Terrorisme: L’incroyable aveuglement occidental devant la véritable horreur de ce que peut produire l’effacement des cultures traditionnelles (Last bang before the whimper ? : Why Israeli-Palestinian peace is not for tomorrow)

Travaillons donc à bien penser : Voilà le principe de la morale. Blaise Pascal

C’est ainsi que finit le monde pas sur un boum mais sur un murmure. TS Eliot

C’est quand les phénomènes vont mourir qu’ils s’exaspèrent. René Girard

Le « bazar » qu’est Al-Qaida – on ne peut en effet plus y distinguer une quelconque structure hiérarchique – est composé d’un cercle mondial de personnes qui commettent des attentats tout simplement nihilistes, puisqu’on ne décèle plus aucun objectif définissable pour lesquels ces acteurs se battent. (…) Ces gens sont complètement détachés des conflits: il s’agit d’une secte ou du moins d’une entité qui a le bagage idéologique d’une secte. Ce qui est dangereux, c’est qu’Internet permet justement à ces fanatiques de se regrouper, de s’organiser et de s’auto-encourager. (…) Al-Qaida est devenue une sorte d’agrégat dans lequel les relations personnelles avec les cadres ne sont plus nécessaires: il s’agit d’une pure idéologie, une idée selon laquelle le monde doit être « nettoyé » des infidèles et qu’il est en guerre, même dans des régions comme Casablanca, Madrid, Paris ou Londres où les gens n’ont pas le sentiment de vivre dans une situation de conflit. Si l’on considère Mohammed Siddique Khan et son message vidéo, on n’a l’impression qu’il se trouvait dans un autre pays qui s’appellerait par hasard « Angleterre ». Le monde est en guerre, et il s’agit de continuer la lutte. Ces gens sont complètement détachés des conflits: il s’agit d’une secte ou du moins d’une entité qui a le bagage idéologique d’une secte. Ce qui est dangereux, c’est qu’Internet permet justement à ces fanatiques de se regrouper, de s’organiser et de s’auto-encourager. (…) Les kamikazes de Casablanca, par exemple, sont allés à pied pour rejoindre le lieu de leur attentat: ils n’avaient pas les moyens de payer un taxi. Comment s’imaginer alors qu’ils aient eu suffisamment d’argent pour entreprendre un voyage en Irak? Je crois qu’il s’agit d’une erreur d’affirmer que les attentats d’Al-Qaida soient liés à une notion de territoire. Même en Irak, on observe depuis environ une année des combats massifs entre la résistance sunnite et des militants qui se sont établis comme Al-Qaida, du fait que sur place, Al-Qaida a assassiné tellement de sheiks, de personnalités locales dans les cercles radicaux que même leurs alliés se sont retournés contre eux plutôt que de perpétrer des attentats sur les Américains.(…) L’attentat-suicide constitue l’ultima ratio de la lutte, mais peut perdre sa valeur s’il est utilisé de manière indiscriminée, comme ce fut le cas durant la guerre Iran-Irak où des centaines de milliers d’enfants ont été envoyés à la mort. Dans ce dernier cas, presque la moitié des familles des quartiers pauvres de Téhéran pourraient prétendre au titre de familles de martyrs. Mais cela crée des conflits puisqu’il n’y pas assez d’argent et qu’il est difficile d’honorer la mémoire de 50.000 personnes chaque année, alors que dans le cas du LTTE et du Hezbollah, il existe des reliquaires pour les martyrs dont on fête l’anniversaire et dont on se souvient. Mais cela ne peut fonctionner que si l’on sacrifie une trentaine de personnes en l’espace de 25 ans, comme dans le cas du Hezbollah. Ce qui se passe en Irak est lié à la désintégration générale d’Al-Qaida. (…) Dans le cas d’Al-Qaida et de sa façon arbitraire et indiscriminée de frapper, ceci aura probablement pour conséquence que l’attrait de l’attentat-suicide va diminuer. On a assisté à un phénomène similaire en Iran après les vagues de kamikazes durant le conflit avec l’Irak: il n’y a plus jamais eu de kamikazes iraniens du fait que la valeur du phénomène a été complètement dévaluée. On peut observer une baisse de l’attrait, mais dans une proportion moindre, dans la société palestienne, où l’on a assisté à d’énormes fluctuations que ce soit au niveau de l’approbation des attentats ou de leur nombre. Par exemple, après le début de la seconde Intifada, les attaques étaient presque quotidiennes, alors que maintenant où l’on assiste à une certaine lassitude, leur nombre a baissé de manière drastique. Dans le cas d’Al-Qaida, cette « réaction à retardement » fonctionne de manière ralentie puisqu’il ne s’agit pas d’un groupe militants limité, mais de ce qu’on pourrait qualifier de « crème de la crème » des ultra-radicaux de toutes les sociétés musulmanes.(…) Il y aura peut-être un problème avec ce qu’on appelle « Al-Qaida », du fait qu’elle opère comme une secte isolée et que malgré son manque de succès, elle trouvera toujours des gens pour se faire sauter, peut-être moins en Irak, mais en Allemagne ou dans des endroits où les mesures de sécurité sont beaucoup plus faibles et que l’on peut facilement se mélanger à des foules nombreuses. En principe, rien ne serait plus facile que de perpétrer un attentat-suicide en Allemagne où dans tous les endroits où il est possible de s’approcher d’une foule avec une camionnette remplie d’explosifs, ce qui est devenu impossible en Irak puisqu’il y a partout ces barrières de béton. (…) La fierté – qui est en fait également très ambivalente puisqu’il s’agit d’une fierté officielle, mais qu’au niveau privé les familles sont souvent accablées – que l’on retrouve dans les familles palestiniennes n’a pas été observé dans les familles irakiennes du fait que les familles ne sont souvent pas au courant et qu’une telle approbation publique n’existe pas en Irak. (…) C’est difficile à dire étant donné que la situation ressemble au jet d’un cocktail Molotov dans une mer de flammes, c’est-à-dire que les attentats-suicides ne constituent qu’une partie de la situation qui perturbe beaucoup la population. A cela s’ajoutent les nettoyages ethniques, c’est-à-dire qu’on assiste à de véritables chasses contre les sunnites, les chiites, les chrétiens. Les escadrons de la mort des groupes de confession sunnite et chiite font la chasse aux membres des autres confessions. Les enlèvements ont atteint un niveau tel que même de pauvres chauffeurs de taxi sont kidnappés, étant donné que tous les gens riches ont déjà été enlevés. Christoph Reuter (2007)

Dans les pays occidentaux, nous avons partout ce système d’allocations sociales qui est à peine utilisé par la population locale. D’un autre côté, il y a cette population immigrante dont les femmes ne peuvent être compétitives sur le marché du travail local. Pour les Danoises et les Allemandes, les allocations sont trop faibles pour être attractives. Pas pour les immigrants. Ce que l’on voit donc en Angleterre, en France, en Allemagne et aux Pays-Bas, ce sont des femmes issues de l’immigration qui complètent leur éventuel petit salaire par les deniers publics. Ce n’est pas un revenu extraordinaire, mais ça leur suffit. Et cela crée un genre de « carrière » réservé aux femmes, un modèle que leurs filles suivront. Mais les fils n’ont pas ce choix. Ils ont grandi dans les basses couches de la société, sans les compétences intellectuelles nécessaires pour améliorer leur position. Ce sont ces garçons qui mettent le feu à Paris, ou dans des quartiers de Brême. Certains d’entre eux parviennent jusqu’à l’université et deviennent des leaders pour les autres – pas des pauvres, mais de jeunes hommes de rang social peu élevé, qui croient être opprimés à cause de leur confession musulmane, alors qu’en réalité c’est le système social qui a créé cette classe de perdants. Gunnar Heinsohn

Le 17 février 2001, un cargo vétuste s’échouait volontairement sur les rochers côtiers, non loin de Saint-Raphaël. À son bord, un millier d’immigrants kurdes, dont près de la moitié étaient des enfants. « Cette pointe rocheuse faisait partie de mon paysage. Certes, ils n’étaient pas un million, ainsi que je les avais imaginés, à bord d’une armada hors d’âge, mais ils n’en avaient pas moins débarqué chez moi, en plein décor du Camp des saints, pour y jouer l’acte I. Le rapport radio de l’hélicoptère de la gendarmerie diffusé par l’AFP semble extrait, mot pour mot, des trois premiers paragraphes du livre. La presse souligna la coïncidence, laquelle apparut, à certains, et à moi, comme ne relevant pas du seul hasard. Jean Raspail

C’est sous la tutelle de Yasser Arafat, le véritable père du terrorisme du Moyen-Orient moderne, les Palestiniens ont appris l’éthique flexible qui permet à des hommes de massacrer des femmes et des enfants et d’appeler cela de la « résistance. » Avec ce type de morale, le respect islamique traditionnel pour le martyre istishhad converti en cri de guerre moderne, l’évolution d’un combattant palestinien armé d’une mitraillette et de grenades en terroriste-suicide homme puis femme semble, rétrospectivement, inévitable. Entendre des mères musulmanes palestiniennes raconter fièrement comment elles avaient envoyé des fils mourir comme terroristes-suicide et se réjouir à présent à l’idée d’envoyer plus de fils ou de filles mourir pour la cause, on réalise la véritable horreur de ce que peut produire l’effacement des cultures traditionnelles par la face cachée de la modernité occidentale. Reuel Marc Gerecht

La même force culturelle et spirituelle qui a joué un rôle si décisif dans la disparition du sacrifice humain est aujourd’hui en train de provoquer la disparition des rituels de sacrifice humain qui l’ont jadis remplacé. Tout cela semble être une bonne nouvelle, mais à condition que ceux qui comptaient sur ces ressources rituelles soient en mesure de les remplacer par des ressources religieuses durables d’un autre genre. Priver une société des ressources sacrificielles rudimentaires dont elle dépend sans lui proposer d’alternatives, c’est la plonger dans une crise qui la conduira presque certainement à la violence. Gil Bailie

L’erreur est toujours de raisonner dans les catégories de la « différence », alors que la racine de tous les conflits, c’est plutôt la « concurrence », la rivalité mimétique entre des êtres, des pays, des cultures. La concurrence, c’est-à-dire le désir d’imiter l’autre pour obtenir la même chose que lui, au besoin par la violence. Sans doute le terrorisme est-il lié à un monde « différent » du nôtre, mais ce qui suscite le terrorisme n’est pas dans cette « différence » qui l’éloigne le plus de nous et nous le rend inconcevable. Il est au contraire dans un désir exacerbé de convergence et de ressemblance. (…) Ce qui se vit aujourd’hui est une forme de rivalité mimétique à l’échelle planétaire. Lorsque j’ai lu les premiers documents de Ben Laden, constaté ses allusions aux bombes américaines tombées sur le Japon, je me suis senti d’emblée à un niveau qui est au-delà de l’islam, celui de la planète entière. Sous l’étiquette de l’islam, on trouve une volonté de rallier et de mobiliser tout un tiers-monde de frustrés et de victimes dans leurs rapports de rivalité mimétique avec l’Occident. Mais les tours détruites occupaient autant d’étrangers que d’Américains. Et par leur efficacité, par la sophistication des moyens employés, par la connaissance qu’ils avaient des Etats-Unis, par leurs conditions d’entraînement, les auteurs des attentats n’étaient-ils pas un peu américains ? On est en plein mimétisme.Ce sentiment n’est pas vrai des masses, mais des dirigeants. Sur le plan de la fortune personnelle, on sait qu’un homme comme Ben Laden n’a rien à envier à personne. Et combien de chefs de parti ou de faction sont dans cette situation intermédiaire, identique à la sienne. Regardez un Mirabeau au début de la Révolution française : il a un pied dans un camp et un pied dans l’autre, et il n’en vit que de manière plus aiguë son ressentiment. Aux Etats-Unis, des immigrés s’intègrent avec facilité, alors que d’autres, même si leur réussite est éclatante, vivent aussi dans un déchirement et un ressentiment permanents. Parce qu’ils sont ramenés à leur enfance, à des frustrations et des humiliations héritées du passé. Cette dimension est essentielle, en particulier chez des musulmans qui ont des traditions de fierté et un style de rapports individuels encore proche de la féodalité. (…) Cette concurrence mimétique, quand elle est malheureuse, ressort toujours, à un moment donné, sous une forme violente. A cet égard, c’est l’islam qui fournit aujourd’hui le ciment qu’on trouvait autrefois dans le marxisme.  René Girard

Si les convertis jouent un rôle fondamental dans la stratégie islamiste, c’est parce qu’ils se trouvent justement à l’intersection de ces deux versants complémentaires de la stratégie de lutte contre l’Occident : certains deviennent des soldats du djihad, d’autres sont employés à des fonctions de da’wa. » (propagation de la foi) Paul Landau

Aucun nombre de bombes atomiques ne pourra endiguer le raz de marée constitué par les millions d’êtres humains qui partiront un jour de la partie méridionale et pauvre du monde, pour faire irruption dans les espaces relativement ouverts du riche hémisphère septentrional, en quête de survie. Boumediene (mars 1974)

Un jour, des millions d’hommes quitteront le sud pour aller dans le nord. Et ils n’iront pas là-bas en tant qu’amis. Parce qu’ils iront là-bas pour le conquérir. Et ils le conquerront avec leurs fils. Le ventre de nos femmes nous donnera la victoire. Houari Boumediene (ONU, 10.04.74)

Le jihad n’est pas exigé si l’ennemi est deux fois plus puissant que les musulmans. (…) Quel intérêt y a-t-il à détruire un des édifices de votre ennemi si celui-ci anéantit ensuite un de vos pays ? A quoi sert de tuer l’un des siens si, en retour, il élimine un millier des vôtres ? Saïd Imam Al-Sharif alias Dr. Fadl (ex-idéologue d’Al Qaeda)

Je ne crois guère au développement d’un terrorisme de masse. (…) Je ne pense donc pas, contrairement à certains, que nous verrons des actes terroristes entraînant des milliers de victimes. Pascal Boniface (mai 2001)

La liberté d’expression est dans tous les pays occidentaux d’ores et déjà limitée (…) en 2005, l’Eglise catholique de France a obtenu le retrait d’une publicité utilisant la Cène, mais remplaçant les apôtres par des femmes court vêtues. Cela relève exactement de la même démarche qu’entreprennent les associations musulmanes aujourd’hui. (…) Aucun grand journal ne publierait des caricatures se moquant des aveugles, des nains, des homosexuels ou des Tziganes, plus par peur du mauvais goût que de poursuites judiciaires. Mais le mauvais goût passe pour l’islam, parce que l’opinion publique est plus perméable à l’islamophobie (qui très souvent recouvre en fait un rejet de l’immigration). Olivier Roy

Four-in-ten Palestinian Muslims see suicide bombing as often or sometimes justified, while roughly half (49%) take the opposite view. In Egypt, about three-in-ten (29%) consider suicide bombing justified at least sometimes. Elsewhere in the region, fewer Muslims believe such violence is often or sometimes justified, including fewer than one-in-five in Jordan (15%) and about one-in-ten in Tunisia (12%), Morocco (9%) and Iraq (7%). In Afghanistan, a substantial minority of Muslims (39%) say that this form of violence against civilian targets is often or sometimes justifiable in defense of Islam. In Bangladesh, more than a quarter of Muslims (26%) take this view. Support for suicide bombing is lower in Pakistan (13%). Sondage Pew

Les attentats du 11 septembre 2001 constituent l’aboutissement extrême d’une orientation prise par la mouvance islamiste radicale depuis le milieu des années 1980, à l’époque où se rassemblaient en Afghanistan les combattants du jihad contre l’Armée rouge. Sous l’égide des États-Unis et des pétro-monarchies de la péninsule arabique, les activistes les plus déterminés venus d’Égypte, d’Algérie, d’Arabie Saoudite, du Pakistan, du Sud-est asiatique… et parfois des banlieues européennes avaient alors constitué des brigades internationales islamiques. […] Pour les États-Unis et les États musulmans conservateurs alliés à Washington, ce jihad en Afghanistan permettait du même coup de piéger l’Union soviétique […] et d’éviter que l’Iran révolutionnaire ne conquière l’hégémonie sur une mouvance islamiste alors en pleine expansion à travers le monde. Ces deux objectifs ont été atteints.[...] Le 11 septembre 2001, les États-Unis vont subir, pour une large part, le choc en retour du phénomène qu’ils ont contribué à engendrer dans les années 1980. La tuerie des milliersde civils du World Trade Center et du Pentagone est le prix payé, avec une décennie de décalage, pour le « zéro mort » américain du jihad contre l’Armée rouge. Gilles Kepel (2003)

Les groupes salafistes (…) ne sont pas très nombreux mais très déterminés. Surtout, dans un univers où les repères ont disparu, ils donnent une sorte de corset à la société, ce qui est rassurant quand vous êtes paumé. Ils font des pauvres et des laissés-pour-compte des héros. Cela crée, dans les situations de désarroi, un phénomène frappant qui ressemble à ce qu’on voit dans l’extrême-droite. Les salafistes arrivent à récupérer les frustrations sociales, et à les traduire dans l’exigence de l’application des normes les plus strictes. (…) Il y a eu trois phases dans les révolutions. La première : la chute des régimes. La deuxième : la conquête du pouvoir, la plupart par des partis islamistes. La troisième se déroule aujourd’hui : la mise en cause de ces partis islamistes pour leur incompétence et le caractère liberticide de certains. Ces partis sont aujourd’hui débordés à la fois par des éléments de la société civile laïque, dont des jeunes ont qui ont porté la révolution, et par des déshérités qui ont épousé le salafisme radical. Nous sommes dans une période d’incertitude totale. Mais c’est assez normal car ces révolutions n’ont que deux ans. (…) Au début, les monarchies du Golfe étaient très inquiètes. Car les mots d’ordre révolutionnaires – liberté, démocratie, justice sociale – pouvaient être prises comme une remise en cause de ce qu’elles sont. Le cauchemar des émirs c’était que des dizaines de millions d’Egyptiens et autres déferlent sur leurs puits de pétrole. Ils ont donc développé deux stratégies : les Saoudiens ont renforcé leur soutien aux salafistes, qui obéissent aux oulémas saoudiens, et les Qataris ont soutenu les Frères musulmans, y voyant des alliés pour construire leur hégémonie sur le monde arabe sunnite. (…) L’affrontement chiites-sunnites est le clivage principal qui sort des révolutions. Le Qatar a tenté de dévier l’énergie révolutionnaire dans la lutte contre l’Iran, le chiisme et ses alliés. C’est une façon de prendre en otage les aspirations révolutionnaires et démocratiques des peuples dans l’affrontement chiites-sunnites pour le contrôle du gaz et du pétrole du Golfe. ( la Syrie) est dans un état catastrophique. On en est à 100 000 morts, avec des perspectives épouvantables. Les salafistes y montent en puissance grâce à la manne financière des pays du Golfe, et parce que l’occident n’a pas aidé l’armée syrienne libre. (la révolution au Bahreïn) survenue après celle de Tunisie et d’Egypte, a été écrasée par l’Arabie saoudite dans l’indifférence totale du monde des consommateurs de pétrole, qui craignait qu’une révolution au Bahreïn mette le feu au Golfe et fasse grimper le prix du baril.. (le printemps arabe dans les banlieues françaises) a créé un espace plus fluide, décrispé de la citoyenneté. Il n’y a plus le bled et la dictature d’un côté, l’Europe et la démocratie de l’autre. Ça c’est l’aspect favorable. L’autre aspect, défavorable, c’est l’arrestation de ce djihadiste de Haute Savoie originaire d’Algérie arrêté au Mali et, plus largement, la fascination pour les terrains du djihad, que ce soit au Mali ou en Syrie. Des jeunes prennent des charters pour aller combattre. Pour ceux qui n’arrivent pas à s’insérer par le travail dans la société, c’est une manière de se construire une position héroïque. Mais leur retour en France sera très préoccupant. A cet égard, le cas de Mohamed Merah reste dans les mémoires. Gilles Kepel

L’attentat de Boston présente de troublantes similitudes avec la tuerie de Montauban et Toulouse en mars 2012. A une année de distance, deux opérations de « djihad du pauvre » ont été menées en Occident par des jeunes musulmans brusquement radicalisés issus de l’immigration. (…) Ces deux passages à l’acte illustrent en effet les préconisations du « troisième âge du djihad », théorisées par l’idéologue islamiste syrien Moustafa Sitt Mariam Al-Nassar – dit Abou Moussab Al-Souri – dans son volumineux opus Appel à la résistance islamique mondiale. Il fut mis en ligne à partir de 2005, lorsque l’auteur comprit que les opérations centralisées impulsées par Al-Qaida avaient failli, avec l’échec du djihad du « deuxième âge », à instaurer un « califat islamiste » en Irak – le « premier âge » se référait au djihad contre l’Armée rouge en Afghanistan dans la décennie 1980. (…) En septembre 2001, la stratégie de Ben Laden était en avance sur la doctrine militaire américaine : l’arsenal de la « guerre des étoiles » s’avéra futile contre les pirates de l’air de New York et de Washington. Dans la décennie qui suivit, l’Occident rattrapa son retard : la surveillance des transferts de fonds, la réorganisation du renseignement et des forces spéciales, les ravages causés par les drones parmi les imams et les fedayins de l’Irak au Yémen et à l’Afghanistan, portèrent des coups terribles au djihad « organisé » par le haut. L’exécution de Ben Laden, et plus encore le succès militaire français au Mali en 2013 contre une Al-Qaida au Maghreb islamique (AQMI), dont la logique avait été percée, le démontrèrent. C’est en alternative à cette défaite anticipée que Souri prôna une stratégie de djihad « par le bas », déstructuré, qu’il nomma nizam la tanzim (un système et non une organisation). A un terrorisme hâtif de destruction massive devenu impraticable, il oppose la multiplication d’actions quasi « spontanéistes » mises en oeuvre au long cours par des djihadistes autoradicalisés grâce aux sites de partage de vidéos – prolongés par quelques stages de formation in situ – incités à choisir eux-mêmes, dans leur proximité, une cible opportune. Peu ou mal identifiables par le renseignement – Merah comme Tsarnaev avaient été repérés et interrogés, mais leur dangerosité fut sous-estimée –, équipés d’explosifs ou d’armes de fortune, autofinancés par des larcins, ils ne pourront tuer des milliers d’ »impies » comme au 11-Septembre. Mais la répétition de ces actions spectaculaires, leur diffusion et leur glorification sur Internet, leur imprédictibilité, sèmeront à la longue, escompte Souri, la terreur au sein d’un ennemi démoralisé, qui multipliera les réactions « islamophobes », soudant en réaction, autour du djihad défensif, une communauté de croyants immigrés que rejoindront des convertis en nombre croissant. C’est alors, pense l’idéologue du « djihad 3G », qu’adviendra sous les meilleurs auspices l’affrontement qui détruira la civilisation occidentale sur son territoire même. Ce djihad de basse intensité, progressif, mécaniste et eschatologique, n’a guère été pris au sérieux par la communauté du renseignement, requinquée par les succès remportés contre Al-Qaida depuis la seconde moitié de la décennie écoulée. Les « terroristologues de plateau télévisé », généralement ignorants d’une idéologie qui suppose la connaissance de l’arabe et de la culture islamiste radicale, avaient traité en son temps Merah de « loup solitaire » pour masquer leur incompréhension du phénomène. Aux Etats-Unis, on affectionne l’expression stray dogs (chiens errants) pour désigner le passage à l’acte djihadiste depuis 2010 d’une demi-douzaine de résidents ou nationaux américains, qui « mordent où ils peuvent » dans la chair de la société américaine multiculturelle. Mais aucun n’avait, en s’attaquant à une grande communion civique comme le marathon de Boston, arrêtant le peuple américain dans sa course, suscité en contrepartie un traumatisme d’une telle ampleur symbolique – concrétisé par l’immobilisation de plus d’un million d’habitants consignés à domicile pour contempler à la télévision le spectacle hollywoodien de la traque d’un fugitif devenu l’ennemi intérieur par excellence. Ce qui nous frappe, dans les affaires Tsarnaev et Merah, c’est l’énorme retour sur investissement terroriste, le retentissement incommensurable avec les misérables moyens mis en oeuvre – comme si les élucubrations de Souri se traduisaient dans la réalité. Au départ, il y a la divagation sur la planète de destins familiaux ravagés. A Boston, une famille tchétchène anciennement exilée par les persécutions staliniennes au Kirghizistan, ballotée entre la décomposition de l’Homo sovieticus et l’identité nationale ; un père et une mère éduqués qui se projettent dans le rêve américain, où ils se dégradent en mécanicien auto et esthéticienne, avant de s’en revenir dépités au bercail. Un frère aîné, nommé, d’après le terrible empereur mongol, Tamerlan, qui rate une carrière de boxeur, perd ses repères, boit, court les filles, puis découvre une version rigoriste de l’islam, voile sa mère, se nourrit de sites djihadistes tant et si bien que les services russes en informent leurs collègues américains qui interrogent, puis laissent aller le suspect. Un séjour de presque six mois en 2012 dans le Caucase suscitant toutes les spéculations – y compris sur les manipulations ou les ratages du renseignement russe –, d’où il revient si radicalisé qu’il effraie les fidèles de sa mosquée de Boston. Gilles Kepel

Moustapha Sitt Mariam Nassar, plus connu sous le pseudonyme d’Abou Moussab Al-Souri (le Syrien), né à Alep en 1958, a été de tous les combats du djihad depuis qu’il a rejoint en 1976 les rangs de l’Avant-Garde combattante, la branche paramilitaire des Frères musulmans syriens. Etudiant en ingénierie, il assiste au massacre des Frères musulmans par le régime lors du soulèvement de Hama en 1982. Réfugié en France, il se familiarise avec la production tiers-mondiste. En 1985, il se fixe en Espagne, où il épouse une gauchiste athée qui se convertira à l’islam et lui donnera le précieux passeport européen facilitant ses déplacements. Rejoignant le front afghan sur fond de retraite de l’Armée rouge et proche de l’idéologue du djihad « du premier âge », le Palestinien Abdallah Azzam, assassiné en 1989 à Peshawar, il commence à coucher sur le papier ses réflexions en plein conflit civil afghan, puis revient dans son Andalousie en 1992 – où il soutient le djihad du Groupe islamique armé algérien, dont il se fera le relais depuis le « Londonistan » en Angleterre. Il y publie le journal ronéoté Al Ansar, qui exalte faits d’armes et autres massacres d’ »impies ». En 1996, après la victoire des talibans, il revient en Afghanistan, où il organise les rendez-vous de Ben Laden et des doctrinaires du « deuxième âge du djihad », dont Zawahiri, avec la presse internationale. Il est dubitatif envers les actions spectaculaires montées par Al-Qaida et commence à écrire un premier jet de son opus, Appel à la résistance islamique mondiale. Le déluge de feu qui s’abat sur Al-Qaida après le 11-Septembre, l’invasion de l’Afghanistan et la chute des talibans le renforcent dans ses convictions : errant au Pakistan, il achève son livre, rédigé au format d’un e-book, où les conseils de « manuel du djihad » sont téléchargés par les adeptes. Capturé en octobre 2005 à Quetta, il est remis aux Américains et, selon ses avocats, livré par ceux-ci aux Syriens autour de 2007 – à une époque où Bachar Al-Assad est en cour en Occident. Selon des sites islamistes « fiables », il est remis en liberté fin 2011, alors que la révolution syrienne a débuté et que le régime s’emploie à inoculer à celle-ci le virus djihadiste pour lui aliéner le soutien occidental. Gilles Kepel

Où l’on voit que l’éducation à la haine, financée en grande partie avec de l’argent européen (les manuels scolaires de l’AP, dégoulinant de la haine la plus sauvage, sont produits grace à des fonds européens, une bonne partie des médias audiovisuels également) a porté ses fruits : 40% des Palestiniens considèrent totalement ou parfois justifiés les attentats suicide visant une population civile. Seuls les Afghans font presque « aussi bien », avec 39%, le soutien à ce genre d’acte étant bien moindre dans les autres pays musulmans : 29% en Egypte, 15 en Jordanie ou Turquie, 3% en Bosnie et 1% en Azerbaïdjan. Résultat d’autant plus écoeurant que lesdits Palestiniens sont les mieux à même de savoir comment, en comparaison, les Israéliens font de leur mieux pour protéger les civils, entre les envois de tracts, SMS et coup de téléphone prévenant des actions militaires (exclusivité mondiale), les soins apportés même aux pires ordures terroristes, les aides humanitaires diverses… Il suffit de voir comment leurs enfants vont provoquer les soldats pour mesurer à quel point cela est un fait acquis pour cette population qui justifiera pour plus de sa moitié les attaques aveugles visant une population civile. En effet, les réponses possibles opposées étaient « ces attentats sont-ils rarement/jamais justifiés », couvrant donc encore des personnes trouvant des justifications à cette barbarie, et que selon PEW ces 2 réponses ne cumulent que 49% des suffrages. Ari Cohen

Dernier boum, avant le murmure ?

A l’heure où, après le pathétique bricolage mortel (pardon: d’ "épisodes de violence sur le lieu de travail") de Boston et d’Istres d’un terrorisme manifestement à bout de souffle,  nos "terroristologues de plateau télévisé" s’extasient devant "l’énorme retour sur investissement terroriste, le retentissement incommensurable avec les misérables moyens mis en oeuvre" du "jihad 3G du pauvre" …

Et qu’un sondage sur les pays musulmans confirme, en ces temps de perte de repères, tant la demande d’idéologies et d’hommes forts que l’inévitable discrédit que subit ledit jihad en dehors de certaines réserves d’indiens (Syrie, avant nos propres "banlieues", désormais comprise?) entretenues à grands frais par les contribuables européens ou les pétrodollars de monarchies du golfe toujours plus manipulatrices …

Comment ne pas voir l’incroyable aveuglement occidental devant  la "véritable horreur de ce que peut produire", dans lesdites réserves, "l’effacement des cultures traditionnelles par la face cachée de la modernité occidentale"?

Mais aussi la non moins formidable hypocrisie des appels des belles âmes et des faussaires à la Enderlin à imposer, à la seule véritable démocratie du Moyen-Orient, un dialogue avec ceux qui de toute évidence ne peuvent avoir aujourd’hui d’autre souhait que celui de son annihilation ?

Un nouveau sondage confirme que 40% des Palestiniens soutiennent les attentats suicides

Ari Cohen

JSSNews

2 mai 2013

Le dernier sondage du Pew Research Center, réalisé dans 21 pays, met une fois de plus en lumière la barbarie dans laquelle se complait la population palestinienne de Judée Samarie et de Gaza.

Pew Research Suicide Bombing

Le sondage portait sur différents points tel que les droits des femmes, l’application de la sharia, les attentats suicide…

Sans surprise particulière pour toute personne disposant d’informations valides sur la région, les « Palestiniens » (comprendre : ceux vivant en Judée Samarie et à Gaza) se situent en haut de classement sur de nombreux points :

application de la sharia comme législation unique (89%, seulement dépassés par l’Afghanistan (99%) et l’Irak (91%), la Jordanie arrivant bien plus bas à 71%, l’Egypte à 74, le Maroc à 83

la place de la femme dans la famille : 87% des Palestiniens considérant que la femme doit obéir à son mari (ils partagent sur ce point l’opinion de l’écrasante majorité du monde musulman, seul la Bosnie Herzébovine, l’Albanie et le Kosovo obtiennent sur cette question des scores inférieurs à 50% (respectivement 45, 40 et 34), l’Afghanistan montant à 84% et la Malaysie à 96 !), 33% considérant qu’elle n’a aucun droit au divorce (ils sont sur ce point vers le bas du tableau) et 45% considérant les « crimes d’honneur » comme

Les relations inter-confessionnelles : les Palestiniens répondant à 89%, et ce alors qu’ils comptent une minorité chrétienne en leur sein, que seul l’Islam accorde l’accès au paradis (1ers ex-aequo : Egypte et Jordanie, avec 96%), 42% affirmant cependant que l’Islam et le christianisme ont de nombreux points en commun (quand seuls 15% affirment connaitre « un peu » ou « beaucoup » le christianisme…). Notons également que seuls 80% d’entre eux (les chiffres montent jusqu’à 100% en Tunisie par exemple !) affirment n’avoir comme meilleurs amis que, ou pratiquement qu’exclusivement, des musulmans. Cela donne donc au bas mot 7% des sondés qui ont comme dans leur amitié proche des gens qu’ils considèrent voués à l’enfer… Notons également que Pew a décidé de ne pas aborder les relations avec les Juifs, seuls celles avec les chrétiens sont abordées dans le sondage, ainsi que dans une moindre mesure le bouddhisme.

démocratie / dictature : 55% des Palestiniens souhaitent vivre dans un régime démocratique contre 40% préférant être dirigé par un « puissant leader). Les pays sondés varient sur ce point entre l’extrème du Kyrgystan (32%/64%) et celui du Ghana (87%/12%), le Liban n’étant pas loin derrière (81%/19%). Les Palestiniens ne semblent visiblement pas réaliser l’incompatibilité entre la Sharia et la démocratie…

opinions sur les partis religieux : 29% des Palestiniens considèrent que les partis religieux sont pires que les autres. Ils sont sur ce point ceux qui rejettent le plus lesdits partis. Probablement l’effet Hamas. A l’inverse, la triste surprise vient de l’Egypte et surtout de la Tunisie où 55% de la population considèrent les partis religieux comme étant meilleurs, devançant même l’Afghanistan (54).

rejet de l’extrémisme religieux : les Palestiniens se retrouvent dans la moitié supérieure du tableau, avec des réponses amenant cependant des questions : 22% d’entre eux se déclarent concernés par l’existence d’extrémistes musulmans au sein de leur population, mais 9% d’entre eux répondre se sentir concernés uniquement par les extrémistes chrétiens (??????) et 30% par les deux. Réponses assez sidérantes quand on connait les chrétiens vivant dans ces régions, oscillant entre soumission servile voir zelée et fuite vers d’autres cieux plus cléments. Des pays comme l’Indonésie, l’Irak ou la Guinée Bissau présentent des résultats plus cohérents, avec une inquiétude face à l’extrémisme musulman touchant plus ou moins 50% de la population, mais l’inquiétude envers le supposé extrémisme chrétien d’une partie de la population se retrouve dans pratiquement tous les pays musulmans, y compris ceux n’ayant pour ainsi dire aucune population chrétienne.

soutien aux attentats suicide : où l’on voit que l’éducation à la haine, financée en grande partie avec de l’argent européen (les manuels scolaires de l’AP, dégoulinant de la haine la plus sauvage, sont produits grace à des fonds européens, une bonne partie des médias audiovisuels également) a porté ses fruits : 40% des Palestiniens considèrent totalement ou parfois justifiés les attentats suicide visant une population civile. Seuls les Afghans font presque « aussi bien », avec 39%, le soutien à ce genre d’acte étant bien moindre dans les autres pays musulmans : 29% en Egypte, 15 en Jordanie ou Turquie, 3% en Bosnie et 1% en Azerbaïdjan. Résultat d’autant plus écoeurant que lesdits Palestiniens sont les mieux à même de savoir comment, en comparaison, les Israéliens font de leur mieux pour protéger les civils, entre les envois de tracts, SMS et coup de téléphone prévenant des actions militaires (exclusivité mondiale), les soins apportés même aux pires ordures terroristes, les aides humanitaires diverses… Il suffit de voir comment leurs enfants vont provoquer les soldats pour mesurer à quel point cela est un fait acquis pour cette population qui justifiera pour plus de sa moitié les attaques aveugles visant une population civile. En effet, les réponses possibles opposées étaient « ces attentats sont-ils rarement/jamais justifiés », couvrant donc encore des personnes trouvant des justifications à cette barbarie, et que selon PEW ces 2 réponses ne cumulent que 49% des suffrages. Il est de plus assez facile de comprendre ce que peuvent penser les 11% qui ont refusé de répondre…

Faire la paix ? Mais avec qui ?

Voir également:

Une majorité de musulmans se déclare pour la charia

OLJ/AFP

| 01/05/2013

Étude Le sondage montre les différences d’interprétation, plus ou moins souples selon le pays.

Une majorité des musulmans dans le monde veulent que la charia, la loi islamique, devienne la loi de leur pays, tout en montrant des opinions disparates sur ce qu’elle recouvre, indiquait hier une étude de l’institut Pew. Cette vaste étude, réalisée de 2008 à 2012 auprès de 38 000 personnes dans 39 pays, porte sur le thème de « Religion, politique et société » dans la communauté musulmane, forte de 1,6 milliard d’individus, la deuxième religion au monde après la religion chrétienne. Une majorité des musulmans notamment en Asie, Afrique et Moyen-Orient, veulent ainsi l’établissement de la charia, avec toutefois des disparités géographiques – 8 % en Azerbaïdjan, mais 99 % en Afghanistan –, affirme Pew qui l’explique par l’histoire des pays et la séparation de l’Église et de l’État.

