secondly, it argues that the US government ignored or neglected the War in Drugs, and focused primarily on Islam as the main enemy without seeing how American society is slowly but surely being contaminated with the drug problem. And lastly, it looks at the complex permutations of the immigration problem, reflecting on the impact of immigration of anti-terrorism efforts. This paper analyzes the Homeland Defense Policy of the United States as it has evolved since 9/11 and seeks to answer why the United States still remains vulnerable to terrorism despite the billions of dollars that it has funnelled into the War on Terror project. The War on Terror project, this paper analyzes, suffers from three fundamental problems: firstly, it has lost is credibility in light of the many human rights violations that have been associated with it; secondly, it has been too simplistic, in that it focused on one enemy – Islam – without realizing the variegated and complex enemies of democracy, including the drug problem; thirdly, it does not address the complex roots of the issue, including what gives rise to terrorism in the first place. There is no doubt that the War on Terror and Homeland Defense has been beset with problems. To quote Ian Lustick (2006): The War on Terror’s record of failure, with its inevitable and spectacular instances of venality and waste, will humiliate thousands of public servants and elected officials, demoralize citizens, and enrage taxpayers. The effort to master the unlimited catastrophes we can imagine by mobilizing the scarce resources we actually have will drain our economy, divert and distort military, intelligence, and law enforcement resources, undermine faith in our institutions, and fundamentally disturb our way of life. In this way the terrorists who struck us so hard on September 11, 2001, can use our own defensive efforts to do us much greater harm than they could ever do themselves. This poses a crucial question. Is it indeed true that our efforts to protect ourselves from external threat have made us even more vulnerable than we already are? This paper will try to explore this seeming irony and examine the mistakes the country may have made in the pursuit of the war on terror . For centuries wars have been fought using the rhetoric of defending the motherland. In recent times, wars have been fought to push an idea – the American Way of Life, for instance. Indeed, it is a form of nationalism that believes that one’s way of life, one’s ideological firmament is more stable, and thus should be exported to the rest of the world, even if it means using guns and killing civilians. But wars cost money, and every cent channeled to finance a war is a cent taken away from the domestic population. Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes (2010) dicussed what he calls the “opportunity costs” of the war They explain: The Iraq war didn't just contribute to the severity of the financial crisis, though; it also kept us from responding to it effectively. Increased indebtedness meant that the government had far less room to maneuver than it otherwise would have had. More specifically, worries about the (war-inflated) debt and deficit constrained the size of the stimulus, and they continue to hamper our ability to respond to the recession. With the unemployment rate remaining stubbornly high, the country needs a second stimulus. But mounting government debt means support for this is low. The result is that the recession will be longer, output lower, unemployment higher and deficits larger than they would have been absent the war. The economic constraints certainly are there, but this paper would focus on the three issues identified above and reflect on how these issues impede the goals of the War on Terror. Human Rights violations A culture of impunity arises when those who are in charge of homeland defense believe themselves to be “elite warriors” rather than public servants out to defend the civilian population and democratic ideals. Peak in his book “Justice Administration: Police, Courts and Corrections Management” (2009) had argued that an “us versus them” mentality among military officers has created a general sentiment wherein civilians are treated with disdain, and civilian law (e.g., human rights law, international humanitarian law) are treated as unnecessary obstacles that prevent the exercise of their prerogatives. Abu Ghraib is a perfect example of this. Abu Ghraib, which was already a prison in Iraq even before the war broke out, served as a significant place in gathering intelligence for the coalition forces. The originally Iraqi prison -- uninhabited and abandoned after its fall to the coalition forces -- was occupied, scrubbed and cleaned to serve as a detention prison manned by United States forces (Hersh, 2004). It became an ideal place for the US to extract information from their detainees. Most of those detained were arrested during regular inspections and operations. The ones targeted for HUMINT, however, were the ‘high value’ detainees who are suspected of being the principals or