by Jeffry Halverson* In the run-up to today’s Afghan elections, the Taliban have been asserting that participation is un-Islamic.  But this infidel thinks these students (Talib translates as “student”) deserve an F. A recent New York Times Op-Ed by Mirwais Ahmadzai, a program manager with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, reports the appearance of ominous [...]

by Steven R. Corman Yesterday Obama counterterrorism adviser John Brennan gave a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism approach.  Patricia Kushlis titles her review of the speech “It’s Official: The Global War on Terror is Over.” But it was official back in March/April, and unofficial stoppage of [...]

by Mark Woodward On 17 July 17 2009, Indonesia and the world were shocked by another round of terrorist attacks. Two powerful bombs exploded in the J.W. Marriott and Ritz- Carlton hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia. Another was found and defused in a hotel room the bombers had rented. I am currently visiting Indonesia and have [...]

by Steven R. Corman A new study of public opinion in Muslim countries was released this week by  WorldPublicOpinion.org.  The study was conducted between July and September of 2008, using in-home interviews of around 1100 people in each of Egypt, Indonesia, and Pakistan, plus “supplemental polling” of 500-1000 people in each of Jordan, the Palestinian [...]

by Steven R. Corman Worldpublicopinon.org has just released the results of a study of world opinion about who committed the 9/11 attacks.  On average, 46% think AQ did it, 15% think we did it to ourselves, 7% think Israel did it, 7% think someone else did it, and 25% don’t know.  Here is the complete [...]

by Steven R. Corman The latest entry in the war of language comes from Jim Guirard of the TrueSpeak Institute writing today at Small Wars Journal Blog. Guirard is one of the earliest and most persistent arguers against using the word “jihadi” to describe the Bad Guys, a position we here at COMOPS have also [...]

by Steven R. Corman Last week I noted that the U.S. had decided to stop calling the Bad Guys “jihadis.”  Well as Jeffrey Imm over at CT Blog points out, there’s just one little problem:   Apparently the State Department and the President didn’t get that memo.  Imm details 30 uses of the word or [...]

by Miriam Sobre-Denton As an American who has traveled overseas throughout my life, as well as a teacher of intercultural communication, I often wonder how it is that we don’t relate travel experiences and study abroad to the potential for loneliness and identity questions—and to the potential for association with radical groups. I remember traveling [...]

by Steven R. Corman Back in September I did a post arguing that we should quit calling the Bad Guys jihadis because this helps construct them as religious actors, and start calling them something else, like islamists. Last week Menahem Milson did a post on MEMRI that gives a nice synopsis of the word jihad [...]

If Michael Scheuer is correct in his assessment of CIA practices, then it is not surprising that an organization of generalists has emerged, and that these generalists do not have the requisite depth of knowledge to wage a war on terror adequately.