War on Terrorism

The Abyss Gazes Back

by Matthew Harwood February 14, 2017

The United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists by Peter Bergen (New York: Crown Publishers, 2016); 400 pages. It took only a few hours after two Islamic State suicide bombings ripped apart the departure hall of Brussels Airport and subway cars in central Brussels for Sen. Ted Cruz to offer a “do something” solution to the threat ...

A Billion Dollars of Federally Funded Paranoia

by James Bovard February 3, 2017

When it comes to mindless excess in the war on terror, it is difficult to compete with the 70+ fusion centers bankrolled by the Department of Homeland Security. They began to be set up around the nation shortly after 9/11 as federal-state-local partnerships to better track terrorist threats. But the centers have been a world-class boondoggle from the start. Fusion ...

The Tyranny of the Distance

by Matthew Harwood December 1, 2016

The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program by Jeremy Scahill and the Staff of The Intercept (Simon & Schuster, 2016); 256 pages. Last summer, the Obama administration finally made good on its promise to provide some transparency to its targeted killing program — well, sort of. On a Friday before the long July Fourth ...

The Libertarian Angle: The 9-11 Attacks

by Future of Freedom Foundation September 14, 2016

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling discuss the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 2001. Go to the podcast.

Warnings and Lessons 15 years After 9/11 and the Afghan Invasion

by Richard M. Ebeling September 12, 2016

September 11, 2016 marked the fifteenth anniversary of the tragic events in New York City and Washington, D.C., when a band of terrorists successfully commandeered several commercial airliners and proceeded to crash them into the World Trade Towers in Manhattan, and into the Pentagon not far from the seats of government in the District of Columbia. More than 3,000 ...

Violence Begets Violence: The Orlando Shootings and the War on Terror

by John W. Whitehead June 24, 2016

“Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the US... But take a closer look and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring, and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts.”—Human Rights Watch We can rail ...

Violence Begets Violence

by John W. Whitehead June 16, 2016

“Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the US... But take a closer look and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring, and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts.”—Human Rights Watch We can rail ...

Does Fear Lead to Fascism? A Culture of Fear and the Epigenetics of Terror

by John W. Whitehead December 9, 2015

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”—Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions. The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other. Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed ...

The Cover-Up of the Damning 9/11 Report Continues

by James Bovard December 1, 2015

Do Americans have the right to learn whether a foreign government helped finance the 9/11 attacks? A growing number of congressmen and senators are demanding that a 28-page portion of a 2002 congressional report finally be declassified. The Obama administration appears to be resisting, and the stakes are huge. What is contained in those pages could radically change Americans’ ...

‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’: The Loss of Our Freedoms in the Wake of 9/11

by John W. Whitehead September 10, 2015

“Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.” ― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta What began with the

Stop the Wars on Drugs & Terrorism (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation April 30, 2015

The Future of Freedom Foundation and Young Americans for Liberty presented a one-day conference on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin at the LBJ Auditorium in the Lyndon B. Johnson Library on Saturday, April 11, 2015, that addressed the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. “Stop the Wars on Drugs and Terrorism” featured an ...

Official Homicide and Legal Rhetoric in Mr. Barron’s Memo

by Joseph R. Stromberg March 1, 2015

The Barron Memo released last summer — if “released” means badly mangled — is an interesting literary production. Its full title is “Applicability of Federal Criminal Laws and the Constitution to Contemplated Lethal Operations Against Shaykh Anwar al-Aulaqi.” Here, David J. Barron, who was acting assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), argued as of July ...