masterminds of the insurgencies (Hersh, 2004). These people were kept and imprisoned as a means of counterintelligence (CI) to ensure that no insurgent would be able to return to their group equipped with material to be used against them. Special Agent DeBatto who testified against the cruelty in Abu Ghraib was also a former U.S. Army Counterintelligence specialist. In Iraq, DeBatto led a tactical HUMINT team or THT whose primary objective is to gain actionable intelligence. These are valuable information which paved the way for many operations such as one involving the capture of the notorious sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay. But the leakage of the photographs and videos took attention away from the valuable information extracted by HUMINT and focused attention on the cruel and inhuman conditions of the detainees. There had been blatant violations of the rights of the prisoners as the photographs that leaked out of Abu Ghraib confirm. The report filed by Major General Taguba on his inspection of the institution was a graphic representation of how the prison was run (Hersh, 2004). The pictures which started the whole controversy were proof enough of the culpability of the participants. The flagrant torture of the army subjected the detainees into performing sadistic acts which included sodomy, violence and intimidation. The abuse of the prisoners was comparable to the German torture employed during World War II (DeBatto, n.d.). There were explicit photographs that included a man masturbating in front of another which makes it even more repulsing as doing such are illegal and taboo in Islam. Some were stripped of their clothes while there are those who were intimidated by attacks of military dogs. The MPs were commissioned to become the prison guards of Abu Ghraib. SSG Frederick, the primary suspect in the abuses during the investigation, led his team and was later dismissed (Hersh, 2004). None of the means employed by them is permissible under any HUMINT or CI standards. Worse, Human Intelligence and Counterintelligence was not used appropriately and failed to maximize its potential in Abu Ghraib. Worse, there was an atmosphere of acceptance and routine which encouraged the personnel to continue with their abuse (Scherer & Benjamin, 2006). After 2004, the United States Congress has enacted a number of reforms to ensure that the scandal of Abu Ghraib will not repeat itself. For example, investigations have been conducted against those who have been pinpointed as perpetrators of torture and human rights abuses. Regulations on greater transparency have been put in place. Human rights advocates have spoken clearly against torture. The practice of hiring private contractors to conduct interrogation has also been put under scrutiny. Since 2009, the Abu Ghraib is now an Iraqi prison, but its lessons should remain with us and guide future military intelligence strategies. What needs to be changed are not individual policies, but the over-all mindset that renders human rights prescriptions optional, rather than sacred; and torture an acceptable strategy in the name of tactical advantage, rather than an antiquated form of warfare. To quote Human Rights Watch (2004): “This pattern of abuse did not result from the acts of individual soldiers who broke the rules. It resulted from decisions made by the Bush administration to bend, ignore, or cast rules aside. Administration policies created the climate for Abu Ghraib….” The War on Drugs The War on Terror has suffered from simplistic analysis, perceiving the threat to be The relentlessness of the War on Terror has obscured an equally great problem: the war on drugs. Terrorism is not simply an assault on freedom and democracy, it can equally be an assault on the individual by creating drug dependence that leads to other pernicious social effects. According to Peak, (2009) “more than half of all adult arrestees test positive for drug use at the time of their apprehension; their drug use prior to incarceration is typically chronic.” The problem of illicit drugs in the United States must be viewed against the backdrop of a well-oiled international drug trafficking network that has sustained the addiction of drug users and has lined the pockets of those who profit from this addiction. Indeed, in order to address illicit drug use at its core, it is imperative to understand the workings of the drug trade – the production, transport and distribution that takes place before eventual consumption. Many Americans assume that illicit drugs in the United States come from Latin America, without really understanding the dynamics between the drug cartels and the relationships of the players with each other. In truth, Colombian drug organizations and Mexican drug organizations have traditionally taken different roles in the drug trafficking chain. In the article by Lyman (2011), the relationship started with Mexican drug organizations acting as surrogates and partners of their Colombian counterpart drug organizations – taking advantage of the borders between Mexico and the United States