Tag: the war of terror

US Mourns The Victims of 9/11, But What Of The Victims Of The “War On Terror”?

In a video reportedly from 2006, a young Iraqi child was captured asking a U.S. soldier why America killed his dad. The soldier being questioned responds that it wasn’t him who killed the young boy’s father. When the child continues his line of questioning, the soldier turns the question around, asking him “do you hate Americans?” and “do you want to shoot me?” Elsewhere, graffiti on a wall in Sanaa, Yemen, depicts a U.S. drone and text written in Arabic and English by a child that says “why did you kill my family.”

Thousands of miles away, Hussein Al-Marfadi, one of many Muslim men who were incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay without charge, was transferred after 12 years in detention to Slovakia — a country where he had no roots. Lamenting his predicament, he said the Americans “killed our youth in Guantánamo and then they tossed us away like garbage.”

At another notorious prison, Abu Ghraib, a prison that the U.S. took over after it destroyed and occupied the country in 2003, Iraqis were subjected to the most egregious torture at the hands of Americans. Commenting on how his experience at the prison impacted him, Talib al-Majli — an Iraqi man who was incarcerated there for 16 months and never charged with anything — stated that “To this day I feel humiliation for what was done to me … The time I spent in Abu Ghraib — it ended my life. I’m only half a human now.”

Amid the violence of the U.S.’s war on terror, these stories, and hundreds of thousands more like them, are a reminder that Muslim people and communities have been rendered disposable as a means to the U.S.’s national security ends.

Unfortunately, the violence of the war on terror, which has been marked by militarism, draconian immigration policies, surveillance, federal terrorism prosecutions, detention, and torture has, thus far, continued unbated. This has resulted in the ongoing targeting and victimization of Muslim and other marginalized communities. Moreover, since Donald Trump began his second tenure as president, he has executed the “war on terror” with even greater fervor — expanding the post 9/11 “forever wars” and constructing new “security threats.”

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US Bombs Somalia for 75th Time This Year

US Africa Command said in a press release on Thursday that its forces launched airstrikes against al-Shabaab in the Shabelle Region of southern Somalia on September 9, marking at least the 75th time the US has bombed the country this year as the Trump administration has shattered the previous record for annual airstrikes in the country.

AFRICOM offered no details about the strikes other they saying they were launched in support of the US-backed Mogadishu-based Federal Government. “Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” the command said.

AFRICOM stopped sharing details about casualties and assessments of civilian harm earlier this year, telling Antiwar.com at the time that it was withholding such information as the new Trump administration “settles in.”

AFRICOM told New America, an organization that tracks the US air war in Somalia, that although it stated it launched “airstrikes,” only one strike was actually launched during two engagements. AFRICOM told Antiwar.com on September 8 that it had launched 74 airstrikes in Somalia so far in 2025, and the September 9 strike brings the total to 75. The previous record for total US airstrikes in Somalia was 63, which President Trump set in 2019.

Garowe Online reported on Wednesday that Somali forces had killed a member of al-Shabaab who was allegedly behind an assassination attempt against President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. The report said the operation was conducted in the Lower Shabelle region and was supported by “international partners,” suggesting it could have been the strike announced by AFRICOM, though it remains unconfirmed.

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The Roots Of Trump’s Continued Wars On Terror Trace Back To 9/11

The U.S. military recently launched a plainly illegal strike on a small civilian Venezuelan boat that President Trump claims was a successful hit on “narcoterrorists.” Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations that the strike was a war crime by saying, “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” insisting this was the “highest and best use of the military.”

This is only the latest troubling development in the Trump administration’s attempt to repurpose “War on Terror” mechanisms to use the military against cartels and to expedite his much vaunted mass deportation campaign, which he says is necessary because of an “invasion” at the border.

Unfortunately, more than two decades of widely-accepted, bipartisan laws and norms first laid the groundwork for this to occur.