L’étude montre que l’application de la charia est surtout souhaitée dans la sphère privée, pour régler les affaires familiales ou foncières, par les musulmans habitant des pays où siègent déjà des cours religieuses de ce type. L’exécution de musulmans convertis à une autre religion ou les supplices des coups de fouet ou des mains coupées pour les voleurs recueillent néanmoins une minorité d’avis favorables, sauf pour une forte majorité en Afghanistan et Pakistan et un peu plus d’une personne sur deux au Moyen-Orient et Afrique du Nord. Ils sont aussi majoritaires à vouloir accorder la liberté religieuse aux autres religions. Ainsi au Pakistan, 84 % veulent voir la charia inscrite dans la loi du pays et 96 % estiment que la liberté des cultes est « une bonne chose ». La moitié des musulmans sont également préoccupés par l’extrémisme religieux dans leur pays, dont une majorité en Égypte, Tunisie ou Irak. De même, une majorité de femmes comme d’hommes estime que la femme doit obéir au mari, notamment en Irak, Maroc, Tunisie, Indonésie, Afghanistan et Malaisie, mais une majorité aussi estime qu’une femme doit pouvoir décider toute seule de porter ou non le voile. De fait, la plupart des musulmans ne ressentent pas de tensions entre leur religion et la vie moderne, préfèrent un régime démocratique, aiment la musique ou les films occidentaux même s’ils pensent que cette culture sape la moralité.

Également, une très forte majorité considère la prostitution, l’homosexualité, le suicide ou l’alcool immoraux mais le regard sur la polygamie diverge (4 % l’estiment moralement acceptable en Bosnie-Herzégovine, contre 87 % au Niger). Seuls l’Afghanistan et l’Irak excusent majoritairement les « crimes d’honneur ». La violence au nom de l’islam est largement rejetée mais approuvée par des minorités substantielles au Bangladesh, en Égypte, en Afghanistan et dans les territoires palestiniens. 81 % des musulmans américains estiment qu’elle n’est « jamais » justifiée, contre une moyenne médiane de 72 % dans le reste du monde, ajoute l’étude.

Voir encore:

Merah et Tsarnaev, même combat

Gilles Kepel (Politologue et spécialiste de l’islam, professeur à Sciences Po)

Le Monde

28.04.2013

Les auteurs des tueries de Toulouse et Boston incarnent le troisième âge du djihad, celui d’un terrorisme isolé et d’un échec de l’intégration en Occident.

L’attentat de Boston présente de troublantes similitudes avec la tuerie de Montauban et Toulouse en mars 2012. A une année de distance, deux opérations de "djihad du pauvre" ont été menées en Occident par des jeunes musulmans brusquement radicalisés issus de l’immigration.

Les rapports des Etats-Unis à la Tchétchénie ex-soviétique et ceux de la France à l’Algérie ex-coloniale diffèrent. Mais l’attentat à l’autocuiseur piégé qui a tué trois passants dont un enfant et blessé des dizaines de personnes, suivi du meurtre d’un policier, participe de la même logique que l’assassinat des militaires français ainsi que des petits élèves et du professeur de l’école juive Ozar-Hatorah.

Ces deux passages à l’acte illustrent en effet les préconisations du "troisième âge du djihad", théorisées par l’idéologue islamiste syrien Moustafa Sitt Mariam Al-Nassar – dit Abou Moussab Al-Souri – dans son volumineux opus Appel à la résistance islamique mondiale. Il fut mis en ligne à partir de 2005, lorsque l’auteur comprit que les opérations centralisées impulsées par Al-Qaida avaient failli, avec l’échec du djihad du "deuxième âge", à instaurer un "califat islamiste" en Irak – le "premier âge" se référait au djihad contre l’Armée rouge en Afghanistan dans la décennie 1980.

Lire aussi : Al-Souri, le cerveau du djihad des pauvres

En septembre 2001, la stratégie de Ben Laden était en avance sur la doctrine militaire américaine : l’arsenal de la "guerre des étoiles" s’avéra futile contre les pirates de l’air de New York et de Washington. Dans la décennie qui suivit, l’Occident rattrapa son retard : la surveillance des transferts de fonds, la réorganisation du renseignement et des forces spéciales, les ravages causés par les drones parmi les imams et les fedayins de l’Irak au Yémen et à l’Afghanistan, portèrent des coups terribles au djihad "organisé" par le haut.

DJIHAD "PAR LE BAS"

L’exécution de Ben Laden, et plus encore le succès militaire français au Mali en 2013 contre une Al-Qaida au Maghreb islamique (AQMI), dont la logique avait été percée, le démontrèrent. C’est en alternative à cette défaite anticipée que Souri prôna une stratégie de djihad "par le bas", déstructuré, qu’il nomma nizam la tanzim (un système et non une organisation).

A un terrorisme hâtif de destruction massive devenu impraticable, il oppose la multiplication d’actions quasi "spontanéistes" mises en oeuvre au long cours par des djihadistes autoradicalisés grâce aux sites de partage de vidéos – prolongés par quelques stages de formation in situ – incités à choisir eux-mêmes, dans leur proximité, une cible opportune.

Peu ou mal identifiables par le renseignement – Merah comme Tsarnaev avaient été repérés et interrogés, mais leur dangerosité fut sous-estimée –, équipés d’explosifs ou d’armes de fortune, autofinancés par des larcins, ils ne pourront tuer des milliers d’"impies" comme au 11-Septembre.

Mais la répétition de ces actions spectaculaires, leur diffusion et leur glorification sur Internet, leur imprédictibilité, sèmeront à la longue, escompte Souri, la terreur au sein d’un ennemi démoralisé, qui multipliera les réactions "islamophobes", soudant en réaction, autour du djihad défensif, une communauté de croyants immigrés que rejoindront des convertis en nombre croissant. C’est alors, pense l’idéologue du "djihad 3G", qu’adviendra sous les meilleurs auspices l’affrontement qui détruira la civilisation occidentale sur son territoire même.

PEU PRIS AU SÉRIEUX PAR LES RENSEIGNEMENTS

Ce djihad de basse intensité, progressif, mécaniste et eschatologique, n’a guère été pris au sérieux par la communauté du renseignement, requinquée par les succès remportés contre Al-Qaida depuis la seconde moitié de la décennie écoulée. Les "terroristologues de plateau télévisé", généralement ignorants d’une idéologie qui suppose la connaissance de l’arabe et de la culture islamiste radicale, avaient traité en son temps Merah de "loup solitaire" pour masquer leur incompréhension du phénomène.

Aux Etats-Unis, on affectionne l’expression stray dogs (chiens errants) pour désigner le passage à l’acte djihadiste depuis 2010 d’une demi-douzaine de résidents ou nationaux américains, qui "mordent où ils peuvent" dans la chair de la société américaine multiculturelle.

Mais aucun n’avait, en s’attaquant à une grande communion civique comme le marathon de Boston, arrêtant le peuple américain dans sa course, suscité en contrepartie un traumatisme d’une telle ampleur symbolique – concrétisé par l’immobilisation de plus d’un million d’habitants consignés à domicile pour contempler à la télévision le spectacle hollywoodien de la traque d’un fugitif devenu l’ennemi intérieur par excellence.

Ce qui nous frappe, dans les affaires Tsarnaev et Merah, c’est l’énorme retour sur investissement terroriste, le retentissement incommensurable avec les misérables moyens mis en oeuvre – comme si les élucubrations de Souri se traduisaient dans la réalité.

INTÉGRATION RATÉE

Or, ce qui s’est joué à Boston comme à Toulouse dépasse la seule logique du terrorisme : l’immense résonance de ces deux affaires provient du basculement effarant de destins individuels, chez des immigrés ou enfants d’immigrés que l’ingénierie sociale occidentale, par-delà la différence des modalités américaine ou française, avait vocation à intégrer.

Tout au contraire, ils se sont "désintégrés" par rapport aux sociétés d’accueil, au travers du rejet systématique de leurs valeurs au nom d’une norme islamiste exacerbée, exprimant par le paroxysme de la violence leur adhésion à une cybercommunauté imaginaire de djihadistes, héros fantasmatiques de la rédemption de l’humanité face aux kouffar ("impies") occidentaux.

Les deux frères Tsarnaev, suspects de l’attentat de Boston.

Au départ, il y a la divagation sur la planète de destins familiaux ravagés. A Boston, une famille tchétchène anciennement exilée par les persécutions staliniennes au Kirghizistan, ballotée entre la décomposition de l’Homo sovieticus et l’identité nationale ; un père et une mère éduqués qui se projettent dans le rêve américain, où ils se dégradent en mécanicien auto et esthéticienne, avant de s’en revenir dépités au bercail.

Un frère aîné, nommé, d’après le terrible empereur mongol, Tamerlan, qui rate une carrière de boxeur, perd ses repères, boit, court les filles, puis découvre une version rigoriste de l’islam, voile sa mère, se nourrit de sites djihadistes tant et si bien que les services russes en informent leurs collègues américains qui interrogent, puis laissent aller le suspect. Un séjour de presque six mois en 2012 dans le Caucase suscitant toutes les spéculations – y compris sur les manipulations ou les ratages du renseignement russe –, d’où il revient si radicalisé qu’il effraie les fidèles de sa mosquée de Boston.

FRÈRE AÎNÉ DOMINATEUR

Le jeune frère, Dzhokhar (de l’arabe jawhar : joyau), carabin tout empreint des traits de l’enfance, loué pour sa douceur par ses camarades, se définit sur son profil Facebook par la triade "islam, carrière, argent". C’est le visage d’ange, la beauté du diable de ce jeune homme au nom de bijou, si parfaitement américain en apparence et en esprit, qui suscite le plus insondable malaise.

Et même s’il incrimine sur son lit d’hôpital la domination de son aîné, le ressort du basculement dans le djihad va chercher plus loin que la simple adhésion aux thèses d’un Souri dont il ignore probablement tout : dans les tréfonds du malaise de la mondialisation, des traumatismes de l’immigration, qu’a su capter et mobiliser à son profit l’idéologie islamiste radicale.

Merah aussi avait un visage encore enfantin et un sourire charmeur ; et également un aîné dominateur, parti étudier le salafisme en Egypte, une mère et une soeur tombées sous l’emprise d’un islamisme rigoriste, une famille brisée, ballottée entre l’Algérie et la France, un père ayant refait sa vie au bled sans plus se préoccuper des siens, après avoir purgé une condamnation pour trafic de stupéfiants.

Mohamed retrouve en prison une identité en survalorisant un islam exalté qui l’absout des délits commis contre une société "impie" dont les lois sont ipso facto dévalorisées. Il ne parvient pas à construire une vie professionnelle, mais se gave de vidéos exaltant le martyre des croyants et l’exécution des infidèles, puis part au contact de groupes djihadistes au Moyen-Orient et en Afghanistan, et roule la police qui pense pouvoir le retourner.

Les croisements avec le destin de Tamerlan Tsarnaev sont frappants – même si le fils de prolétaire algérien était plus démuni que l’enfant choyé d’un couple de petits-bourgeois tchétchènes.

Et quel incroyable entrelacs de ces destins chaotiques avec la grande Histoire : le djihad de Mohamed Merah a lieu entre le 11 et le 22 mars 2012, cinquante ans après les accords d’Evian du 18 mars 1962, qui scellent l’indépendance d’une Algérie dont tant d’enfants iront s’installer dans le pays qu’ils combattirent pour s’en séparer. Quant à "Bijou" Tsarnaev, il vient d’être naturalisé américain, le 11 septembre 2012, onze ans après les attentats de New York et Washington, l’acte fondateur du djihad en terre d’Occident, dont il a joué une variation qui représente le plus pervers des défis pour la citoyenneté et l’intégration de nos sociétés.

Gilles Kepel (Politologue et spécialiste de l’islam, professeur à Sciences Po)

Voir aussi:

Al-Souri, le cerveau du djihad des pauvres

Gilles Kepel (Politologue et spécialiste de l’islam, professeur à Sciences Po)

Le Monde

28.04.2013

Moustapha Sitt Mariam Nassar, plus connu sous le pseudonyme d’Abou Moussab Al-Souri (le Syrien), né à Alep en 1958, a été de tous les combats du djihad depuis qu’il a rejoint en 1976 les rangs de l’Avant-Garde combattante, la branche paramilitaire des Frères musulmans syriens. Etudiant en ingénierie, il assiste au massacre des Frères musulmans par le régime lors du soulèvement de Hama en 1982.

Réfugié en France, il se familiarise avec la production tiers-mondiste. En 1985, il se fixe en Espagne, où il épouse une gauchiste athée qui se convertira à l’islam et lui donnera le précieux passeport européen facilitant ses déplacements. Rejoignant le front afghan sur fond de retraite de l’Armée rouge et proche de l’idéologue du djihad "du premier âge", le Palestinien Abdallah Azzam, assassiné en 1989 à Peshawar, il commence à coucher sur le papier ses réflexions en plein conflit civil afghan, puis revient dans son Andalousie en 1992 – où il soutient le djihad du Groupe islamique armé algérien, dont il se fera le relais depuis le "Londonistan" en Angleterre. Il y publie le journal ronéoté Al Ansar, qui exalte faits d’armes et autres massacres d’"impies".

Lire aussi : Merah et Tsarnaev, même combat

En 1996, après la victoire des talibans, il revient en Afghanistan, où il organise les rendez-vous de Ben Laden et des doctrinaires du "deuxième âge du djihad", dont Zawahiri, avec la presse internationale. Il est dubitatif envers les actions spectaculaires montées par Al-Qaida et commence à écrire un premier jet de son opus, Appel à la résistance islamique mondiale. Le déluge de feu qui s’abat sur Al-Qaida après le 11-Septembre, l’invasion de l’Afghanistan et la chute des talibans le renforcent dans ses convictions : errant au Pakistan, il achève son livre, rédigé au format d’un e-book, où les conseils de "manuel du djihad" sont téléchargés par les adeptes.

Capturé en octobre 2005 à Quetta, il est remis aux Américains et, selon ses avocats, livré par ceux-ci aux Syriens autour de 2007 – à une époque où Bachar Al-Assad est en cour en Occident. Selon des sites islamistes "fiables", il est remis en liberté fin 2011, alors que la révolution syrienne a débuté et que le régime s’emploie à inoculer à celle-ci le virus djihadiste pour lui aliéner le soutien occidental. Des rumeurs invérifiables font état de son retour dans sa ville natale d’Alep, place forte de l’insurrection, où les milices djihadistes du Jabhat Al-Nousra ont pignon sur rue – sans que l’on puisse mesurer son rôle exact.

Gilles Kepel (Politologue et spécialiste de l’islam, professeur à Sciences Po)

Voir encore:

Révolutions arabes: «Nous sommes dans une période d’incertitude totale»

8 avril 2013

20 minutes

INTERVIEW – Gilles Kepel, professeur à Sciences-Po, publie «Passion arabe», récit de son périple sur les traces du Printemps arabe…

Gilles Kepel, professeur à Sciences-Po et grand connaisseur du monde arabe contemporain, publie Passion arabe (Ed. Gallimard), récit du périple qu’il a effectué pendant deux ans sur les traces du Printemps arabe. 20 Minutes l’a rencontré…

L’enthousiasme qui a accueilli l’éclosion du printemps arabe a laissé place à un discours pessimiste sur «l’hiver islamiste». Que vous inspire cette analyse?

Les deux discours étaient faux : l’enthousiasme naïf du début qui croyait qu’on pouvait faire l’impasse sur l’histoire des sociétés arabes, comme si elles se réduisaient à Facebook et Twitter, et le discours actuel sur l’hiver islamiste, le retour du terrorisme etc. Malgré tous leurs soubresauts, les révolutions ont créé quelque chose de décisif : les arabes se sont emparés de la liberté d’expression, que les régimes avaient confisquée après les indépendances. Quel que soit le devenir de ces révolutions, ils ne vont pas se la laisser reprendre. Cela a complètement modifié le logiciel politique, culturel et mental des sociétés arabes.

Quel regard portez-vous sur leur apprentissage de la démocratie?

La démocratisation est un test pour les gens qui veulent conquérir le pouvoir. La population ne s’en laisse plus conter. Les mouvements islamistes sont aujourd’hui confrontés à la gestion des affaires courantes et s’en sortent mal parce qu’ils ont fait passer l’idéologie avant le pragmatisme. Ils sont en outre en concurrence les uns avec les autres : les salafistes disent que les Frères musulmans sont pourris, et les Frères musulmans disent que salafistes sont des fanatiques. Les islamistes sont considérablement descendus de leur piédestal dans les populations du monde arabe. Les Frères musulmans, qui avaient l’aura des martyrs parce qu’ils avaient été violemment réprimés sous (l’ancien président égyptien) Moubarak, ont désormais davantage l’image de mauvais gestionnaires tentés par la dérive autoritaire que de martyrs.

Où sont passées la liberté et la démocratie pour lesquelles les populations se sont soulevées?

Les mots d’ordre des révolutions c’était : liberté, démocratie, justice sociale. La liberté a été conquise dans beaucoup de cas. La démocratie, plus ou moins. Mais la justice sociale, pas du tout, à cause de problèmes économiques, de la crise, la mauvaise gouvernance, l’absence d’investissements étrangers, la fuite des touristes… Il y a aujourd’hui un appauvrissement général. Du coup, on entend parfois dire que «Moubarak, Kadhafi et Ben Ali étaient des salauds, mais au moins à leur époque il y avait de l’ordre et du travail». Les groupes salafistes bénéficient de ce désenchantement.

Quelle influence ont-ils?

Ils ne sont pas très nombreux mais très déterminés. Surtout, dans un univers où les repères ont disparu, ils donnent une sorte de corset à la société, ce qui est rassurant quand vous êtes paumé. Ils font des pauvres et des laissés-pour-compte des héros. Cela crée, dans les situations de désarroi, un phénomène frappant qui ressemble à ce qu’on voit dans l’extrême-droite. Les salafistes arrivent à récupérer les frustrations sociales, et à les traduire dans l’exigence de l’application des normes les plus strictes.

Sommes-nous dans une spirale : pas de travail, plus de pauvreté, radicalisation?

Il y a eu trois phases dans les révolutions. La première : la chute des régimes. La deuxième : la conquête du pouvoir, la plupart par des partis islamistes. La troisième se déroule aujourd’hui : la mise en cause de ces partis islamistes pour leur incompétence et le caractère liberticide de certains. Ces partis sont aujourd’hui débordés à la fois par des éléments de la société civile laïque, dont des jeunes ont qui ont porté la révolution, et par des déshérités qui ont épousé le salafisme radical. Nous sommes dans une période d’incertitude totale. Mais c’est assez normal car ces révolutions n’ont que deux ans.

Quelle a été l’influence des pétromonarchies du Golfe dans les révolutions, en particulier le Qatar, dont l’influence est controversée en France?

Au début, les monarchies du Golfe étaient très inquiètes. Car les mots d’ordre révolutionnaires – liberté, démocratie, justice sociale – pouvaient être prises comme une remise en cause de ce qu’elles sont. Le cauchemar des émirs c’était que des dizaines de millions d’Egyptiens et autres déferlent sur leurs puits de pétrole. Ils ont donc développé deux stratégies : les Saoudiens ont renforcé leur soutien aux salafistes, qui obéissent aux oulémas saoudiens, et les Qataris ont soutenu les Frères musulmans, y voyant des alliés pour construire leur hégémonie sur le monde arabe sunnite.

C’est-à-dire?

L’affrontement chiites-sunnites est le clivage principal qui sort des révolutions. Le Qatar a tenté de dévier l’énergie révolutionnaire dans la lutte contre l’Iran, le chiisme et ses alliés. C’est une façon de prendre en otage les aspirations révolutionnaires et démocratiques des peuples dans l’affrontement chiites-sunnites pour le contrôle du gaz et du pétrole du Golfe.

Et la Syrie?

Le pays est dans un état catastrophique. On en est à 100 000 morts, avec des perspectives épouvantables. Les salafistes y montent en puissance grâce à la manne financière des pays du Golfe, et parce que l’occident n’a pas aidé l’armée syrienne libre.

Pourquoi la révolution au Bahreïn a-t-elle avorté?

Cette révolution, survenue après celle de Tunisie et d’Egypte, a été écrasée par l’Arabie saoudite dans l’indifférence totale du monde des consommateurs de pétrole, qui craignait qu’une révolution au Bahreïn mette le feu au Golfe et fasse grimper le prix du baril…

Vous avez travaillé sur la place de l’islam dans les banlieues françaises. Quel écho le printemps arabe a-t-il dans ces banlieues?

Ça a créé un espace plus fluide, décrispé de la citoyenneté. Il n’y a plus le bled et la dictature d’un côté, l’Europe et la démocratie de l’autre. Ça c’est l’aspect favorable. L’autre aspect, défavorable, c’est l’arrestation de ce djihadiste de Haute Savoie originaire d’Algérie arrêté au Mali et, plus largement, la fascination pour les terrains du djihad, que ce soit au Mali ou en Syrie. Des jeunes prennent des charters pour aller combattre. Pour ceux qui n’arrivent pas à s’insérer par le travail dans la société, c’est une manière de se construire une position héroïque. Mais leur retour en France sera très préoccupant. A cet égard, le cas de Mohamed Merah reste dans les mémoires.

Propos recueillis par Faustine Vincent

Voir par ailleurs:

Make No Mistake, It Was Jihad

Let’s hope the administration gets over its reluctance to recognize attacks on the U.S. for what they are.

Michael B. Mukasey

The WSJ

April 21, 2013

If your concern about the threat posed by the Tsarnaev brothers is limited to assuring that they will never be in a position to repeat their grisly acts, rest easy.

The elder, Tamerlan—apparently named for the 14th-century Muslim conqueror famous for building pyramids of his victims’ skulls to commemorate his triumphs over infidels—is dead. The younger, Dzhokhar, will stand trial when his wounds heal, in a proceeding where the most likely uncertainty will be the penalty. No doubt there will be some legal swordplay over his interrogation by the FBI’s High-Value Interrogation Group without receiving Miranda warnings. But the only downside for the government in that duel is that his statements may not be used against him at trial. This is not much of a risk when you consider the other available evidence, including photo images of him at the scene of the bombings and his own reported confession to the victim whose car he helped hijack during last week’s terror in Boston.

But if your concern is over the larger threat that inheres in who the Tsarnaev brothers were and are, what they did, and what they represent, then worry—a lot.

For starters, you can worry about how the High-Value Interrogation Group, or HIG, will do its work. That unit was finally put in place by the FBI after so-called underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up the airplane in which he was traveling as it flew over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009 and was advised of his Miranda rights. The CIA interrogation program that might have handled the interview had by then been dismantled by President Obama.

At the behest of such Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups as the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America, and other self- proclaimed spokesmen for American Muslims, the FBI has bowdlerized its training materials to exclude references to militant Islamism. Does this delicacy infect the FBI’s interrogation group as well?

Will we see another performance like the Army’s after- action report following Maj. Nidal Hasan’s rampage at Fort Hood in November 2009, preceded by his shout "allahu akhbar"—a report that spoke nothing of militant Islam but referred to the incident as "workplace violence"? If tone is set at the top, recall that the Army chief of staff at the time said the most tragic result of Fort Hood would be if it interfered with the Army’s diversity program.

Presumably the investigation into the Boston terror attack will include inquiry into not only the immediate circumstances of the crimes but also who funded Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s months-long sojourn abroad in 2012 and his comfortable life style. Did he have a support network? What training did he, and perhaps his younger brother, receive in the use of weapons? Where did the elder of the two learn to make the suicide vest he reportedly wore? The investigation should include as well a deep dive into Tamerlan’s radicalization, the Islamist references in the brothers’ social media communications, and the jihadist websites they visited.

Will the investigation probe as well the FBI’s own questioning of Tamerlan two years ago at the behest of an unspecified foreign government, presumably Russia, over his involvement with jihadist websites and other activities? Tamerlan Tsarnaev is the fifth person since 9/11 who has participated in terror attacks after questioning by the FBI. He was preceded by Nidal Hasan; drone casualty Anwar al Awlaki; Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (born Carlos Leon Bledsoe), who murdered an Army recruit in Little Rock in June 2009; and David Coleman Headley, who provided intelligence to the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre in 2008. That doesn’t count Abdulmutallab, who was the subject of warnings to the CIA that he was a potential terrorist.

If the intelligence yielded by the FBI’s investigation is of value, will that value be compromised when this trial is held, as it almost certainly will be, in a civilian court? Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers, as they have every right to do, will seek to discover that intelligence and use it to fashion a case in mitigation if nothing else, to show that his late brother was the dominant conspirator who had access to resources and people.

There is also cause for concern in that this was obviously a suicide operation—not in the direct way of a bomber who kills all his victims and himself at the same time by blowing himself up, but in the way of someone who conducts a spree, holding the stage for as long as possible, before he is cut down in a blaze of what he believes is glory. Here, think Mumbai.

Until now, it has been widely accepted in law-enforcement circles that such an attack in the U.S. was less likely because of the difficulty that organizers would have in marshaling the spiritual support to keep the would-be suicide focused on the task. That analysis went out the window when the Tsarnaevs followed up the bombing of the marathon by murdering a police officer in his car—an act certain to precipitate the violent confrontation that followed.

It has been apparent that with al Qaeda unable to mount elaborate attacks like the one it carried out on 9/11, other Islamists have stepped in with smaller and less intricate crimes, but crimes that are nonetheless meant to send a terrorist message. These include Faisal Shahzad, who failed to detonate a device in Times Square in 2010, and would-be subway bomber Najibullah Zazi and his confederates.

Is this, as former CIA Director Michael Hayden put it, the new normal?

There is also cause for concern in the president’s reluctance, soon after the Boston bombing, even to use the "t" word—terrorism—and in his vague musing on Friday about some unspecified agenda of the perpetrators, when by then there was no mystery: the agenda was jihad.

For five years we have heard, principally from those who wield executive power, of a claimed need to make fundamental changes in this country, to change the world’s—particularly the Muslim world’s—perception of us, to press "reset" buttons. We have heard not a word from those sources suggesting any need to understand and confront a totalitarian ideology that has existed since at least the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s.

The ideology has regarded the United States as its principal adversary since the late 1940s, when a Brotherhood principal, Sayid Qutb, visited this country and was aghast at what he saw as its decadence. The first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, al Qaeda attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in 2000, the 9/11 attacks, and those in the dozen years since—all were fueled by Islamist hatred for the U.S. and its values.

There are Muslim organizations in this country, such as the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, headed by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, that speak out bravely against that totalitarian ideology. They receive no shout-out at presidential speeches; no outreach is extended to them.

One of the Tsarnaev brothers is dead; the other might as well be. But if that is the limit of our concern, there will be others.

Mr. Mukasey served as attorney general of the United States from 2007 to 2009 and as a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of New York from 1988 to 2006.

Voir de plus:

Defining ‘Rights’ in a Terror Case

Michael B. Mukasey

WSJ

May 1, 2013

The new arrests in Boston look like criminal cases. But why was the interrogation of the accused bomber handled like a criminal matter too?

By MICHAEL B. MUKASEY

The three suspects arrested Wednesday in the Boston Marathon bombing case appear to be considered accomplices after the fact. It is likely that they will be treated as common criminals rather than terrorists. Unfortunately, law-enforcement has approached the accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that way as well.

A miasma of conflicting views about Mr. Tsarnaev’s legal status has engulfed the case. The rules and principles that should govern the relevant facts are pretty straightforward, but they alone do not explain the actual outcome thus far, which seems rooted instead in the Obama administration’s gauzy notions about what is required of law informed by morality.

At the time of Mr. Tsarnaev’s April 19 apprehension, no warrant had been issued for his arrest. The case law on warrantless arrests requires the initiation of the court process within 48 hours, with exceptions arguably not relevant here. The reason for the 48-hour requirement, as explained by the Supreme Court in County of Riverside v. McLaughlin (1991), is to prevent secret arrests unsupported by probable cause, as determined by what the law calls a neutral magistrate. Of course, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s arrest was not secret, and the facts surrounding it far surpassed the modest probable-cause standard. All that was missing was the finding by a neutral magistrate.

That gap was filled, when a criminal complaint was filed by federal prosecutors based on an affidavit that established probable cause, and the magistrate judge issued an arrest warrant. Using that warrant, the authorities—if they wished to indulge an exacting taste for formality—could have rearrested Mr. Tsarnaev. No more was required.

At that point his interrogation had already begun, but it was being conducted by the FBI-led High Value Interrogation Group, solely—or so it should have been—for the purpose of gathering intelligence. Recall that the HIG, as the interrogation group is known, wascreated to fill the void left after President Obama, on his second day in office, abolished the CIA’s then-classified interrogation program.

The president limited future use of interrogation techniques to those set forth in the Army Field Manual, a document long available on the Internet and actually used by terrorist groups to train their recruits to resist questioning. Mr. Obama also promised to create a team of specially trained law-enforcement officers and intelligence officials to question captured terrorists. That team had not yet been created when, almost a year later, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up himself and his fellow passengers aboard an airplane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. The opportunity to question him extensively was lost when he stopped talking to the FBI after being advised of his Miranda right to silence.

Didn’t Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have the same right as Abdulmutallab, and weren’t officials legally required to inform him of it? Well, not quite. The right in question is not, strictly speaking, a right to remain silent. Rather, it is derived from the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that a defendant in a criminal case may not be compelled to be a witness against himself. But if an interrogation is being conducted to gather information, not to build a criminal case, then no right to remain silent exists. Law enforcement already has a surfeit of evidence—including photographs and videos of him at the scene of the bombing. The HIG interrogators weren’t trying to help prosecutors construct their case.

Of course, Mr. Tsarnaev could have chosen not to talk to intelligence interrogators, or chosen to lie to them. But that is what he would have been exercising: a choice, not a right.

Wasn’t there a requirement that Mr. Tsarnaev be brought without delay before a judge? Again, not quite. The rule in question requires that defendants be taken to court without unnecessary delay—but the rule has been interpreted in one case from the judicial circuit that includes Massachusetts to permit even a hiatus of almost four months between arrest and court appearance when a defendant was in state custody during that period. The circuit court found that so long as the delay wasn’t used to obtain a confession, it was not unreasonable.

And what of the right to counsel? Didn’t Mr. Tsarnaev have the right to a lawyer, and to have that lawyer present during any questioning? Once more, not quite. Another amendment, the Sixth, guarantees the right to counsel in a criminal case, but it guarantees no more.

If Mr. Tsarnaev was being questioned by the HIG solely to gather intelligence, and no admission of his or lead from information he disclosed was to be used in his criminal case, then he was no more entitled to a lawyer in connection with such questioning unrelated to his criminal case than he was entitled to a lawyer to close a real-estate transaction. The HIG could have easily ensured that none of the fruits of its questioning could be used in the criminal case.

Ideally, such intelligence questioning would have continued for a long period, probably months, so that interrogators could try to substantiate the information they obtained, then double back and ask more questions based on what they found. Intelligence-gathering is an incremental process, at best.

Would the HIG have run any risks by continuing to question Mr. Tsarnaev outside the presence of a lawyer? Not really. Defense counsel could have filed a habeas corpus petition on his behalf challenging the circumstances of the detention and his continued questioning for intelligence purposes. If the ruling on such a petition, for some reason I cannot now fathom, went against the government, and that ruling were sustained for months all the way through a Supreme Court review, then—and only then—the HIG questioning would have had to stop. No right of Mr. Tsarnaev’s would have been compromised in the interim because, again, none of the fruits of the HIG questioning would be used in the criminal case.

Could all of this legal mumbo-jumbo have been avoided by labeling Mr. Tsarnaev an unlawful enemy combatant? No. As an American citizen, by law he could not be tried before a military commission, and labeling him an unlawful enemy combatant would have had no legal significance when it came to interrogating him.

There is one question about the Tsarnaev legal matter for which no answer readily appears: Why did the Justice Department order U.S. Marshals to bring a magistrate judge to Mr. Tsarnaev’s hospital room on April 22 to advise him of a right he did not have if he was being questioned for intelligence purposes, and to introduce him to a lawyer with no authority to advise him in connection with such questioning?

Why indeed. Regrettably, it appears that here we must fall back to the Obama administration’s frequently articulated concern, always presented in overarching moral terms, that America must prove to a constantly doubting world that the U.S. can follow the law even—especially—when it confers rights on unlovely folk like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and even if those rights don’t quite exist. Here, maybe it is time that our hectoring schoolmasters and schoolmarms consider a lesson taught by the philosopher Blaise Pascal: The first rule of morality is to think clearly.

Mr. Mukasey served as U.S. attorney general (2007-09) and as a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of New York (1988-2006).

Voir enfin:

The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society

POLL

Pewforum

April 30, 2013

Chapter 2: Religion and Politics

Muslims around the world express broad support for democracy and for people of other faiths being able to practice their religion freely. At the same time, many Muslims say religious leaders should influence political matters and see Islamic political parties as just as good or better than other political parties.

Many Muslims express concern about religious extremist groups operating in their country. On balance, more Muslims are concerned about Islamic than Christian extremist groups. And while the vast majority of Muslims in most countries say suicide bombing is rarely or never justified to defend Islam against its enemies, substantial minorities in a few countries consider such violence justifiable in at least some circumstances.

Democracy

In 31 of the 37 countries where the question was asked at least half of Muslims believe a democratic government, rather than a leader with a strong hand, is best able to address their country’s problems.

Support for democracy tends to be highest among Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. In 12 of the 16 countries surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa, roughly two-thirds or more prefer a democratic government, including nearly nine-in-ten (87%) in Ghana. Fewer, though still a majority, prefer democracy over a strong leader in Guinea Bissau (61%), Niger (57%) and Tanzania (57%). In Southeast Asia, more than six-in-ten Muslims in Malaysia (67%), Thailand (64%) and Indonesia (61%) also prefer democracy.

In the Middle East and North Africa, at least three-quarters of Muslims support democracy in Lebanon (81%) and Tunisia (75%). At least half in Egypt (55%), the Palestinian territories (55%) and Iraq (54%) do so as well.

Attitudes vary somewhat in the other regions surveyed. In South Asia, the percentage of Muslims who say a democratic government is better able to solve their country’s problems ranges from 70% in Bangladesh to 29% in Pakistan. In Central Asia, at least half of Muslims in Tajikistan (76%), Turkey (67%), Kazakhstan (52%) and Azerbaijan (51%) prefer democracy over a leader with a strong hand, while far fewer in Kyrgyzstan (32%) say the same.

In Southern and Eastern Europe, support for democracy is much higher among Muslims in Kosovo (76%) and Albania (69%) than in Bosnia-Herzegovina (47%) and Russia (35%), where a majority of Muslims favor a powerful leader.

Views about the better type of government differ little by frequency of prayer, age, gender or education level.

Religious Freedom

Muslims generally say they are very free to practice their religion. Most also believe non-Muslims in their country are very free to practice their faith. And among those who view non-Muslims as very free to practice their faith, the prevailing opinion is that this is a good thing.

Muslims in Southeast Asia, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are particularly likely to say they are “very free” to practice their faith. Roughly seven-in-ten or more Muslims in each country surveyed in these regions hold this view.

There is more variation in the Middle East-North Africa region, where Muslims in Iraq (48%) and Egypt (46%) are much less likely than Muslims in Lebanon (90%) and Morocco (88%) to believe they are able to practice Islam very freely. Muslims in Uzbekistan (39%) are the least likely among the Muslim populations surveyed to say they are very free to practice their faith.

In addition to freedom for themselves, most Muslims believe individuals from other religions are able to practice their faith openly. In 33 of the 38 countries where the question was asked at least half say people of other faiths are very free to practice their religion. (This question was not asked in Afghanistan.)

Muslims in Central Asia and the Middle East and North Africa are generally less likely to believe non-Muslims can practice their faith freely. Fewer than half in Kyrgyzstan (48%), Tajikistan (47%) and Uzbekistan (26%), for example, say others are able to practice their faith openly. Similarly, in the Middle East-North Africa region, fewer than four-in-ten Muslims in Iraq (37%) and Egypt (31%) believe non-Muslims are free to practice their religion.

In 15 of the countries surveyed, Muslims are significantly more likely to say they themselves are very free to practice their religion than to say the same about people of other faiths. The gaps are particularly wide in Jordan (-22 percentage points), Kyrgyzstan (-20), Turkey  (-20) and Egypt (-15).

Overall, Muslims broadly support the idea of religious freedom. Among Muslims who say people of different religions are very free to practice their faith, three-quarters or more in each country say this is a good thing.

Religious Leaders’ Role in Politics

Compared with support for democracy and religious freedom, sharper regional differences emerge over the question of the role of religious leaders in politics. The prevailing view among Muslims in Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East-North Africa region is that religious leaders should have at least some influence in political matters. By contrast, this is the minority view in most of the countries surveyed in Central Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe. With the notable exception of Afghanistan, fewer than half of Muslims in any country surveyed say religious leaders should have a large influence in politics.