to smuggle in cocaine from Colombia. However, towards the end of the 1980s the Mexicans were no longer satisfied with being mere conduits and wanted a share both of the drug loot and the U.S. markets. Lyman explained the consequence of this: Eventually, this arrangement with the Colombians not only resulted in dividing the cocaine shipments down the middle but in dividing much of the U.S. markets down the middle. As the arrangement evolved over time, the Colombians retained the wholesale market in the eastern United States as their own, and Mexican drug cartels took over the wholesale market in the Midwestern and Western states. According to Bagley (1988), the expanded role of the Mexicans in the drug trade had created, in his words, “an unprecedented wave of drug related violence in Mexico that seriously threatened the country’s fledgling process of democratization. (page 71)”. And this begins to answer the question as to whether or not these drug cartels are as much of a threat to the United States as traditional terrorist organizations. In fact, it may even be argued that drug cartels are even more of a threat to the United States than the terrorist networks that people have come to associate with Islamic fundamentalist groups and the like. For one thing, the scale of violence wrought by drug organization can perhaps rival that of traditional terrorist organizations. Colombia’s principal guerrilla organization, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucion de Colombia or FARC, has been known to be involved in drug trafficking activities to finance the insurgency – thereby creating a lethal combination of drug money and armed tactics. But secondly and more importantly, the impacts of drug organizations are more pervasive than terrorist organizations, if you count the lives that have been destroyed because of the proliferation of the illicit drugs in the market. These are not only the drug users themselves, but also victims of drug-related crimes, and even helpless family members and loved ones of those who are held in a vise-like grip by their addictions. Illegal Immigrants: Labelling and Isolating Homeland defense and illegal immigration are inextricably intertwined, in that much of the Homeland Defense policy of the United States has targeted illegal immigration. Much debate has raged over immigration policies in the United States. In the past, the United States had reached out with open arms to immigrants coming from distant shores who want to make this country their home. As a result of this, we have seen America become a melting pot of cultures, offering its embrace to the poor and downtrodden. In many instances, however, social controversies had arisen as a result of the influx of immigrants. This is the current situation at hand. Conservative Americans say that the government has coddled illegal immigrants far too long, and given the current bleak state of the US economy, this is prejudicial to ordinary Americans citizens. Those of immigrant heritage, on the other hand, particularly the Latinos, call for less stringent immigration measures, and continue to go to the US to escape the poverty and desperation in their home countries. Immigration policies are hotly contested and draw divisive lines across the nation. Peak (2009) has colourfully described illegal immigration efforts by the US government: The UAVs use thermal and night vision equipment to spot illegal immigrants; they can detect movement from 15 miles of altitude, read a license plate, and even detect weapons. In 39 days of border surveillance, the UAVs led to the apprehension of 248 illegal immigrants and the seizure of 518 pounds of marijuana. The vehicles are waist-high, weigh about 1000 pounds, have a 35-foot wingspan, fly faster than 100 miles an hour and can stay aloft for 20 hours at a time. The general perception against the illegal immigrant population remains to be negative. They are perceived to be deviants. Certainly, they are going against their law by virtue of the fact that they are in a country when it is not legally permissible for them to be in it. However, the manner with which they have been portrayed or caricaturized by media and by the public at large goes beyond violation of the law. Indeed, stereotypes and labels are attached to them. But how did the labeling of illegal immigrants happen? It is important to note that the process of labeling begins at the behest of a ‘moral entrepreneur’ (Becker, 1963), who makes a claim that some behavior or action is wrong and then makes new rules or code of conduct in order to stop that behavior or action, and punish the actor. They package their efforts as a moral crusade, but what really happens is that “they add to the power they derive from the legitimacy of their moral position the power they derive from their superior position in society" (Becker 1963). In illegal immigration in the United States, the moral entrepreneurs were those who expressed objections to the unfettered entry of Mexicans into American soil, a phenomenon made complicated by the fact that many of the wealthy