After 9/11, the Bush administration created the Specially Designated Global Terrorists list, and Congress expanded the pre-existing Foreign Terrorist Organization list. These lists allow the executive branch, at its sole discretion, to add and remove individuals and groups to standing lists of “terrorists,” a term that is defined broadly.

The Trump administration has exercised this authority to formally designate transnational cartels as “terrorists” due in part to their role in the flow of people and drugs across the southern border into the United States. They have leveraged this designation to justify a range of actions, including deploying troops to Los Angeles and deporting immigrants to a brutal Salvadorean prison without due process.

Another post-9/11 legal invention that paved the way to what the Trump administration is doing today was the USA PATRIOT Act’s updates to immigration law that allowed deportation of not just those involved in actual violent acts of terrorism, but also those loosely associated with designated “terrorist groups,” even if those associations were peaceful and law-abiding or involuntary and a result of duress. People who have previously been excluded from the United States by these provisions include Iraqi interpreters for U.S. troops, victims of forced labor by violent armed groups in El Salvador, and even Nelson Mandela. These provisions mean that not just alleged members of cartels, but also cartel victims could be denied entry into the United States or deported if already here.

These same post-9/11 immigration law amendments also allow for revoking or denying immigration benefits to foreign nationals who “endorse or espouse” “terrorist activity,” defined broadly. The Trump administration has already revoked the visas of several immigrant students and scholars solely for their nonviolent activities criticizing the U.S.-Israel genocide in Gaza, as part of what they call a “zero-tolerance” policy for terrorism. The administration has primarily leaned on an older and more obscure provision of immigration law to carry out these attacks on immigrants’ free speech rights. But if current efforts are blocked by courts, or they wish to go further, post-9/11 immigration law may give them the tools to justify doing so.

The original decision to treat the 9/11 attacks not as crime but as warfare, and to launch a literal “war on terror” in response, remains the primary post-9/11 legal innovation on which so many abuses are made possible. Under this global war paradigm, the Obama administration carried out ruthless drone killings, including one that targeted a U.S. citizen, and justified the strikes with a mish-mash of legal standards that applied rules of war outside of actual war zones, and expansively interpreted what constitutes an “imminent threat” and resulting “self-defense” powers.

Every post-9/11 president has claimed wide authority to use military force so long as it serves a vague “national interest.” We can see echoes of this in the Trump administration’s insistence that the small Venezuelan boat blown up by the U.S. military posed an “immediate threat to the United States,” that the strike complied with the laws of war, and was “in defense of vital U.S. national interests.”

Commentators are entirely correct to denounce these assertions of legal authority. But policymakers have spent more than two decades accepting a war paradigm against whomever presidents determine to be “terrorist,” making it politically and legally all the more difficult to push back against what the Trump administration is doing now.

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The Freedoms Lost Under the Patriot Act

The Patriot Act was drafted and pushed through with lightning speed, something that could not have been written overnight. This was the beginning of warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention, and a wholesale reversal of constitutional rights. I have said many times: governments do not waste a good crisis. They wait for the right moment to impose measures that would never pass during normal times. Americans may be unaware of the freedoms that have been stripped away from them after October 26, 2001, when the Patriot Act was signed into law.

The Patriot Act, officially titled “the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001,” provided the government with unlimited surveillance powers. Terrorism became the premise to bypass the checks and balances of the legal system. Need a warrant? One could be obtained in any district or area where terrorism was suspected. Of course, warrantless searches were permitted under the guise of terrorism and deemed “sneak and peek” searches, where the government could enter a business or personal residence immediately and without warning to conduct an investigation.

Neither party has repealed the Patriot Act, and politicians on both sides of the aisle will NEVER relinquish these powers. The Patriot Act destroyed the Fourth Amendment and legally permitted the NSA to spy on all Americans. October 26, 2001, marked the day that the United States of America officially became a surveillance state. We The People were branded as potential terrorists, and “the land of the free” was permanently placed under the watchful eye of government. “The War on Terror” has no clear end or defined enemy. The real target was always domestic — the American people themselves. By creating an atmosphere of fear, Washington justified trillions in spending, the invasion of foreign countries, and the slow strangulation of the very liberties the terrorists supposedly hated.