Support for religious leaders having a say in political matters is particularly high in Southeast Asia. At least three-quarters of Muslims in Malaysia (82%) and Indonesia (75%) believe religious leaders should influence political matters, including substantial percentages who say they should play a large role (41% and 30%, respectively).

In South Asia, a large majority in Afghanistan (82%) and Bangladesh (69%) believe religious leaders ought to influence political matters, while 54% of Pakistani Muslims agree. Afghan Muslims are the most likely among the populations surveyed to say religious leaders should have a large influence on politics (53%), while roughly a quarter of Muslims in Pakistan (27%) and Bangladesh (25%) express this view.

In the Middle East-North Africa region, a majority of Muslims in most countries surveyed say religious leaders should play a role in politics. Support is highest among Muslims in Jordan (80%), Egypt (75%) and the Palestinian territories (72%). Roughly six-in-ten in Tunisia (58%) and Iraq (57%) agree. Lebanese Muslims are significantly less supportive; 37% think religious leaders should have at least some role in political matters, while 62% disagree. In each country in the region except Lebanon, about a quarter or more say religious leaders should have a large influence on politics, including 37% in Jordan.

Muslims in Southern and Eastern Europe and Central Asia tend to be less supportive of a role for religious leaders in political matters. Only in Russia does a majority (58%) believe religious leaders should have at least some influence. Meanwhile, Muslims in Kyrgyzstan are divided over the issue (46% say religious leaders should have an influence on political matters, 51% disagree). In the other countries surveyed in these two regions, fewer than four-in-ten Muslims believe religious leaders should have a role in politics.

In some countries, Muslims who pray several times a day are more likely than those who pray less often to say religious leaders should influence political matters. The gap is particularly large in Lebanon, where 51% of Muslims who pray several times a day believe religious leaders should have at least some political influence, compared with 13% of those who pray less often.

Islamic Political Parties

In most countries where the question was asked at least half of Muslims rate Islamic parties as better than, or about the same, as other political parties.

The percentage of Muslims who say Islamic parties are better than other political parties is highest in Egypt (55%), Tunisia (55%) and Afghanistan (54%), although at least four-in-ten share this view in Jordan (46%), Malaysia (43%) and Bangladesh (41%). By contrast, fewer than a quarter of Muslims view Islamic parties more favorably than other parties in the Palestinian territories (21%), Kosovo (16%), Bosnia-Herzegovina (12%), Azerbaijan (11%) and Kazakhstan (9%).

In all countries where the question was asked, substantial percentages of Muslims rate Islamic parties as the same as other political parties, including at least half in Indonesia (57%) and Lebanon (51%). Elsewhere, at least one-in-five rate Islamic and other political parties the same.

Relatively few Muslims consider Islamic parties to be worse than other political parties. Only in the Palestinian territories (29%), Azerbaijan (27%) and Turkey (26%) do more than a quarter subscribe to this view.

In many countries, favorable assessments of Islamic political parties track with support for religious leaders having an influence on politics. In Lebanon, for example, Muslims who say religious leaders should have at least some political influence are 53 percentage points more likely than those who disagree to say Islamic parties are better (63% vs. 10%). In 15 of the other countries surveyed, similar double-digit gaps emerge over the question of Islamic parties, with those who support a role for religious leaders in politics consistently more favorable toward Islamic political parties.

Views on the role of religion in politics may not be the only factor affecting attitudes toward Islamic parties. Local political circumstances may also influence opinions on this question. Both Tunisia and Egypt, for example, experienced major political upheavals in 2011, with Islamic parties emerging as the dominant political blocs. At the time of the surveys in Tunisia and Egypt, Muslims who said they were satisfied with the direction of the country were significantly more likely than those who were dissatisfied to say Islamic political parties are better than other political parties (+24 percentage points in Tunisia and +11 in Egypt).²⁰

Concern About Religious Extremism

At least half of Muslims in 22 of the 36 countries where the question was asked say they are at least somewhat concerned about religious extremist groups in their country. In most countries, Muslims are much more worried about Islamic extremists than Christian extremists. Substantial proportions in some countries, including countries surveyed in the Middle East and North Africa, express concern about both Muslim and Christian extremist groups.

The survey finds widespread concern about religious extremism in Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East-North Africa region. In nearly every country surveyed in these regions, at least half of Muslims say they are very concerned or somewhat concerned about extremist groups. In Indonesia, nearly eight-in-ten Muslims say they are worried about religious extremism (78%), including more than half (53%) who are worried about Islamic extremists. In Malaysia, too, a majority of Muslims (63%) are worried about extremist groups; however, more Malaysian Muslims express concerns about Christian than Muslim groups (31% vs. 8%). In the Middle East-North Africa region, on balance, Muslims are more concerned about Islamic than Christian extremist groups, but more than one-in-five in most countries surveyed in the region are worried about both Islamic and Christian groups.

At least half in nine of the 16 countries surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa also say they are concerned about religious extremism. And in most countries, Islamic extremism rather than Christian extremism is the principal worry. For example, in Guinea Bissau, more than half of Muslims (54%) say they are at least somewhat concerned about Islamic extremist groups; in Ghana 45% say the same, as do roughly a third of Muslims in Djibouti (36%), Chad (33%), Kenya (33%) and Niger (32%).

In Southern and Eastern Europe, worries about religious extremism are most widespread in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where more than six-in-ten (63%) are at least somewhat concerned about religious extremist groups, including 27% who are specifically concerned about Islamic extremists. A similar proportion of Muslims (30%) in Bosnia-Herzegovina are worried about both Muslim and Christian groups in the country. Fewer than half say they are very or somewhat concerned about religious extremist groups in Russia (46%), Kosovo (45%) and Albania (21%).

In Central Asia, the percentage of Muslims concerned about religious extremism ranges from roughly six-in-ten in Kazakhstan (63%) and Kyrgyzstan (62%) to fewer than one-in-ten in Azerbaijan (6%). In most of the countries surveyed in the region, worries about Islamic extremists are more common than are concerns about Christian extremists, although one-in-five in Kyrgyzstan are concerned about extremists of both faiths.

Suicide Bombing

In most of the 21 countries where the question was asked few Muslims endorse suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets as a means of defending Islam against its enemies. But in a few countries, substantial minorities believe suicide bombing can be often justified or sometimes justified.

Muslims in some countries surveyed in South Asia and the Middle East-North Africa region are more likely than Muslims elsewhere to consider suicide bombing justified. Four-in-ten Palestinian Muslims see suicide bombing as often or sometimes justified, while roughly half (49%) take the opposite view. In Egypt, about three-in-ten (29%) consider suicide bombing justified at least sometimes. Elsewhere in the region, fewer Muslims believe such violence is often or sometimes justified, including fewer than one-in-five in Jordan (15%) and about one-in-ten in Tunisia (12%), Morocco (9%) and Iraq (7%).

In Afghanistan, a substantial minority of Muslims (39%) say that this form of violence against civilian targets is often or sometimes justifiable in defense of Islam. In Bangladesh, more than a quarter of Muslims (26%) take this view. Support for suicide bombing is lower in Pakistan (13%).

In the countries surveyed in Central Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe, fewer than one-in-six Muslims consider suicide bombing justified in Turkey (15%), Kosovo (11%) and Kyrgyzstan (10%). Elsewhere in these two regions, even fewer say this tactic can be justified.

In Southeast Asia, Malaysian Muslims are more likely than Indonesian Muslims to consider suicide bombing justifiable (18% vs. 7%).

---

Footnotes:

20 The survey in Egypt was conducted Nov. 14-Dec. 18, 2011. Parliamentary elections were held in November 2011 through January 2012, and the Islamist Freedom and Justice Party was declared the winner of a plurality of seats in January 2012. The survey in Tunisia was conducted Nov. 10-Dec. 7, 2011. The Islamist party Ennahda won a plurality of seats in the Constituent Assembly elections in October 2011, and the Constituent Assembly met for the first time in November 2011.

Tuerie d’Istres: Attention, une balade sauvage peut en cacher une autre (Badlands goes Allahu Akbar: Should the legless Bostonians have agitated more forcefully for federally mandated after-school assimilationist basketball programs ?)

L’acte surréaliste le plus simple consiste, revolvers au poing, à descendre dans la rue et à tirer, au hasard, tant qu’on peut dans la foule. Breton

Il faut avoir le courage de vouloir le mal et pour cela il faut commencer par rompre avec le comportement grossièrement humanitaire qui fait partie de l’héritage chrétien. (..) Nous sommes avec ceux qui tuent. Breton

Nouvelle réédition pour La Balade sauvage et nouvelle visibilité grâce à la palme remportée à Cannes par le dernier film de Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life). Le premier long-métrage du cinéaste, qui conte la balade meurtrière du couple formé par Holly (Sissy Spacek) et Kit (Martin Sheen) à travers les États-Unis, s’assure d’emblée une certaine carrière en salles. Depuis son âge d’or dans les années 1970, le road-movie a subi de nombreuses mutations. Revenir sur La Balade sauvage, c’est donc revenir au classicisme d’un genre, ce qui n’est pas sans constituer un certain paradoxe étant donné le souffle nouveau que ce film a représenté en son temps. Mais trente-cinq ans plus tard, on est en droit de se demander si La Balade sauvage a conservé toute sa modernité ou s’il ne pâtit pas du passage du temps. Quel écho de la révolte de la jeunesse américaine des années 1970 contre l’autorité (gouvernementale, parentale, etc.) aujourd’hui ? Si l’escapade insouciante de Holly et Kit comme réponse au carcan social paraît aujourd’hui un peu naïve et présente une idée de la liberté un peu vieillotte, mieux vaut y voir le premier maillon d’une œuvre à venir. Le premier long-métrage de Malick pose déjà la question qui hantera toute sa filmographie : comment créer un lieu de vie idéal au sein d’une terre hostile (déclinée dans The Tree of Life en situation hostile : la mort d’un enfant). Le titre original de l’œuvre vaut ainsi qu’on le rappelle : Badlands, ces mauvaises terres que l’on brûle au son d’un chœur religieux (faut-il passer par l’Enfer pour parvenir au Paradis ?) et qu’on brûlera à nouveau dans la plus belle séquence des Moissons du ciel, lors d’une apocalyptique attaque de sauterelles. Si le film de Malick constitue le modèle d’une tendance cinématographique qui émergera dans les années 1990 – les road-movies meurtriers –, ce film-source a ceci de spécifique qu’il se construit toujours dans la distance (particularité dont ses petits rejetons – de Sailor et Lula à Tueurs-nés en passant par True Romance, qui reprend presque littéralement la musique de La Balade sauvage – s’émanciperont pour proclamer un style kitch-hémoglobine). Le recul qu’il prend vis-à-vis de la violence passe essentiellement par le personnage incarné par Sissy Spacek (qui se trouve alors à l’orée d’une période de grands rôles : Carrie, Three Women, etc.), dont l’impassibilité désamorce toujours immédiatement l’agitation de Martin Sheen. On se trouve avec La Balade sauvage devant le portrait d’une jeunesse qui, malgré les cadavres qu’elle laisse sur son chemin, se démarque par sa grande innocence. La mort n’intervient jamais comme un drame mais comme une étape, un relais sur la route de Holly et Kit. Pas de drame, pas de coupable. La singularité de la démarche malickienne est de faire de ce fait-divers une ode à l’innocence plutôt qu’un trip sulfureux (comme s’attacheront à le faire David Lynch, Oliver Stone et Tony Scott), de dépasser l’anecdote, la chronique de départ pour dépeindre un état de fait plus global : la jeunesse, la liberté. Critikat (juin 2011)

Terrence Malick (…) sort d’un long cursus de philo à Harvard, suivi de reportages pour le New Yorker, et soudain le voilà « possédé » par le cinéma. La Balade sauvage, qui suit la piste d’un couple d’amoureux criminels façon Bonnie and Clyde, est un film où les idées fusent, tranchantes, lyriques, baroques. L’univers d’un cinéaste de génie – Palme d’or 2011 pour The Tree of life – s’y déploie avec une précision, une assurance et une liberté stupéfiantes. Tout de l’oeuvre à venir est déjà là : la voix off, pure et mélancolique, flotte depuis un au-delà étrange, surplombant les passions. Filmée avec grâce, la nature vibre, plane et palpite autour de jeunes héros dont les rêves s’abîment à toute vitesse. Télérama

Badlands was inspired by the short, bloody saga of Charles Starkweather who, at age nineteen, in January, 1958, with the apparent cooperation of his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Caril Fugate, went off on a murder spree that resulted in ten victims. Starkweather was later executed in the electric chair and Miss Fugate given life imprisonment. Badlands inevitably invites comparisons with three other important American films, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde and Fritz Lang’s Fury and You Only Live Once, but it has a very different vision of violence and death. Malick spends no great amount of time invoking Freud to explain the behavior of Kit and Holly, nor is there any Depression to be held ultimately responsible. Society is, if anything, benign. This is the haunting truth of Badlands, something that places it very much in the seventies in spite of its carefully re-created period detail. Kit and Holly are directionless creatures, technically literate but uneducated in any real sense, so desensitized that Kit (in Malick’s words at a news conference) can regard the gun with which he shoots people as a kind of magic wand that eliminates small nuisances. Kit and Holly are members of the television generation run amok. They are not ill-housed, ill-clothed, or ill-fed. If they are at all aware of their anger (and I’m not sure they are, since they see only boredom), it’s because of the difference between the way life is and the way it is presented on the small screen, with commercial breaks instead of lasting consequences. Badlands is narrated by Holly in the flat, nasal accents of the Middle West and in the syntax of a story in True Romances. "Little did I realize," she tells us at the beginning of the film, "that what began in the alleys and by-ways of this small town would end in the badlands of Montana." At the end, after half a dozen murders, she resolves never again to "tag around with the hell-bent type." Kit and Holly share with Clyde and Bonnie a fascination with their own press coverage, with their overnight fame ("The whole world was looking for us," says Holly, "for who knew where Kit would strike next?"), but a lack of passion differentiates them from the gaudy desperados of the thirties. Toward the end of their joyride, the bored Holly tells us she passed the time, as she sat in the front seat beside Kit, spelling out complete sentences with her tongue on the roof of her mouth. Malick tries not to romanticize his killers, and he is successful except for one sequence in which Kit and Holly hide out in a tree house as elaborate as anything the M-G-M art department ever designed for Tarzan and Jane. Sheen and Miss Spacek are splendid as the self-absorbed, cruel, possibly psychotic children of our time, as are the members of the supporting cast, including Warren Oates as Holly’s father. One may legitimately debate the validity of Malick’s vision, but not, I think, his immense talent. Badlands is a most important and exciting film. The NYT

Le scénario est inspiré d’une histoire vraie : en 1957, deux amants du Middle West effectuèrent une "balade sauvage" qui coûta la vie à onze personnes. Le jeune homme, Charles Starkweather, finit sur la chaise électrique, et sa compagne, Caril Ann Fugate, fut condamnée à la réclusion criminelle à perpétuité. Wikipedia

Charles Raymond Starkweather (24 novembre 1938 – 25 juin 1959) était un tueur à la chaîne américain qui a assassiné 11 personnes dans le Nebraska et dans le Wyoming lors d’un road trip avec sa copine adolescente, Caril Ann Fugate. Il devint une fascination nationale aux États-Unis, inspirant notamment les films « The Sadist », « La Balade sauvage » , « Starkweather », « Murder in the Heartland », « Fantômes contre Fantômes » et « Tueurs nés ». Il a également inspiré la chanson « Nebraska » de Bruce Springsteen, que Springsteen pensait initialement intituler « Starkweather ». Liza Ward, la petite-fille des victimes C. Lauer et Clara Ward, a écrit un roman, « Outside Valentine », basé sur les événements de la tuerie de Starkweather. (…) Stephen King fut fortement inspiré par les meurtres de Starkweather lorsqu’il était plus jeune, gardant un scrapbook d’eux1 et incorporant plusieurs avatars de Starkweather dans ses œuvres. Par exemple, il est dit que Starkweather était un collègue de classe de Randall Flagg dans « Le Fléau ». King a également affirmé lors d’une interview que son personnage The Kid, qui apparaît dans la version complète de « Le Fléau » se veut être une réincarnation de Charles Starkweather. Le cas Starkweather-Fugate a inspiré, entre autres, les films « La Balade sauvage » (1973, avec Martin Sheen et Sissy Spacek) et « Tueurs nés » (1994, avec Woody Harrelson et Juliette Lewis). Le téléfilm « Murder in the Heartland » (1993) est une description biographique de Starkweather avec Tim Roth dans le rôle principal, alors qu’en 1983, « Stark Raving Mad », un film avec Russell Fast et Marcie Severson, fournit une version fictionnelle des meurtres de Starkweather et Fugate. Le film « Fantômes contre Fantômes », de Peter Jackson, met en scène un couple meurtrier inspiré par Starkweather et Fugate. Après avoir commis leur 12ème meurtre, Bartlett (l’homme) annonce triomphalement : "Un de plus que Starkweather !" (One more than Starkweather!). Wikipedia

Est-ce que l’industrie pense que les armes vont aider à vendre des tickets’ Je ne sais pas… Je crois que la question mérite d’être posée. Robert Redford

Le maire de New York, Michael Bloomberg, affirme que les frères Tsarnaev, suspects dans les attentats du marathon de Boston, prévoyaient déposer des bombes à Times Square. Ils voulaient se rendre à New York dans la soirée de jeudi (18 avril), mais la prise d’otage d’un automobiliste a mal tourné et leur plan a échoué. Dzhokhar, hospitalisé depuis son arrestation, aurait fait cette déclaration. Radio-Canada

Selon ses dires, il a déterré une kalachnikov achetée sur Internet avant de faire feu et de tuer deux voisins, âgés de 35 et 45 ans, dans leurs jardins. Il a ensuite arrêté une voiture et demandé à la conductrice de l’emmener à Paris. Devant son refus, il a fait feu sur le pare-brise du véhicule, blessant légèrement la femme à la main et à l’oreille. Puis il a arrêté une deuxième voiture conduite par un sexagénaire, qu’il a abattu d’une rafale d’arme automatique. Selon les enquêteurs, l’adolescent assure "n’être militant de rien", n’avoir aucune conviction politique ou religieuse et ne se revendique d’aucune idéologie ni d’aucun courant de pensée. Le Monde

La forte concentration d’établissements d’enseignement supérieur et de recherche explique le surnom de Boston, l’ « Athènes de l’Amérique ». L’agglomération compte une centaine d’institutions publiques ou privées qui concourent à sa réputation d’excellence depuis la période coloniale. Parmi elles, les 65 colleges et universités27 font de Boston une ville étudiante. Cependant, le Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) et Harvard ne se trouvent pas dans les limites de la ville, mais sont installés à Cambridge, sur l’autre rive de la Charles River. Le Boston College fut créé en 1827 dans le South End avant de déménager à Chestnut Hill. L’université de Boston, fondée en 1869, est aujourd’hui la quatrième plus grande université du pays avec environ 30 000 étudiants et le second employeur de la ville28. L’université du Massachusetts est un établissement d’enseignement supérieur public situé dans le quartier de Dorchester. Le collège Emerson (3 700 étudiants) est situé non loin du Boston Common et propose des formations dans les arts et la communication. La Northeastern University dispose d’un grand campus sur l’avenue Huntington dans le quartier de Fenway. Le Wentworth Institute of Technology propose plusieurs formations de haut niveau en architecture ou en informatique par exemple. L’université Suffolk (4 600 étudiants) est une école de droit qui garde un campus sur Beacon Hill. Il existe bien d’autres établissements d’enseignement supérieur : le Simmons College (1899), l’Emmanuel College (1919), etc. Boston compte également de nombreux lieux de formation aux arts du spectacle, à la musique (New England Conservatory of Music, Boston Conservatory, Berklee College of Music). Wikipedia

The alleged involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the Boston Marathon last week should prompt Americans to reflect on whether we do an adequate job assimilating immigrants who arrive in the United States as children or teenagers". Marcello Suarez-Orozco and Carola Suarez-Orozco (UCLA)

It was a blow the immigrant boxer could not withstand: after capturing his second consecutive title as the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of New England in 2010, Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev, 23, was barred from the national Tournament of Champions because he was not a United States citizen. The cocksure fighter, a flamboyant dresser partial to white fur and snakeskin, had been looking forward to redeeming the loss he suffered the previous year in the first round, when the judges awarded his opponent the decision, drawing boos from spectators who considered Mr. Tsarnaev dominant. From one year to the next, though, the tournament rules had changed, disqualifying legal permanent residents — not only Mr. Tsarnaev, who was Soviet-born of Chechen and Dagestani heritage, but several other New England contenders, too. His aspirations frustrated, he dropped out of boxing competition entirely, and his life veered in a completely different direction. Mr. Tsarnaev portrayed his quitting as a reflection of the sport’s incompatibility with his growing devotion to Islam. But as dozens of interviews with friends, acquaintances and relatives from Cambridge, Mass., to Dagestan showed, that devotion, and the suspected radicalization that accompanied it, was a path he followed most avidly only after his more secular dreams were dashed in 2010 and he was left adrift. His trajectory eventually led the frustrated athlete and his loyal younger brother, Dzhokhar, to bomb one of the most famous athletic events in this country, killing three and wounding more than 200 at the Boston Marathon, the authorities say. They say it led Mr. Tsarnaev, his application for citizenship stalled, and his brother, a new citizen and a seemingly well-adjusted college student, to attack their American hometown on Patriots’ Day, April 15. The NYT

(…) that personal grievances of some sort must always somehow be responsible (…) is true by definition for individuals who carry out acts of violence for idiosyncratic personal motives, but it misses the point entirely when one is dealing with ideological extremists. It is the adoption of extremist political and religious ideologies that is the primary causal factor in precipitating acts of non-state terrorism. And it should be self-evident that those who formulate or adopt extremist ideologies must necessarily be disgruntled and alienated from the current social or political status quo, whether justifiably or not. Why? Because people who are happy or essentially satisfied with the status quo are neither going to create nor embrace radical worldviews that advocate attacking the existing system in order to establish what they believe will be a better, more just world. Thus there is no mystery at all about why the alleged Boston bombers committed their terrorist atrocity: like the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and thousands of other jihadist terrorist attacks throughout the world, they had embraced a radical Islamist ideology that enjoined them to wage armed jihad against the “infidel” enemies of Islam. It hardly matters why the Tsarnaev brothers became disgruntled or angry—people can become disgruntled and angry for a vast array of both legitimate and delusional reasons. What matters is that this underlying emotional attitude made them receptive to and ultimately caused them to embrace Islamist doctrines, which offered them an explicit, coherent, and theologically sanctioned justification for perpetrating violence. Yet that undeniable fact is consistently denied in cases of jihadist terrorism, both in the media and even by government officials. Perhaps the most egregious illustrative example is the case of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, whose jihadist terrorism at Fort Hood was foolishly ascribed to personal grievances in the U.S. military’s own investigative report. However, the evidence clearly indicates that Hasan had increasingly embraced radical Islamist doctrines, and that in the months before his attack he had extensive email contact with Anwar al-Awlaqi, the al Qaeda  operative who was linked to numerous jihadist plots, became a key figure in al Qaeda’s affiliate in the Arabian peninsula after leaving the United States, helped prepare the group’s English-language magazine Inspire, and was killed in a drone strike in 2011. Here one can observe a blatant double standard at work, since Islamist ideology, uniquely amongst extremist ideologies, is rarely if ever identified—much less highlighted—as the primary motivational factor behind terrorism committed by certain Muslims, even those who proudly proclaim their adherence to that ideology. In contrast, the media have no qualms about rightly emphasizing the role of white supremacist ideologies in precipitating acts of violence or terrorism by neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and certain right-wing militiamen; the impact of extremist interpretations of Christianity in fomenting anti-abortion violence; or the degree to which apocalyptic millennarian doctrines have generated violence by groups like Aum Shinrikyo. Nor do the media customarily refrain from noting the communist ideological agendas of left-wing terrorists, or the underlying beliefs fueling the violent actions of certain eco-radicals. Why, then, is the role of Islamist ideology so often downplayed or denied in connection with acts of jihadist terrorism? Those who are now claiming that the Boston bombers’ actions had nothing to do with their adoption of particular interpretations of Islam are seriously mistaken. And those who are foolishly endeavoring to portray the two Chechen Muslims as the innocent victims of covert manipulation or anti-Muslim prejudice—rather than as brutal victimizers—are either being disingenuous or living in a state of psychological denial, if not in a parallel mental universe. Jeffery M. Bale

But, if I follow correctly, these UCLA profs are arguing that, when some guys go all Allahu Akbar on you and blow up your marathon, that just shows that you lazy complacent Americans need to work even harder at « assimilating immigrants ». After all, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were raised in Cambridge, Mass., a notorious swamp of redneck bigotry where the two young Chechens no doubt felt « alienated » and « excluded » at being surrounded by NPR-listening liberals cooing, « Oh, your family’s from Chechnya? That’s the one next to Slovakia, right? Would you like to come round for a play date and help Jeremiah finish his diversity quilt? » Assimilation is hell. (…) We’re collapsing our own skulls here” the parameters in which we allow ourselves to think about abortion, welfare, immigration, terrorism, Islam shrink remorselessly, not least at the congressional level. Maybe if we didn’t collapse the skulls of so many black babies in Philadelphia, we wouldn’t need to import so many excitable young Chechens. But that’s thinking outside the box, and the box is getting ever smaller, like a nice, cozy cocoon in which we’re always warm and safe. Mark Steyn

Attention: une balade sauvage peut en cacher une autre !

"Balade sauvage", "balade meurtrière", "souffle nouveau", "réponse au carcan social", "modernité", "révolte de la jeunesse contre l’autorité (gouvernementale, parentale, etc.)",  "escapade insouciante", "naïve" "réponse au carcan social", "modèle" de "road-movies meurtriers", "film-source de Sailor et Lula à Tueurs-nés en passant par True Romance", "portrait d’une jeunesse qui, malgré les cadavres qu’elle laisse sur son chemin, se démarque par sa grande innocence", "mort jamais comme un drame mais comme une étape", "pas de drame, pas de coupable", "ode à l’innocence", "jeunesse", "liberté" …

Alors que la France s’interroge sur le début heureusement avorté de balade sauvage, qui (l’amour en plus, "ode à l’innocence"oblige) avait en son temps tant ému nos cinéphiles, du passionné d’armes et de jeux de guerre en ligne et admirateur de Mérah d’Istres …

Et qu’après l’autre balade sauvage avortée des apprentis et fils de jiahdistes de Boston, l’Amérique bien-pensante a repris son auto-flagellation sur le véritable enfer anti-immigrant qu’est devenu, sous la présidence du premier président non-blanc de l’histoire américaine, l’une des plus grandes concentrations mondiales de matière grise (centaine d’universités, 250 000 étudiants pour 620 000 habitants) …

Pendant que le même Robert Redford qui dit s’interroger sur les tomberaux de violence fournis quotidiennement par son industrie est en ville pour nous vendre sa dernière ode en date sur le bon vieux terrorisme Weathermen des amis de la Maison blanche…

Comment ne pas voir, avec l’éditorialiste canadien Mark Steyn, le véritable décervellement qu’est en train de s’auto-administrer l’Occident pour tout ce qui touche, entre avortement, aide sociale, immmigration, terrorisme et islam, les dernières vaches sacrées en date de ses belles âmes ?

No Mystery About the ‘Why’ in Boston
Jeffery M. Bale
USNI News
April 26, 2013

Ever since the two alleged perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings were identified as Chechens living in America, the constant refrain in the media—as is almost always the case after terrorist attacks—has been to ask “why?” Apparently, many media pundits simply cannot comprehend how seemingly normal and relatively successful individuals could be motivated to carry out such actions.

Clearly, they have been misled into believing that one must be poor and disenfranchised or mentally disturbed to carry out acts of terrorism, despite a wealth of empirical evidence indicating that terrorists tend to be relatively well-educated, from higher socio-economic strata, and do not exhibit disproportionate levels of psychopathology. Still, the default assumption — at least in cases of jihadist terrorism — is that personal grievances of some sort must always somehow be responsible. That is true by definition for individuals who carry out acts of violence for idiosyncratic personal motives, but it misses the point entirely when one is dealing with ideological extremists.

It is the adoption of extremist political and religious ideologies that is the primary causal factor in precipitating acts of non-state terrorism. And it should be self-evident that those who formulate or adopt extremist ideologies must necessarily be disgruntled and alienated from the current social or political status quo, whether justifiably or not. Why? Because people who are happy or essentially satisfied with the status quo are neither going to create nor embrace radical worldviews that advocate attacking the existing system in order to establish what they believe will be a better, more just world.

Thus there is no mystery at all about why the alleged Boston bombers committed their terrorist atrocity: like the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and thousands of other jihadist terrorist attacks throughout the world, they had embraced a radical Islamist ideology that enjoined them to wage armed jihad against the “infidel” enemies of Islam. It hardly matters why the Tsarnaev brothers became disgruntled or angry—people can become disgruntled and angry for a vast array of both legitimate and delusional reasons. What matters is that this underlying emotional attitude made them receptive to and ultimately caused them to embrace Islamist doctrines, which offered them an explicit, coherent, and theologically sanctioned justification for perpetrating violence.

Yet that undeniable fact is consistently denied in cases of jihadist terrorism, both in the media and even by government officials. Perhaps the most egregious illustrative example is the case of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, whose jihadist terrorism at Fort Hood was foolishly ascribed to personal grievances in the U.S. military’s own investigative report. However, the evidence clearly indicates that Hasan had increasingly embraced radical Islamist doctrines, and that in the months before his attack he had extensive email contact with Anwar al-Awlaqi, the al Qaeda  operative who was linked to numerous jihadist plots, became a key figure in al Qaeda’s affiliate in the Arabian peninsula after leaving the United States, helped prepare the group’s English-language magazine Inspire, and was killed in a drone strike in 2011.

Here one can observe a blatant double standard at work, since Islamist ideology, uniquely amongst extremist ideologies, is rarely if ever identified—much less highlighted—as the primary motivational factor behind terrorism committed by certain Muslims, even those who proudly proclaim their adherence to that ideology. In contrast, the media have no qualms about rightly emphasizing the role of white supremacist ideologies in precipitating acts of violence or terrorism by neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and certain right-wing militiamen; the impact of extremist interpretations of Christianity in fomenting anti-abortion violence; or the degree to which apocalyptic millennarian doctrines have generated violence by groups like Aum Shinrikyo. Nor do the media customarily refrain from noting the communist ideological agendas of left-wing terrorists, or the underlying beliefs fueling the violent actions of certain eco-radicals. Why, then, is the role of Islamist ideology so often downplayed or denied in connection with acts of jihadist terrorism?

Those who are now claiming that the Boston bombers’ actions had nothing to do with their adoption of particular interpretations of Islam are seriously mistaken. And those who are foolishly endeavoring to portray the two Chechen Muslims as the innocent victims of covert manipulation or anti-Muslim prejudice—rather than as brutal victimizers—are either being disingenuous or living in a state of psychological denial, if not in a parallel mental universe.

The main substantive questions still to be answered in the Boston Marathon bombing case are whether the two bombers were part of a larger local cell or had received any tangible logistical or operational assistance from an organized jihadist group or network abroad. But it is all too obvious why they committed the reprehensible acts of terrorism.

Voir aussi:

The Collapsing of the American Skull

The parameters in which we allow ourselves to think about vital issues shrink remorselessly.

Mark Steyn

National  Review online

April 26, 2013

One of the most ingenious and effective strategies of the Left on any number of topics is to frame the debate and co-opt the language so effectively that it becomes all but impossible even to discuss the subject honestly. Take the brothers Tsarnaev, the incendiary end of a Chechen family that in very short time has settled aunts, uncles, sisters, and more across the map of North America from Massachusetts to New Jersey to my own home town of Toronto. Maybe your town has a Tsarnaev, too: There seems to be no shortage of them, except, oddly, back in Chechnya. The Tsarnaevs mom, now relocated from Cambridge to Makhachkala in delightful Dagestan, told a press conference the other day that she regrets ever having gotten mixed up with those crazy Yanks: "I would prefer not to have lived in America", she said.

Not, I’m sure, as much as the Richard family would have preferred it. Eight-year-old Martin was killed; his sister lost a leg; and his mother suffered serious brain injuries. What did the Richards and some 200 other families do to deserve having a great big hole blown in their lives? Well, according to the New York Times, they and you bear collective responsibility. Writing on the op-ed page, Marcello Suarez-Orozco, dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and Carola Suarez-Orozco, a professor at the same institution, began their ruminations thus:

"The alleged involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the Boston Marathon last week should prompt Americans to reflect on whether we do an adequate job assimilating immigrants who arrive in the United States as children or teenagers".

Maybe. Alternatively, the above opening sentence should "prompt Americans to reflect" on whether whoever’s editing America’s newspaper of record these days ‘does an adequate job’ in choosing which pseudo-credentialed experts it farms out its principal analysis on terrorist atrocities to. But, if I follow correctly, these UCLA profs are arguing that, when some guys go all Allahu Akbar on you and blow up your marathon, that just shows that you lazy complacent Americans need to work even harder at "assimilating immigrants". After all, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were raised in Cambridge, Mass., a notorious swamp of redneck bigotry where the two young Chechens no doubt felt "alienated" and "excluded" at being surrounded by NPR-listening liberals cooing, "Oh, your family’s from Chechnya? That’s the one next to Slovakia, right? Would you like to come round for a play date and help Jeremiah finish his diversity quilt?" Assimilation is hell.

How hard would it be for Americans to be less inadequate when it comes to assimilating otherwise well-adjusted immigrant children? Let us turn once again to Mrs. Tsarnaev:

"They are going to kill him. I don’t care", she told reporters. "My oldest son is killed, so I don’t care. …  I don’t care if my youngest son is going to be killed today. … I don’t care if I am going to get killed, too and I will say Allahu Akbar!"

You can say it all you want, madam, but everyone knows that "Allahu Akbar" is Arabic for "Nothing to see here". So, once you’ve cleared the streets of body parts, you inadequate Americans need to redouble your efforts.

There is a stupidity to this, but also a kind of decadence. Until the 1960s, it was assumed by all sovereign states that they had the right to choose which non-nationals were admitted within their borders. Now, to suggest such a thing risks the charge of "nativism" and to propose that, say, Swedes are easier to assimilate than Chechens is to invite cries of "Racist!" So, when the morgues and emergency rooms are piled high, the only discussion acceptable in polite society is to wonder whether those legless Bostonians should have agitated more forcefully for federally mandated after-school assimilationist basketball programs.

As Ma Tsarnaev’s effusions suggest, at the sharp end of Islamic imperialism, there’s a certain glorying in sacrifice. We’re more fatalistic about it: After Major Hasan gunned down 13 of his comrades and an unborn baby, General Casey, the Army’s chief of staff, assured us that it could have been a whole lot worse:

‘What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here".

What happened at Boston was a "tragedy", but it would be an even greater tragedy if there were to be any honest discussion of immigration policy, or Islam, or anything else that matters.

Speaking of glorying in blood, in Philadelphia the Kermit Gosnell defense rested, without calling either the defendant or any witness to the stand. As I wrote last week, "Doctor" Gosnell is accused of cutting the spinal columns and suctioning out the brains of fully delivered babies. The blogger Pundette listed some questions she would have liked the "doctor" to be asked:

"Why did you chop off and preserve baby hands and feet and display them in jars?"

There seems to be no compelling medical reason for Gosnell’s extensive collection, but bottled baby feet certainly make a novelty paperweight or doorstop. "I think we already know the answer", wrote the Pundette. "He enjoyed it".

Unlike the Boston bombings, even the New York Times op-ed team can’t figure out a line on this. Better to look away, and ignore the story. America is the abortion mill of the developed world. In Western Europe, the state is yet squeamish enough to insist that the act be confined to twelve weeks (France) or 13 (Italy), with mandatory counseling (Germany), or up to 18 if approved by a government "commission" (Norway). Granted, many of these "safeguards" are pro forma and honored in the breach, but that’s preferable to America where they’re honored in the breech and the distinction between abortion and infanticide depends on whether the ‘doctor’ gets to the baby’s skull before it’s cleared the cervix. The Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney sat in on a conference call with Dr. Tracy Weitz of the University of California, San Francisco:

"When a procedure that usually involves the collapsing of the skull is done, it’s usually done when the fetus is still in the uterus, not when the fetus has been delivered." So, in terms of thinking about the difference between the way abortion providers who do later abortions in the United States practice, and this particular practice, they are completely worlds apart".

