National Security

Since 9/11, many have cast the Global War on Terrorism as the forces of democracy and freedom pitted against an emerging and increasingly dangerous “Islamofascism”. Author and editor Robert Dreyfuss contends that during the Cold War (and since), the forces of the Islamic right have been erstwhile allies of the United States.

In his first book, Charles Pena, Senior Fellow at the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and Terrorism Analyst for MSNBC, re-examines the U.S. national security strategy, tackling key questions such as: What is the best way to restructure homeland security to prevent future attacks? How should the U.S. dismantle the al Qaeda terrorist network? Should this be a top priority? And how can we construct a foreign policy that will tamper down, rather than assist recruitment for, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups?

While the long overdue death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the "sheikh of the slaughterers," is hailed as a "good omen" by the American ambassador to Iraq, it is likely that conditions in Iraq will continue to worsen. Knowing who this man was and why he fought are key to understanding why.

Zarqawi was the most famous but not the most important fighter committed to defeating the American coalition and its Shia allies in Iraq. His martyrdom will mythologize him in a way that his arrest would have shamed him.

ZURICH, Switzerland(CNN) -- Osama bin Laden and his number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, would have first met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi around 1999, just after he had been released from a Jordanian jail and made his way to Afghanistan.

Al-Zarqawi went there to set up a training camp in the western part of the country for a small group of his Jordanian followers known as Tawhid, an organization that aimed to overthrow the Jordanian government.

George W. Bush continues to campaign for his idea of a "comprehensive" immigration bill, even as geopolitical events conspire to undercut him. We can bet on reality, rather than Bush's ideology, to win.

Some American Marines face legal jeopardy because of an incident in Haditha, Iraq, last November that left two dozen civilians dead. But before we rush to judgment about the specifics of that day, we might ask some larger questions: What sort of tactics work to truly end fighting? How does one keep order in a Middle Eastern country?

London.

On April 30, 2003 two British, middle-class citizens of Pakistani heritage walked into Mike's Place, a nightclub in Israel's capital, Tel Aviv. One of them detonated a bomb killing himself and three others. This appears to have been the first suicide mission carried out by a western citizen motivated by al-Qaeda's ideology.

While neither of the Britons had trained in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, both had attended meetings of the London-based al-Muhajiroun, effectively an al-Qaeda support group.

Every morning the streets of Baghdad are littered with dozens of bodies, bruised, torn, mutilated, executed only because they are Sunni or because they are Shiite. Power drills are an especially popular torture device.

While many books have been written on post war Iraq, only a handful have been by writers who speak Arabic and --until now--none by a writer who has had direct access to the insurgents. Nir Rosen’s new book fills this important gap. The New America Foundation is pleased to host the first DC event featuring Rosen, author of the forthcoming In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq.

Since the breaking story of the alleged CIA kidnappings, rendition program and secret prisons in Europe, the European Union has released a report stating that "European governments condoned the abduction, transport and detention of terrorist suspects by the United States on European territory." The report examines the extent to which there have been violations of national, EU, and international law.