ARTICLES:

Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
2005-01-11, Los Angeles Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/11/opinion/oe-scheer11

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist? To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this. "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" ... argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned ... around the world." Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people? Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing? The film ... directly challenges the conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire in order to push a political agenda. "The nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organization waiting to strike our societies is an illusion. Wherever one looks for this Al Qaeda organization, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the 'sleeper cells' in America, the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy."

Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico
2011-03-03, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/03/eveningnews/main20039031.shtml

Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief. He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico. An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [ATF] senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010,Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen. Investigators call the tactic letting guns "walk." In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States. Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico. ATF named the case "Fast and Furious." Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets. The Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence. One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence. Senior agents including Dodson ... confronted their supervisors over and over. Their answer ... "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs." On Dec. 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down. Two assault rifles ATF had let go nearly a year before were found at Terry's murder. Dodson said, "I felt guilty. I mean it's crushing." Dodson said they never did take down a drug cartel. However, he said thousands of Fast and Furious weapons are still out there and will be claiming victims on both sides of the border for years to come.

REACTION: "VAGUE ABOMINATION"

This topic that I’m about to deal with is surely not new to all of us. It has been used since the beginning of recorded human history but without doubt it is left unresolved due to its vagueness and abstraction. It has been described variously depending on whose point of views are being represented. It is said to be a tactic and a strategy, a crime and holy duty, a justified reaction to oppression and an inexcusable abomination. Even the United States Department of Defense defines it as “the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious or ideological”. So what really is this ‘it’ that I’m talking about? Within the given definitions above, there are three crucial elements that can be found, one is violence, next is fear and lastly intimidation. Each of these vital features produces terror in its victims and surely one can wrap up all these to know that this nebulous concept is terrorism itself.

I decided to tackle about this topic because in our World History class, we watched a documentary film entitled Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore and it basically concerns the said issue. The film really had an impact on me that I decided to talk about it in my last article. This use of violence for political ends, any use of violence for the purpose of putting the public or any section of the public in fear is surely a terrorist operation. Their strategy is to commit acts of violence to draw the attention of the local populace, the government and the world to their cause or intentions.

There are three perspectives of terrorism, the terrorist’s, the victim’s and the general public’s. The phrase “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” is surely the view of the terrorists themselves. They do not see themselves as evil and they believe that they are legitimate combatants, fighting for what they believe in, by whatever means there is. On the other hand, a victim of a terrorist act views the terrorist as a criminal with no regard for human life and lastly, the general public’s view which is the most unstable and varied.

In the Philippines, there are four terrorist groups, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) which sought an independent Islamic nation in the Filipino islands with sizable Muslim populations, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) which is the largest Islamic extremist group in the country and is a split from the MNLF, the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) which means “Bearer of the sword” that is the smallest, most active and most violent Islamic separatist group in the Southern Philippines and finally, the New People’s Army (NPA) which is the military wing of the Communist People’s Party of the Philippines (CPP) that strongly opposes the U.S. military presence in the country. All of these considered terrorists in our country truly have an effect not only in our country’s security and safety but also on our economic activities.

The economic impact of terrorism can be calculated from a variety of perspectives. There are direct costs to property and immediate effects on productivity as well as longer term indirect costs of responding to terrorism. People generally panic, spending plummets or falls and the country’s GDP growth slows or stops. But these usually are only short-term effects. These terrorism threats have brought about large-scale losses of life, destruction of property, widespread illness and injury, devastating economic loss as well as displacement of large numbers of people. But for me, the longer effects of this problem are the trauma and the lasting fear and horror that are coupled with every terrorism act. These are the things that cannot be easily forgotten. Even though the economy suffers from the costs of recovery and restoration if there are needed rebuilding, human costs are really incalculable and this for me is the true economic damage since a country needs a great deal of manpower and mind power in order for its economy to flourish and prosper.

Terror is the most vicious rear of cruelty, malevolence and vindictiveness. That is the reason why we must strive to eradicate and combat this subject of terrorism through political, legal and military means and even though it is costly enough to support defense and homeland security, we must still keep in mind that as long as there is no unity of ideas, principles, advocacies and beliefs in our world, this problem of terrorism will always emerge and that it is better to be prepared and spend for the people’s safety rather than suffer the consequences and casualties of neglecting it. We must also bear in mind that we must always be equipped and ready since in this ambiguous matter of terrorism, the face of the enemy is also unclear.