and powerful took advantage of the cheap labor provided by these immigrants. Bustamante (1972) presented a fascinating description of the beginnings or root of this labeling of illegal immigrants: The appearance of the Border Patrol in 1924 altered the primary deviance of the illegal entrant by crystallizing a new social reaction to the violation of immigration laws. The new police force was to reveal these primary deviants, violators of immigration laws. In this process, the term ‘wetback’, previously purely descriptive, acquired a new meaning. It became the ‘label’ or ‘stigma’ by which the illegal immigrant was made visible. At the same time, the label ‘wetback’ also became the symbol by which the illegal immigrant was able to identify a new ‘me’ for himself. (p. 708) It was not difficult to see how the immigrants had become treated as deviants. There was rising resentment caused by their presence because they were taking away jobs from the local people, since it became more economically efficient to hire those who do not refuse work even at very low wages and subhuman conditions. It is also argued that the labeling of deviancy has the tendency to be a self-fulfilling prophecy – with the labeled party assuming the label as his identity and perhaps experimenting with other forms of deviance. In cases of alcoholic deviancy, Roman and Trice (1968) wrote that, “the mere process of labeling and sick-role assignment may serve to aggravate and perpetuate a condition which is initially under an individual’s control.” An analogy may be drawn here to the case of illegal immigrants. Because they are pushed to the side, because they are treated not as human beings but as burdens, the human tendency is to lash back. There is also a tendency to retreat to social groups where deviant activities are accepted (Bernburg, et. al. 2006), and this can push the immigrants into an even deeper web and a life of crime. They may not have been criminals or deviants in their home countries but because of the stereotypes that have been assigned them, they find themselves adopting these stereotypes. This becomes especially so when there are public announcements of the deviancy (Wilkins, 1964).Where illegal migrants are concerned, this can take the form of public raids, humiliating arrests by border patrols, even media reports where immigrants are subjected to derision and ridicule. It creates in the illegal immigrant a sense that he or she is being labeled as deviant and criminal by society, and this defines them and determines future actions. Currently, there are plenty of illegal immigrants in the United States, many of whom are from nearby Hispanic countries, most notably still Mexico. It has been found that when the purchasing power of the dollar increases in Mexico, illegal immigration increases, suggesting that illegal immigration is brought on by economic reasons. (Hanson and Spilimbergo, 1996). While all of them can technically be called “criminals” because being in the country illegally is a crime, there are many who participate in criminal activity over and above the fact of their illegal immigrant status. We refer to those who engage in drug trafficking, in human trafficking, in illegal possession of firearms, in petty crimes. Thus the phenomenon of illegal immigration causes even greater social problems: human trafficking and drug trafficking. This is the sort of problem where it is difficult to draw black and white lines: to say, for example, that the illegal immigrants are the only ones at fault and they are predators, taking jobs from citizens and welfare from the taxpayers who sustain and support the welfare system. But this is an issue with many stakeholders and players. There are the illegal immigrants themselves, who enter the country illegally, or who enter the country legally but whose continued stay becomes illegal because their tourist visa has lapsed. Many of them become victimized as well, particularly the young. There are the American citizens who suffer from the recession and who cannot get jobs because the illegal immigrants are willing to work for much less, and other less-than-adequate work conditions. There are the states that come up with immigration policies for their states, such policies determined by local voter sentiments. There is the federal government under Obama, that has to balance the competing interests of the participants. The perspectives of these participants are shaped by their contexts. The illegal immigrants of course see themselves as victims of poverty and unevenness, and come to the United States to seek a better life. Immigration is seen not as a crime but as part of a bigger structural problem. Certainly, the ordinary Americans also assert fairness and justice when calling for stricter anti-immigrant measures – it is of course unfair that a person who does not pay taxes benefit from a country’s welfare, considering that many of the citizens of that country face vulnerabilities and uncertainties as a result of the current recession climate. The government, as already mentioned, straddles competing