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The Feds Defend Their Tortures Again

While the public’s attention this summer has been drawn to masked ICE agents arresting folks without warrants, presidentially imposed sales taxes on goods emanating from foreign countries that have been invalidated by three federal courts, and the fruitless Kabuki dance between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, last month, the federal government continues its slow assault on the Constitution at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In April, the feds suffered a major setback when a military judge ruled that evidence obtained under and as a result of torture is inadmissible at the trial of Ammar al-Baluchi, who is one of the five remaining defendants accused in the attacks of 9/11. Al-Baluchi is the nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the so-called mastermind of the attacks. So-called because Osama bin Laden was the person designated by the feds as the mastermind until they murdered him and his family – without any 9/11-related charges having been filed against him – in his home in Pakistan.

Mohammed and al-Baluchi were to have been tried together, along with their three alleged accomplices when the feds decided that the torture of Mohammed was too egregious for them to defend in a public courtroom.

So, the prosecutors then initiated plea negotiations with Mohammed’s defense lawyers, which resulted in a plea agreement that was accepted by the court, the defense, the prosecutors and their bosses in the Department of Defense. Then the Secretary of Defense at the time, Lloyd Austin, overruled the general in charge of the prosecutions and directed the prosecutors who had initiated, drafted and publicly accepted the plea agreement to ask the court to nullify it.

Following standard rules of criminal procedure, the court declined to nullify the Mohammed plea agreement since, by the time Sec. Austin objected to it, it had become a binding contract. An appeals court disagreed, and the Mohammed case is now back in the military trial court without a trial date.

There is no trial date because there is no trial judge assigned to the case. The trial judge who accepted Mohammed’s guilty plea has since retired, and no judge has been assigned; nor are any judges volunteering for the case. The case docket consists of 40,000+ pages of documents for a judge to read prior to trial.

Whoever the judge is will be the fourth on the case. The prosecution team has changed as many times as well.

Why is this happening? Largely because military justice is to justice as military music is to music – slow, heavy, ponderous, unending and repetitive. Had President George W. Bush not created, and his successors not accepted, the crafting of a Devil’s Island 90 miles from Florida and instead permitted the Department of Justice and civilian federal judges to handle these cases, they would have been resolved 20 years ago.

But Bush believed that at Gitmo his torturers could do as they wished. He argued that because Gitmo is in Cuba, the Constitution didn’t apply, federal laws couldn’t be enforced and those meddlesome federal judges couldn’t interfere.

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Cartels are bad but they’re not ‘terrorists.’ This is mission creep.

There is a dangerous pattern on display by the Trump administration. The president and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seem to hold the threat and use of military force as their go-to method of solving America’s problems and asserting state power.

The president’s reported authorization for the Pentagon to use U.S. military warfighting capacity to combat drug cartels — a domain that should remain within the realm of law enforcement — represents a significant escalation. This presents a concerning evolution and has serious implications for civil liberties — especially given the administration’s parallel moves with the deployment of troops to the southern border, the use of federal forces to quell protests in California, and the recent deployment of armed National Guard to the streets of our nation’s capital.

Last week, the Pentagon sent three guided-missile destroyers to interdict drug cartel operations off the coast of South America, giving the U.S. Navy unprecedented counternarcotics authority and foreshadowing a potential military stand-off against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who is wanted by the United States on charges of narco-terrorism. This development is echoed by President Trump reportedly seeking authorization to deploy U.S. military forces on the ground against drug cartels in Mexico.