Technically, they’re only inches apart. So what’s the big deal? The skull is collapsed in order to make it easier to clear the cervix. Once a healthy baby is out on the table and you cut his spinal column, there’s no need to suck out his brains and cave in his skull. But Dr. Gosnell seems to have got a kick out of it, so why not?

You can understand why American progressivism would rather avert its gaze. Out there among the abortion absolutists, they’re happy to chit-chat about the acceptable parameters of the "collapsing of the skull", but the informed general-interest reader would rather it all stayed at the woozy, blurry "woman’s right to choose’ level.

We’re collapsing our own skulls here” the parameters in which we allow ourselves to think about abortion, welfare, immigration, terrorism, Islam shrink remorselessly, not least at the congressional level. Maybe if we didn’t collapse the skulls of so many black babies in Philadelphia, we wouldn’t need to import so many excitable young Chechens. But that’s thinking outside the box, and the box is getting ever smaller, like a nice, cozy cocoon in which we’re always warm and safe. Like ” what’s the word?” a womb.

Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon.

Voir encore:

A Battered Dream, Then a Violent Path

Deborah Sontag, David M. Herszenhorn and Serge F. Kovaleski

The New York Times

April 27, 2013

BOSTON — It was a blow the immigrant boxer could not withstand: after capturing his second consecutive title as the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of New England in 2010, Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev, 23, was barred from the national Tournament of Champions because he was not a United States citizen.

The cocksure fighter, a flamboyant dresser partial to white fur and snakeskin, had been looking forward to redeeming the loss he suffered the previous year in the first round, when the judges awarded his opponent the decision, drawing boos from spectators who considered Mr. Tsarnaev dominant.

From one year to the next, though, the tournament rules had changed, disqualifying legal permanent residents — not only Mr. Tsarnaev, who was Soviet-born of Chechen and Dagestani heritage, but several other New England contenders, too. His aspirations frustrated, he dropped out of boxing competition entirely, and his life veered in a completely different direction.

Mr. Tsarnaev portrayed his quitting as a reflection of the sport’s incompatibility with his growing devotion to Islam. But as dozens of interviews with friends, acquaintances and relatives from Cambridge, Mass., to Dagestan showed, that devotion, and the suspected radicalization that accompanied it, was a path he followed most avidly only after his more secular dreams were dashed in 2010 and he was left adrift.

His trajectory eventually led the frustrated athlete and his loyal younger brother, Dzhokhar, to bomb one of the most famous athletic events in this country, killing three and wounding more than 200 at the Boston Marathon, the authorities say. They say it led Mr. Tsarnaev, his application for citizenship stalled, and his brother, a new citizen and a seemingly well-adjusted college student, to attack their American hometown on Patriots’ Day, April 15.

Mr. Tsarnaev now lies in the state medical examiner’s office, his body riddled with bullets after a confrontation with the police four days after the bombings. He left behind an American-born wife who had converted to Islam, a 3-year-old daughter with curly hair, a 19-year-old brother charged with using a weapon of mass destruction, and a puzzle: Why did these two young men seemingly turn on the country that had granted them asylum?

Examining their lives for clues, the authorities have focused on Mr. Tsarnaev’s six-month trip to the Russian republics of Chechnya and Dagestan last year. But in Cambridge, sitting on the front steps of the ramshackle, brown-shingled house where the Tsarnaev family lived for a decade, their 79-year-old landlady urged a longer lens.

“He certainly wasn’t radicalized in Dagestan,” the landlady, Joanna Herlihy, said.

Ms. Herlihy, who speaks Russian and was friends with the Tsarnaevs, said she told law enforcement officials that his trip clearly merited scrutiny. But she said that Mr. Tsarnaev’s embrace of Islam had grown more intense before that.

As his religious identification grew fiercer, Mr. Tsarnaev seemed to abandon his once avid pursuit of the American dream. He dropped out of community college and lost interest not just in boxing but also in music; he used to play piano and violin, classical music and rap, and his e-mail address was a clue to how he once saw himself: The_Professor@real-hiphop.com. He worked only sporadically, sometimes as a pizza deliverer, and he grew first a close-cropped beard and then a flowing one.

He seemed isolated, too. Since his return from Dagestan, he, his wife and his child were the only Tsarnaevs living full time in the three-bedroom apartment on Ms. Herlihy’s third floor.

Mr. Tsarnaev’s two younger sisters had long since married and moved out; his parents, now separated, had returned to Dagestan, his mother soon after a felony arrest on shoplifting charges; and his brother had left for the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, returning home only on the occasional weekend, as he did recently after damaging his 1999 green Honda Civic by texting while driving.

“When Dzhokhar used to come home on Friday night from the dormitory, Tamerlan used to hug him and kiss him — hold him, like, because he was a big, big boy, Tamerlan,” their mother, Zubeidat, 45, said last week, adding that her older son had been “handsome like Hercules.”

Not long after he gave up his boxing career, Mr. Tsarnaev married Katherine Russell of Rhode Island in a brief Islamic ceremony at a Dorchester mosque in June 2010. She has declined to speak publicly since the attacks.

His wife primarily supported the family through her job as a home health aide, scraping together about $1,200 a month to pay the rent. While she worked, Mr. Tsarnaev looked after their daughter, Zahira, who was learning to ride the tricycle still parked beside the house, neighbors said. The family’s income was supplemented by public assistance and food stamps from September 2011 to November 2012, state officials said.

It was probably not the life that Anzor Tsarnaev had imagined for his oldest child, who, even as a boy, before he developed the broad-shouldered physique that his mother described as “a masterpiece,” dreamed of becoming a famous boxer.

But then the father’s life had not gone as planned, either. Once an official in the prosecutor’s office in Kyrgyzstan, he had been reduced to working as an unlicensed mechanic in the back lot of a rug store in Cambridge.

“He was out there in the snow and cold, freezing his hands to do this work on people’s cars,” said Chris Walter, owner of the store, Yayla Tribal Rug. “I did not charge him for the space because he was a poor, struggling guy with a good heart.”

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was born on Oct. 21, 1986, five years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in Kalmykia, a barren stretch of Russian territory by the Caspian Sea. A photograph of him as a baby shows a cherubic child wearing a knit cap with a pompom, perched on the lap of his unsmiling mother, who has spiky black bangs and an artful pile of hair. Strikingly, she did not cover her head then, as she does now; she began wearing a hijab only a few years ago, in the United States, prodded by her son just as she was prodding him, too, to deepen his faith.

When he was still little, his parents moved from Kalmykia to Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, where their other three children were born. They left there during the economic crisis of the late 1990s and spent a few brief months in Chechnya, then fled before the full-scale Russian military invasion in 1999. They sought shelter next in his mother’s native Dagestan.

In an interview there, Patimat Suleimanova, her sister-in-law, said the family had repeatedly been on the run from war and hardship in those days. “In search of peace, they kept moving,” she said.

Finally, Anzor Tsarnaev sought political asylum in the United States. He arrived first, with his younger son, in the spring of 2002. His older son, a young man of 16, followed with the rest of the family in July 2003.

Their neighborhood in Cambridge was run-down, with car repair lots where condominiums have since arisen. But the city has long been especially welcoming to immigrants and refugees; its high school has students from 75 countries.

The schools superintendent, Jeffrey Young, described Cambridge as “beyond tolerant.”

“How is it that someone could grow up in a place like this and end up in a place like that?” he said of the Tsarnaevs.

Unlike his little brother, who was well integrated into the community by the time he started high school, Mr. Tsarnaev was a genuine newcomer when he entered the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, from which he graduated in 2006. Enrolled in the large English as a Second Language program, he made friends mostly with other international students, and his demeanor was reserved, one former classmate, Luis Vasquez, said.

“The view on him was that he was a boxer and you would not want to mess with him,” Mr. Vasquez, now 25 and a candidate for the Cambridge City Council, said. “He told me that he wanted to represent the U.S. in boxing. He wanted to do the Olympics and then turn pro.”

Jumping right into boxing after his arrival in the United States, he called attention to himself immediately in more ways than one. During registration for a tournament in Lowell, he sat down at a piano and lost himself for 20 minutes in a piece of classical music. The impromptu performance, so out of place in that world, finished to a burst of applause from surprised onlookers.

“He just walked over from the line and started playing like he was in the Boston Pops,” his trainer at the time, Gene McCarthy, 77, recalled.

Having trained in Dagestan, where sport fighting has an impassioned following, Mr. Tsarnaev boxed straight-legged like a European and not crouched, American-style. He also incorporated showy gymnastics into his training and fighting, walking on his hands, falling into splits, tumbling into corners. So as he started working out in Boston-area clubs — and winning novice tournament fights — he made an impression, although not an entirely positive one.

“For a big man, he was very agile,” said Tom Lee, president of the South Boston Boxing Club. “He moved like a gazelle and was strong like a horse. He was a big puncher. But he was an underachiever because he did not dedicate himself to the proper training regimen.”

In 2009, Mr. Tsarnaev won the New England Golden Gloves championship in the 201-pound division, which qualified him for the national tournament in Salt Lake City in May. Introducing what would become his signature style, he showed up overdressed, wearing a white silk scarf, black leather pants and mirrored sunglasses.

Stepping into the ring, as The Lowell Sun described it, Mr. Tsarnaev floored Lamar Fenner of Chicago with an explosive punch that required an eight-count from the referee, and then he seemed to control the rest of the fight.

Bob Russo, then the coach of the New England team, said: “We thought he won. The crowd thought he won. But he didn’t.”

Mr. Fenner’s mother, Marsha, said her son had called her the night of his “bout with the bomber,” thrilled to have defeated an opponent he described as unnervingly strong. Her son, who died of heart problems last year at 29, ended up coming in second in the tournament and turning professional, she said.

If Mr. Tsarnaev was chastened by the defeat, it did not temper his behavior. During a preliminary round of the New England Golden Gloves in 2010, in a breach of boxing etiquette, he entered the locker room to taunt not only the fighter he was about to face but also the fighter’s trainer. Wearing a cowboy hat and alligator-skin cowboy boots, he gave the two men a disdainful once-over and said: “You’re nothing. I’m taking you down.”

The trainer, Hector Torres, was furious and subsequently lodged a complaint, arguing that Mr. Tsarnaev should not be allowed to participate in the competition because he was not a citizen.

As it happened, Golden Gloves of America was just then changing its policy. It used to permit legal immigrants to compete in its national tournament three out of every four years, barring them only during Olympic qualifying years, James Beasley, the executive director, said. But it decided in 2010 that the policy was confusing and moved to end all participation by noncitizens in the Tournament of Champions.

So Mr. Tsarnaev, New England heavyweight champion for the second year in a row, was stymied. The immigrant champions in three other weight classes in New England were blocked from advancing, too, Mr. Russo said.

Mr. Tsarnaev was devastated. He was not getting any younger. And he was more than a year away from being even eligible to apply for American citizenship, and there appeared to be a potential obstacle in his path.

The previous summer, Mr. Tsarnaev had been arrested after a report of domestic violence.

His girlfriend at the time had called 911, “hysterically crying,” to say he had beaten her up, according to the Cambridge police report. Mr. Tsarnaev told the officers that he had slapped her face because she had been yelling at him about “another girl.”

Eventually, charges against him would be dismissed, the records show, so the episode would not have endangered his eventual citizenship application.

But his life was changing. He married. He had a child. And he largely withdrew from Cambridge social life, and from many of the friendships he had enjoyed. “He had liked to party,” said Elmirza Khozhugov, 26, his former brother-in-law, who lost touch with him in 2010. “But there was always the sense that he felt a little guilty that he was having too much fun, maybe.”

In 2011, the Russian security service cautioned the F.B.I., and later the C.I.A., that “since 2010” Mr. Tsarnaev had “changed drastically,” becoming “a follower of radical Islam.” The Russians said he was planning a trip to his homeland to connect with underground militant groups. An F.B.I. investigation turned up no ties to extremists, the bureau has said.

In early 2012, Mr. Tsarnaev left his wife and child for a six-month visit to Russia. His parents, speaking in Dagestan, portrayed it as an innocuous visit to reconnect with family and to replace his nearly expired passport from the Republic of Kyrgyzstan with a Russian one. His father said he had kept his son close by his side as they visited relatives, including in Chechnya, and renovated a storefront into a perfume shop.

But American officials say Mr. Tsarnaev arrived in Russia months before his father returned to Dagestan and so did not have the continuous tight supervision described by his father.

Also, Mr. Tsarnaev, with no apparent sense of urgency about his travel documents, waited months to apply for a Russian passport, and returned to the United States before the passport was ready for him.

After his return, Mr. Tsarnaev applied for American citizenship, a year after he was eligible to do so. But the F.B.I. investigation, though closed, had caused his application to be stalled. Underscoring how detached he had become, he no longer had any valid passport, or international travel document, and Cambridge, to which he had a hard time readapting, was now his de facto home more than ever.

He grew a five-inch beard, which he shaved off before the bombings, and interrupted prayers at his mosque on two occasions with outbursts denouncing the idea that Muslims should observe American secular holidays. He engaged neighbors in affable conversations about skiing one week and heated ones about American imperialism the next.

At a neighborhood pizzeria, wearing a head covering that matched his jacket, he explained to Albrecht Ammon, 18, that “the Koran is great and flawless, and the Bible is ripped off from the Koran, and the U.S. used the Bible as an excuse to invade different countries.”

“I asked him about radical Muslims that blow themselves up and say, ‘It’s for Allah,’ ” Mr. Ammon said. “And he said he wasn’t one of those Muslims.”

Deborah Sontag and Serge F. Kovaleski reported from Boston, and David M. Herszenhorn from Makhachkala, Russia. Reporting was contributed by Michael Schwirtz, John Eligon, Ian Lovett and Dina Kraft from Boston; Andrew Roth from Makhachkala; Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Julia Preston from New York; and Andrew E. Kramer from Moscow. Kitty Bennett and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

Voir également:

Coup d’essai d’un palmé

La Balade sauvage

réalisé par Terrence Malick

Julia Allouache

Critikat.com

14 juin 2011

critique du film La Balade sauvage, réalisé par Terrence Malick

Nouvelle réédition pour La Balade sauvage et nouvelle visibilité grâce à la palme remportée à Cannes par le dernier film de Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life). Le premier long-métrage du cinéaste, qui conte la balade meurtrière du couple formé par Holly (Sissy Spacek) et Kit (Martin Sheen) à travers les États-Unis, s’assure d’emblée une certaine carrière en salles.

Depuis son âge d’or dans les années 1970, le road-movie a subi de nombreuses mutations. Revenir sur La Balade sauvage, c’est donc revenir au classicisme d’un genre, ce qui n’est pas sans constituer un certain paradoxe étant donné le souffle nouveau que ce film a représenté en son temps. Mais trente-cinq ans plus tard, on est en droit de se demander si La Balade sauvage a conservé toute sa modernité ou s’il ne pâtit pas du passage du temps. Quel écho de la révolte de la jeunesse américaine des années 1970 contre l’autorité (gouvernementale, parentale, etc.) aujourd’hui ? Si l’escapade insouciante de Holly et Kit comme réponse au carcan social paraît aujourd’hui un peu naïve et présente une idée de la liberté un peu vieillotte, mieux vaut y voir le premier maillon d’une œuvre à venir. Le premier long-métrage de Malick pose déjà la question qui hantera toute sa filmographie : comment créer un lieu de vie idéal au sein d’une terre hostile (déclinée dans The Tree of Life en situation hostile : la mort d’un enfant). Le titre original de l’œuvre vaut ainsi qu’on le rappelle : Badlands, ces mauvaises terres que l’on brûle au son d’un chœur religieux (faut-il passer par l’Enfer pour parvenir au Paradis ?) et qu’on brûlera à nouveau dans la plus belle séquence des Moissons du ciel, lors d’une apocalyptique attaque de sauterelles.

Si le film de Malick constitue le modèle d’une tendance cinématographique qui émergera dans les années 1990 – les road-movies meurtriers –, ce film-source a ceci de spécifique qu’il se construit toujours dans la distance (particularité dont ses petits rejetons – de Sailor et Lula à Tueurs-nés en passant par True Romance, qui reprend presque littéralement la musique de La Balade sauvage – s’émanciperont pour proclamer un style kitch-hémoglobine). Le recul qu’il prend vis-à-vis de la violence passe essentiellement par le personnage incarné par Sissy Spacek (qui se trouve alors à l’orée d’une période de grands rôles : Carrie, Three Women, etc.), dont l’impassibilité désamorce toujours immédiatement l’agitation de Martin Sheen. On se trouve avec La Balade sauvage devant le portrait d’une jeunesse qui, malgré les cadavres qu’elle laisse sur son chemin, se démarque par sa grande innocence. La mort n’intervient jamais comme un drame mais comme une étape, un relais sur la route de Holly et Kit. Pas de drame, pas de coupable. La singularité de la démarche malickienne est de faire de ce fait-divers une ode à l’innocence plutôt qu’un trip sulfureux (comme s’attacheront à le faire David Lynch, Oliver Stone et Tony Scott), de dépasser l’anecdote, la chronique de départ pour dépeindre un état de fait plus global : la jeunesse, la liberté.

En résulte un film mat et flegmatique, auquel on peut toutefois reprocher de faire tendre la sobriété de son style vers une certaine banalité. Cet équilibre incertain entre la fine mise à distance du propos et le peu d’innovation du style rejoint le débat qui s’est construit autour de l’œuvre de Malick, entre génie et imposteur, et ce jusqu’à son dernier né The Tree of Life, qui alterne moments intimes prodigieux et envolées cosmiques grotesques. On touche là ce qui constitue peut-être la signature d’un réalisateur qui, même à travers cette inégalité qui lui est propre, prouve qu’il est un auteur.

Voir de plus:

5 raisons de (re)voir La balade sauvage de Terrence Malick

Thomas Baurez (Studio Ciné Live)

L’Express

08/06/2011

Alors que tout le monde parle de Terrence Malick et de son The Tree of Life, récemment palmé à Cannes, son premier long-métrage ressort judicieusement en salles. 38 ans déjà, et pas une ride!

5 raisons de (re)voir La balade sauvage de Terrence Malick

1 – Une leçon de road-movie

Ce n’est plus un secret pour personne. A partir de la fin des sixties, Hollywood opère sa mue et l’espace d’une grosse décennie va déborder d’indépendance. C’est dans ce contexte qu’explose réellement le road-movie sur grand écran, un genre synonyme d’espace, de liberté et de tragédie. Easy Rider de Dennis Hopper en 1969, Macadam à deux voies de Monte Hellman en 1971, L’épouvantail de Jerry Schatzberg en 1973 et donc cette Balade sauvageen 1974, premier long d’un étudiant de l’American Film Institute passé par Harvard et Oxford, Terrence Malick.

2 – Société, je vous hais !

Alors que le républicain Nixon s’apprête bientôt à faire ses valises à cause du Watergate et que le Vietnam brûle de ses derniers feux au napalm, la société nord-américaine est en crise. La jeunesse a besoin d’air. La balade sauvage, traduit cet état d’esprit. Nous suivons ici la fuite en avant du psychopathe Kit (Martin Sheen) et de la pure Holly (Sissy Spacek), jeunes et pas franchement innocents, pourchassés par une foule vengeresse.

3 -L’éternel combat entre l’Homme et la Nature

Dans les films de Terrence Malick, les hommes finissent toujours par saccager la nature qui les entoure. Les soldats de la Ligne rouge après avoir nagé dans le jardin d’Eden tombent sauvagement sur le champ de bataille, les amoureux des Moissons du ciel envoient en fumée des champs à perte de vue, le beau colon du Nouveau Monde, lui, souille malgré lui la belle indigène en l’arrachant à sa terre natale. Dans La balade sauvage, si la forêt sert de refuge pour le couple en fuite, elle sera finalement le lieu de leur perte.

4- Sheen-Spacek, un duo de rêve

Si le Nouvel Hollywood a vu l’émergence de jeunes cinéastes (Scorsese, de Palma, Spielberg…), de nouveaux visages se sont également imposés devant l’objectif. Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, de Niro… Sissy Spacek et Martin Sheen, le duo de cette Balade sauvage, s’imposent immédiatement. Elle, 25 ans, tout en tâche de rousseur, incarne pureté et innocence. Sissy sera bientôt Carrie pour de Palma et l’une des trois femmes de Robert Altman. Lui, 34 ans déjà, réincarnation de James Dean, porte beau le jean et le t-shirt blanc. Bientôt il connaîtra l’Apocalypse pour Coppola.

5 – Pénultième film avant la disparition

Aussitôt apparu, aussitôt disparu ! A l’instar, des protagonistes de La balade sauvage, Terrence Malick était condamné à disparaitre. Ainsi après Les moissons du ciel, tourné 4 ans plus tard, l’homme ne va plus donner de nouvelles pendant 20 longues années. Tel Martin Sheen levant les bras en l’air devant l’objectif, Malick sait qu’il faut parfois se rendre pour mieux frapper un grand coup. 38 ans séparent aujourd’hui La balade sauvage de The Tree of Life. Il est intéressant de voir le chemin parcouru.

Voir encore:

BADLANDS

Vincent Canby

The New York Times

October 15, 1973

The time is late summer at the end of the 1950′s and the place a small, placid town in South Dakota. The streets are lined with oak and maple trees in full leaf. The lawns are so neat, so close-cropped, they look crew-cut. Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) is twenty-five, a garbage collector who fancies his cowboy boots and his faint resemblance to James Dean. Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek) is fifteen. Until she meets Kit, she hasn’t much interest in anything except her dog and her baton, which she practices twirling in her front yard.

In Terrence Malick’s cool, sometimes brilliant, always ferociously American film, Badlands, which marks Malick’s debut as a director, Kit and Holly take an all-American joyride across the upper Middle West, at the end of which more than half a dozen people have been shot to death by Kit, usually at point-blank range.

Badlands was presented twice at Alice Tully Hall Saturday night, the closing feature of the 11th New York Film Festival that began so auspiciously with François Truffaut’s Day for Night. In between there were a lot of other films, good and bad, but none as provocative as this first feature by Malick, a twenty-nine-year-old former Rhodes Scholar and philosophy student whose only other film credit is as the author of the screenplay for last year’s nicely idiosyncratic Pocket Money.

Badlands was inspired by the short, bloody saga of Charles Starkweather who, at age nineteen, in January, 1958, with the apparent cooperation of his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Caril Fugate, went off on a murder spree that resulted in ten victims. Starkweather was later executed in the electric chair and Miss Fugate given life imprisonment.

Badlands inevitably invites comparisons with three other important American films, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde and Fritz Lang’s Fury and You Only Live Once, but it has a very different vision of violence and death. Malick spends no great amount of time invoking Freud to explain the behavior of Kit and Holly, nor is there any Depression to be held ultimately responsible. Society is, if anything, benign.

This is the haunting truth of Badlands, something that places it very much in the seventies in spite of its carefully re-created period detail. Kit and Holly are directionless creatures, technically literate but uneducated in any real sense, so desensitized that Kit (in Malick’s words at a news conference) can regard the gun with which he shoots people as a kind of magic wand that eliminates small nuisances. Kit and Holly are members of the television generation run amok.

They are not ill-housed, ill-clothed, or ill-fed. If they are at all aware of their anger (and I’m not sure they are, since they see only boredom), it’s because of the difference between the way life is and the way it is presented on the small screen, with commercial breaks instead of lasting consequences.

Badlands is narrated by Holly in the flat, nasal accents of the Middle West and in the syntax of a story in True Romances. "Little did I realize," she tells us at the beginning of the film, "that what began in the alleys and by-ways of this small town would end in the badlands of Montana." At the end, after half a dozen murders, she resolves never again to "tag around with the hell-bent type."

Kit and Holly share with Clyde and Bonnie a fascination with their own press coverage, with their overnight fame ("The whole world was looking for us," says Holly, "for who knew where Kit would strike next?"), but a lack of passion differentiates them from the gaudy desperados of the thirties. Toward the end of their joyride, the bored Holly tells us she passed the time, as she sat in the front seat beside Kit, spelling out complete sentences with her tongue on the roof of her mouth.

Malick tries not to romanticize his killers, and he is successful except for one sequence in which Kit and Holly hide out in a tree house as elaborate as anything the M-G-M art department ever designed for Tarzan and Jane. Sheen and Miss Spacek are splendid as the self-absorbed, cruel, possibly psychotic children of our time, as are the members of the supporting cast, including Warren Oates as Holly’s father.

One may legitimately debate the validity of Malick’s vision, but not, I think, his immense talent. Badlands is a most important and exciting film.

BADLANDS (MOVIE)

Produced, written, and directed by Terrence Malick; cinematographers, Brian Probyn, Tak Fujimoto, and Stevan Larner; edited by Robert Estrin; music by George Tipton; art designer, Jack Fisk; released by Warner Brothers. Running time: 95 minutes.

With: Martin Sheen (Kit), Sissy Spacek (Holly), Warren Oates (Holly’s Father), Ramon Bieri (Cato), and Alan Vint (Deputy).

Voir enfin:

Riots Create Irrational Behavior

Apr. 30, 2013 — Participants of group riots have since the end of the 1960s been viewed as rational individuals driven by a sense of injustice. But in today’s world this is misleading, concludes sociologist and PhD Christian Borch in a newly published doctoral thesis, and he encourages the police to take the destructive behaviour of some participants into account when dealing with groups of rioters.

During the so-called ‘UK Riots’ in the summer of 2011, discontented young people set the streets of London alight and looted shopping centres. The initial strategy of the police which was to communicate with rioters soon failed. Instead they resorted to using batons and containment. Within a Danish context, the violent reactions to the clearance of ‘Ungdomshuset’ in 2007 show that a revolt can develop into serious criminal actions.

According to Christian Borch, these examples illustrate that group rioting are not solely based on righteous indignation and considered planning:

"The notion of the 1960s that social movements happened as a legitimate response to social injustice created the impression of riots as being rational. Crowds however do not have to be rational entities," says Christian Borch.

In a new doctoral thesis "The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative History of Sociology" from University of Copenhagen, Christian Borch analyses the historical development of the concept of crowds in a sociological context.

"The riots in London demonstrate the existence of a lack of rational thought processes as the events had an entirely spontaneous and irrational character. People looted for the sake of looting, for many this was not necessarily born out of a sense of injustice," says Christian Borch who has analysed the strategies of the Metropolitan police in connection with the London riots.

Danish riots attracted violent supporters

The riots surrounding the clerance of "Ungdomshuset" at Jagtvej 69 in Denmark illustrate that demonstrations are capable of creating a self-perpetuating sense of dynamics which accenture the irrational elements. Thus, setting cars alight and breaking windows became part of the rioting.

"During the Danish riots there existed on the one hand a sense of rationality within the young people’s protests, in so far as they were drive by a political motivated interest. However, other people who were normally not affiliated with ‘Ungdomshuset’ became a part of the conflict and participated in the riots without any shared purpose. They were having fun and the adrenalin kicked in," says Christian Borch.

It is inner group dynamics which fuel pointless bahaviour.

"Riots can assume self-perpetuating dynamics which is not driven by rational motives. When individuals form a crowd they can become irrational and driven by emotion which occur as part of the rioting," says Christian Borch.

Inspiration to police tactics

Thinking of crowds as rational entities has since 2000 affected the way in which the British police have handled riots. The UK Riots serve as an example of this. The police worked on the promise that they were dealing with rational individuals with sensible objectives which is why their plan of action was based on communication rather than containment. This however, did not work in practice.

"The interesting aspect of the London riots was to ascertain that it was pointless to address the crowds through a communication strategy. The rational way of regarding the crowds came to nothing whereas the traditional form of containment did. This shows that at certain times a successful solution is not to handle crowds based on dialogue-orientated efforts," says Christian Borch.

In addition to the police, Christian Borch encourages town planners, sociologists and economists to apply a more critical approach when dealing with the concept of crowds.

Tuerie d’Istres: C’est l’imitation et les médias, imbécile ! (When monkey see monkey do meets have gun will travel)

Je suis et demeure un combattant révolutionnaire. Et la Révolution aujourd’hui est, avant tout, islamique. Illich Ramirez Sanchez (dit Carlos)

Nous avons constaté que le sport était la religion moderne du monde occidental. Nous savions que les publics anglais et américain assis devant leur poste de télévision ne regarderaient pas un programme exposant le sort des Palestiniens s’il y avait une manifestation sportive sur une autre chaîne. Nous avons donc décidé de nous servir des Jeux olympiques, cérémonie la plus sacrée de cette religion, pour obliger le monde à faire attention à nous. Nous avons offert des sacrifices humains à vos dieux du sport et de la télévision et ils ont répondu à nos prières. Terroriste palestinien (Jeux olympiques de Munich, 1972)

Il s’est mis à tirer comme dans un jeu video. Enquêteurs

L’erreur est toujours de raisonner dans les catégories de la "différence", alors que la racine de tous les conflits, c’est plutôt la "concurrence", la rivalité mimétique entre des êtres, des pays, des cultures. La concurrence, c’est-à-dire le désir d’imiter l’autre pour obtenir la même chose que lui, au besoin par la violence. Sans doute le terrorisme est-il lié à un monde "différent" du nôtre, mais ce qui suscite le terrorisme n’est pas dans cette "différence" qui l’éloigne le plus de nous et nous le rend inconcevable. Il est au contraire dans un désir exacerbé de convergence et de ressemblance. (…) Ce qui se vit aujourd’hui est une forme de rivalité mimétique à l’échelle planétaire. (…) Ce sentiment n’est pas vrai des masses, mais des dirigeants. Sur le plan de la fortune personnelle, on sait qu’un homme comme Ben Laden n’a rien à envier à personne. Et combien de chefs de parti ou de faction sont dans cette situation intermédiaire, identique à la sienne. Regardez un Mirabeau au début de la Révolution française : il a un pied dans un camp et un pied dans l’autre, et il n’en vit que de manière plus aiguë son ressentiment. Aux Etats-Unis, des immigrés s’intègrent avec facilité, alors que d’autres, même si leur réussite est éclatante, vivent aussi dans un déchirement et un ressentiment permanents. Parce qu’ils sont ramenés à leur enfance, à des frustrations et des humiliations héritées du passé. Cette dimension est essentielle, en particulier chez des musulmans qui ont des traditions de fierté et un style de rapports individuels encore proche de la féodalité. (…) Cette concurrence mimétique, quand elle est malheureuse, ressort toujours, à un moment donné, sous une forme violente. A cet égard, c’est l’islam qui fournit aujourd’hui le ciment qu’on trouvait autrefois dans le marxisme. René Girard

More ink equals more blood,  newspaper coverage of terrorist incidents leads directly to more attacks. It’s a macabre example of win-win in what economists call a « common-interest game. Both the media and terrorists benefit from terrorist incidents". Terrorists get free publicity for themselves and their cause. The media, meanwhile, make money « as reports of terror attacks increase newspaper sales and the number of television viewers ». Bruno S. Frey (University of Zurich) et Dominic Rohner (Cambridge)

Les images violentes accroissent (…) la vulnérabilité des enfants à la violence des groupes dans la mesure où ceux qui les ont vues éprouvent de sensations, des émotions et des états du corps difficiles à maîtriser et donc angoissants, et qu’ils sont donc particulièrement tentés d’adopter les repères que leur propose leur groupe d’appartenance, voire le leader de ce groupe. Serge Tisseron

Ces meurtriers sont fascinés par des jeux vidéo violents. Ces jeux consommés à haute dose provoquent une désensibilisation par rapport à l’acte criminel. Dans certains jeux, pour franchir les différents niveaux, il faut parfois tuer un policier ou une femme enceinte. Celui qui joue est par définition acteur, il n’est pas passif. Certains jeux japonais, accessibles gratuitement en ligne, permettent d’incarner un violeur en série. Le joueur devient un participant actif et exprime ses fantasmes. Là, c’est le véritable danger. (…) Le tueur de masse avance toujours de faux prétextes religieux, politiques, ce qui semble être le cas ici. Cet homme s’est défini comme un fondamentaliste chrétien. Depuis la tragédie de Columbine aux Etats-Unis en 1999, le crime de masse est devenu un crime d’imitation. Les tueurs sont souvent habillés de noir, vêtus d’un treillis ou d’un costume de l’autorité. Ils postent de nombreux messages sur des forums Internet annonçant leurs actes. Le réseau Internet où ils se mettent en scène est l’occasion pour eux de laisser un testament numérique. Stéphane Bourgoin

Le tueur de masse, et c’est important, commet un crime d’imitation. On le voit dans le cas de Breivik puisqu’il pompe des centaines de pages du manifeste de Théodor Kaczynski, Unabomber. Il se contente à certains endroits de remplacer le marxisme par multiculturalisme ou par islamisme. Il copie, c’est frappant. Pourtant, idéologiquement, ils sont à l’opposé puisque Unabomber est un terroriste écologique. Autre imitation, pour sa bombe, il utilise exactement la même recette de fabrication que Timothy McVeigh dans l’attentat de l’immeuble fédéral d’Oklahoma City, en 1995. Il a trouvé la recette sur Internet, sur des sites suprématistes blancs et de survivalistes américains. (…)  J’estime à 10 % d’entre eux ceux qui manifestent des revendications idéologiques. Mais ce ne sont pas uniquement ces revendications idéologiques qui poussent Anders Breivik ou Timothy McVeigh à commettre de tels attentats meurtriers. C’est aussi une véritable haine de la société. Ils s’estiment victimes de la société parce qu’elle ne les a pas reconnus à leur juste valeur. Et ils souffrent de troubles psychologiques voire psychiatriques profond. Là, ce n’est pas le cas pour Breivik qui ne souffre pas de troubles psychiatriques, puisqu’une personne délirante et irresponsable n’est pas capable d’organiser des attentats d’une telle envergure et avec une telle minutie. (…)  Il a choisi deux cibles qui cristallisent, l’une et l’autre, ses haines. Des immeubles du gouvernement norvégien qu’il juge responsable de l’immigration massive en Norvège et sa haine des marxistes avec le rassemblement des jeunes du Parti travailliste, qu’il savait sur une île isolée, où il pourrait commettre un carnage sans être dérangé. (…) C’est un long processus. Il commence à écrire son manifeste en 2002. En 2007, il quitte le Parti du progrès, parti populiste d’extrême droite norvégien, et indique dans plusieurs forums que l’action politique et démocratique mène à une impasse et qu’il est temps de créer un choc et mener une révolution au sein de la société norvégienne. Sans parler ouvertement de son acte. En 2008, voire 2007, il pense déjà à commettre un tel attentat. Il a loué cette ferme voici deux ans, uniquement pour qu’elle lui serve de couverture. Nullement pour subvenir à ses besoins, mais pour lui permettre d’acheter des engrais chimiques sans attirer l’attention. On sait par son journal intime qu’il avait terminé de fabriquer les engins explosifs vers le mois de mai. Il a alors attendu le moment favorable, cette réunion des jeunes du Parti travailliste où devait se rendre, avant finalement d’annuler, le Premier ministre. (…) Le phénomène est amplifié par les nouvelles technologies, notamment Internet. Depuis Columbine, les tueurs laissent tous un testament numérique. On a retrouvé de nombreuses vidéos où ils se mettent en scène, apprennent à tirer. Où ils tiennent un journal de bord. Idem pour le massacre de Virginia Tech, qui a fait une trentaine de victimes en 2007. Idem avec les deux tueurs allemands dans deux écoles (Erfurt en 2002, Winnenden en 2009, ndlr). Idem pour le tueur finlandais de Kauhajoki en 2008, etc. Depuis le massacre de Colombine, c’est pareil pour tous les tueurs de masse : on laisse un testament en vidéo ou un long post sur un blog. C’est assez frappant. C’est un crime d’imitation. D’ailleurs, j’ajoute que les médias sont également un peu responsables de la prolifération de ce type d’acte criminel en raison de la place qu’ils accordent à ces criminels. Si, par exemple, les médias décidaient de ne jamais publier l’identité des auteurs ni leur texte ou leur vidéo, je pense qu’on verrait une réduction de ce type d’actes criminels. Ce que veulent ces individus, c’est passer à la postérité, or si on ne publie pas leur identité, la frustration sera extrême. La mégalomanie et le narcissisme d’un personnage comme Anders Breivik est éloquent ! Il voulait apparaître en uniforme lors d’un procès public, pour montrer au monde entier sa puissance. Ils savent ce qui va se passer après les meurtres et s’en délectent à l’avance, comme se délecte Anders Breivik à l’idée de son procès, qui devrait se tenir d’ici un an et demi. (…) Une agence de presse a quelque peu exagéré et déformé mes propos. Ce que j’ai exactement dit sur le profil-type du tueur de masse, c’est que sur les 113 cas en vingt ans, 108 s’adonnaient quotidiennement voire parfois des heures entières à des jeux vidéo violents. Mais j’ajoutais, bien sûr, que ce n’est pas le fait de jouer à des jeux vidéo violents qui fait qu’on devient un tueur de masse. Comme pour les tueurs en série, on retrouve la plupart du temps des cas de maltraitances physiques ou psychologiques et d’abandon parental, mais ce n’est parce qu’on est un enfant abandonné qui subit des maltraitances qu’on est un serial killer. Il y en aurait malheureusement des milliers. J’ajoutais aussi que pour un adolescent qui souffre de troubles psychiatriques ou psychologiques, le fait de s’adonner de manière frénétique à des jeux vidéo violents pouvait le mener à une désensibilisation à la violence. Stéphane Bourgoin

On est dans le crime d’imitation. Ces tueurs savent qu’ils vont avoir une importante résonance médiatique. (…) On peut imaginer qu’ils s’estimaient persécutés et avaient des comptes à régler avec la société. En tuant des personnes qu’ils ne connaissaient pas, ils plongeaient dans un monde virtuel. Comme dans un jeu vidéo … Stéphane Bourgoin

Attention: un tueur peut en cacher beaucoup d’autres !

