Terrorism and the War on Terror

Unlawful → helps us distinguish between war and terrorism. Where do we draw the line?
Mass killing vs. terrorism — example of mass killing is the Columbine High School massacre, which is a mass killing because there is no purpose.

Gross power imbalance → can’t address the conflict directly, so you need to do things to “annoy” the greater power
- Example → if you don’t understand why terrorism happens, you’ve never been stuck in a tent with a mosquito
Terrorism is subjective; we need to acknowledge that one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist

1995 (Domestic) - Timothy McVeigh bombs Oklahoma City building
1998 (Could be a little bit of both; either Irish on Irish or British) - The Real IRA detonates several car bombs in Northern Ireland
2001 (Foreign) - al-Qaeda hijacks 4 American planes and destroyed the World Trade Center & part of Pentagon
2004 (Domestic) - ETA (group of Basque separatists who think that the Basque population in Spain should be a separate, autonomous region) bombs the Madrid rain system, killing 192 people
2001 - Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb in Oslo and attacked a summer camp, killing 77 people in Norway
2012 - Wade Michael Page killed 6 Sikhs at a temple in Wisconsin
2013 - Boston Marathon bombing
2015 - Robert Lewis Dear kills 3 people at a Planned Parenthood clinic
2015 - Dylan Roof killed 9 African-Americans during a Church service in South Carolina

Al Qaeda
Boko Haram - in Africa
Army of God - radical of Christian anti-abortion organization (sent stuff laced with anthrax (poison) to abortion clinics in 2001)
Continuity Irish Republican Army
ISIS

1957 born in Saudi Arabia
17th child of a wealthy, Sunni family
One of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against Soviets
- Creates al-Qaeda (the base): decentralized, international terrorist network that seeks to rid the Muslim world of western influence (from things like colonialism and mandates)
- The US sent them money at one point to try and fight back against the Communist invasion of Afghanistan
Taliban vs. al-Qaeda
Family is SUPER rich - they made lots of money from construction
He is well-educated
Disowned by his family early on in his life when he starts to radicalize and get involved in crazy stuff
Creates al-Qaeda (Arabic for “the base” [of something])
- Very hard to eliminate al-Qaeda because it's decentralized, so if you deal with one part of it you gotta deal with the rest
- After the Soviets were pushed out of Afghanistan, there is a power struggle in Afghanistan for who will lead them. He hopes that al-Qaeda will lead them, but they don’t and the Taliban becomes the leaders
- After 9/11, he goes to the mountainous region of Pakistan where he is killed by Seal Team 6

They try to get rid of western influence by attacking America.

1993 - Ramsey Yousef tries to blow up WTC
- Wanted to hijack airplanes and crash them into CIA headquarters and Pentagon
- Planes weren’t feasible, so he uses a van with explosives parked in the parking garage under the WTC. Doesn’t really work, just hurt some cars and stuff.
- 1995 - Captured in Pakistan, sentenced to life in prison
  - Pakistan → ally of the USA
Why the WTC?
- They are symbols of America’s financial power, hubris, dominance, etc.
- They are iconic and part of the iconic New York skyline
- Symbolic
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (Yousef’s uncle) - Brain of 9/11
- Suggests use of planes to Osama
  - Because planes are full of highly-flammable jet fuel, making it good for use as a weapon
- As this is happening, various US intelligence agencies are aware of bits and pieces of the plan. However, they don’t really do anything about it because they don’t really talk to each other.
  - Maybe if they were talking to each other, they could have prevented the attacks
- As such, the Department of Homeland Security was created. All of the intelligence agencies are under one umbrella and are sharing information with each other.

Political
- US invades Afghanistan and bombs the Taliban-controlled parts of Afghanistan & installs a democratic government
- Department of Homeland Security created so different agencies can talk to each other
- Congress passes Patriot Act - gave the government far greater ability to monitor the American public
- Guantanamo Bay - this is where a military prison is located and enemy combatants from the War on Terror are taken there
  - Because it’s a foreign country and they are not US citizens, they can be held for an indeterminate amount of time without just cause
Social
- Islamophobia - fear and harassment of Muslims
  - Most Americans didn’t know what Islam was before this attack, but many of them started associating it with this
  - Bush tried to convince people that people should not associate Muslims with bad stuff (tried to tell them that it was a peaceful religion) but they just did the jawn
- Interest in current events
Economic
- Recession - short-lived, but happens
Homeland Security Advisory System
- Severe, High, Elevated, Guarded, Low
Eventually, they track down and kill Osama bin Laden (in 2011)
- Through a team of women in the intelligence agencies of the USA. They track him down in a house in Pakistan, send in Seal Team 6, and kill him
- His body is just dumped in the ocean in a random location so that nobody finds his body

Signed Feb. 29, 2020 (Trump administration)

Tenets
- Cease fire
- Withdrawal of foreign forces
- Intra-Afghan negotiations
- Counterterrorism assurances
Other issues facing Iraq today
- Iranian and American attacks on each other in Iraq
  - We invaded Iraq (unrelated to 9/11) because Bush thought they were creating weapons of mass-destruction or something
- Taliban-Afghan governmental issues
  Gender issues

Withdrawal of US troops, started at the end of Feb. 2020, was completed on Aug. 30, 2021
Taliban quickly retook the government
- We spent a lot of money and lost a lot of life on this war and it wasn’t exactly a success. We entered to depose of the Taliban, but when we left, the Taliban was still in charge. Got cooked