New York, NY — The Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee last night lashed out at former Vice President Dick Cheney for bearing “false witness” and “straying from the truth” in recent comments about U.S. treatment of foreign detainees.  Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, speaking to the Foreign Policy Association in New York City, said Cheney’s recent attempts to justify harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. run facilities threatened to undermine U.S. security.  It was the latest blow in an ongoing debate between top former Bush administration officials and Democratic leaders over detainee policies in the U.S.-led fight against terrorism.

“Former Vice President Cheney’s world view, which dominated the Bush years and so dishonored the nation, gained a little traction last week,” said Levin.  “If the abusive interrogation techniques he champions – the face of which are the pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib – if they are once more seen as the face of America our security will be severely set back.”

Levin’s remarks came in the wake of a Senate Armed Services Committee investigation conducted over the past 18 months that holds senior officials in the U.S. government responsible for creating a culture in which such practices were allowed to flourish.  The report claims “senior officials in the U.S. government solicited information on how to use aggressive interrogation techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of legality, and authorized their use against detainees,” according to Levin.

“The seeds of Abu Ghraib’s rotten fruit were sown at the highest levels of our government,” he said.

Levin’s remarks drew a mixed response from those in attendance, with some walking out before the speech ended and others giving a standing ovation.

COURTESY FOREIGN POLICY ASSOCIATION 28 MAY 2009

Mas Selamat bin Kastari, a high ranking leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, is in Malay custody. He was recaptured more than a year after he escaped, pantsless, through the bathroom window of the Whitley Road Detention Center in Singapore. His recapture has resulted in much celebration among the Malaysian and Singaporean security industries, though it has been mostly overlooked by the Western media. It’s important for us to understand the history of Jemaah Islamiyah as part of the ongoing security struggle with terrorism in the security states of Southeast Asia.

There are more than 260 million Muslims in Southeast Asia, with the vast majority in Indonesia and Malaysia. Both countries have been spotlighted repeatedly for corruption, ethno-religious discrimination, and human rights abuses. Though nominally Muslim countries, there are many who feel that they are oppressive and overly obsequious to the west. As we have seen over and over again across the world, oppressive governments which are seen as morally and religiously bankrupt by their citizens are the perfect breeding ground for fundamentalist terrorist groups.

It was out of this climate that Jemaah Islamiyah was born. With the nominal goal of a unified Southeast Asian Islamic state ruled by strict Sharia law, they grew a substantial support base among the poor and disenfranchised in the region. In the 1980s, members of JI heeded the call of international Jihad and traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the Mujahedeen against the Soviet invasion. There they made connections with similar organizations from as far afield as Chechnya, Kashmir, Uzbekistan, as well as the large and extremely well organized Maktab al-Khadamat, Osama Bin Laden’s organization which was the forerunner to al-Qaeda.

Radicalized by their experiences in Afghanistan, members of JI returned to Southeast Asia where they continued to publish conservative theological literature and open religious schools dedicated to strict Islamic practices, and they provided succor to al-Qaeda in the region. They organized themselves into cells, and built ties with a variety of other Islamic separatist and nationalist organizations throughout the region. They did not, however, begin engaging in outright terrorism until the year 2000.

Since 2000, JI has been involved in over a dozen terrorist attacks, the largest of which was the Bali nightclub bombing in 2002, which killed more than 200 people. They have been demonstrably active in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Australia.

The arrest of Selamat is not a particularly significant victory for regional security forces so much as his initial escape was a crushing defeat. Singapore is a predominantly Buddhist city-state with 5 million people living in it. It has the fifth highest GDP per capita in the world, and spends nearly a third of its GDP on military and security. With only about 15% of its population practicing Islam, the fact that JI has a presence in the country at all is a testament to the organization’s power. But that Singapore’s Most Wanted managed to jump out a bathroom window sans-culottes, swim across a river in broad daylight and then evade capture for a year and a half in neighboring Malaysia shows just how difficult nation-states are finding the prosecution of international terrorists.

With all eyes on Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is important to remember the lessons of Mas Salemat and JI. Terrorism is a global problem. It is a product of institutional weaknesses around the globe, and exists on a truly transnational scale. And, most troublingly, it is a problem that national governments around the world have found nearly impossible to deal with in a timely and effective manner.

Terrorism is not a Clash of Civilizations, but a Clash of Time

Samuel Huntington forever changed the face of international political discourse when he published The Clash of Civilizations. It redefined the world not along political boundaries or geographic features, but along the delicate fault-lines of civilization and culture. In his 1993 article, he writes:

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics.

Huntington was wrong. As we progress further and further in to the post Cold-War world, it is becoming clear that we are not entering an era where civilizations are at war, but time itself. The rise of terror, America’s ‘War on Terror’, and other conflicts are not being waged along cultural lines, but between those who seek to progress towards the future and those who seek to revert to the past.

The war in Iraq, Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, tensions in Saudi Arabia, rise of authoritarianism in Russia; all of these conflicts are not between civilizations, but within civilizations. That is single greatest flaw in Huntington’s approach. The battle between reversion and progress does not take place externally, but from within specific cultures.

The war on international terrorism is not a war between western nations and their Muslim enemies, but between modern Islamic governments and terrorist organizations wishing to return to the eighth century. The same is true in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. There is no renewed cold-war between Russia and the United States, but a cold-war within Russia between industro-capitalist democrats and those wishing to return to the glory days of the mid 20^th century. In America, the much-hyped ‘Culture War’ between secular leftists and traditional conservatives has been waged since the 1960s. The list goes on.

While alliances are indeed forged along similar cultures and tongues, they are not maintained so easily. On the flip of that coin, it is a simplification to argue that nations of varying civilizations will inevitably conflict. For the time being, religion and location and culture and history are irrelevant. The only question to be asked is: Who’s going my way?