These efforts are not new. Trump and the GOP have increasingly called for U.S. military interdiction against Mexican drug cartels under the banner of counterterrorism. During his first administration, Trump seriously considered launching strikes at drug labs in Mexico in an effort that was successfully shut down by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

But there are no such guardrails in the new Trump administration, and the rhetoric has progressively crept toward the use of U.S. special operations, specifically. During an interview on Fox News in November, incoming Border Czar Tom Homan announced that, “[President Trump] will use the full might of the United States special operations to take [the cartels] out.”

If that is indeed the direction the administration wants to go, it appears to be taking action to set plans into motion, starting with an executive order on day one that designated cartels as foreign terrorist organizations — thus opening a Pandora’s box of potential legal authority to use military force. On signing the order, President Trump acknowledged, “People have been wanting to do this for years.” And when asked if he would be ordering U.S. special forces into Mexico to “take out” the cartels, Trump replied enigmatically, “Could happen … stranger things have happened.”

The executive order upholds that drug cartels “operate both within and outside the United States … [and] present an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” It declares a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The specificity of both “within and outside” the U.S. combined with the declaration of a national emergency is perhaps the first step toward the broader use of executive power to deploy military forces in counternarcotics operations not only within Mexico, but potentially the United States too.

To be sure, the Trump administration is already testing the limits of Posse Comitatus — the law that prevents presidents from using the military as a domestic police force — by invoking questionable authorities to use National Guard and active duty troops during the counter-ICE protests in California and, most recently, to declare a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C. federalizing the police force and deploying troops to patrol the district’s streets. Reports this week suggest the administration is preparing to do the same in Chicago.

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Decades Later, It’s Time To Seriously Rethink—And Reduce—The TSA 

As a retired international airline captain, my relationship with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been fraught ever since its inception after 9/11. Before that seismic event, I logged countless hours as a Delta Airlines pilot, operating in an environment defined by professionalism and mutual respect among crew, passengers, and airport staff. Today, I view the TSA not as an indispensable pillar of aviation safety, but as an institution whose practices have needlessly burdened travelers and which, after more than two decades, may do more harm than good to the spirit and efficiency of air travel. 

Personal Experience with TSA 

My experiences with TSA have run the gamut: some screeners are cordial and efficient, while others act with indifference—or outright hostility. Despite my decades in aviation, both my wife and I found ourselves subjected to heightened scrutiny and what felt like constant harassment at security checkpoints. This pattern was not isolated to us; colleagues and fellow travelers shared similar frustrations. The inconsistency in treatment reflects deeper problems in TSA’s culture and priorities. 

More troubling is my memory of reporting suspicious activities in airports and on airplanes long before 9/11—concerns that were either ignored or dismissed. In the worst cases, I was treated not as a professional fulfilling a duty of care, but as an alarmist, or, unconscionably, accused of prejudice. These failures of the pre-TSA security apparatus were tragic enough. The answer, however, was not to swing to the other extreme by creating an agency whose methods too often resemble performative security theater rather than effective defense. 

TSA: Record Size, Questionable Effectiveness 

The TSA today is larger, wealthier, and more technologically advanced than at any point in its history: in 2024, it screened over 900 million passengers, processed nearly half a billion checked bags, and employed the largest screening workforce on record.  The agency celebrates its lowered attrition rates, large-scale recruitments, and new technologies, but these metrics only tell part of the story. What goes unaddressed mainly is the pressing question: has all this intrusion, inconvenience, and expense made us significantly safer? 

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FBI: Southern California Man Arrested with Homemade Bomb After Sending Money to ISIS

Federal authorities arrested a Southern California man Friday for allegedly sending a dozen payments to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, commonly known as the foreign terrorist group ISIS.

The feds charged Mark Lorenzo Villanueva, 28, of Long Beach with “attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, a felony offense that carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison,” according to a statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

The statement reported that Villanueva is a lawful permanent resident from the Philippines.