Au lendemain d’un nouvel épisode de fusillade meurtrière encore inexpliqué cette fois sur notre propre Côte d’azur …

Comment ne pas deviner, avec l’écrivain spécialisé Stéphane Bourgoin, cette forte dimension mimétique de la chose y compris d’ailleurs chez les pros de naguère à la Carlos?

Mais aussi hélas cette vague de tueurs de masse qui vient ou est en fait déjà (potentiellement) là …

Qui, entre ressentiment personnel, recherche de visibilité médiatique, entrainement/conditionnement quotidien et massif à la tuerie en ligne et accessibilité en ligne des matériels et modes d’emplois, n’attendent que l’occasion propice pour passer à l’acte?

D’où la double contrainte inextricable du phénomène: si on n’en parle pas, on risque de passer à côté de quelque chose de peut-être bien plus grave (voir les frères Tsarnaev) et si on en parle, on fait le jeu du tueur en question et de ses futurs imitateurs toujours prêts à raccrocher leur wagon de ressentiment personnel à tout mouvement de haine du moment à forte valeur ajoutée médiatique …

Fusillade d’Istres : le profil psy et guerrier d’un individu nommé Rose

La Provence

26 avril 2013

Le tueur se nommerait Karl Rose, son profil Facebook donne quelques indications sur sa personnalité

Il s’appelle Karl Rose. Il a 19 ans. Il est né à Istres, habite Istres et lors de sa dernière comparution en justice, il se disait "ouvrier". Pour l’heure, il était hier encore sans profession, précise-t-on de source proche de l’enquête.

Il est connu des services de police pour port d’armes prohibées, au moins à deux reprises, ce qui témoigne à tout le moins d’un certain goût pour elles. Jusqu’aux faits qui l’ont traîné hier à la Une des gazettes, il était aussi connu pour escroquerie et falsification de documents. Il est manifestement sujet à des problèmes psychiatriques, a prétendu répondre aux "préceptes" d’al-Qaïda.

Un individu dans son univers

Quand il a été interpellé, il a fait état aussitôt d’une "connaissance" qui s’apprêterait à agir à sa manière, dans une gare, en région parisienne… Cet homme a été arrêté plus tard dans la soirée. Pour le reste, le profil Facebook de Karl Rose est aussi éloquent que crypté.

Il y dit travailler à "braqueur de fourgon". Il aime aussi les arts martiaux, la musculation et l’informatique. Toujours selon son profil Facebook, il étudie à "Paris Tramway Ligne 3". Comprenne qui pourra. "La TV dirige la nation", peut-on entendre, en anglais, sur la seule chanson présente sur son profil en ligne.

Un individu manifestement dans son univers, qui, au chapitre des livres, affiche : "Le judaïsme est une escroquerie de 4 000 ans", semble faire de l’affaire Mérah un "complot" et s’autodécerne la "médaille d’honneur" du "combattant de guerre" sur un jeu vidéo qui permet, au moins virtuellement, de tuer plus facilement son prochain que de l’aimer.

Les 3 questions à Stéphane Bourgoin auteur du livre "99 ans de serial killer" (Edition Ring)

1. La Provence a jusqu’ici été épargnée par les tueurs de masse. L’hyper médiatisation de l’affaire Merah et des attentats de Boston a-t-elle pu favoriser le passage à l’acte ?

Stéphane Bourgoin : Oui, on est dans le crime d’imitation. Ces tueurs savent qu’ils vont avoir une importante résonance médiatique.

2. Ont-ils un profil psychologique similaire ?

S.B : Ils sont souvent très jeunes et fascinés par les armes à feu. Si eux agissent sur la voie publique, les plus vieux passent généralement à l’acte sur leur lieu de travail. Dans la plupart des cas, ce sont des paranoïaques qui ont pu avoir des antécédents psychiatriques ou souffrent de troubles psychologiques.

3. Généralement, ces tueurs se suicident ou se font abattre. À Istres, il s’est rendu sans problème…

S.B : 70 % de ces tueurs ne survivent pas, c’est vrai. Mais ce n’était pas le cas du tueur d’Aurora ou de Anders Breivik en Norvège. On peut imaginer qu’ils s’estimaient persécutés et avaient des comptes à régler avec la société. En tuant des personnes qu’ils ne connaissaient pas, ils plongeaient dans un monde virtuel. Comme dans un jeu vidéo.

Denis Trossero et Frédéric Cheutin, propos recueillis par Laetitia Sariroglou

Voir aussi:

Norvège : «Ces tueurs veulent laisser une trace dans l’histoire»

Stéphane Bourgoin

Le Parisien

24.07.2011

STÉPHANE BOURGOIN spécialiste des tueurs de masse*. Ecrivain, Stéphane Bourgoin, 58 ans, est surtout un spécialiste reconnu des tueurs de masse et tueurs en série.

Peut-on considérer le suspect arrêté comme un tueur de masse?

STÉPHANE BOURGOIN. Il appartient à l’évidence à la catégorie des tueurs de masse. Il s’agit souvent d’hommes solitaires souffrant de troubles suicidaires.

Ce sont des désespérés extravertis et très narcissiques. Ils ont un désir de toute-puissance et sont souvent fascinés par les armes à feu et aussi l’autorité. Ils aiment incarner des militaires ou des policiers.

Quels sont leurs autres traits communs?

Ils ont peu de relations sociales, voire pas du tout. Leur univers amoureux est réduit à néant. Mais, surtout, ils veulent tous laisser une trace dans l’histoire pour qu’on se souvienne d’eux. Ils tuent pour qu’on ne les oublie pas. A la différence des tueurs en série, qui, eux, sont des psychopathes responsables de leurs actes qui font tout pour échapper à la police, les tueurs de masse cherchent à revendiquer leurs actes. Ils vont à la rencontre des enquêteurs, ils font face et cherchent même à se faire tuer par les policiers.

Les jeux vidéo ont-t-ils une influence dans leur passage à l’acte?

Là aussi, c’est un trait dominant chez ces meurtriers. Ils sont fascinés par des jeux vidéo violents comme World of Warcraft. Ces jeux consommés à haute dose provoquent une désensibilisation par rapport à l’acte criminel. Dans d’autres jeux, pour franchir les différents niveaux, il faut parfois tuer un policier ou une femme enceinte. Celui qui joue est par définition acteur, il n’est pas passif. Certains jeux japonais, accessibles gratuitement en ligne, permettent d’incarner un violeur en série. Le joueur devient un participant actif et exprime ses fantasmes. Là, c’est le véritable danger.

Comment analyser ce qui vient de se passer en Norvège?

Le tueur de masse avance toujours de faux prétextes religieux, politiques, ce qui semble être le cas ici. Cet homme s’est défini comme un fondamentaliste chrétien. Depuis la tragédie de Columbine aux Etats-Unis en 1999, le crime de masse est devenu un crime d’imitation. Les tueurs sont souvent habillés de noir, vêtus d’un treillis ou d’un costume de l’autorité. Ils postent de nombreux messages sur des forums Internet annonçant leurs actes. Le réseau Internet où ils se mettent en scène est l’occasion pour eux de laisser un testament numérique.

Il vient de publier « Enquête mondiale sur les tueurs en série » aux Editions Grasset.

Voir encore:

Profil de tueur

Dorothée Duchemin

Citazine

28 juill. 2011

Anders Breivik, principal suspect de la tuerie survenue en Norvège le 22 juillet dernier, possède-t-il le profil typique d’un tueur de masse ? Qui sont ces criminels ? Stéphane Bourgoin, spécialiste des tueurs en série et tueurs de masse, répond à Citazine.

Peut-on parler d’un profil-type du tueur de masse ?

Le profil d’un tueur de masse, auquel répond tout à fait Anders Breivik, est quelqu’un qui tue un grand nombre de personnes en un laps de temps très court. Peu lui importe l’âge, le sexe ou l’ethnie des victimes, contrairement au tueur en série qui tue sur des années et ne cherche pas à se faire prendre. Alors que le tueur de masse, dans 75 % des cas, va chercher soit à se suicider, soit à être abattu par les forces de l’ordre après avoir commis son acte.

Cette personne est généralement isolée de la société, marginalisée. Elle a peu d’amis, pas de relation sentimentale, est passionnée d’armes à feu et est fascinée par la chasse ainsi que par toutes formes d’autorité. Elle s’adonne à des jeux vidéo violents, est marquée par une lourde tendance suicidaire mais ne se suicidera pas seule dans son coin. Elle veut marquer l’histoire et laisser une marque indélébile en se suicidant et en emportant le plus de victimes avec elle.

Alors, puisqu’il ne s’est pas suicidé, Andres Breivik fait-il figure d’exception ?

Un gros pourcentage d’entre eux, entre 25 et 30 %, ne se suicident pas au moment où ils commettent leurs actes. Andres Breivik l’annonce, dans la partie du journal intime, à la fin de son manifeste. Il n’avait pas l’intention de se suicider et veut témoigner à son procès.

Un code, depuis Columbine

Anders Breivik est âgé de 32 ans. N’est-il pas bien plus vieux que la majorité des tueurs de masse ?

Il y a eu des tueurs de masse bien plus âgés qu’Anders Breivik. Cela n’a rien à voir avec l’âge. Les tueries de masse ont existé avant Columbine (Tuerie du lycée de Columbine, en 1999, perpétrée par Eric Harris et Dylan Klebold, ndlr). Mais depuis, un code et une imitation s’installent. Un code vestimentaire : les tueurs sont revêtus de noir, de treillis militaire ou uniforme de police. Avec ces vêtements, ils expriment le désir de toute puissance et la fascination des armes à feu. Ils s’imaginent être des héros dans une réalité virtuelle. Alors qu’ils savent que dans la réalité, ils sont des types qui n’ont jamais rien concrétisé dans leur existence. Le tueur de masse, et c’est important, commet un crime d’imitation. On le voit dans le cas de Breivik puisqu’il pompe des centaines de pages du manifeste de Théodor Kaczynski, Unabomber. Il se contente à certains endroits de remplacer le marxisme par multiculturalisme ou par islamisme. Il copie, c’est frappant. Pourtant, idéologiquement, ils sont à l’opposé puisque Unabomber est un terroriste écologique. Autre imitation, pour sa bombe, il utilise exactement la même recette de fabrication que Timothy McVeigh dans l’attentat de l’immeuble fédéral d’Oklahoma City, en 1995. Il a trouvé la recette sur Internet, sur des sites suprématistes blancs et de survivalistes américains.

Il se nourrit ça et là des tueries de masse de ses prédécesseurs.

Oui, tout à fait.

La majorité des ces tueurs agit-elle par revendications idéologiques ?

Non. Un certain nombre d’entre eux en ont, mais ils sont assez rares. J’estime à 10 % d’entre eux ceux qui manifestent des revendications idéologiques. Mais ce ne sont pas uniquement ces revendications idéologiques qui poussent Anders Breivik ou Timothy McVeigh à commettre de tels attentats meurtriers. C’est aussi une véritable haine de la société. Ils s’estiment victimes de la société parce qu’elle ne les a pas reconnus à leur juste valeur. Et ils souffrent de troubles psychologiques voire psychiatriques profond. Là, ce n’est pas le cas pour Breivik qui ne souffre pas de troubles psychiatriques, puisqu’une personne délirante et irresponsable n’est pas capable d’organiser des attentats d’une telle envergure et avec une telle minutie.

Deux lieux, deux armes

N’est-ce pas étonnant d’agir avec une bombe puis une arme à feu ?

Oui, c’est assez rare. En règle général, le crime se déroule en un lieu unique pour les tueurs de masse. Là, c’est un cas assez inhabituel. Il a choisi deux cibles qui cristallisent, l’une et l’autre, ses haines. Des immeubles du gouvernement norvégien qu’il juge responsable de l’immigration massive en Norvège et sa haine des marxistes avec le rassemblement des jeunes du Parti travailliste, qu’il savait sur une île isolée, où il pourrait commettre un carnage sans être dérangé.

Peut-il ressentir de la pitié, de la compassion et des remords ?

Absolument pas. Au moment où il commet son acte, on voit qu’il rit sur certaines images en abattant ses victimes. Il est à ce moment dans une transe et agit comme un robot. Lors de ses interrogatoires, il insiste sur le fait qu’il a effectivement commis « des actes cruels mais nécessaires » et plaide non coupable car il ne se sent pas responsable de ce qu’il a commis. Il n’éprouvera jamais de remords.

Est-il arrivé à commettre de tels actes après un long processus qui s’est mis en place petit à petit ou s’agit-il d’un déclic soudain ?

C’est un long processus. Il commence à écrire son manifeste en 2002. En 2007, il quitte le Parti du progrès, parti populiste d’extrême droite norvégien, et indique dans plusieurs forums que l’action politique et démocratique mène à une impasse et qu’il est temps de créer un choc et mener une révolution au sein de la société norvégienne. Sans parler ouvertement de son acte. En 2008, voire 2007, il pense déjà à commettre un tel attentat.

Il a loué cette ferme voici deux ans, uniquement pour qu’elle lui serve de couverture. Nullement pour subvenir à ses besoins, mais pour lui permettre d’acheter des engrais chimiques sans attirer l’attention. On sait par son journal intime qu’il avait terminé de fabriquer les engins explosifs vers le mois de mai. Il a alors attendu le moment favorable, cette réunion des jeunes du Parti travailliste où devait se rendre, avant finalement d’annuler, le Premier ministre.

Un phénomène contemporain ?

Pensez-vous que les meurtres de masse sont des phénomènes de notre époque ?

Tout à fait. Le phénomène est amplifié par les nouvelles technologies, notamment Internet. Depuis Columbine, les tueurs laissent tous un testament numérique. On a retrouvé de nombreuses vidéos où ils se mettent en scène, apprennent à tirer. Où ils tiennent un journal de bord. Idem pour le massacre de Virginia Tech, qui a fait une trentaine de victimes en 2007. Idem avec les deux tueurs allemands dans deux écoles (Erfurt en 2002, Winnenden en 2009, ndlr). Idem pour le tueur finlandais de Kauhajoki en 2008, etc.

Depuis le massacre de Colombine, c’est pareil pour tous les tueurs de masse : on laisse un testament en vidéo ou un long post sur un blog. C’est assez frappant. C’est un crime d’imitation. D’ailleurs, j’ajoute que les médias sont également un peu responsables de la prolifération de ce type d’acte criminel en raison de la place qu’ils accordent à ces criminels. Si, par exemple, les médias décidaient de ne jamais publier l’identité des auteurs ni leur texte ou leur vidéo, je pense qu’on verrait une réduction de ce type d’actes criminels. Ce que veulent ces individus, c’est passer à la postérité, or si on ne publie pas leur identité, la frustration sera extrême. La mégalomanie et le narcissisme d’un personnage comme Anders Breivik est éloquent ! Il voulait apparaître en uniforme lors d’un procès public, pour montrer au monde entier sa puissance.

Ils savent ce qui va se passer après les meurtres et s’en délectent à l’avance, comme se délecte Anders Breivik à l’idée de son procès, qui devrait se tenir d’ici un an et demi.

Ne peut-on pas y avoir une délectation d’ordre sexuel ?

Si, sans doute. J’ai interrogé quelques tueurs de masse survivants qui m’ont dit que quand ils abattaient leurs victimes, ils agissaient comme des sortes de robots et qu’ils en ressentaient une poussée d’adrénaline mais aussi une jouissance immense. Donc, on peut penser que ces meurtres peuvent avoir une connotation sexuelle. De toute façon, c’est un désir de toute puissance. Celle-ci peut s’obtenir par le sexe ou d’autres moyens.

De la même façon, les tueurs en série ne sont pas intéressés par le sexe en lui-même mais par l’envie d’humilier, de dominer leurs victimes.

Et pourquoi seuls des hommes sont-ils concernés ?

Sur 113 cas en vingt ans, il n’y a que deux femmes. Parce que les femmes ne sont pas fascinées par les armes à feu, ne vont pas ou peu s’adonner à des jeux vidéo violents, ne vont pas s’amuser à se déguiser en policier ou en soldat. Et il y a aussi fort peu de femmes tueuses en série.

Je me permets de revenir sur les jeux vidéo. La polémique rejaillit, comme à chaque fois en pareil cas, autour de la responsabilité des jeux vidéo. J’ai cru comprendre que vous les jugiez responsables ?

Une agence de presse a quelque peu exagéré et déformé mes propos. Ce que j’ai exactement dit sur le profil-type du tueur de masse, c’est que sur les 113 cas en vingt ans, 108 s’adonnaient quotidiennement voire parfois des heures entières à des jeux vidéo violents. Mais j’ajoutais, bien sûr, que ce n’est pas le fait de jouer à des jeux vidéo violents qui fait qu’on devient un tueur de masse.

Comme pour les tueurs en série, on retrouve la plupart du temps des cas de maltraitances physiques ou psychologiques et d’abandon parental, mais ce n’est parce qu’on est un enfant abandonné qui subit des maltraitances qu’on est un serial killer. Il y en aurait malheureusement des milliers. J’ajoutais aussi que pour un adolescent qui souffre de troubles psychiatriques ou psychologiques, le fait de s’adonner de manière frénétique à des jeux vidéo violents pouvait le mener à une désensibilisation à la violence. C’est exactement ce que j’ai dit.

> Stéphane Bourgoin est analyste au Centre international de sciences criminelles et pénales. Auteur de nombreux ouvrages sur les tueurs, il vient de publier aux éditions Grasset Serial Killers, enquête mondiale sur les tueurs en série. Il est également libraire et tient la librairie Au 3ème oeil.

Attentats de Boston: C’est l’islam, imbécile ! (Have Koran, will kill: Muslims of the world, unite!)

L’erreur est toujours de raisonner dans les catégories de la « différence », alors que la racine de tous les conflits, c’est plutôt la « concurrence », la rivalité mimétique entre des êtres, des pays, des cultures. La concurrence, c’est-à-dire le désir d’imiter l’autre pour obtenir la même chose que lui, au besoin par la violence. Sans doute le terrorisme est-il lié à un monde « différent » du nôtre, mais ce qui suscite le terrorisme n’est pas dans cette « différence » qui l’éloigne le plus de nous et nous le rend inconcevable. Il est au contraire dans un désir exacerbé de convergence et de ressemblance. (…) Ce qui se vit aujourd’hui est une forme de rivalité mimétique à l’échelle planétaire. (…) Ce sentiment n’est pas vrai des masses, mais des dirigeants. Sur le plan de la fortune personnelle, on sait qu’un homme comme Ben Laden n’a rien à envier à personne. Et combien de chefs de parti ou de faction sont dans cette situation intermédiaire, identique à la sienne. Regardez un Mirabeau au début de la Révolution française : il a un pied dans un camp et un pied dans l’autre, et il n’en vit que de manière plus aiguë son ressentiment. Aux Etats-Unis, des immigrés s’intègrent avec facilité, alors que d’autres, même si leur réussite est éclatante, vivent aussi dans un déchirement et un ressentiment permanents. Parce qu’ils sont ramenés à leur enfance, à des frustrations et des humiliations héritées du passé. Cette dimension est essentielle, en particulier chez des musulmans qui ont des traditions de fierté et un style de rapports individuels encore proche de la féodalité. (…) Cette concurrence mimétique, quand elle est malheureuse, ressort toujours, à un moment donné, sous une forme violente. A cet égard, c’est l’islam qui fournit aujourd’hui le ciment qu’on trouvait autrefois dans le marxisme. René Girard

While it is critical that we don’t jump to conclusions by associating religious affiliation with militancy, there is no doubt that embracing an ideology of Islam that promotes extremism and violence has been a motivator for terrorism, from assassinated al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Army Major Nidal Hasan. Did such an ideology influence the Tsarnaev brothers? Who or what compelled them to violence? What role does Muslim culture play in this type of radicalization? Rather than worrying about being politically correct, we have to be comfortable asking these difficult questions. And the collectivist-minded Muslim community needs to learn an important lesson from Tsarni: It’s time to acknowledge the dishonor of terrorism within our communities, not to deny it because of shame. As we negotiate critical issues of ethnicity, religious ideology and identity as potential motivators for conflict, we have to establish basic facts. (…) The bombing suspects, "put a shame on the entire Chechnyan ethnicity,” he said. (…) To me, the answer lies inside a culture shift where we honestly acknowledge the radicalization problems within our communities … Asra Q. Nomani

Nous ne savons pas si Hitler est sur le point de fonder un nouvel islam. Il est d’ores et déjà sur la voie; il ressemble à Mahomet. L’émotion en Allemagne est islamique, guerrière et islamique. Ils sont tous ivres d’un dieu farouche. Jung (1939)

Notre lutte est une lutte à mort. Ernesto Guevara (décembre 1964)

Il faut mener la guerre jusqu’où l’ennemi la mène: chez lui, dans ses lieux d’amusement; il faut la faire totalement. Ernesto Guevara (avril 1967)

Kidnapper des personnages célèbres pour leurs activités artistiques, sportives ou autres et qui n’ont pas exprimé d’opinions politiques peut vraisemblablement constituer une forme de propagande favorable aux révolutionnaires. ( …) Les médias modernes, par le simple fait qu’ils publient ce que font les révolutionnaires, sont d’importants instruments de propagande. La guerre des nerfs, ou guerre psychologique, est une technique de combat reposant sur l’emploi direct ou indirect des médias de masse. (…) Les attaques de banques, les embuscades, les désertions et les détournements d’armes, l’aide à l’évasion de prisonniers, les exécutions, les enlèvements, les sabotages, les actes terroristes et la guerre des nerfs sont des exemples. Les détournements d’avions en vol, les attaques et les prises de navires et de trains par les guérilleros peuvent également ne viser qu’à des effets de propagande. Carlos Marighela (Minimanuel de guerilla urbaine, 1969)

Je suis et demeure un combattant révolutionnaire. Et la Révolution aujourd’hui est, avant tout, islamique. Illich Ramirez Sanchez (dit Carlos, 2004)

Nous avons constaté que le sport était la religion moderne du monde occidental. Nous savions que les publics anglais et américain assis devant leur poste de télévision ne regarderaient pas un programme exposant le sort des Palestiniens s’il y avait une manifestation sportive sur une autre chaîne. Nous avons donc décidé de nous servir des Jeux olympiques, cérémonie la plus sacrée de cette religion, pour obliger le monde à faire attention à nous. Nous avons offert des sacrifices humains à vos dieux du sport et de la télévision et ils ont répondu à nos prières. Terroriste palestinien (Jeux olympiques de Munich, 1972)

Comme au bon vieux temps de la Terreur, quand les gens venaient assister aux exécutions à la guillotine sur la place publique. Maintenant, c’est par médias interposés que la mort fait vibrer les émotions (…) Les médias filment la mort comme les réalisateurs de X filment les ébats sexuels. Bernard Dugué

Il est malheureux que le Moyen-Orient ait rencontré pour la première fois la modernité occidentale à travers les échos de la Révolution française. Progressistes, égalitaristes et opposés à l’Eglise, Robespierre et les jacobins étaient des héros à même d’inspirer les radicaux arabes. Les modèles ultérieurs — Italie mussolinienne, Allemagne nazie, Union soviétique — furent encore plus désastreux. Ce qui rend l’entreprise terroriste des islamistes aussi dangereuse, ce n’est pas tant la haine religieuse qu’ils puisent dans des textes anciens — souvent au prix de distorsions grossières —, mais la synthèse qu’ils font entre fanatisme religieux et idéologie moderne. Ian Buruma et Avishai Margalit

Hors de la Première guerre mondiale est venue une série de révoltes contre la civilisation libérale. Ces révoltes accusaient la civilisation libérale d’être non seulement hypocrite ou en faillite, mais d’être en fait la grande source du mal ou de la souffrance dans le monde. (…) [Avec] une fascination pathologique pour la mort de masse [qui] était elle-même le fait principal de la Première guerre mondiale, dans laquelle 9 ou 10 millions de personnes ont été tués sur une base industrielle. Et chacun des nouveaux mouvements s’est mis à reproduire cet événement au nom de leur opposition utopique aux complexités et aux incertitudes de la civilisation libérale. Les noms de ces mouvements ont changé comme les traits qu’ils ont manifestés – l’un s’est appelé bolchévisme, et un autre s’est appelé fascisme, un autre s’est appelé nazisme. (…) De même que les progressistes européens et américains doutaient des menaces de Hitler et de Staline, les Occidentaux éclairés sont aujourd’hui en danger de manquer l’urgence des idéologies violentes issues du monde musulman. Paul Berman

Comme jadis avec le communisme, l’Occident se retrouve sous surveillance idéologique. L’islam se présente, à l’image du défunt communisme, comme une alternative au monde occidental. À l’instar du communisme d’autrefois, l’islam, pour conquérir les esprits, joue sur une corde sensible. Il se targue d’une légitimité qui trouble la conscience occidentale, attentive à autrui : être la voix des pauvres de la planète. Hier, la voix des pauvres prétendait venir de Moscou, aujourd’hui elle viendrait de La Mecque ! (…) Aujourd’hui à nouveau, des intellectuels incarnent cet oeil du Coran, comme ils incarnaient l’oeil de Moscou hier. Ils excommunient pour islamophobie, comme hier pour anticommunisme. À l’identique de feu le communisme, l’islam tient la générosité, l’ouverture d’esprit, la tolérance, la douceur, la liberté de la femme et des moeurs, les valeurs démocratiques, pour des marques de décadence. Ce sont des faiblesses qu’il veut exploiter au moyen «d’idiots utiles», les bonnes consciences imbues de bons sentiments, afin d’imposer l’ordre coranique au monde occidental lui-même. Robert Redeker

Des millions de Faisal Shahzad sont déstabilisés par un monde moderne qu’ils ne peuvent ni maîtriser ni rejeter. (…) Le jeune homme qui avait fait tous ses efforts pour acquérir la meilleure éducation que pouvait lui offrir l’Amérique avant de succomber à l’appel du jihad a fait place au plus atteint des schizophrènes. Les villes surpeuplées de l’Islam – de Karachi et Casablanca au Caire – et ces villes d’Europe et d’Amérique du Nord où la diaspora islamique est maintenant présente en force ont des multitudes incalculables d’hommes comme Faisal Shahzad. C’est une longue guerre crépusculaire, la lutte contre l’Islamisme radical. Nul vœu pieu, nulle stratégie de « gain des coeurs et des esprits », nulle grande campagne d’information n’en viendront facilement à bout. L’Amérique ne peut apaiser cette fureur accumulée. Ces hommes de nulle part – Shahzad Faisal, Malik Nidal Hasan, l’émir renégat né en Amérique Anwar Awlaki qui se terre actuellement au Yémen et ceux qui leur ressemblent – sont une race de combattants particulièrement dangereux dans ce nouveau genre de guerre. La modernité les attire et les ébranle à la fois. L’Amérique est tout en même temps l’objet de leurs rêves et le bouc émissaire sur lequel ils projettent leurs malignités les plus profondes. Fouad Ajami

Le problème de fond, c’est qu’aujourd’hui, en sus de cette crise d’identité des minorités hybrides, il existe une crise d’identité plus générale de l’Europe et des États-Unis. Une forme d’anxiété profonde face à l’afflux d’immigrants. En Amérique, un pays qui s’est bâti sur l’immigration, le sentiment général à l’égard des immigrés est en train de changer, se rapprochant de ce qu’il est en Europe. Depuis le 11 Septembre, les musulmans américains deviennent une minorité qui fait peur. Cette peur est le résultat de notre ère globalisée. Dans les pays musulmans, la peur de l’hybride croît également. De la même manière que l’Europe et l’Amérique se sentent physiquement menacées par une invasion musulmane, les populations conservatrices du Pakistan se sentent, elles, menacées par l’invasion du mode de pensée et de vie américain et européen. C’est la raison pour laquelle, l’an dernier, 3 000 personnes ont été tuées par les terroristes en terre pakistanaise. N’oublions jamais que la vraie bataille entre l’islam radical et le reste du monde se déroule là-bas. Mohsin Hamid

Humanity makes the gravest of errors and risks losing its account of morals, if it makes America its example. Sayyid Qutb

This is the very spirit in which the crowds visit the art museums, passing rapidly through the halls and the exhibits in a way that does not suggest any enjoyment or love of these works [of art]. In just the same way they go (individually and in groups) to get a rapid view of natural spectacles. Passing by places and spectacles at the cars’ top speed, they collect conversational material and also comply with the natural American inclination toward collection and enumeration. At the beginning of my stay in America, I would hear that one of them had visited X cities and countries and sights and spectacles and had gone X miles in his tourist journeys and knew X friends, so that I was astonished at this capacity for producing such things and wished that I were capable of any of it! Then I discovered afterward how all these marvels took place… One of them drives his car on a journey, alone or with his family or friends. He races it at top speed, taking it through cities and over distances, passing by sights and spectacles, while recording in his notebook the names and the mileage… Then he returns, and see! he has seen all of it, and he has the right to converse about it! As for friends, it is enough that one be invited to get-acquainted parties. There he encounters their faces for the first time, and the host acquaints him with the attendees one by one (men as well as women), and he asks whoever of them wish to do so to write down their names and addresses, and so they in turn do with him. After some time, his notebook is full of names and addresses. And see! he has a great number of friends (men and women), and perhaps he is even victorious in the competition undertaken in pursuit of this goal. How great, how strange are the competitions here! Thus your knowledge and your culture are often measured by how much you have read and watched and heard. It is the same as the way that your material riches are calculated by the quantity and amount of the cash and real property that you own: without any distinctions!

The only art in which the Americans are proficient—although there are other [peoples] who still surpass them in it as far as artistry goes—is the art of the cinema. This is natural and logical given the phenomenon that makes the American unique: the height of industrial proficiency combined with primitiveness of artistic feelings. In the cinema this phenomenon is very much manifest. By its nature, the cinematic art does not rise to the loftiest regions of the arts—music, drawing, sculpture, and poetry—nor for that matter to the [level of the] art of the theater, although in the cinema the possibilities for artistic craft and the possibilities of production are much greater. And in terms of originality, the art of production in the cinema has gotten only as far as the farthest point reached by the art of photography. Moreover, some distance remains between it and (for example) the art of the theater, just as some distance remains too between depiction by photography and depiction by a [painter’s] brush. In the latter is expressed genius of feelings; in the former, expertise of craft. The cinema is the popular art of the multitudes, so it is the art in which one finds expertise, proficiency, magnification, and approximation. By its nature it relies more on expertise than on the artistic spirit… in it the American genius can exercise creativity… yet despite this, English, French, Russian, and German film all remain superior to American film, although they are inferior to it in craft and expertise. In the great majority of American films, one sees manifestly primitive subjects and primitive excitement; this is true of police/crime films and cowboy films. As for high, skillful films, such as “Gone with the Wind,” “Wuthering Heights,” “The Song of Bernadette,” and such, they are few in comparison with what America produces. Such American film as does reach Egypt or the Arab countries does not resemble this family, since the majority of it comes from among the superior, rare American films. And those people who visit the regions of the land in America are those who reach that tiny family of valuable films. Sayyid Qutb

The core problem with the United States, for Qutb, was not something Americans did, but simply what America was—“the New World…is spellbinding.” It was more than a land of pleasures without limit. In America, unlike in Egypt, dreams could come true. Qutb understood the danger this posed: America’s dazzle had the power to blind people to the real zenith of civilization, which for Qutb began with Muhammad in the seventh century and reached its apex in the Middle Ages, carried triumphantly by Muslim armies. David Von Drehle

Qutb (…)  judges Americans on a range of social and moral characteristics—including their sexual mores, their political history, and their attitudes towards religion, sports, art, and death—and generally finds them wanting. Most striking about the article is Qutb’s adherence to a standard of “human values” rather than specifically “Islamic values.” Qutb never elaborates this standard explicitly, but in general his theme seems to be that human beings should strive to attain high-minded, civilized, and spiritual values rather than bestial, primitive, and sensual ones. American society, in Qutb’s view, tends toward the latter. Daniel Burns

Ils ont tué des gens parce que l’Islam leur donne l’autorisation théologique d’utiliser la violence contre les infidèles dont l’existence menace l’hégémonie islamique légitimée par Allah. (…) Le manque d’éducation et d’opportunité économique existe dans le monde entier, mais les chrétiens africains et les animistes ou les hindous indiens, et les Bouddhistes ne commettent pas d’actes terroristes n’importe où et à la même fréquence que les musulmans. Beaucoup de personnes dans le monde vivent sous des dictateurs oppressifs qui violent régulièrement les droits de l’homme, et ils ne se tournent pas pour autant vers le terrorisme contre les étrangers, en réponse. Les Tibétains n’enfilent pas des gilets pour kamikazes et ne bombardent pas des marathoniens. Il y a des millions et des millions de pauvres partout dans le monde, ils ne tuent pas aveuglément des gens innocents dans les pays éloignés de leur domicile. Bruce Thornton

Alors qu’au lendemain de l’attentat aveugle et purement anti-civils de Boston suivi ou précédé, de la France à l’Espagne et au Canada, par plusieurs autres tentatives déjouées (dont une, signe encourageant, avec l’aide d’un imam) …

Comment ne pas voir, avec le chroniqueur américain Bruce Thornton, l’incroyable aveuglement de nos belles âmes devant l’évidence …

De ce nouveau ciment de toutes les violences (plus de 20.000 depuis le 11 Septembre) qu’est devenu, remplaçant le marxisme d’hier, l’islam ?

Et, depuis le voyage en Amérique d’un de leurs premièrs théoriciens, l’Egyptien  Sayyid Qutb dans les années 50, de cette haine pure et simple, tout en profitant de ses largesses, de la civilisation occidentale incarnée par l’Amérique ?

llusions sur la raison pour laquelle des frères musulmans tuent

Bruce Thornton

Middle East and Terrorism

Adapté en français par Hanna Lévy

israel-chronique-en-ligne.over-blog.com

21 Avril 2013

Malgré les vœux fervents des médias progressistes et du fantaisiste David Sirota, qui espérait que le coupable soit un « homme blanc », il s’avère que les terroristes qui ont bombardé le Marathon de Boston, n’étaient pas blancs, ni le Tea Party, ni des frondeurs amers haïssant les impôts, mais des Musulmans tchéchènes. Quelle surprise ! Comme disent les Français. Nous allons maintenant, commencer à entendre toutes les interprétations de justification pour leur acte, dont peu exposeront l’évidence : Ils ont tué des gens parce que l’Islam leur donne l’autorisation théologique d’utiliser la violence contre les infidèles dont l’existence menace l’hégémonie islamique légitimée par Allah.

Bien sûr, pour les matérialistes laïques et les experts de gauche, dont les esprits sont pourvus d’idées, de clichés banals, tels que le fait de dire, que c’est un discours de haine islamophobe. Que seul le christianisme et le judaïsme mènent à la violence, aux croisades et au sionisme. Que l’Islam est « la religion de paix et de tolérance », qui a créé la Renaissance et a traité les Juifs et les Chrétiens avec bonté. Que si les Musulmans agissent avec violence – plus de 20.000 attaques violentes depuis le 11 Septembre – c’est parce qu’ils doivent avoir été provoqué par le mauvais comportement de l’Occident : le colonialisme, l’impérialisme, l’avidité pour le pétrole, le soutien à Israël, le non-respect de l’Islam et de Mohammed, la guerre contre le terrorisme qui a diabolisé les Musulmans. Ou, parce que les terroristes sont créés par les inégalités et les coûts du capitalisme mondial, qui ne donnent que peu de possibilités éducatives ou économiques aux jeunes gens musulmans, créant chez eux frustration et désespoir, ce qui les poussent à se tourner vers un schisme déformé de l’Islam en soulagement. Ou, parce qu’ils sont les produits de régimes politiques oppressifs qui limitent leur liberté, violent leurs droits de l’homme et étouffent leurs aspirations.