interests between different members of the community; at the same time, it straddles its political interests (noting the large Latino voting population) and its legal interest (illegal immigration is still illegal and the executive body cannot amend the law.) The problems that arise out of illegal immigration are manifold and complex, and this also what caused the labeling and isolation of illegal immigrants. While some of the objections against illegal immigrants are caused by racism and xenophobia, there are valid social issues as well. Illegal immigration also creates unfair advantages for cheating corporations. As it is, multi-million dollar enterprises are already becoming richer and richer as a result of illegal immigrants. We see how despite the lack of jobs for American citizens, illegal immigrants are still being hired by companies that want to obtain extra profit by not having to pay the appropriate wages and not having to confer employee benefits. That is why the main reason why illegal immigration is sought to be blocked is because of the unwarranted entry of illegal immigrants into the job market (Chiswick, 1988). Despite the recession and the high unemployment rate, illegal immigrant hiring is still prevalent. Hence, problems abound for all parties: these illegal immigrants are exposed to dangers and hazards, the American citizens are kept out of jobs, the country finds itself with a big debt problem. What is the future of the immigration debate, ten or twenty years down the road? These are trying times for th United States – the economy is at a downturn, joblessness is a reality for many ordinary Americans, there is a global right-wing trend sweeping over the world as a result of the recession that is making governments erect higher borders. There is reason to believe that the policies will tilt persuasively against illegal immigrants and there will be a stricter implementation of immigration policies. This might mean more border patrols, greater penalties for illegal immigrants, greater penalties for those who hire them. But alongside this, it must bear repeating that we have to reexamine our penchant for labeling people as a result of our fears and our need for “sameness”. It is valid to push for stricter anti-illegal immigrant regulations in order to safeguard American jobs, but it is never valid to judge people on the basis of race or culture, or to make “illegal immigrant” the core identity of the Mexicans, Peruvians, Filipinos and others who enter our borders because this is akin to labeling them. This can cause problems not only for the labeled but for the country as well, and can bring about social consequences with irreversible damages. In sum, it must be understood that if the War on Terror it must be done correctly. This means that no shortcuts should be taken with respect to human rights, no neglect of other wars such as the War on Drugs, and a better understanding of the complex permutations of the illegal immigration debate must be undertaken. References Bagley, B. (1988) “The New Hundred Years War? U.S. National Security and the War on Drugs in Latin America”. Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 30 (1). 71-92. Becker, Howard. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. Bernburg, J., Krohn, M. and Rivera, C. (2006). “Official Labelling, Criminal Embeddedness and Subsequent Delinquency: A Longitudinal Test of Labelling Theory”. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. Vol. 43, pages 67-88. Bustamante, J. (1972). “The Wetback as Deviant: An Application of Labeling Theory”. American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 77(4), 706-718. Chiswick, B. (1988). “Illegal Immigration and Border Control.” Journal of Economic Perspectives. Vol. (3), 101-115. DeBatto, D. (n.d.). Testimony of former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent DeBatto, Previously assigned to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade in Iraq. Hanson, G. and Spilimbergo, A. (1996). “Illegal Immigration, Border Enforcement and Relative Wages: Border Apprehensions at the U.S. Mexico Border.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 5592. Retrieved from http://www.nber.org/papers/w5592. Hersh, Seymour M. “Torture at Abu Ghraib”. The New Yorker. 10 May 2004. Human Rights Watch. “The Road to Abu Ghraib”. Human Rights Watch. 8 June 2004. Lyman, M. D. (2011). Drugs in Society: Causes, Concepts and Control. (6th Ed.), Burlington, MA: Anderson Publishing.  Lustick, I. (2006). Trapped in the War on Terror. Philadephia: Philadelphia University Press. Peak, K. (2009). Justice Administration: Police, Courts, and Corrections Management. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Roman, P. and Trice, H. (1968). “The Sick Role, Labelling Theory and the Deviant Drinker.” International Journal of Social Psychiatry. Vol. 14, 245-251. Stiglitz, J. and L. Blimes. (2010) “The True Cost of the Iraq War: $3 trillion and Beyond.” The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html Wilkins, Leslie. 1964. Social Deviance. London: Tavistock Read More