“Supporting a terrorist group, whether at home or abroad, is a serious risk to our national security,” said Acting United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “We will aggressively hunt down and prosecute anyone who provides support or comfort to our enemies.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office account added:

According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, Villanueva communicated via social media with two individuals who self-identified as ISIS fighters. During these communications, Villanueva discussed his desire to support ISIS, and offered to send money to the ISIS fighters to support their terrorist activities.

Villanueva told one of the self-identified ISIS fighters that Villanueva wanted to fight for ISIS himself, stating, “It’s an honor to fight and die for our faith. It’s the best way to go to heaven.” Villanueva also stated, “Someday soon, I’ll be joining.”

The man also allegedly told one of the ISIS fighters that he had a bomb and knives. The FBI recovered what appeared to be a bomb from Villanueva’s bedroom during his arrest, prosecutors said.

Villanueva then allegedly sent 12 payments totaling $1,615 during a five-month period to two intermediaries who accessed the money overseas, the office reported, citing Western Union records.

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Ron DeSantis’ Superior Speaks Out Amid Guantanamo Torture Accusations

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis‘ former boss weighed in on the accusations that DeSantis oversaw the torture of prisoners during his tenure at Guantanamo Bay.

DeSantis, a Republican who has become a leading conservative figure in the United States, was accused of overseeing torture at the prison where the Untied States detained suspected terrorists, despite concerns over detainees being held without criminal charges being filed.

Mansoor Adayfi, former detainee at Guantanamo Bay who was held for 14 years without being charged with a crime, made the accusation during a November 2022 interview on the Eyes Left podcast, in which he said DeSantis observed guards force-feed him amid a hunger strike, laughing during the procedure. DeSantis, however, has not been accused of torturing inmates.

These accusations reemerged on Tuesday following a report from McClatchy/The Miami Herald that shined a light on the governor’s time at Guantanamo Bay, a topic on which he has offered little public comment. He joined the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate in 2006, four years after the facility opened.

Amid these accusations of overseeing torture, DeSantis’ former supervisor, retired Navy Captain Patrick McCarthy, defended the governor, explaining that he was tasked “with detainees when there were any complaints to ensure they were lawfully addressed.”

“DeSantis served honorably and professionally in a very complex mission,” McCarthy told the Herald.

DeSantis has not publicly addressed Adayfi’s allegations, which could not be independently verified.

Retired Colonel Michael Bumgarner told the Herald that DeSantis would have had “very, very intimate knowledge” about conditions at Guantanamo Bay, which have been long criticized by human rights advocates as violating detainees’ rights and due process.

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Army Sends Letter to Pro-Life Groups Apologizing for Referring to Them as ‘Terrorists’ During Training Under Biden

The Gateway Pundit reported that during Joe Biden’s regime, the Defense Department categorized pro-life organizations as “terrorist organizations” during an anti-terrorism briefing held at Fort Bragg’s Directorate of Emergency Services, formerly known as Fort Liberty.

Citizen journalist Sam Shoemate, or @samour, shared the disturbing slide on X.

“An anti-terrorism brief was held on Fort Liberty (Bragg) today where they listed several Pro-Life organizations as “terrorist organizations.” The slide you see here followed right after a slide about ISIS, a terror group in the Middle East,” Shoemate wrote on X.

The presentation slide, which was widely circulated on social media, lists these pro-life organizations that oppose “Roe[sic] v. Wade” under a headline reading “TERRORIST GROUPS.”

The presentation specifically targets groups like National Right to Life and Operation Rescue, which have long been pillars of the pro-life community.

These organizations are dedicated to peaceful advocacy against abortion, grounded in the belief that every life is valuable and worth protecting.

The slide shockingly equates their activities, such as demonstrations, protests, mass demonstrations, Life Chain, The Rescue, The Truth Display, and picketing, along with counseling efforts at sidewalks and crisis centers, with terrorism.

Now that the DOD has rational, non-woke leadership, U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll sent a letter offering a “sincerest apology” for the actions taken under the prior administration on behalf of himself and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

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