Nous avons entendu toutes ces explications venant de gauche comme de droite depuis plus d’une décennie. Ce que nous n’avons pas vu, c’est la preuve que cela soit réellement le cas. L’histoire ne fournit aucune preuve que les prétendus péchés de la politique étrangère américaine prédominent sur les avantages tangibles démontrables de nos actions aux Musulmans. L’Amérique n’a jamais eu de colonie dans les terres musulmanes, et en effet,  après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, a résisté aux tentatives françaises et britanniques de réaffirmer leur autorité sur leurs anciennes colonies, plus manifestement dans la crise de Suez de 1956. Depuis lors, les États-Unis ont armé les Afghans et les ont aidé à chasser les Soviétiques, ils ont sauvé le Koweït et l’Arabie Saoudite des griffes du sadique psychopathe Saddam Hussein, ils ont bombardé les Serbes chrétiens pour sauver les Kosovars et les Bosniaques musulmans, ils ont libéré les Chiites irakiens des mains de Saddam Hussein, ils ont libéré les Afghans de la brutalité des Talibans, ils ont versé des milliards de dollars d’aide à des régimes terroristes palestiniens, ils ont utilisé leurs avions pour aidé les Musulmans en Libye afin de les libérer du psychotique Kadhafi, et ils ont soutenu la parole et les inventions des djihadistes, des Frères musulmans d’Égypte, antisémites et haïssant l’Amérique, afin que les Musulmans puissent jouir de la « liberté et la démocratie ».

Et ce n’est pas tout ! Nous avons sans cesse manifesté notre respect pour la merveilleuse foi islamique, nous avons censuré nos communications officielles et nos programmes de formation pour supprimer toute référence au djihadisme ou à la théologie islamique qui justifie la guerre sainte, nous avons parlé avec pudeur des attaques djihadistes comme pour les meurtres de Fort Hood « violence en milieu du travail », nous avons invité de modestes Imams à prier à la Maison Blanche, nous avons rempli nos écoles avec des programmes faisant l’éloge de l’Islam et de ses contributions à la civilisation, nous avons sermonné et poursuivi des auteurs ou dessinateurs qui exerçaient leur droit au premier amendement, critiquer l’Islam, nous avons abandonné le « profilage » en tant que technique permettant d’identifier d’éventuels terroristes tentant de monter dans un avion ou entrer dans le pays, nous avons employé comme conseillers auprès du FBI, du Pentagone et de la CIA, des Musulmans apologistes, qui recyclent des mensonges éhontés et déforment les faits – nous avons fait tout ceci pour cette libération musulmane, pour eux, pour leur foi, et ils ne nous aiment toujours pas, ils veulent toujours nous tuer !

Cette déconnexion entre notre prétendu mauvais comportement et les motivations des djihadistes est particulièrement évidente dans le cas des terroristes de Boston. Si les Musulmans tchéchènes ont quelque chose à reprocher à quelqu’un, c’est aux Russes. Quand le terrorisme djihadiste est devenu un problème en Tchéchènie, il n’y a eu ni « cœurs, ni esprits » pour des campagnes de sensibilisation, aucune sollicitude, aucune aide de l’étranger, aucune excuse pour ses péchés passés, aucun respect scrupuleux des lois de la guerre, des conventions de Genève ou des droits de l’homme, aucun tribunal d’Imam pour donner un aperçu de la magnificence de l’Islam. Les Russes ont employé la torture, l’assassinat, les représailles collectives, et pour finir ont encerclé Grozny avec l’artillerie et l’ont laissé en ruines. Au cours des deux guerres de Tchétchénie, les Russes ont tué environ 150.000 personnes. En fait, la Russie a tué des Musulmans depuis le 18ème siècle et ont occupé des terres musulmanes en Asie centrale pendant 80 ans sous l’Union soviétique. Alors, dites-moi, M. le Sénateur Rand Paul ou M. le Secrétaire à la Défense Chuck Hagel, si notre mauvaise conduite de politique étrangère explique la haine djihadiste, comment se fait-il que deux siècles de violence russe contre les Musulmans soient ignorés, que tout notre sang et notre argent dépensé pour libérer et aider les Musulmans n’aient aucune importance ?

Les autres justifications de la violence musulmane ne sont pas plus convaincantes. Le manque d’éducation et d’opportunité économique existe dans le monde entier, mais les chrétiens africains et les animistes ou les Hindous indiens, et les Bouddhistes ne commettent pas d’actes terroristes n’importe où et à la même fréquence que les Musulmans. Beaucoup de personnes dans le monde vivent sous des dictateurs oppressifs qui violent régulièrement les droits de l’homme, et ils ne se tournent pas pour autant vers le terrorisme contre les étrangers, en réponse. Les Tibétains n’enfilent pas des gilets pour kamikazes et ne bombardent pas des marathoniens. Il y a des millions et des millions de pauvres partout dans le monde, ils ne tuent pas aveuglément des gens innocents dans les pays éloignés de leur domicile. Chaque excuse à la violence musulmane s’effondre sous le poids de ces faits. Pendant ce temps, la cause commune à tous ces tueurs – riches ou pauvres, instruits ou pas, politiquement opprimés ou non – est l’Islam, et préventivement le rejet de l’explication de la violence.

Cet « aveuglement volontaire », comme l’appelle Andy McCarthy, est devenu dangereux. Il reflète l’arrogance du matérialisme laïc, qui a écarté la religion comme un simple choix de style de vie, d’habitude bénin – à moins que vous ne parliez d’un criminel armé, d’un raciste, d’un misogyne, d’un chrétien évangélique homophobe ou raciste, de l’accaparement de terres par des Juifs sionistes. Non, il s’agit d’un traumatisme psychologique causé par la mondialisation ou l’islamophobie ou des insultes insensibles à Mohammed ou l’oppression des Palestiniens par Israël ou quoique ce soit d’autre que les passages dans le Coran, les hadiths et 14 siècles de jurisprudence islamique et de théologie, qui clairement et systématiquement définissent la doctrine du djihad violent contre les infidèles.

Attendez-vous donc, dans les prochaines semaines au même retour de flamme du vieux commentaire sur la politique étrangère ou à un soupçon d’analyses psychologiques personnelles ou des commentaires sur les péchés d’Israël et les guerres de Bush ou des commentaires sur l’intolérance et la xénophobie américaine ou sur notre besoin de « tendre la main » et  de « s’engager » et de « respecter » et de « comprendre » les fanatiques qui ne veulent pas de notre aide, de notre tolérance ou de notre respect, mais nos morts. En bref, il faut s’attendre à ce que les djihadistes pensent que nous sommes faibles et corrompus et que nous méritons donc de mourir.

Voir aussi:

Muslims have a problem. Uncle Ruslan may have the answer.

Asra Nomani

Washington post

April 23

In Reef flip flops, blue jeans and a Calvin Klein polo shirt, Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, strode down the driveway of his Federalist-style home last week in Montgomery Village, Md., an upper middle-class Washington, D.C. suburb, past a ground cover of purple wisteria blooming in his front yard and pink tulips across the street.

In the next few minutes, the uncle to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, accomplished something that 11 years of post-9/11 press releases, news conferences and soundbites by too many American Muslim leaders has failed to do on the issue of radicalization and terrorism: with raw, unfettered emotion, he owned up to the problem within.

Instead of being silenced by what they did, he openly said that his nephews had brought “shame” on the family with their actions. This is the same kind of “shame off,” as one admirer later called it, that protesters to the gang rape in India have to win: Are we shamed into silence? Or do we confront the serious issues that shame us?

Hands clasped tightly in front of him, Uncle Ruslan faced off against a pack of about 30 journalists, cameras pointing at him, microphones stuck in front of him, questions about his nephews thrown at him:

“When was the last time you saw them?” He answered: December 2005. Another journalist asked: “What do you think provoked this?” “Umm, being losers! Hatred to those who were able to settle themselves!” he shouted. “These are the only reasons I can imagine. Anything else to do with religion, to do with Islam, is a fraud, is a fake.”

As an American Muslim who has watched the radicalization of Muslims from Louisville, Ky., to Chatanooga, Tenn., to Chechnya, the ancestral ethnicity of the alleged bombers, over the last three decades, I had one question on my mind.

I asked softly: “Is your family Muslim?”

The uncle didn’t hear me well: “Huh?”

I repeated my question: “Is your family Muslim?”

The question was one other journalists later admitted to me that they wondered but didn’t dare ask, the proverbial elephant in the room, only at that moment, on a cul-de-sac with manicured lawns, playground sets and helicopters and Canadian geese overhead. In Washington, D.C., leaders of national American Muslim organizations filled a room at the National Press Club and issued their flat, blanket rebuttals: Islam doesn’t sanction violence, and it doesn’t allow terrorism. When the New York Post made the mistake of writing that a Saudi witness was actually a suspect, bloggers and others took advantage of the opportunity to chortle over the mistake as just one more horrible example of stereotyping.

While it is critical that we don’t jump to conclusions by associating religious affiliation with militancy, there is no doubt that embracing an ideology of Islam that promotes extremism and violence has been a motivator for terrorism, from assassinated al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Army Major Nidal Hasan.

Did such an ideology influence the Tsarnaev brothers? Who or what compelled them to violence? What role does Muslim culture play in this type of radicalization?

Rather than worrying about being politically correct, we have to be comfortable asking these difficult questions. And the collectivist-minded Muslim community needs to learn an important lesson from Tsarni: It’s time to acknowledge the dishonor of terrorism within our communities, not to deny it because of shame. As we negotiate critical issues of ethnicity, religious ideology and identity as potential motivators for conflict, we have to establish basic facts.

So when I asked about his faith, Tsarni heard me. And he did something remarkable. He didn’t flinch.

“We are Muslims,” he answered clearly and steely-eyed. “We are Chechnyans. We are ethnic Chechnyans.”

Had the boys gotten radicalized, I wondered. The stories of so many—from Richard Reid, the “shoebomber,” to Faisal Shahzad, the alleged Time Square bomber–have included radicalization. The Boston area mosques haven’t been immune. “Do you think that they got radicalized in the mosques in that area?” I asked.

What I heard I couldn’t believe, I’ve become so used to the tactics of deflection. He looked me straight in the eye, and he said, “…most likely somebody radicalized them. But it’s not my brother, who just moved back to Russia, who spent his life bringing bread to their table, fixing cars, fixing cars.”

What happened when this Muslim American looked us in the eye and admitted the problem?

Tsarni became “Uncle Ruslan” to millions of Americans watching him on TV and later online, winning their respect, first, with apologies and then, with his hands clenched, fierce indignation, outrage and anger over the suspected role of his nephews as the Boston Marathon bombers. And there was his color too: Still using AOL when most don’t even know it still exits, scolding Dzhokhar to turn himself in.

The uncle stunned seasoned reporters, some of them veterans of the trials in Guantanamo Bay and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with his straight talk. First, he expressed his condolences to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings and, then, declared loud and clear that his nephews brought “shame” on his family and the people of Chechnya, the family’s ethnicity: “Yes, of course, we’re ashamed. We’re ashamed. They’re children of my brother, who had little influence of them!” Later on Dzhokhar: “He put a shame on the entire Chechnyan ethnicity!” According to public records, Uncle Ruslan shared the same last name as his nephews but shortened it .

With close-cropped hair, a strong jawline and fit physique, the attorney became an accidental spokesman, instilling confidence as a truth-teller.

Admirers have created memes, or images, of his face, contorted in rage, revealing just how effective he has been in instilling confidence.

One meme headline: “Uncle Ruslan. Mosque Board Chairman 2013.”

His effectiveness reveals that the best crisis management doesn’t require intellectual gymnastic but just plain, honest talk: We have a problem. We know it. And we want to do right. Another “Uncle Ruslan” meme reads, “If you can believe it I have had no media training.” Yet another, “First time public speaking. Nailed it.”

“Uncle Ruslan” proved that folks can handle nuance. “It was wild, dramatic, angry, over-the-top,” wrote Washington Post blogger Alexandra Petri. She added: “People like Uncle Ruslan remind us that it’s the apples, not the barrel.”

She concluded: “Thank you. This was a moment we all needed.”

In this family lies the dichotomy of cross-cultural communication patterns confronting Muslim communities, just like other traditional societies. Many parts of Muslim society hold to traditional cultures which are shame-based; people “save face” to hide “shameful” acts. That’s what we heard from the brothers’ parents and aunt, Patemat Sulemanova.

While her brother said the nephews had shamed their family, Sulemanova, in Canada, told reporters she didn’t believe her nephews were involved in the bombings: “Convince me,” she said.

In Russia, Zubeidat Tsarnaev said her older son got involved in “religious politics” five years ago, but she refused to believe her sons were involved in the bombings, saying the FBI had visited her years earlier, troubled about Tamerlan’s activities, but that the FBI was in “the control” her older son’s activities. “He never told me he would be on the side of jihad,” she said. Typical of the failure of this posture of denial and conspiracy theories, a CNN reporter called it “a rant.”

Also in Russia, the alleged bombers’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev, called his brother “a great attorney,” but said he couldn’t believe his sons were involved. “I’m always telling them study, study, study,” he said. “Someone framed them.”

But back in America, Uncle Ruslan was winning in the court of public opinion.

And it was stunning to see how he acknowledged the shame openly but didn’t allow it to silence his criticism.

The bombing suspects, "put a shame on the entire Chechnyan ethnicity,” he said.

Earlier, Tsarni had told the Associated Press: “When I was speaking to the older one, he started all this religious talk, ‘Insh’allah’ and all that, and I asked him, ‘Where is all that coming from?’” Insh’allah is the Arabic phrase that means “God willing.”

What Tsarni is admitting is something true but politically incorrect to talk about: the increasing use of these phrases of religiosity are code inside the community for someone who is becoming hardcore. It doesn’t mean that they’re becoming violent or criminal, but it’s a red flag. In 2004, when I spoke about women’s rights at mosques at the Islamic Society of North America conference in Chicago, a young Muslim man stood at the microphone during the Q&A and scolded me for not saying an honorific, “Peace be upon him,” whenever I mentioned the name of the prophet Muhammad. He later sent me an electronic death threat I turned over to the FBI. It’s a game of trying to out-Muslim a Muslim.

Instead of playing that game, Uncle Ruslan did something remarkable. He put his hands together as if in prayer, and he showed humility, not defensive arrogance, saying he’d prostrate himself before the victims of the Boston bombings.

Ameen, as “amen” is said in Arabic and Muslim culture, to Uncle Ruslan. I believe it’s time for us American Muslims to take collective responsibility, rather than issue collective denial. That’s the attitude that cultivates confidence and fosters safety—for all.

With his passions expressed, Uncle Ruslan begged his goodbyes. Journalists remained in formation on the street outside the house, one eating a quick Subway sandwich on the lawn outside, another dragging a wicker chair from a neighbor’s garbage, before a cop reprimanded him. Suddenly, Tsarni emerged. Coming down the stairs onto the driveway he turned to walk toward the end of the cul-de-sac. Reporters and camera crews hustled to catch up. He pleaded with them: “What are you expecting from me? I’m just going to my neighbors to apologize to them for the discomfort my family has caused them.”

Rather than waiting for an invitation to RSVP to a superfluous “interfaith” dinner, Uncle Ruslan did something simple but crucial: He extended an invitation, was a good neighbor and took responsibility for the trouble that emerged in his front yard. In short, he owned up.

Surely, the Tsaernev family story is complicated, and there is nobody without flaw.

But Uncle Ruslan showed us where to begin.

With reporters still camped out , he emerged from his neighbor’s porch, his arm around the older music teacher who lived there, leading her warmly into his house. Hundreds of miles away, Boston Police drew close to bringing his nephew into custody, leaving Uncle Ruslan, the rest of Tsaernev family and our Muslim communities to do some real soul-searching about how we lost these boys to the ideology of terrorism.

To me, the answer lies inside a culture shift where we honestly acknowledge the radicalization problems within our communities—so that no Uncle Ruslan has to step outside his home, confessing to something gone very, very wrong.

Asra Q. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is a mother and the author of “Standing Alone: A Muslim Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam.”

Voir également:

A Lesson In Hate

How an Egyptian student came to study 1950s America and left determined to wage holy war

David Von Drehle

Smithsonian magazine

February 2006,

Before Sayyid Qutb became a leading theorist of violent jihad, he was a little-known Egyptian writer sojourning in the United States, where he attended a small teachers college on the Great Plains. Greeley, Colorado, circa 1950 was the last place one might think to look for signs of American decadence. Its wide streets were dotted with churches, and there wasn’t a bar in the whole temperate town. But the courtly Qutb (COO-tub) saw things that others did not. He seethed at the brutishness of the people around him: the way they salted their watermelon and drank their tea unsweetened and watered their lawns. He found the muscular football players appalling and despaired of finding a barber who could give a proper haircut. As for the music: “The American’s enjoyment of jazz does not fully begin until he couples it with singing like crude screaming,” Qutb wrote when he returned to Egypt. “It is this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.”

Such grumbling by an unhappy crank would be almost comical but for one fact: a direct line of influence runs from Sayyid Qutb to Osama bin Laden, and to bin Laden’s Egyptian partner in terror, Ayman al-Zawahiri. From them, the line continues to another quietly seething Egyptian sojourning in the United States—the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. Qutb’s gripes about America require serious attention because they cast light on a question that has been nagging since the fall of the World Trade Center: Why do they hate us?

Born in 1906 in the northern Egyptian village of Musha and raised in a devout Muslim home, Qutb memorized the Koran as a boy. Later he moved to Cairo and found work as a teacher and writer. His novels made no great impression, but he earned a reputation as an astute literary critic. Qutb was among the first champions of Naguib Mahfouz, a young, modern novelist who, in 1988, would win the Nobel Prize in Literature. As Qutb matured, his mind took on a more political cast. Even by the standards of Egypt, those were chaotic, corrupt times: World War I had completed the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, and the Western powers were creating, with absolute colonial confidence, new maps and governments for the Middle East. For a proud man like Sayyid Qutb, the humiliation of his country at the hands of secular leaders and Western puppets was galling. His writing drew unfavorable attention from the Egyptian government, and by 1948, Mahfouz has said, Qutb’s friends in the Ministry of Education were sufficiently worried about his situation that they contrived to send him abroad to the safety of the United States.

Some biographical sketches suggest that Qutb arrived with a benign view of America, but if that’s true it didn’t last long. During a short stay in Washington, D.C., he witnessed the commotion surrounding an elevator accident and was stunned to hear other onlookers making a joke of the victim’s appearance. From this and a few offhand remarks in other settings, Qutb concluded that Americans suffered from “a drought of sentimental sympathy” and that “Americans intentionally deride what people in the Old World hold sacred.”

This became the lens through which Qutb read nearly every American encounter—a clash of New World versus Old. Qutb easily satisfied the requirements at the graduate school of the Colorado State College of Education (now known as the University of Northern Colorado) and devoted the rest of his time to his true interest—the American soul, if such a thing existed. “This great America: What is its worth in the scale of human values?” Qutb wondered. “And what does it add to the moral account of humanity?” His answer: nothing.

Still, Qutb’s contempt for America was not as simple as some people might now imagine. He did not recoil from political freedom and democracy, as, say, President Bush might expect from a jihadi theorist, nor did he complain about shades of imperial ambition in American foreign policy, as writers on the left might suppose. Regarding the excesses of American culture—vulgarity, materialism and promiscuity—Qutb expressed shock, but it rang a bit hollow. “The American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity,” he wrote. “She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it.” These curvy jezebels pursued boys with “wide, strapping chest[s]” and “ox muscles,” Qutb added with disgust. Yet no matter how lascivious his adjectives, the fastidious, unmarried Egyptian could not convincingly portray the church dances and Look magazines he encountered in sleepy Greeley as constituting a genuine sexual “jungle.”

The core problem with the United States, for Qutb, was not something Americans did, but simply what America was—“the New World…is spellbinding.” It was more than a land of pleasures without limit. In America, unlike in Egypt, dreams could come true. Qutb understood the danger this posed: America’s dazzle had the power to blind people to the real zenith of civilization, which for Qutb began with Muhammad in the seventh century and reached its apex in the Middle Ages, carried triumphantly by Muslim armies.

Qutb rejected the idea that “new” was also “improved.” The Enlightenment, the Industrial Age—modernity itself—were not progress. “The true value of every civilization…lies not in the tools man has invented or in how much power he wields,” Qutb wrote. “The value of civilizations lay in what universal truths and worldviews they have attained.” The modern obsession with science and invention was a moral regression to the primitive condition of the first toolmakers. Qutb’s America was bursting with raw energy and appetite, but utterly without higher virtues. In his eyes, its “interminable, incalculable expanses of virgin land” were settled by “groups of adventurers and groups of criminals” who lacked the time and reflection required for a civilized life. Qutb’s Americans “faced the uncharted forests, the tortuous mountain mazes, the fields of ice, the thundering hurricanes, and the beasts, serpents and vermin of the forest” in a struggle that left them numb to “faith in religion, faith in art and faith in spiritual values altogether.”

This portrait likely would have surprised the people of mid-century Greeley, had they somehow become aware of the unspoken opinions of their somewhat frosty neighbor. Theirs was a friendly town best known for the unpretentious college and for the cattle feedlots sprawling pungently on its outskirts. The founding of Greeley in the 1870s involved no ice fields, hurricanes or serpents. Instead, it began with a simple newspaper column written by Nathan Meeker, agricultural editor of the New York Tribune. On December 14, 1869, Meeker appealed to literate readers of high moral character to join him in building a utopian community by the South Platte River near the foot of the Rocky Mountains. More than 3,000 readers applied; from this list Meeker selected the 700 best qualified to realize his vision of a sober, godly, cooperative community. The town was dubbed Greeley in honor of Meeker’s boss at the Tribune, the quixotic publisher Horace Greeley, who died within weeks of his failed run for president in 1872, just as the project was gathering steam.

Poet and journalist Sara Lippincott was an early visitor to the frontier outpost, and later wrote about it under her pen name, Grace Greenwood. “You’ll die of dullness in less than five hours,” another traveler had warned her about Greeley. “There is nothing there but irrigation. Your host will invite you out to see him irrigate his potato-patch…there is not a billiard-saloon in the whole camp, nor a drink of whiskey to be had for love or money.” None of that made any difference to Qutb, who saw only what he already believed, and wrote not facts, but his own truth, in his 1951 essay, “The America I Have Seen.”

Sayyid Qutb cut short his stay in America and returned to Egypt in 1951 after the assassination of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the nationalist, religious and militant movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood. Over the next decade and a half, often writing from prison, Qutb refined a violent political theology from the raw anti-modernism of his American interlude. Virtually the entire modern world, Qutb theorized, is jahiliyya, that barbarous state that existed before Muhammad. Only the strict, unchanging law of the prophet can redeem this uncivilized condition. Nearly a millennium of history became, to the radicalized Qutb, an offense wrought by the violence of jahili “Crusaders” and the supposed perfidy of the Jews. And Muslim leaders allied with the West were no better than the Crusaders themselves. Therefore, Qutb called all true Muslims to jihad, or Holy War, against jahiliyya—which is to say, against modernity, which America so powerfully represents.

This philosophy led to Qutb’s execution in 1966. Proud to the end, he refused to accept the secular Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser’s offer of mercy in exchange for Qutb’s repudiation of his jihad. Nasser may have silenced a critic, but the martyrdom of Sayyid Qutb accelerated his movement. The same year the philosopher was hanged, according to journalist Lawrence Wright, the teenage al-Zawahiri formed his first violent cell, dedicated to the overthrow of the Egyptian government and the creation of an Islamist state. Meanwhile, Qutb’s brother Muhammad went into exile in Saudi Arabia, where he taught at King Abdul Aziz University. One of his students, an heir to the country’s largest construction fortune, was Osama bin Laden.

Others have taken Qutb’s ideas in less apocalyptic directions, so that M.A. Muqtedar Khan of the Brookings Institution can rank him alongside the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran as “one of the major architects and ‘strategists’ of contemporary Islamic revival.” But the last paragraphs of Qutb’s American memoir suggest just how far outside normal discourse his mind was wont to stray. After noting the stupidity of his Greeley neighbors, who failed to understand his dry and cutting jokes, Qutb writes: “In summary, anything that requires a touch of elegance is not for the American, even haircuts! For there was not one instance in which I had a haircut there when I did not return home to even with my own hands what the barber had wrought.” This culminating example of inescapable barbarism led directly to his conclusion. “Humanity makes the gravest of errors and risks losing its account of morals, if it makes America its example.”

Turning a haircut into a matter of grave moral significance is the work of a fanatic. That’s the light ultimately cast by Qutb’s American experience on the question of why his disciples might hate us. Hating America for its haircuts cannot be distinguished from hating for no sane reason at all.

Voir encore:

Said Qutb on the Arts in America

Daniel Burns, Translator

November 18, 2009

Current Trends in Islamist Ideology vol. 9

Translator’s note[1]

The Egyptian Said Qutb was one of the leading intellectual lights of 20th Century Islamic radicalism when he was executed in 1966 for his involvement with the illegal Muslim Brotherhood. He is best known for his lengthy Quranic commentary In the Shade of the Qur’an and his book Milestones, in which he makes the case that allegedly Muslim regimes like that of Egypt should be understood as jahiliy (pagan) and therefore the proper target of military jihad.

Years before writing these radical works, Qutb spent two years studying in America (1948-1950). Upon his return to Egypt, he published the three-part article “The America That I Have Seen: In the Scale of Human Values” in the Egyptian journal Al-Risala (Vol. 19 [1951]; no. 957, 959, 961; pp. 1245-7, 1301-6, 1357-1360). A translation of this article appears in the anthology America in an Arab Mirror (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), but that translation is missing a considerable block of text for no reason that I can see. Here I have translated the section of the article’s third part that contains that missing block. All but the first three and the last three paragraphs below are therefore appearing in English for the first time.

The article as a whole contains Qutb’s observations on American life and chiefly on how American citizens rank “in the scale of human values.” He judges Americans on a range of social and moral characteristics—including their sexual mores, their political history, and their attitudes towards religion, sports, art, and death—and generally finds them wanting. Most striking about the article is Qutb’s adherence to a standard of “human values” rather than specifically “Islamic values.” Qutb never elaborates this standard explicitly, but in general his theme seems to be that human beings should strive to attain high-minded, civilized, and spiritual values rather than bestial, primitive, and sensual ones. American society, in Qutb’s view, tends toward the latter.

Wherever possible, I have translated a single Arabic word with a single English word. Words in [square brackets] are my additions or clarifications. I have used Qutb’s punctuation as a guideline but have not been able to reproduce it fully in English; in particular, I have used parentheses, long dashes, sentence breaks, and other means to translate the versatile Arabic particle wa. I have however retained the author’s strange use of quotation marks and ellipses.

Said Qutb: On the Arts in America

The American is primitive in his artistic taste, both in what he enjoys as art and in his own artistic works.

“Jazz” music is his music of choice. This is that music that the Negroes invented to satisfy their primitive inclinations, as well as their desire to be noisy on the one hand and to excite bestial tendencies on the other. The American’s intoxication in “jazz” music does not reach its full completion until the music is accompanied by singing that is just as coarse and obnoxious as the music itself. Meanwhile, the noise of the instruments and the voices mounts, and it rings in the ears to an unbearable degree… The agitation of the multitude[2] increases, and the voices of approval mount, and their palms ring out in vehement, continuous applause that all but deafens the ears.

But despite this, the American multitude attends the opera, listens to symphonies, crowds together for the “ballet,” and watches “classic” plays—so much so that you will hardly find an empty seat. It will happen sometimes that you do not find a place unless you reserve your seat days beforehand, and that at the high price of the fares for these performances.

This phenomenon misled me at first; I even rejoiced at it, down to the depths of my soul. For I had been feeling constantly “begrudging” at the fact that this people, which produces marvels in the world of industry and of science and of research, should have no store of the other human values. I had also been terribly afraid on behalf of humanity that its leadership will pass into the hands of this people that is altogether poor in those values.

Therefore I rejoiced when I saw this phenomenon. For the public that takes an interest in refined art is not to be despaired of no matter what its faults may be, and when this window on its feelings has been opened, there is great hope that many other rays may diffuse from it.

The importance of this phenomenon pushed me to investigate everything about it, in different surroundings and in numerous cities. But when I tracked the expressions on faces, and conversed with a great many of the men and women[3] who visit these places (those I knew and those I did not know), all this revealed to me—with regret—how wide a chasm still separates the spirit of such humane art from the spirit of the Americans. Indeed, their feelings about it[4] are even concealed in all but rare cases; they only look at the matter from a purely social angle. For the cultured American must of necessity see these sorts [of shows] and go to these places in case there should be a conversation about them in any group of people taking part in conversation together. For it is a matter of the greatest shame in America that anyone should fail to take part in the conversation—especially in the case of young women, since what is demanded of them is that they should always find subjects for conversation. So if young women visit these places, they add new subjects to the perpetual American subjects [of conversation], i.e., ball games, names of films and of actors and actresses, cases of divorce and marriage, markings and prices of cars…

This is the very spirit in which the crowds visit the art museums, passing rapidly through the halls and the exhibits in a way that does not suggest any enjoyment or love of these works [of art]. In just the same way they go (individually and in groups) to get a rapid view of natural spectacles. Passing by places and spectacles at the cars’ top speed, they collect conversational material and also comply with the natural American inclination toward collection and enumeration.

At the beginning of my stay in America, I would hear that one of them had visited X cities and countries and sights and spectacles and had gone X miles in his tourist journeys and knew X friends, so that I was astonished at this capacity for producing such things and wished that I were capable of any of it! Then I discovered afterward how all these marvels took place… One of them drives his car on a journey, alone or with his family or friends. He races it at top speed, taking it through cities and over distances, passing by sights and spectacles, while recording in his notebook the names and the mileage… Then he returns, and see! he has seen all of it, and he has the right to converse about it! As for friends, it is enough that one be invited to get-acquainted parties. There he encounters their faces for the first time, and the host acquaints him with the attendees one by one (men as well as women)[5], and he asks whoever of them wish to do so to write down their names and addresses, and so they in turn do with him. After some time, his notebook is full of names and addresses. And see! he has a great number of friends (men and women)[6], and perhaps he is even victorious in the competition undertaken in pursuit of this goal. How great, how strange are the competitions here!

Thus your knowledge and your culture[7] are often measured by how much you have read and watched and heard. It is the same as the way that your material riches are calculated by the quantity and amount of the cash and real property that you own: without any distinctions!

And this is not the mentality of the multitudes only, but it is also very much the mentality of the thinkers and the researchers. For it had occurred to the thinkers in America that it was not right that their country should be the richest country in the world, and their people the greatest people on earth in terms of industrial civilization and scientific civilization, while they should have no artistic wealth like that of poorer peoples such as the Italians and the Germans.

They have money—and money works wonders—so it was only a matter of years before they had museums of drawing and sculpture more magnificent and larger than those other peoples’. These museums have accumulated for themselves works of art from everywhere and have filled up with the rare and the costly among these works, which they[8] have not been stingy about buying with money. These are all foreign works save a few, since American works are primitive and plain to the point of being laughable next to those splendid worldly treasures.

Likewise, [it was only a matter of years before] they had some performing orchestras and some dance troupes of the “ballet,” most of which [demonstrate] expertise and proficiency. And most of the conductors of these orchestras and the directors of these troupes [demonstrate] genius and originality…and all of them[9] save a few are foreigners.

Thus there emerged[10] precise enumerations that indicate what America possesses in the way of great artistic riches, purchased by money. But there remained one little matter: Does the American soul have any share in these riches? Does she even have mere artistic enjoyment of this costly human inheritance!

It occurred to me to examine these points in the art museums just as I examined them at the opera houses and such.

I went for the tenth time to the museum of art in San Francisco and made one of the picture halls of French art the subject of my examination. I distributed my attention over all the pictures inside it, but I concentrated on one outstanding picture named “Fox in the Chicken House.”[11] There are no words that could relate to the reader the beauty of this ingenious picture, in which the artist depicted several profound, complex feelings in a painting where there is no human face to make it easy for the artist to depict those feelings… A fox is in the chicken house, the sky is suffocatingly dark, and the fox has just attacked a chicken, a nesting mother, who appears in distress and exhausted in the claws of the wild beast baring his teeth; her little ones are terrified and the eggs remaining beneath her are scattered; her fellow hens meanwhile are scattered throughout the space of the painting, and the rooster—the man of the house—stands helpless, at a loss to find any salvation for his spouse in distress, although he is her guardian! As for the other hens, one is anxious and taken by surprise, another is despairing and disgusted that there should be all this atrocity in life, while a third is at a loss, asking: “How did this happen?” And the entire sky and the colors in this ingenious painting depict that which words cannot grasp.

I took a rest on one of the seats that the halls do provide with singular[12] courtesy for those visitors who are tired of looking and of walking around to rest on, and I rested, inspecting the features and expressions [of faces] and listening to the remarks and comments.

Four full hours passed over me in my seat, during which 109 persons passed by me, singles and couples and groups, of whom the majority were among the [many] young women and young men[13] who make appointments to spend some time in the museum’s garden and then in the museum itself, since it is proper for the social young woman to share in conversation and to find subjects for conversation.

On [the faces of] how many of these 109 did it appear that they were feeling anything of what they were seeing? Only one lingered for about two minutes in front of the picture I had selected, and he lingered in the whole hall for about five minutes…then he flew off.

I repeated the experiment in the other halls of the museum, and then repeated it in other museums in several cities. Again I arrived at the point where [I could say that], out of the great mass of visitors comprised in my enumerations, only a rare minority comprehended anything of these tremendous artistic riches that the dollar has gathered from all the places on earth; all that remained for the dollar to do was to create artistic sensation, but apparently that does not respond to the dollar’s charms!

The only art in which the Americans are proficient—although there are other [peoples] who still surpass them in it as far as artistry goes—is the art of the cinema. This is natural and logical given the phenomenon that makes the American unique: the height of industrial proficiency combined with primitiveness of artistic feelings. In the cinema this phenomenon is very much manifest.

By its nature, the cinematic art does not rise to the loftiest regions of the arts—music, drawing, sculpture, and poetry—nor for that matter to the [level of the] art of the theater, although in the cinema the possibilities for artistic craft[14] and the possibilities of production are much greater. And in terms of originality, the art of production in the cinema has gotten only as far as the farthest point reached by the art of photography. Moreover, some distance remains between it and (for example) the art of the theater, just as some distance remains too between depiction by photography and depiction by a [painter’s] brush. In the latter is expressed genius of feelings; in the former, expertise of craft.

The cinema is the popular art of the multitudes, so it is the art in which one finds expertise, proficiency, magnification, and approximation. By its nature it relies more on expertise than on the artistic spirit… in it the American genius[15] can exercise creativity… yet despite this, English, French, Russian, and German film all remain superior to American film, although they are inferior to it in craft and expertise.

In the great majority of American films, one sees manifestly primitive subjects and primitive excitement; this is true of police/crime films and cowboy films. As for high, skillful films, such as “Gone with the Wind,” “Wuthering Heights,” “The Song of Bernadette,” and such, they are few in comparison with what America produces. Such American film as does reach Egypt or the Arab countries does not resemble this family, since the majority of it comes from among the superior, rare American films.[16] And those people who visit the regions of the land in America are those who reach that tiny family of valuable films.

There is another art in which the Americans are skillful, because in it there is more of expertise in craft and production than there is of high, genuine art… It is the art of depicting natural spectacles in color as if [the depictions] were photographic, true and exact[17]. This can be seen in the museums of land and water animals, since these animals or their embalmed bodies are displayed [there] in the likeness of their natural habitats, just as if they were real. The artist’s brush is skillful in depicting these habitats in cooperation with the spectacle’s artistic design; it reaches the point of creativity.

This translation of Qutb’s article appeared in Volume 9 of Current Trends in Islamist Ideology published by Hudson Institute.

Keywords: Qutb, Muslim Brotherhood, American Arts, jahiliy

Notes

[1] I am grateful to the Ernest Fortin Memorial Foundation for a summer grant that allowed me to work on this translation, to Michael Montalbano for his relentless editing, and to Prof. Martha Bayles, Prof. Nasser Behnegar, Dr. Hillel Fradkin, Prof. Dennis Hale, Prof. James Nolan, and Zander Baron for reading drafts.

[2] The word consistently translated “multitude” (jamhour) appears a few times in this passage and has political connotations: it is the root of the Arabic word for “republic.” It means something like hoi polloi.

[3] Here and elsewhere Qutb uses two forms, a masculine and a feminine, where Arabic grammar only requires one (since the masculine is taken to include both sexes). Literally this passage says “a great many [m.] and a great many [f.] of those who visit these places.” Qutb seems to want to emphasize that both sexes are included, perhaps because he finds this immodest or perhaps because his audience would not otherwise know whether the social events being described were single-sex.

[4] The nearest possible antecedent is “spirit,” but the earlier “this phenomenon” seems likelier. The gender of the pronoun makes it impossible that it could be “art”.

[5] Literally “one by one and one (f.) by one (f.).” See note 3.

