Afrasianet - Subhi Hadidi - Whatever the logical and conceptual divergence, how in the actual and tangible convergence of the four elements in the title of these lines, a common denominator brings them together, throws them into one basket that US President Donald Trump has in mind, and calls it the "United States Counterterrorism Strategy".
It is, from a second point of view, a 16-page document, according to the official PDF version, topped by an introduction page by Trump himself, and distributed on an entry (with a funny title:
"The good versus the bad in the fight against terrorism"!)and 10 chapters dealing with counterterrorism issues in terms of threat, strategy, principles, priorities, goals, sources, presidential diplomacy, region, weapons of mass destruction, and the principle of America first...
As for al-Muhandis, he is a member of the National Security Council and an aide to President Sebastian Gorka: British-born, Hungarian-originated, naturalized American, a conservative close to far-right, militia and fascist European circles (such as Vitesse and Magyar Garda), who served in Trump's first term (as part of the Strategic Initiative Group) and in the second (on the permanent recommendation of Steve Bannon), and one of the fiercest hawks of militancy in U.S. national security in general, and anti-leftism, Islam, and secular Europe in particular.
He argues that Islamic terrorism stems from the fact that Islam is a terrorist mentality in the first place, so he is not embarrassed by the accusation of Islamophobia leveled against him by writers, journalists, academics, and politicians.
He was one of the shadow architects, and most enthusiastic in public, of Trump's executive orders barring U.S. entry to nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries, and he is said to have been the first whisper in the president's ear with the term "radical Islam."
He has repeatedly quarreled with his colleagues on the National Security Council on several issues, most notably his assertion that the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have ignored the ideological aspects of Islamic terrorism, which he discussed at length in the pages of his first book, "Defeating Jihad: A Victorious War."
Without much shortening the content of the latest strategy, because in the end it is neither entirely new nor innovative, it is possible to rely on the 16-page summary of the document's findings of the three "types of terrorist groups": Drugs, transnational gangs, the legacy of Islamic terrorism, and violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists.
To clarify, which may be necessary for some, antifa is a form of intimidation in the eyes of the current strategy, which, in digression, is not comparable in terms of violence, danger or intimidation to any right-wing, far-right, or even fascist style that is hostile to democracy or human rights and the other, nor to any of the currents of racism, racial superiority and claims of civilizational superiority.
It is no wonder, then, that in the diagnosis of the current strategy, Europe occupies both the position of danger and its incubator.
There is no other reason that precedes the secularism of some ruling regimes, their leniency in allowing other faiths to coexist with Western civilizational values, opening the doors to waves of immigration and the breeding of radical ideas, separating religion and state, and allowing leftist ideologies to be active and influence the ballot box.
The old continent is at the bottom of the Trump basket, especially since the current administration's choices have "come back to the right" in dealing with European partners, as the document says, and adopted a policy based on reality and realism (but does not address Trump's successive rivalries with these "partners", on various levels that do not start with tariffs and do not end with expansionist geographical ambitions).
George W. Bush, in his speech on October 6, 2005 at the National Institute for Democracy, recorded one of the culminations of the convergence of the neoconservatives' hardline line toward Islam, with the evangelical and semi-neurotic temperament of an American president who is himself a man of the strength to fight evil.
At that time, Bush changed his mind about the labels and terminology, before settling on his preferred formulation: "Some call this evil Islamic radicalism, others call it Islamic jihadism, and there are also those who call it Islam and fascism.
This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent political vision based on the foundation, through terrorism, deviance, and disobedience, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom."
It is true that previous American presidents, in recent decades, did not bother to formulate a special strategy under the banner of counterterrorism, but they did not delay in this regard, each in his own way.
After this introduction, which mixed demagogic premises with simplistic contrived conclusions, Bush concluded the speech (which Newsweek did not correctly dismiss as an "ideological bomb") as follows: "Islamic radicalism, like communist ideology, contains inherent contradictions that necessitate its failure.
In its hatred of freedom, by losing faith in human creativity, punishing change, and restricting the contributions of half of society, this ideology undermines the very features that make human progress possible, and human societies to succeed."
In addition to Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Libya, which were already classified as "state sponsors of terrorism," the Obama administration added a new designation of "terrorist-prone countries" that included Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Somalia, as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria.
In its diverse demographic, geopolitical and historical outcomes, this selection was not only a crude reference to fragments of neoconservative philosophy on ways to prevent "terrorism" by blocking or drying up its sources altogether; A production, more or less convincing, of James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA, of an "open world war."
During the era of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Woolsey presented his doctrine at a famous meeting attended by two of the Defense Policy Council's greats, Paul Wolfowitz and Elliott Cohen, and summed it up this way: The Cold War was World War III, and the United States' war on terror was World War IV.
It is long-lasting, may take up to 100 years, and spreads at regional and continental levels; its forms of warfare are not limited to military action, but involve various forms of intervention, including There are too many examples to list here, and perhaps whenever a basket is issued by one administration or another claiming the methods of fighting terrorism, Sir Michael Howard, a British historian specializing in the history of wars, who considered that the struggle against terrorism is not a war, he wondered whether the name "war" gives the second group, i.e., the "terrorists" themselves, a legitimate status that requires them to obtain rights, such as their obligation, as stipulated in special international conventions In wars?