[6] Literally “male-friends and female-friends,” or “friends and female friends.” See note 3.

[7] In the sense of “the state of being cultured,” not “cultural identity.”

[8] The gender of the pronoun means that it most likely refers to, not “museums,” but the antecedent from earlier in the paragraph: “Americans,” or possibly “the thinkers in America.”

[9] Since the entire paragraph is one sentence in Arabic, it is not clear whether this word refers only to the conductors and directors or to the performing groups’ members as a whole.

[10] This is a bit obscure, but Qutb seems to mean that these enumerations became easily available in the course of his own investigations.

[11] Jean-Baptiste Huet’s Fox in the Chicken Yard (1766) meets most of Qutb’s description. I can only see two “other hens,” though.

[12] The ambiguity is present in Arabic as in English: this may be a backhanded compliment.

[13] Literally “female-youths and male-youths,” or “female-youths and youths.” See note 3.

[14] The word is a recurrent theme in the entire article and has been translated “industry” or (as an adjective) “industrial.” From here on it will be translated “craft.”

[15] This phrase does not refer to particular American people that we would call “geniuses,” but to something more abstract, like the previous “artistic spirit.”

[16] The antecedents are hard to follow in this sentence, but the sense seems to me to require: “Such American film as does reach us in Egypt or the Arab countries does not resemble the (generally low-quality) family of American films as a whole, since the majority of what does reach us consists in those high-quality films that make up only a tiny minority of the whole family.”

[17] Qutb seems to mean this as something of a compliment, but on the other hand, that meaning would seem to be at odds with his disparagement of photography three paragraphs earlier.

Voir enfin:

Column One: Moral relativism and jihad

Caroline B. Glick

The Jerusalem Post

11/04/2013

It is the dominance of moral relativism in liberal institutions like the New York Times that make even the most apologetic expose of the Muslim Brotherhood a major event.

Two events happened on Wednesday which should send a shiver down the spine of everyone concerned about the future of the American Jewish community. But to understand their importance it is important to consider the context in which they occurred.

On January 13, The New York Times reported on a series of virulently anti-Jewish comments Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi made in speeches given in 2010. Among other things, Morsi said, “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.” He said that Egyptian children “must feed on hatred; hatred must continue. The hatred must go on for God and as a form of worshiping him.”

In another speech, he called Jews “bloodsuckers,” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.”

Two weeks after the Times ran the story, the Obama administration sent four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt as part of a military aid package announced in December 2012 entailing the provision of 20 F-16s and 200 M1-A1 Abrams tanks.

The Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and other prominent American Jewish groups did not oppose the weapons transfer.

With the American Jewish leadership silent on the issue, Israel found its national security championed by Sen. Rand Paul. He attached an amendment to a budget bill that would bar the US from transferring the advanced weapons platforms to Egypt.

Paul explained, “Egypt is currently governed by a religious zealot… who said recently that Jews were bloodsuckers and descendants of apes and pigs. This doesn’t sound like the kind of stable personality we [sh]ould be sending our most sophisticated weapons to.”

Paul’s amendment was overwhelmingly defeated, due in large part to the silence of the American Jewish leadership.

The Times noted that Morsi’s castigation of Jews as “apes and pigs” was “a slur for Jews that is familiar across the Muslim world.”

Significantly the Times failed to note that the reason it is familiar is because it comes from both the Koran and the hadith. The scripturally based denigration of Jews as apes and pigs is legion among leading clerics of both Sunni and Shi’ite Islam.

It was not a coincidence that the Times failed to mention why Morsi’s castigation of Jews as apes and pigs was so familiar to Muslim audiences.

The Islamic sources of Muslim Brotherhood Jew hatred, and indeed, hatred of Jews by Islamic leaders from both the Sunni and Shi’ite worlds, is largely overlooked by the liberal ideological camp. And the overwhelming majority of the American Jewish leadership is associated with the liberal ideological camp.

If the Times acknowledged that the Jew hatred espoused by Morsi and his colleagues in the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as by their Shi’ite colleagues in the Iranian regime and Hezbollah is based on the Koran, they would have to acknowledge that Islamic Jew hatred and other bigotry is not necessarily antithetical to mainstream Islamic teaching. And that is something that the Times, like its fellow liberal institutions, is not capable of acknowledging.

They are incapable of acknowledging this possibility because considering it would implicitly require a critical study of jihadist doctrine. And a critical study of jihadist doctrine would show that the doctrine of jihad, or Islamic holy war, subscribed to by the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates, as well as by the Iranian regime and Hezbollah and their affiliates, is widely supported, violent, bigoted, evil and dangerous to the free world.

And that isn’t even the biggest problem with studying the doctrine of jihad. The biggest problem is that a critical study of the doctrine of jihad would force liberal institutions like the New York Times and the institutional leadership of the American Jewish community alike to abandon the reigning dogma of the liberal ideological camp – moral relativism.

Moral relativism is based on a refusal to call evil evil and a concomitant willingness to denigrate truth if truth requires you to notice evil.

Since pointing out the reality of the danger the jihadist doctrines propagated by the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood involves the implicit demand that people make distinctions between good and evil and side with good against evil, moral relativists – that is most liberals – cannot contend with jihad.

This is why the American Jewish leadership refused to join Rand Paul and his conservative Republican colleagues in the Senate and demand an immediate cessation of US military aid to the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egyptian military even after the evidence of the Brotherhood’s genocidal Jew hatred was splashed across the front page of the Times.

It is the dominance of moral relativism in liberal institutions like the New York Times that make even the most apologetic expose of the Muslim Brotherhood a major event. And it is the dominance of liberal orthodoxies in the mainstream Jewish community that makes it all but impossible for Jewish leaders to speak up against the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the manifest danger its genocidal hatred of Jews poses not only for Israel, but for Jews everywhere.

It is bad enough that liberal Jewish leaders won’t speak out against the Koranic-inspired evil that characterizes the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. What is worse is what their own morally relative blindness causes them to do.

On Wednesday, we saw two distressing examples of the consequences of this self-imposed embrace of ideological fantasies.

First, on Wednesday, Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School’s Journal of Conflict Resolution gave its annual International Advocate of Peace Award to former president Jimmy Carter.

Carter’s long record of anti-Israel, and indeed anti-Semitic, actions and behavior made the decision to bestow him with the honor an affront not only to the cause of peace, but to the cause of Jewish legal rights. As an advocate of Hamas and a man who castigates Israel as an illegal “apartheid” state, Carter has a long record of outspoken opposition to both Jewish human rights and to viable peace between Israel and its neighbors.

For outsiders, the Orthodox Jewish university’s law school’s law journal’s decision to honor Carter was shocking, but as it works out, the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution confers its prize almost exclusively on people active in pressuring Israel to make concessions to Palestinian terrorists who reject Israel’s right to exist. Past winners include Dennis Ross, Bill Clinton, Richard Holbrooke, George Mitchell, John Wallach and Seeds of Peace and, perhaps most astoundingly, the outspoken Jew hater Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

In other words, Carter wasn’t chosen for the honor despite his anti-Israel record. He was selected because of his anti-Israel record.

In a similar fashion, New York’s 92nd Street Y invited virulent Israel hater Roger Waters to perform a concert on April 30. Given Waters’s outspoken opposition to Israel, his call for total economic and cultural warfare against the Jewish state and his leading role in the BDS movement, it is not possible that the 92nd Street Y was unaware of his radical, anti-Semitic sentiments.

And so, the only reasonable explanation for his invitation to perform at the Jewish institution is that the Y wanted to invite this openly anti- Semitic musician to perform. A public outcry by pro-Israel activists forced the Y to cancel his performance.

The day that Carter was embraced by the Orthodox Jewish establishment, Jewish author and activist Pamela Geller was silenced. Geller is the nightmare of the liberal Jewish establishment.

She is a beautiful and articulate speaker and writer who has risen to prominence in the US for her steadfast commitment to exposing the deadly pathologies of Jew hatred, misogyny and other prejudices inherent to jihadist ideology.

Geller’s website, Atlas Shrugs, is a clearinghouse for information on Islamic persecution of women, Christians and apostates and hatred of Jews. She also showcases the documented ties between mainstream American Islamic groups and the Muslim Brotherhood.

An indefatigable defender of Israel, Geller recently ran a highly controversial, and successful ad campaign in the New York and San Francisco public transportation systems in response to an anti-Israel ad campaign. Her billboards read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel, Defeat Jihad.”

Geller was scheduled to speak on April 13 at the Great Neck Synagogue in Great Neck, New York. The topic of her talk was “The Imposition of Shari’a in America.”

Last month, after learning of her talk, a consortium of Islamic and leftist activists in Nassau County led by Habeed Ahmed from the Islamic Center of Long Island launched a pressure campaign to coerce the synagogue into cancelling her speech. Members of the group telephoned the synagogue and castigated Geller as a bigot, and likened her to the Nazis in the 1930s.

In short order liberal rabbis Michael White and Jerome Davidson took over the opposition to Geller and launched a media campaign attacking her as a bigot and demanding that the Great Neck Synagogue cancel her speech.

Rejecting the distinction Geller makes between jihadists and their victims – Muslim and non- Muslim alike, White and Davidson claimed that she opposes all Muslims and so her speech must be canceled. By hosting her, they intoned, the Great Neck Synagogue would be guilty of propagating hate speech. Liberal Christian and Jewish activists and their Muslim associates threatened to protest the speech.

On Wednesday the synagogue caved in to their massive pressure. Citing “security concerns” the synagogue board released a statement saying that while “these important issues must be discussed, the synagogue is unable to bear the burden” of the pressure campaign surrounding Geller’s planned speech. Her event was canceled.

Surveys of the American Jewish community taken in recent years by the American Jewish Committee demonstrate that the vast majority of American Jews are deeply supportive of Israel, and their views tend toward the Right side of the political spectrum in issues related to Israel, the Palestinians and the wider Islamic conflict with the Jewish state.

On the other hand, the AJC’s surveys show that for the vast majority of American Jews, Israel is not a voting issue. This state of affairs was reflected by a comment that Yeshiva University student Ben Winter made to the media regarding the absence of student protest against Carter on Wednesday. In Winter’s words, “While many students at YU feel strongly about their Zionism, few have the courage to publicly express their opinions.”

The danger exposed by the cancellation of Geller’s speech and the conferral of honors on the likes of Carter and Waters by mainstream Jewish institutions is daunting. If moral relativism remains the dominant dogma of the American Jewish establishment, the already weakly defended, but still strongly rooted, support for Israel among the rank and file of the American Jewish community will dissipate.

Attentats de Boston: La surveillance pour tous ! (Why should Muslims and leftists be less deserving of surveillance than right-wing extremist groups ?)

L’erreur est toujours de raisonner dans les catégories de la « différence », alors que la racine de tous les conflits, c’est plutôt la « concurrence », la rivalité mimétique entre des êtres, des pays, des cultures. La concurrence, c’est-à-dire le désir d’imiter l’autre pour obtenir la même chose que lui, au besoin par la violence. Sans doute le terrorisme est-il lié à un monde « différent » du nôtre, mais ce qui suscite le terrorisme n’est pas dans cette « différence » qui l’éloigne le plus de nous et nous le rend inconcevable. Il est au contraire dans un désir exacerbé de convergence et de ressemblance. (…) Ce qui se vit aujourd’hui est une forme de rivalité mimétique à l’échelle planétaire. (…) Ce sentiment n’est pas vrai des masses, mais des dirigeants. Sur le plan de la fortune personnelle, on sait qu’un homme comme Ben Laden n’a rien à envier à personne. Et combien de chefs de parti ou de faction sont dans cette situation intermédiaire, identique à la sienne. Regardez un Mirabeau au début de la Révolution française : il a un pied dans un camp et un pied dans l’autre, et il n’en vit que de manière plus aiguë son ressentiment. Aux Etats-Unis, des immigrés s’intègrent avec facilité, alors que d’autres, même si leur réussite est éclatante, vivent aussi dans un déchirement et un ressentiment permanents. Parce qu’ils sont ramenés à leur enfance, à des frustrations et des humiliations héritées du passé. Cette dimension est essentielle, en particulier chez des musulmans qui ont des traditions de fierté et un style de rapports individuels encore proche de la féodalité. (…) Cette concurrence mimétique, quand elle est malheureuse, ressort toujours, à un moment donné, sous une forme violente. A cet égard, c’est l’islam qui fournit aujourd’hui le ciment qu’on trouvait autrefois dans le marxisme. René Girard

The Tsarnaev brothers pulled off their terrorist attack with great skill but made a fatal mistake in letting their faces and bodies be seen at a heavily photographed international sporting event. This meant that multiple images of them were available for a massive law enforcement squad to comb over and, after three days, identify them by name and appearance. This rapid identification was not unprecedented – the London police had done likewise in the July 2005 suicide bombings but because none of the four perpetrators survived that attack, that was more a theoretical achievement than a practical one. To the best of my knowledge, the Tsarnaevs were the first terrorists to be tracked down via still and video pictures. (…) But how to avoid doing so? Hoodies leave the face exposed. Ski masks arouse suspicion in temperate weather, as do Halloween masks all but one night a year, and stocking masks at any time. Obviously, they should have put on Islamic full body covers that show only the eyes (niqabs) or nothing at all (burqas). These garments have multiple and unique virtues, totally hiding the wearers identity; being legitimate attire in any weather and in any place; permitting the discreet transport of weapons; giving off the helpfully false impression of being worn by women, which both reduces suspicion and misleads witnesses; usefully creating a social barrier; maximizing personal prerogatives; and being ideologically appropriate, sending an unmistakable Islamist signal. (…) One must expect future non-suicide bombers to turn to niqabs or burqas. (As many terrorists and criminals repeatedly have done so.). But why wait for them to engage in more murders? Why close the barn door only after the horse has run away? Far smarter would be to ban the niqab and burqa in public places now, before tragedy occurs. Daniel Pipes

L’attaque de Bourgas était une attaque sur le sol européen contre un Etat membre de l’Union européenne. Nous espérons que les Européens vont tirer les conclusions qui s’imposent. Les conclusions annoncées par la Bulgarie aujourd’hui sont claires: le Hezbollah était directement responsable de cette atrocité. Il n’y a qu’un seul Hezbollah, c’est une organisation unique avec un commandement unique. C’est une nouvelle confirmation de ce que nous savions déjà: que le Hezbollah et son parrain l’Iran orchestrent une campagne terroriste à travers les pays et les continents. Benjamin Netanyahou

Il y a des informations concernant des financements et une appartenance au Hezbollah de deux personnes, dont l’auteur de l’attentat. (Ces personnes) possédaient des passeports de l’Australie et du Canada" et "vivaient sur le territoire libanais depuis 2006 et 2010. Tsvetan Tsvetanov (ministre bulgare de l’Intérieur)

Tamerlan Tsarnaev a été entendu en 2011 par la police américaine après l’avertissement d’un pays étranger, a confirmé vendredi le FBI, qui pourrait ainsi être placé dans l’embarras. Les autorités du pays en question, qui n’a pas été précisé, le soupçonnaient d’être «un adepte de l’islam radical» sur le point de quitter les Etats-Unis pour rejoindre un mouvement armé, a précisé le FBI vendredi soir. L’audition de Tamerlan Tsarnaev et de sa famille n’a pas permis «de découvrir une quelconque activité terroriste», pas plus que les recherches concernant leurs déplacements, leurs activités sur internet ou leur entourage, ajoute l’agence. 20 minutes

A l’été 1996, le monde avait les yeux rivés sur Atlanta pour les Jeux olympiques. Sous la protection et les auspices du régime de Washington, des millions de personnes étaient venues pour célébrer les idéaux du monde socialiste. Les multinationales ont dépensé des milliards de dollars et Washington avait mis en place une armée de sécurité pour protéger le meilleur de ces jeux. (…) L’objectif de l’attaque du 27 juillet était de confondre, de mettre en colère et dans l’embarras le gouvernement de Washington aux yeux du monde pour son abominable autorisation de l’avortement à la demande. Le plan était de forcer l’annulation des Jeux, ou au moins de créer un état d’insécurité, pour vider les rues autour des lieux et ainsi rendre inutiles les vastes sommes d’argent investies. Le plan sur lequel je me suis finalement rabattu était d’utiliser cinq explosifs chronométrés low-tech à placer un à la fois et en des jours successifs tout au long du calendrier olympique, chacun précédé d’un avertissement de quarante à cinquante minutes sur le 911. Les lieu et heure de la détonation devaient être donnés, et l’intention était de ce fait de faire évacuer chacune des zones visées, laissant seuls exposés au risque potentiel de blessure les forces de l’ordre en uniforme et armées. « Les attaques devaient commencer dès le début des Jeux olympiques, mais en raison d’un manque de planification, cela a été reporté d’une semaine. J’avais espéré sincèrement atteindre ces objectifs sans nuire à des civils innocents. Eric Randolph

Aux Etats-Unis, les musulmans sont plus résistants, mais pas à l’abri du message radical. Malgré les perspectives économiques, la puissante force d’attraction des racines religieuses des individus et de l’identité peut parfois prendre le dessus sur la nature assimilatrice de la société américaine, faite de réussite professionnelle, stabilité financière et confort matériel. Mitchell Silber et Arvin Bhatt

Certains utiliseront cette menace comme un argument contre l’immigration, mais cela serait punir tout le monde pour les péchés de quelques uns. La menace radicale intérieure est vraiment un argument à la vigilance, notamment au sein de communautés enclines à produire des terroristes. Autrement dit, surveiller les groupes d’étudiants étrangers aux États-Unis, certaines communautés d’immigrants qui ont produit des jihadistes et, oui, même les mosquées et d’autres lieux musulmans. L’important est d’être assez familier avec ces communautés, pour connaître et être suffisamment en confance avec leurs dirigeants de sorte que ces hommes et ces femmes alertent les forces de l’ordre lorsque que l’un de leurs membres semble s’être radicalisé. Cela offense certains défenseurs des libertés civiles et l’Associated Press qui s’en sont pris à la police de New York pour la pratique dans une série d’histoires en 2011. Dans le sillage de Boston, cela semble particulièrement peu judicieux. Les policiers de New York disent qu’ils ont poursuivi leur surveillance, en vertu de garanties juridiques appropriées, et nous espérons qu’ils continueront. Le gouvernement américain surveille des groupes extrémistes de droite, parce que nous savons qu’ils sont dangereux. La police ne devrait pas s’abstenir de faire la même chose pour les groupes musulmans ou immigrés simplement parce que cela serait jugé moins politiquement correct. Comme le montrent les événements de la semaine à Boston, ne pas le faire serait bien trop coûteux. Le Wall Street Journal

Attention: un scandale peut en cacher un autre !

Responsable de l’attentat des Jeux d’Atlanta accusé d’attaque indiscriminée de civils alors qu’en alertant la police 45 minutes auparavant il avait tout fait pour l’éviter, groupe suprémaciste texan faussement soupçonné d’avoir tué un juge et son épouse, organisation terroriste libanaise et ses commanditaires iraniens contraints de déployer leurs actions jusqu’en Bulgarie devant le refus indu de l’Europe de toute reconnaissance digne de ce nom …

Alors qu’au lendemain de la mort et de la capture des Mérah américains responsables de la dernière tuerie islamiste en date …

Une opinion et des médias obsédés par les groupes extrémistes de droite continuent comme si de rien n’était leur refus de voir l’évidence …

Pendant qu’après la Maison Blanche, Hollywood se décide enfin à reconnaitre leur dû aux Weathermen et les parlementaires français comme néo-zélandais l’avancée incommensurable du mariage pour tous …

Comment ne pas voir avec le WSJ…

Sous prétexte de correction politique et face aux efforts toujours plus méritants des musulmans et de leurs soutiens d’extrême-gauche se tuant littéralement à prouver leur bonne volonté meurtrière …

La scandaleuse injustice d’une surveillance policière réservée aux seuls groupes extémistes de droite ?

The Brothers Tsarnaev

Mohsin Hamid

The WSJ

April 20, 2013

The terrorist suspects next door.

Events in Boston were moving so quickly on Friday that it’s impossible to draw too many conclusions. But the emergence of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev as the chief terror suspects who paralyzed a great American city deserves at least some reflection.

One consoling thought is the admirable behavior of the citizens of greater Boston and its law enforcers. The point may seem banal, but it’s no small matter that the public largely heeded the government’s orders to stay off the streets and take the day off so police could track down the younger brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar, who was captured Friday night after a day-long manhunt.

Bostonians have endured enormous disruption this week, but the city has shown a remarkable civility and calm throughout it all. Many lives were saved because of the rapid triage work by volunteers at the bomb scene. Bloomberg News reports that one of the marathon bombing’s victims also helped the FBI identify a suspect after he awoke from surgery at the hospital. The suspect had dropped a bag at Jeff Bauman’s feet and looked him in the eye minutes before it exploded. Mr. Bauman lost both legs below the knee but got his man.

As for the brothers, we will learn more about their motives, their training and whether they acted alone or as part of a network. What we have already learned is that they are immigrants from Chechnya, of the Muslim faith, and that 26-year old Tamerlan was uncomfortable in American society despite having lived here for about a decade.

The Associated Press reported that he was quoted in a Boston University student magazine in 2010 as saying, "I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them." Mother Jones reported that a video attributed to a Tamerlan Tsarnaev extolled an extremist religious prophecy associated with al Qaeda. None of this is definitive but it might be illustrative.

If such alienation turned to jihad, it would not be the first time. The radicalization of young Muslims in the West, in particular children of the well-off, is by now a familiar story. The London bombers of 2005 were middle-class Pakistani immigrants from Birmingham. Faisal Shahzad, the failed Times Square bomber, was a naturalized citizen from Pakistan.

After the London bombings, many Americans took comfort in the belief that immigrants to the U.S. are better assimilated than they are in Europe. But that may be more conceit than fact, at least in regard to some young men. "My Son the Fanatic" is a novella by Hanif Kureishi that speaks to the difficulties of acculturation of second-generation Muslims. The recent Pulitzer Prize- winning play, "Disgraced," covers related ground.

Mitchell Silber and Arvin Bhatt explained how this can evolve into a threat in an instructive paper for the New York Police Department in 2007,

"Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat." The intelligence analysts looked at several cases here and abroad and described the process by which otherwise "unremarkable" men leading regular lives become jihadists.

"Muslims in the U.S. are more resistant, but not immune to the radical message," they wrote. "Despite the economic opportunities in the United States, the powerful gravitational pull of individuals’ religious roots and identity sometimes supersedes the assimilating nature of American society which includes pursuit of a professional career, financial stability and material comforts." The Tsarnaev brothers may be an example.

Some will use this threat as an argument against immigration, but that would punish everyone for the sins of a few. The "homegrown" radical threat is really an argument for vigilance, especially within communities prone to producing terrorists.

This means surveilling foreign student groups in the U.S., certain immigrant communities that have produced jihadists, and, yes, even mosques and other Muslim venues. The key is to be familiar enough with these communities, to know and be trusted enough by their leaders, so those man and women will alert law enforcers when someone appears to have become radicalized.

This offends some civil libertarians, and the Associated Press excoriated the NYPD for the practice in a series of stories in 2011. In the wake of Boston, this looks notably misguided. New York’s police say they’ve kept at it, under appropriate legal safeguards, and we hope they will continue.

The U.S. government watches right-wing extremist groups because we know they are dangerous. The police shouldn’t refrain from doing the same to Muslim or immigrant groups merely because that is deemed less politically correct. As the week’s events in Boston show, the costs of doing otherwise are too high.

Voir aussi:

Tamerlan Tsarnaev a été entendu en 2011 par le FBI

20 minutes

20/04/2013

ETATS-UNIS – Le FBI l’a confirmé. Il pourrait ainsi être placé dans l’embarras…

Tamerlan Tsarnaev a été entendu en 2011 par la police américaine après l’avertissement d’un pays étranger, a confirmé vendredi le FBI, qui pourrait ainsi être placé dans l’embarras. Les autorités du pays en question, qui n’a pas été précisé, le soupçonnaient d’être «un adepte de l’islam radical» sur le point de quitter les Etats-Unis pour rejoindre un mouvement armé, a précisé le FBI vendredi soir. L’audition de Tamerlan Tsarnaev et de sa famille n’a pas permis «de découvrir une quelconque activité terroriste», pas plus que les recherches concernant leurs déplacements, leurs activités sur internet ou leur entourage, ajoute l’agence.

«Un coup monté», selon la mère des deux suspects

Interrogée par le service en langue anglaise de la chaîne de télévision Russia Today, la mère des deux suspects a pour sa part affirmé que son fils aîné était surveillé par le FBI depuis au moins trois ans et que la police fédérale américaine était parfaitement au courant de ses activités. «Il était contrôlé par le FBI depuis quelque chose comme trois à cinq ans», a dit Zoubeidat Tsarnaeva, employant en anglais le faux-ami du mot russe signifiant «surveiller». «Ils savaient ce que mon fils était en train de faire, ils savaient quels sites il consultait sur internet» a-t-elle ajouté.

D’après Russia Today, qui l’a interrogée au téléphone, Zoubeidat Tsarnaeva se trouvait à Makhachkala, la ville du Daguestan où elle réside. Comme Anzor, leur père interrogé vendredi par les médias, Zoubeidat Tsarnaeva pense que ses enfants ont été manipulés. «C’est vraiment, vraiment difficile à entendre. Et en tant que mère, tout ce que je peux dire, c’est que je suis vraiment convaincue, je suis sûre à 100% qu’il s’agit d’un coup monté» a-t-elle dit. On ignore donc d’où provenait l’avertissement mentionné par le FBI mais Tamerlan Tsarnaev aurait effectué un voyage en Russie l’année dernière.

«Très perturbant de savoir qu’il était sur les écrans radar du FBI»

Les deux suspects, originaires de Tchétchénie, sont nés au Kirghizistan et vivaient depuis une dizaine d’années aux Etats-Unis, où rien ne pouvait laisser croire qu’il s’agissait d’extrémistes. Le cadet a la nationalité américaine Rien n’indiquait jusqu’ici que les frères Tsarnaev étaient connus des services de police.

«C’est une information nouvelle pour moi et c’est très perturbant de savoir qu’il était sur les écrans radar du FBI» a réagi Michael McCaul, député républicain du Texas et président de la commission Sécurité de la Chambre des représentants. Les services de sécurité américains avaient auparavant indiqué ne disposer d’aucune information permettant d’établir un lien entre les frères Tsarnaev et un mouvement islamiste tel qu’Al Qaïda.

Voir également:

Procureurs assassinés au Texas : un ex-juge et sa femme incriminés

France info

18 Avril 2013

Deux procureurs ont été tués dans l’Etat du Texas, en janvier puis fin mars dernier. Après avoir soupçonné un groupe de défense de la suprémacie de la race blanche, l’enquête a connu un rebondissement ces derniers jours. Un ancien juge de paix et sa femme ont été mis en accusation.

L’affaire avait suscité beaucoup d’émoi au Texas le mois dernier. Non seulement le procureur du comté de Kaufman, près de Dallas et sa femme avaient été retrouvés morts chez eux. Mais en plus, il ne s’agissait pas du premier crime. Un autre procureur travaillant dans le même bureau avait été assassiné deux mois plus tôt.

De quoi envisager aussitôt un lien entre les deux affaires. Les enquêteurs avaient même poussé le raisonnement jusqu’à relier ces deux meurtres, à un troisième, celui du directeur d’une prison dans le Colorado le 19 mars. Dans leur ligne de mire : un groupe de "suprémacistes", la Fraternité aryenne.

De la fausse piste aux arrestations

Mais la piste s’est avérée fausse. Car les recherches ont éloigné les enquêteurs de cette piste d’extrême droite, pour les conduire à un email anonyme annonçant d’autres attaques, et à un ancien juge de paix, renvoyé pour avoir été confondu dans une affaire de vol. Tout est alors allé très vite.

L’ancien magistrat a été arrêté samedi, et accusé de "menace à caractère terroriste", pour avoir rédigé cet email. Quand à sa femme, elle a "avoué son implication dans la planification et la mise à exécution des meurtres par balle", indique son mandat d’arrestation. Mise en accusation mercredi, elle a néanmoins affirmé que c’est son mari qui avait appuyé sur la gâchette.

Voir encore:

Deux procureurs assassinés au Texas, les "suprémacistes" suspectés

France info

1 Avril 2013

Un procureur a été retrouvé mort samedi dans le comté de Kaufman, près de Dallas au Texas. Deux mois après le meurtre de son adjoint et deux semaines après celui d’un directeur de prison. Coïncidences ? Les autorités locales en doutent et soupçonnent un groupe de défenseurs de la race blanche.

Le FBI, les Texas Rangers et d’autres services judiciaires participent à l’enquête sur le meurtre du procureur et sa femme © Reuters – Shannon Stapleton

Il y a deux mois, le procureur de Kaufman Mike McLelland, ancien GI’s de l’opération Tempête du désert en Irak jouait les fier-à-bras, promettant une traque sans fin à la "racaille" qui venait d’assassiner son adjoint, Franck Hasse. Il ne quittait jamais son arme, "même pour promener son chien", disait-il, se décrivant comme "un soldat". Pourtant, il a été retrouvé mort samedi, chez lui, à quelques kilomètres de Dallas, avec son épouse, le corps criblé de balles. Selon les témoignages, le couple aurait été abattu par un ou deux hommes, visages masqués.

"Une attaque ciblée", affirme la police qui refuse de tirer des conclusions trop hâtives, mais estime tout de même que deux meurtres de procureurs à deux mois d’intervalle, dans une ville de 106.000 habitants, c’est un peu trop pour n’être qu’une coïncidence.

Sur les traces de la Fraternité aryenne

Dans le viseur des autorités, la Fraternité aryenne, prônant la défense de la suprématie blanche. Un premier lien avait été établi après le meurtre de Franck Hasse, meurtre perpétré le 19 janvier, jour où le département de la Justice avait annoncé par communiqué l’ouverture d’une enquête par le bureau du procureur de Kaufman contre ce groupe d’extrême droite pour une affaire de racket.

Mais l’affaire ne s’arrêterait pas là. Car le FBI s’est déjà intéressé aux liens entre le meurtre de Franck Hasse et celui du directeur d’une prison du Colorado le 19 mars. Le suspect principal de ce dernier assassinat, mort dans une course-poursuite avec la police deux jours plus tard, faisait précisément partie de la Fraternité aryenne et portait des tatouages de croix gammées.

>>> Si vous avez du mal à suivre, le New York Times a tenté de remonter le temps pour illustrer les possibles connections entre ces différentes affaires.

La branche texane de la Fraternité aryenne est présentée comme un gang responsable de meurtres, d’incendies criminels, d’agressions et autres crimes. Il est décrit comme "enclin à la violence et aux menaces violentes pour maintenir une discipline interne ainsi qu’à des représailles contre les personnes soupçonnées de collaborer avec les forces de l’ordre". La Fraternité aryenne ("Aryan brotherhood") fait partie de la mouvance suprémaciste, qui comme son nom l’indique, revendique la suprématie de la race blanche. Des groupuscules surveillés de près par la SLPC aux États-Unis.

Voir encore:

Hezbollah : les révélations des enquêteurs bulgares

Alexandre Lévy

Le Figaro

07/02/2013

Le Figaro a recueilli des confidences sur le rapport top secret de la Commission nationale de sécurité bulgare qui a conclu à la responsabilité du Hezbollah dans l’attentat de Burgas contre un bus israélien en 2012.

Jacque Filipe Martin, Ralph William Rico et Brian Jameson. Deux jeunes Canadiens et un Australien sur les bords de la mer Noire à l’été 2012. Des touristes en goguette? Non, pour les autorités bulgares, ces trois hommes sont les responsables de l’attentat anti-israélien du 18 juillet 2012 qui a fait six morts et une trentaine de blessés à l’aéroport de Burgas, à l’est du pays.

Le premier y a laissé sa peau, déchiqueté par la charge explosive de plus de 3 kg qu’il transportait dans son sac à dos; ses deux complices sont repartis, via un autre pays européen, vers le Liban dont ils sont tous originaires. Des binationaux, le «cauchemar» des services de sécurité.

«Toutes les pistes mènent à Beyrouth»

«Toutes les pistes mènent à Beyrouth», résume un responsable policier au lendemain de la session extraordinaire du Conseil de sécurité, le 5 février, à l’issue duquel Sofia a officiellement mis en cause le Hezbollah dans cet acte sans précédent sur le sol bulgare. «Il y a des informations concernant des financements et une appartenance au Hezbollah de deux personnes», a affirmé le ministre de l’Intérieur Tsvetan Tsvetanov, après six heures de débats à huis clos pendant lesquels les membres du Conseil ont pris connaissance du rapport préliminaire établi par les services de sécurité bulgares et leurs partenaires occidentaux sur cette affaire – un texte classé «secret-défense».

Grâce aux confidences de certains des membres du Conseil, on peut néanmoins établir les éléments qui ont permis cette mise en cause tant attendue par Washington et Tel-Aviv qui se sont empressés de remettre la pression sur l’Union européenne pour qu’elle reconnaisse le Hezbollah comme «organisation terroriste».

Les terroristes voulaient faire un maximum de victimes

Les transferts d’argent en provenance du Liban tout d’abord. Ils avaient pour destinataire le porteur du passeport australien du trio, que les enquêteurs considèrent comme l’artificier du groupe. Les faux permis de conduire américains retrouvés en Bulgarie étaient tous fabriqués dans le même atelier libanais – un lieu «connu» des services de renseignement occidentaux.

Les enquêteurs bulgares disposeraient également d’une photo sur laquelle figureraient des proches parents de l’un des présumés terroristes aux côtés de membres du Hezbollah. Enfin, les policiers ont également établi avec exactitude le timing des déplacements du trio. Ils sont arrivés par avion en Bulgarie munis de leurs véritables passeports, après avoir transité par trois autres pays européens. Mais leur point de départ était Beyrouth, où, selon, le patron de l’antigang de Sofia, Stanimir Florov, les deux survivants se trouvent aujourd’hui.

Autre conclusion importante: l’explosion sur le parking de l’aéroport de Burgas, présentée comme un attentat suicide au début, est aujourd’hui considérée comme «accidentelle». «Les terroristes voulaient faire exploser la bombe à distance dans le bus en mouvement, faisant ainsi le maximum de victimes tout en effaçant leurs traces. Mais soit le porteur de la bombe a fait une mauvaise manipulation, soit il s’est fait avoir par ses coéquipiers», affirme une source policière.

Ayant reconstitué le parcours des trois hommes en Bulgarie, les enquêteurs sont également persuadés qu’ils n’avaient pas un comportement de fanatiques islamiques mais plutôt de «James Bond en herbe». Et ils n’ont boudé les plaisirs de la vie. «Ils ont fréquenté des hôtels de charme et des restaurants fins, souvent joliment accompagnés», disent-ils.

Ottawa a confirmé que l’un de ses ressortissants est bien impliqué dans cet attentat, précisant qu’il a quitté le sol canadien à l’âge de 12 ans. Les autorités australiennes sont également à la recherche de «Brian», alors que le gouvernement libanais s’est engagé à «coopérer» avec les enquêteurs bulgares. La véritable identité du troisième terroriste, mort dans l’attentat, reste en revanche un mystère. «Force est de constater que les organisateurs de cet attentat ont trouvé un homme que personne ne pleure, ni ne regrette», conclut un policier occidental spécialisé dans la lutte antiterroriste.

Voir enfin:

The Homegrown Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland (ARI)

Lorenzo Vidino

ARI 171/2009

18/12/2009

Theme: Radicalisation into violence affects some small segments of the American Muslim population and recent events show that a threat from homegrown terrorism of jihadist inspiration does exist in the US.

Summary: The wave of arrests and thwarted plots recently seen in the US has severely undermined the long-held assumption that American Muslims, unlike their European counterparts, are virtually immune to radicalisation. In reality, as argued in this ARI, evidence also existed before the autumn of 2009, highlighting how radicalisation affected some small segments of the American Muslim population exactly like it affects some fringe pockets of the Muslim population of each European country. After putting forth this argument, this paper analyses the five concurring reasons traditionally used to explain the divergence between the levels of radicalisation in Europe and the US: better economic conditions, lack of urban ghettoes, lower presence of recruiting networks, different demographics and a more inclusive sense of citizenship. While all these characteristics still hold true, they no longer represent a guarantee, as other factors such as perception of discrimination and frustration at US foreign policies could lead to radicalisation. Finally, the paper looks at the post-9/11 evolution of the homegrown terrorist threat to the US homeland and examines possible future scenarios.[1]

Analysis: The American authorities and public have been shocked by the tragic events of 5 November 2009, when Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly opened fire against fellow soldiers inside the Fort Hood military base, killing 13 people and wounding 30 others. The shooting triggered a heated debate over Major Hasan’s motives. Earlier analyses focused on personal and psychological factors, such as his alleged distress towards his forthcoming deployment to Iraq and the abuses he had reportedly suffered from other soldiers. As the days went by, more and more evidence surfaced pointing to Major Hasan’s radical Islamist sympathies. Colleagues and acquaintances described many instances in which the Virginia-born Army psychiatrist had expressed extremely negative feelings towards the US and praised acts of violence against it. Reports also indicated that the FBI had investigated Major Hasan’s e-mail conversations with Anwar al Awlaqi, a US-born Yemeni-based cleric known for his fiery rhetoric and links to two of the 9/11 hijackers.

Authorities have so far been reluctant to officially label the Fort Hood shooting an act of terrorism and, at the time of writing, various investigations are exploring all angles of this tragic event. While it might be premature, if ever possible, to identify the full spectrum of motives behind Major Hasan’s actions, it is fair to say that radical Islamist ideology had an influence on his worldview. In any case, the Fort Hood shooting comes at the tail end of two months that have challenged many of the assumptions on terrorism and radicalisation in the US that have shaped the debate for more than a decade. Since September 2009, in fact, a staggering series of arrests has taken place on US soil:

On 20 September, FBI agents arrested two Afghan immigrants in Colorado and one in New York.[2] According to the authorities, one of the men, Najibullah Zazi, had trained in an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan and, once back in the US, had purchased large quantities of chemical substances in various beauty supply stores. Zazi allegedly intended to mix the substances and detonate them against targets throughout the New York metropolitan area. The authorities described Zazi’s plot as the most serious threat against the US homeland uncovered since 9/11.[3]

On 24 September, a 19-year-old Jordanian immigrant was arrested for having parked what he believed to be a car bomb in the car park of a 60-story skyscraper in downtown Dallas, Texas.4 Before driving the car to the site, Hosam Hamer Husein Smadi had made a video which he believed would have been sent to Osama bin Laden.[5]

On the same day but in an unrelated plot, Michael C. Finton, a 29-year-old American-born convert to Islam, parked a car that he also believed laden with explosives outside a federal courthouse in Springfield, Illinois.[6] In both the Finton and the Smadi cases, federal agents had approached the two men after unearthing information about their desire to commit acts of violence, led them to believe they were affiliated to al-Qaeda and supplied them with explosives that the men wrongly believed to be active.

On 21 October, the authorities indicted two Boston-area natives, Tarek Mehanna and Ahmad Abousamra, with various conspiracy charges.[7] According to the indictment, the men, who had been extremely active in online jihadist forums, had been trying to join various al-Qaeda affiliates since 2001 and had also planned attacks inside the US (reportedly targeting a local shopping mall and various US government officials).

On 27 October, the authorities arrested two long-time Chicago residents of Pakistani descent and charged them with conspiracy to provide material support and/or to commit terrorist acts against overseas targets.[8] According to the charges the two men had been in close contact with senior leaders of Pakistani jihadist groups Lashkar e Taiba and Harakat ul Jihad Islami and one of them, Daood Gilani, had travelled to Denmark to conduct surveillance of the facilities of the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten for a possible attack against it. On 7 December the authorities charged Gilani also with conducting surveillance of various targets in Mumbai in the two years preceding the deadly November 2008 attack on the Indian city. According to the indictment, upon accepting the task Gilani changed his name to David Headley and travelled at least five times to Mumbai, confident that his new name and American passport would not attract the attention of the Indian authorities. After each trip he travelled to Pakistan, where he shared the pictures, videotapes and notes he had taken with senior Lashkar e Taiba operatives.[9]

On 28 October, the federal authorities in Detroit proceeded to arrest 11 members of Ummah, a group of mostly African-American converts to Islam, on charges that ranged from mail fraud to illegal possession and sale of firearms. Most suspects were arrested without opposing resistance, but Luqman Ameen Abdullah (alias Christopher Thomas), the group’s leader, fired at agents and was subsequently killed. While the case cannot be considered a full-fledged terrorism investigation, it nevertheless involves a US-based radical Islamist network. Ummah, in fact, is a group that, according to authorities, ‘seeks to establish a separate Sharia-law governed state within the United States’ and whose members have been involved in violent acts in the past.[10]

Finally, in early December, the Pakistani authorities arrested five American Muslims in the city of Sargodha. The five, all US citizens in their late teens and early 20s who had gone missing from their northern Virginia homes a few days earlier, had reportedly been in touch via the Internet with senior militants of various al-Qaeda-affiliated organisations and allegedly intended to train with local outfits to fight against US forces.[11]

All these plots are very diverse in their origin, degree of sophistication and characteristics of the individuals involved. Yet they all contribute to paint the picture of the complex and rapidly changing reality of terrorism of Islamist inspiration in the US. Moreover, they smash or, at least, severely undermine an assumption that has been widely held by policymakers and analysts over the last 15 years. The common wisdom, in fact, has traditionally been that American Muslims, unlike their European counterparts, were virtually immune to radicalisation. Europeans, argued this narrative, have been unable to integrate their immigrant Muslim population and radicalisation is the inevitable by-product of the discrimination and socio-economic disparity suffered by European Muslims. America, on the other hand, is more open to its immigrants and has been able to integrate its Muslims, making them impervious to radicalisation.

The wave of arrests of the last months of 2009 has contributed to shedding light on a reality that is significantly more nuanced, showing that radicalisation affects some small segments of the American Muslim population exactly like it affects some fringe pockets of the Muslim population of each European country. Evidence supporting this view has been available for a long time, as the cases of American Muslims joining radical Islamist groups date back to the 1970s.[12] According to data collected by the NYU Center on Law and Security, for example, more than 500 individuals have been convicted by the American authorities for terrorism-related charges since 9/11.[13] Most of them are US citizens or long-time US residents who underwent radicalisation inside the US. While making a numerically accurate comparison is not easy, it is fair to say that the number of American Muslims involved in violent activities is either equal or only slightly lower than that of any European country with a comparable Muslim population.

Yet, despite this evidence, for a long time the American authorities and commentators seemed unable to acknowledge the existence of radicalisation among small segments of the American Muslim population. In the FBI’s parlance, for example, until 2005, the term ‘homegrown terrorism’ was still reserved for domestic organisations such as anti-government militias, white supremacists and eco-terrorist groups such as the Earth Liberation Front. Such groups were termed ‘homegrown’ to distinguish them from jihadist terrorist networks, even though some of the latter possessed some of the very same characteristics (membership born and raised in the US and a focus on US targets). Since the cause of the jihadists was perceived to be foreign, the US government did not label them as ‘homegrown’, despite the typically homegrown characteristics of many of them.

The July 2005 attacks in London led the US authorities to look at the homegrown issue with renewed attention. As an increasing number of cells that clearly possessed homegrown characteristics were uncovered throughout the country, the authorities began to re-assess the definition of homegrown. By 2006 top FBI and DHS officials began to openly speak of homegrown terrorism of jihadist inspiration inside the US, even describing it as a threat ‘as dangerous as groups like al-Qaeda, if not more so’.[14] As a consequence of this reassessment, the US authorities began to ask themselves if the emergence of relatively large numbers of radicalised second-generation Muslims that had been observed in Europe could also take place in the US. This fear led to an increased attention on the dynamics and causes of radicalisation among Muslims in both Europe and North America.

Comparing Radicalisation in Europe and America

Five concurring reasons have traditionally been used to explain the divergence between the levels of radicalisation in Europe and the US. The first one is related to the significantly better economic conditions of American Muslims. While European Muslims generally languish at the bottom of most rankings that measure economic integration, American Muslims fare significantly better, and the average American Muslim household’s income is equal to, if not higher, than the average American’s.[15] As the many cases of militants who came from privileged backgrounds have proved, economic integration is not always an antidote to radicalisation, but it is undeniable that radical ideas find a fertile environment among unemployed and disenfranchised youth. A direct consequence of economic integration is the lack of Muslim ghettoes in the US. Areas of large European cities with a high concentration of poor Muslim immigrants have been ideological sanctuaries where radicals could freely spread their message and where radical Islam has become a sort of counterculture. The American Muslim community’s economic conditions have prevented the formation of such enclaves in the US.

Geographic dispersion, immigration patterns and tougher immigration policies have also prevented the formation of extensive recruiting and propaganda networks as those that have sprung up in Europe. While places such as Brooklyn’s al-Farooq mosque or Tucson’s Islamic Center saw extensive jihadist activities in the 1990s, they pale in comparison to recruiting headquarters such as London’s Finsbury Park, Hamburg’s al-Quds mosque or Milan’s Islamic Cultural Institute. Moreover, the fact that large segments of the American Muslim population belong to ethnicities that have traditionally espoused moderate interpretations of Islam has been cited as another reason for America’s lower levels of radicalism. In fact, Muslims from the Iranian and Indian American communities, which account for vast segments of America’s Muslim population, have traditionally embraced moderate forms of Islam and have been, to varying degrees, almost impervious to radicalisation.

Finally, commentators have often pointed out that America is a country built on immigration, traditionally accepting immigrants of all races and religions as citizens. European countries, on the other hand, have been unable to develop a sense of citizenship not linked to century-long identifying factors such as ethnicity and religious affiliation. In a nutshell, it is easy to become American, while it is very difficult for immigrants, particularly if they are not white and Christian, to be accepted as full-fledged Germans, Frenchmen or Spaniards. This sense of exclusion is traditionally cited as one of the factors driving some European Muslims to radicalisation, while the more inclusive nature of American society would prevent American Muslims from undergoing the same process.

While all these characteristics still hold true, they no longer represent a guarantee. Factors such as perception of discrimination and frustration at US foreign policies could lead to radicalisation, irrespective of favourable economic conditions. Experts and community leaders have repeatedly warned about the growing alienation of American Muslims, particularly among those of the second generation. These frustrations could produce what Steven Simon refers to as ‘a rejectionist generation’, which could embrace radical interpretations of Islam.[16] The same conclusion has been reached by a widely publicised report released by the New York Police Department Intelligence Division in 2007. ‘Despite the economic opportunities in the United States’, reads the report, ‘the powerful gravitational pull of individuals’ religious roots and identity sometimes supersedes the assimilating nature of American society which includes pursuit of a professional career, financial stability and material comforts’.[17]

Future Scenarios

The terrorist threat to the US homeland has evolved significantly over the last eight years. Until mid-2003 virtually all of the terrorist conspiracies intended to strike against American soil had been planned, albeit with varying degrees of involvement, by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and al-Qaeda’s central leadership. The arrest of KSM and many of his top lieutenants, al-Qaeda’s loss of the Afghan sanctuary and the significant improvement in homeland security measures triggered a shift that began to materialise in late 2003. With the exception of the 2006 Transatlantic Plot, a plot hatched by UK-based militants apparently directed by al-Qaeda members in Pakistan to detonate liquid explosives on board several US-bound flights, every single attack against the American homeland thwarted by US authorities since then appears to have been conceived by individuals acting independently from al-Qaeda’s leadership.[19]

The individuals involved in these plots have been an odd mix of low-ranking al-Qaeda affiliates and jihad enthusiasts who had never had any contact with al-Qaeda or other established organisations. And most of them have been characterised by the absolute operational independence of the planners. The result of this shift from leader-led to homegrown has been a remarkable decrease in the sophistication of the operations planned, as most of the plotters were amateurish if not embarrassingly clumsy, lacking the basic tradecraft and capabilities to operate undetected or mount any sort of sophisticated attack.

While this was true until a few months ago, there are indications that things are changing. Recent investigations have shown that a small yet increasing number of American Muslims have been travelling to Pakistan to acquire operational skills and establish contacts with various jihadist outfits. One well known case is that of Bryant Neal Vinas, a 26 year-old Long Island native who was captured in Pakistan and brought back to the US in November 2008.[20] Vinas, who had allegedly participated in a rocket attack against a US military base in Afghanistan, decided to cooperate with American interrogators and has since provided ‘an intelligence gold mine’.[21] Thanks to Vinas’ information the authorities have been able to identify and arrest several American and European militants who had also trained with al-Qaeda and affiliated groups in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region.

While this ‘Pakistan connection’ is not new to the European authorities, it is a disturbing new development for their American counterparts. To be sure, Americans had trained with various Afghanistan/Pakistan-based jihadist outfits before and after 9/11. In 2003, for example, the US authorities dismantled the so-called ‘paintball jihad’ network in northern Virginia.[22] The network was formed by a dozen young men from the Washington suburbs who had travelled to Pakistan immediately after 9/11, where they trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba. But what seemed to be isolated cases are increasingly becoming the norm. Moreover, in the case of Vinas and at least two of the cases from the fall of 2009 (the Najibullah Zazi/New York plot and the Chicago/Denmark plot) authorities have noticed with apprehension that American militants returning from Pakistan were significantly better trained and organised than the homegrown jihadists who had been operating in the US over the last few years. The ‘Pakistan connection’, that operational link to organised outfits in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area that makes amateurish homegrown networks graduate into more professional terrorist clusters, has been crucial in the development of jihadist networks in Europe over the last five years and it now appears to have become a significant factor also in the US.

Given these dynamics, one of the scenarios that the US authorities take into particular consideration is the case of a homegrown cluster that, thanks to the directions and skills obtained from al-Qaeda or various al-Qaeda-affiliated networks in Afghanistan/Pakistan, manages to reach sufficient operational sophistication to carry out a significant attack against the American homeland.[23] And if traditionally authorities estimated that al-Qaeda’s leadership intended to strike inside the US only with a mass-casualty attack that would at least rival the actions of 9/11, lately this assessment has been revised.[24] Recent cases have shown that not only independent clusters but also American networks operating in cooperation with Afghanistan/Pakistan-based groups are focusing on less grandiose plans, considering that even a less ambitious attack –on the scale of the 2004 Madrid or 2005 London bombings– would be a success.

If Afghanistan/Pakistan is a major source of concerns, the authorities have also been monitoring the possible impact of the Somali conflict on American domestic security. Over the last few years, in fact, a few dozen young American Muslims have travelled to Somalia to fight and train alongside al-Shabaab, the local Islamist militia battling the Somali government and African Union troops. Most of them have been ethnic Somalis, sons of the large Somali diaspora community present in Minneapolis, Seattle and other American cities. One of them, 27-year-old Minneapolis college student Shirwa Ahmed, reportedly blew himself up in a suicide bombing in northern Somalia in October 2008.[25] Another four Minneapolis residents have been reported killed in the African country since then. A few non-ethnic Somali Americans have also reportedly joined al-Shabaab. While the New Jersey native of Egyptian descent Amir Mohamed Meshal and Massachusetts-born convert Daniel Maldonado have been arrested after leaving Somalia, Alabama native Omar Hammami is still very much active inside the country, starring in several English language al-Shabaab propaganda videos under the nom de guerre Abu Mansour al Amriki.

While there are no indications that al-Shabaab is planning an attack within the US, its increased focus on global issues and public support for al-Qaeda make the hypothesis not that far-fetched. Moreover, while many of the foreign fighters joining al-Shabaab, whether from the US, Europe or other regions, are Somalis driven by some sort of nationalist sentiment, others are aspiring jihadists whose interest in the African country is mostly tactical and temporary. It is safe to assume that many of them, given the opportunity, would use the skills acquired in Somalia against other targets. Questioned by American interrogators after his arrest, in fact, Daniel Maldonado described his experience in the African country with these words: ‘I would be fighting the Somali militia, and that turned into fighting the Ethiopians, and if Americans came, I would fight them too’.[26] The fact that Maldonado was in close contact with the individuals arrested in Boston in October 2009 provides additional evidence as to why the ‘Somalia connection’ is considered a serious threat.

Conclusion: Since 9/11 the American counterterrorism posture has been extraordinarily aggressive, both domestically and globally. Extensive overseas military and intelligence gathering actions, the introduction of enhanced investigative powers, a significantly improved inter-agency coordination and, in general, a constant high level of vigilance have allowed the authorities to keep the country safe from terrorist attacks. While some civil libertarians might have a point in questioning some of the tools used to do so, the achievement is nevertheless remarkable. At the same time, though, the US seems to be lacking a long-term strategy to confront the threat of radicalisation on the domestic front. The authorities have in fact been unable to conceive a policy that would pre-emptively tackle the issue of radicalisation, preventing young American Muslims from embracing extremist ideas in the first place.

Various intelligence and law enforcement agencies have reached out to the academic community to better understand the social, political and psychological causes of radicalisation. But the limited understanding of the issue, coupled with the overlap of jurisdiction between often competing federal, state and local authorities, has prevented the implementation of a systematic, nationwide programme to combat radicalisation. Solutions are, to be sure, hard to find. Europeans, who experienced the problem of radicalisation of segments of their own Muslim communities well before the US, are still struggling with the same issue and are only now attempting to put in place coherent anti-radicalisation programmes, the success of which must still be verified. Equally challenging have been the efforts, on both sides of the Atlantic, to find reliable and representative organisations within various Muslim communities to be employed as partners in anti-radicalisation activities. Clearly, more attention and analysis should be devoted to the issue. But the awareness that homegrown terrorism of jihadist inspiration does exist in the US is a necessary starting point. The events of the fall of 2009 provided, if needed, additional evidence to suggest so.

Lorenzo Vidino

Fellow at the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and a Peace Scholar at the US Institute of Peace

[1] It goes without saying that various forms of homegrown terrorism have long threatened the US, some of them well before those of jihadist inspiration. Right-wing militias, radical environmentalist groups and, to a lesser degree, some fringe left-wing and anarchist groups are very much active inside the country and have occasionally carried out violent acts over the last few years. Yet it is undeniable that, in terms of magnitude, frequency and sophistication, homegrown terrorism of jihadist inspiration currently represents the most immediate threat against the US and is therefore the subject of this analysis.

[2]http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel09/zazi_092009.htm.

[3] Kevin Johnson, ‘Alleged terror threat seen as “most serious” since 9/11 attacks’, USA Today, 25/IX/2009.

[4]http://dallas.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/dl092409.htm.

[5] Jon Nielsen, ‘FBI says Dallas terror plot suspect made video to send to Osama bin Laden’, Dallas Morning News, 5/X/ 2009.

[6] http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/ilc/press/2009/09September/24Finton.html.

[7] http://boston.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/bs102109a.htm.

[8] http://www.justice.gov/usao/iln/pr/chicago/2009/pr1027_01.pdf.

[9] http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2009/December/09-nsd-1304.html.

[10] http://detroit.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/de102809.htm.

[11] Waqar Gilani & Jane Perlez, ‘5 US Men Arrested Said to Plan Jihad Training’, New York Times, 11/XII/2009.

[12] For an overview, see Lorenzo Vidino, ‘Homegrown Jihadist Terrorism in the United States: A New and Occasional Phenomenon?’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 32, 1/I/2009, p. 1-17.

[13] http://www.lawandsecurity.org/publications/TTRCHighlightsSept25th.pdf.

[14] Remarks of FBI Director Robert Muller, City Club of Cleveland, 23/VI/2006.

[15] Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream, Pew Research Center, 22/V/2007, p. 24-5.

[16] Steven Simon, Statement before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 12/IX/2006.

[17] Report by Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, New York Police Department Intelligence Division, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, August 2007, p. 8.

[18] Bruce Hoffman, ‘The Use of the Internet by Islamic Extremists’, Testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 4/V/2006.

[19] Vidino, ‘Homegrown Jihadist Terrorism in the United States’.

[20] US v. Bryant Neal Vinas, Superseding Indictment, US District Court, Eastern District of New York, 08-823 (NGG) (S-1), 28/I/2009.

[21] ‘Man Was “Gold Mine” of Terror Intel’, Associated Press, 31/VII/2009.

[22] Terrorism in the United States, 2002-2005, unclassified report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,http://www.fbi.gov/publications/terror/terrorism2002_2005.htm.

[23] Interview with various FBI officials, September/October 2009, Boston and Washington DC.

[24] David Johnston & Eric Schmitt, ‘Smaller-Scale Terrorism Plots Pose New and Worrisome Threats, Officials Say’, New York Times, 31/X/2009.

[25] http://minneapolis.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/mp112309.htm.

[26] Affidavit of FBI Special Agent Jeremiah A. George in US v. Daniel Joseph Maldonado, US District Court, Southern District of Texas, H-07-125M, 13/II/2007.

Attentats de Boston: Des Maghrébins infiltrés du Canada ? (French judge surprised that a US far right anti-government movement would suddenly target civilians)

Espérons que le terroriste du marathon de Boston est un Américain blanc. Salon

White privilege is knowing that even if the Boston Marathon bomber turns out to be white, his or her identity will not result in white folks generally being singled out for suspicion by law enforcement, or the TSA, or the FBI. White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for whites to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening, or threatened with deportation. White privilege is knowing that if the bomber turns out to be white, he or she will be viewed as an exception to an otherwise non-white rule, an aberration, an anomaly, and that he or she will be able to join the ranks of Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph and Joe Stack and George Metesky and Byron De La Beckwith and Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton and Herman Frank Cash and Robert Chambliss and James von Brunn and Robert Mathews and David Lane and Michael F. Griffin and Paul Hill and John Salvi and James Kopp and Luke Helder and James David Adkisson and Scott Roeder and Shelley Shannon and Dennis Mahon and Wade Michael Page and Byron Williams and Kevin Harpham and William Krar and Judith Bruey and Edward Feltus and Raymond Kirk Dillard and Adam Lynn Cunningham and Bonnell Hughes and Randall Garrett Cole and James Ray McElroy and Michael Gorbey and Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman and Frederick Thomas and Paul Ross Evans and Matt Goldsby and Jimmy Simmons and Kathy Simmons and Kaye Wiggins and Patricia Hughes and Jeremy Dunahoe and David McMenemy and Bobby Joe Rogers and Francis Grady and Demetrius Van Crocker and Floyd Raymond Looker and Derek Mathew Shrout, among the pantheon of white people who engage in (or have plotted) politically motivated violence meant to terrorize and kill, but whose actions result in the assumption of absolutely nothing about white people generally, or white Christians in particular. And white privilege is being able to know nothing about the crimes committed by most of the terrorists listed above — indeed, never to have so much as heard most of their names — let alone to make assumptions about the role that their racial or ethnic identity may have played in their crimes. White privilege is knowing that if the Boston bomber turns out to be white, we will not be asked to denounce him or her, so as to prove our own loyalties to the common national good. It is knowing that the next time a cop sees one of us standing on the sidewalk cheering on runners in a marathon, that cop will say exactly nothing to us as a result. White privilege is knowing that if you are a white student from Nebraska — as opposed to, say, a student from Saudi Arabia — that no one, and I mean no one would think it important to detain and question you in the wake of a bombing such as the one at the Boston Marathon. And white privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Belfast. And if he’s an Italian American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican. In short, white privilege is the thing that allows you (if you’re white) — and me — to view tragic events like this as merely horrific, and from the perspective of pure and innocent victims, rather than having to wonder, and to look over one’s shoulder, and to ask even if only in hushed tones, whether those we pass on the street might think that somehow we were involved. Tim Wise

Despite widespread speculation that “white supremacists” were behind the killings of two prosecutors in Texas (and the wife of one of the prosecutors), it turned out that a disgruntled Texas Justice of the Peace was behind the murders. As in the Newtown and Boston Marathon cases, initial media speculation and reporting was almost entirely wrong. National media attention on the case mostly dropped once the “white supremacist” angle was gone. LI

A l’été 1996, le monde avait les yeux rivés sur Atlanta pour les Jeux olympiques. Sous la protection et les auspices du régime de Washington, des millions de personnes étaient venues pour célébrer les idéaux du monde socialiste. Les multinationales ont dépensé des milliards de dollars et Washington avait mis en place une armée de sécurité pour protéger le meilleur de ces jeux. (…) L’objectif de l’attaque du 27 juillet était de confondre, de mettre en colère et dans l’embarras le gouvernement de Washington aux yeux du monde pour son abominable autorisation de l’avortement à la demande. Le plan était de forcer l’annulation des Jeux, ou au moins de créer un état d’insécurité, pour vider les rues autour des lieux et ainsi rendre inutiles les vastes sommes d’argent investies. Le plan sur lequel je me suis finalement rabattu était d’utiliser cinq explosifs chronométrés low-tech à placer un à la fois et en des jours successifs tout au long du calendrier olympique, chacun précédé d’un avertissement de quarante à cinquante minutes sur le 911. Les lieu et heure de la détonation devaient être donnés, et l’intention était de ce fait de faire évacuer chacune des zones visées, laissant seuls exposés au risque potentiel de blessure les forces de l’ordre en uniforme et armées. "Les attaques devaient commencer dès le début des Jeux olympiques, mais en raison d’un manque de planification, cela a été reporté pd’une semaine. J’avais espéré sincèrement atteindre ces objectifs sans nuire à des civils innocents. Eric Randolph

C’est à proximité d’une scène où se déroulait chaque soir un spectacle que s’est produite l’explosion, au pied d’une tour de quatre étages utilisée pour les éclairages et le son. Le quartier est immédiatement bouclé. Les mesures d’évacuation ne seront prises qu’après l’alerte donnée par le garde Richard Jewell. Ce dernier deviendra rapidement le suspect numéro un lorsqu’il déclare avoir aperçu un sac et affirme avoir alerté les forces de sécurité. Peu avant l’explosion, la police reconnaîtra avoir reçu une alerte téléphonique mais l’appel n’a jamais été répercuté auprès de la police et des gardes du parc. Selon le FBI, l’engin explosif, une bombe artisanale composée d’un tube en métal contenant des clous et des vis, était caché dans un sac à dos abandonné. Une personne, présentée comme un "Américain blanc, sans accent particulier", avait prévenu la police par téléphone de l’imminence de l’explosion. Radio France

Depuis la double explosion de lundi aux États-Unis, la piste du terrorisme interne était surtout évoquée, notamment celle de l’extrême droite. Mais le juge Bruguière trouvait "étrange que cette mouvance américaine, focalisée dans un combat contre les institutions fédérales ou leurs représentants, s’en prennent subitement à des civils et même à des enfants, dans un attentat aveugle". (…) Si la piste islamiste devait se vérifier, l’ancien magistrat invite à s’intéresser à ce qui se passe dans la communauté islamiste au Canada. «L’opération contre la base pétrolière de BP en Algérie, en janvier dernier, agrégeait deux islamistes venus du Canada.» Et l’ancien juge d’ajouter: «L’opération terroriste de Mogadiscio, le 14 avril dernier, qui fit 34 morts, avait été pilotée également par un Canadien et en incluait un autre dans le commando.» (…) «c’est aussi par le Canada que Hamed Ressam avait tenté de passer pour réaliser un attentat contre l’aéroport de Los Angeles en 1999, en prélude aux actions du 11 septembre 2001». Selon lui, le nord des États-Unis, avec sa frontière terrestre, est «perméable». Le Figaro

Alors que le FBI publie des photos de deux suspects ayant apparemment déposé les sacs à dos contenant les bombes des attentats du marathon de Boston d’il y a quatre jours …

Et que, certains s’en réjouissant déjà explicitement à l’avance, l’hypothèse, y compris sur les réseaux sociaux, du terrorisme interne d’extrême-droite est jusque là la plus souvent évoquée …

Qui à part le juge antiterroriste Bruguière jugeant sérieuse la piste islamiste éventuellement infiltrée du Canada ….

S’étonne qu’une mouvance jusque là caractérisée par sa focalisation sur l’Etat fédéral et ses représentants s’attaque soudain à des civils d’une manière aveugle?

Et qui prend la peine de rappeler par exemple que contrairement à l’attaque délibérément anti-civils de Boston   ….

Le militant anti-avortement Eric Rudolph et auteur de l’attentat des Jeux d’Atlanta de 1996 avait, en appelant à l’avance la police qui n’avait hélas pas répercuté à temps l’avertissement, tout fait pour éviter les victimes civiles ?

Boston : Bruguière juge la piste islamiste sérieuse

Jean-Marc Leclerc

Le Figaro

18/04/2013

Alors que le FBI aurait identifié sur des photos deux suspects, possibles ressortissants du Maghreb ou du Moyen-Orient, l’ancien vice-président du tribunal de Paris chargé de la coordination antiterroriste en France, Jean-Louis Bruguière, explique pourquoi il faut prendre au sérieux la piste islamiste dans les attentats de Boston. Resté très proche des autorités américaines, l’ex-juge l’assurait au Figaro dès le 16 avril, au lendemain des attaques sur le sol américain: «Ce n’est pas parce qu’al-Qaida au Pakistan prétend ne pas être l’auteur d’une agression que celle-ci n’a rien à voir avec le djihad». Lui a évoqué d’emblée l’hypothèse d’un acte d’al-Qaida en Afrique, type Aqmi (al-Qaida pour le Maghreb islamique ). Un acte peut-être en lien avec les soubresauts au Mali et plus généralement dans la région subsaharienne, «où le djihad s’internationalise», rappelle-t-il.

Depuis la double explosion de lundi aux États-Unis, la piste du terrorisme interne était surtout évoquée, notamment celle de l’extrême droite. Mais le juge Bruguière trouvait «étrange que cette mouvance américaine, focalisée dans un combat contre les institutions fédérales ou leurs représentants, s’en prennent subitement à des civils et même à des enfants, dans un attentat aveugle».

Nitrate de fioul ou poudre noir

L’explosion filmée et largement diffusée par les médias a fait dire à cet observateur avisé, qui a visionné des dizaines de films d’attentats et assisté à de nombreuses reconstitutions techniques, que «l’explosif employé à Boston n’était pas un explosif brisant, de type semtex ou penthrite».

Selon lui, «les images font plutôt penser à une explosion de nitrate de fioul ou de poudre noire, très usités par les islamistes radicaux». Le morceau, retrouvé sur place, de la cocotte-minute contenant l’explosif accrédite, il est vrai, une telle hypothèse. Par ailleurs, «le mélange avec des billes d’acier et de clous, pour faire un maximum de victimes, ainsi que les explosions coordonnées, sont typiques de la signature des commandos type Aqmi ou Groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat (GSPC)». Il cite comme exemple les attentats de Madrid en 2004.

À quelle logique répondrait une telle agression? «Le Mouvement pour l’unicité et le djihad en Afrique de l’Ouest (Mujao), issu d’une scission d’Aqmi en 2011, a annoncé récemment qu’il comptait internationaliser son combat et il s’appuie sur les islamistes libyens, spécule le juge Bruguière. Par ailleurs, dans la région, le groupuscule islamiste du Nigeria Boko Haram, responsable notamment de l’enlèvement d’une famille française au Cameroun, a revendiqué son allégeance à al-Qaida.»

Le précédent Hamed Ressam

Si la piste islamiste devait se vérifier, l’ancien magistrat invite à s’intéresser à ce qui se passe dans la communauté islamiste au Canada. «L’opération contre la base pétrolière de BP en Algérie, en janvier dernier, agrégeait deux islamistes venus du Canada.» Et l’ancien juge d’ajouter: «L’opération terroriste de Mogadiscio, le 14 avril dernier, qui fit 34 morts, avait été pilotée également par un Canadien et en incluait un autre dans le commando.»

Jean-Louis Bruguière rappelle que «c’est aussi par le Canada que Hamed Ressam avait tenté de passer pour réaliser un attentat contre l’aéroport de Los Angeles en 1999, en prélude aux actions du 11 septembre 2001». Selon lui, le nord des États-Unis, avec sa frontière terrestre, est «perméable».

Et l’ex-juge de conclure: «Si c’est bien cette piste africaine qui émerge, ce serait un bouleversement géopolitique majeur, car ces actions placeraient l’Afrique au centre des préoccupations de la population américaine. Et les États-Unis restent rarement sans réagir…» Les enquêteurs du FBI disent ne vouloir pour l’heure privilégier aucune thèse.

Voir aussi:

Attentat de Boston: Le FBI lance un appel à témoin pour identifier deux suspects

Philippe Berry

20 minutes

19/04/2013

ETATS-UNIS – Des photos et une vidéo ont été publiées. Selon les autorités, le suspect numéro 2 est vu en train de déposer un sac à dos près de la ligne d’arrivée…

De notre correspondant aux Etats-Unis

Ce sont les deux hommes les plus recherchés des Etats-Unis. Jeudi, trois jours après le double attentat de Boston, le FBI a dévoilé des photos et une vidéo de deux «suspects». Les autorités demandent l’aide du public pour identifier les deux hommes, décrits comme «extrêmement dangereux».

La vidéo, filmée par plusieurs caméras de surveillance

Deux hommes relativement jeunes

La mauvaise qualité des images ne permet pas de déterminer avec exactitude leur âge ou leur race. Ils marchent sans se presser. L’un porte une casquette de golf sombre et des lunettes de soleil (suspect #1). L’autre a une casquette blanche portée à l’envers, qui laisse davantage voir son visage (suspect #2). Ils ont tous les deux un sac à dos.

Pourquoi sont-ils considérés comme suspects?

Le FBI aurait pu les qualifier de «personnes d’intérêt» mais le terme «suspect» est plus fort.Sur une autre vidéo non dévoilée, le suspect #2 est vu en train de déposer son sac à dos au niveau du site de la seconde explosion, quelques minutes avant la détonation, selon le FBI. Le sac à dos du premier ressemble aux restes de celui retrouvé au niveau de la ligne d’arrivée. Les deux hommes marchent ensemble, à quelques mètres de distance.

Les internautes au travail

Sur Reddit, un fil de discussion a rassemblé plus de 2.000 commentaires en moins d’une heure. Le modèle des casquettes a vite été identifié (Bridgestone et Ralph Lauren). Un internaute appelle tous ceux présents sur la ligne d’arrivée, lundi, à se replonger dans leurs photos pour essayer d’en dénicher une de meilleure définitions que celles des caméras de vidéosurveillance. Un autre demande aux redditeurs de ne publier ni noms ni adresses, pour éviter les erreurs et un lynchage accidentel. «Innocent until proven guilty», rappelle un dernier, alors que le New York Post a publié, la veille, une photo de deux prétendus «suspects». Ils ont depuis été innocentés par les autorités.

L’analyste de Tom Fuentes, ex-directeur adjoint du FBI

«Ce qui frappe, c’est le confort, la nonchalance, avec laquelle ils marchent, surtout pour des hommes, si ce sont les coupables, qui portent une bombe dans leur sac à dos. C’est le signe d’une confiance et d’une expérience avec les explosifs qu’on peut trouver chez des ex-soldats ou des militants terroristes», analyse Fuentes, interrogé sur CNN, jeudi soir.

Combien de temps avant une identification?

Une source au FBI dit à Reuters que les autorités espèrent les identifier «en quelques heures». Selon CBS, le FBI dispose déjà de plusieurs pistes.

Voir de même:

Attentats à Boston : les internautes mènent leur propre enquête

Blandine Le Cain

8/04/2013

Une chasse à l’homme a été lancée sur les réseaux sociaux pour identifier des suspects potentiels, après l’appel du FBI à fournir toutes les photos et vidéos disponibles.

Les forces de police américaines redoublent d’effort pour mettre la main sur le ou les responsables des explosions du marathon de Boston. Les spectateurs présents ont été invités par le FBI à fournir tous les éléments – photos, vidéos, témoignages – qui pourraient les y aider. Un appel massivement suivi, qui a engendré une enquête parallèle et communautaire sur les réseaux sociaux.

Une page Findbostonbombers (Trouver les terroristes de Boston) a été lancée sur le site Reddit, réseau social de partage de liens qui sont soumis au vote des internautes. En 24 heures d’existence, elle affiche plus de 200 discussions. Le principe? Les internautes postent photos et vidéos du marathon, puis observent, zooment, recoupent et partagent leur moindre soupçon, cercles colorés et flèches à l’appui, pour débusquer le moindre suspect.

Une marque de sac, un vêtement, un simple «air suspect» ou «inquiétant», et les théories s’échaffaudent au fil des centaines de commentaires: «L’homme au manteau noir et au sweat gris (à gauche). Sa réaction est bizarre (…) Il ne se retourne pas vers le son de l’explosion (comme les autres), il continue d’avancer…», pointe un internaute. Ou encore: «Comment le sac de cette femme s’est retrouvé de l’autre côté de la barrière? Peut-il contenir la bombe?» Apparaissent alors «suspect potentiel», hyptohèse «plausible», «théorie»… La traque numérique s’organise: des albums photos ont été créés, ainsi qu’un document Google, que chacun peut alimenter. Il récapitule les indices: explosifs utilisés, caractéristiques de la Cocotte-Minute, listings des possibles suspects.

Des risques de dérive

Les concordances repérées par des internautes peuvent orienter les enquêteurs du FBI, auprès de qui certains contributeurs disent avoir témoigné. Les enquêteurs ont d’ailleurs reconnu avoir eu écho d’une photo montrant une silhouette sur un toit, postée sur Twitter, et qui avait agité de nombreux membres, même s’ils refusent de commenter toute photo émanant du grand public. Le site Reddit permet par ailleurs de valoriser les indices bien argumentés. Mais les risques de dérive existent.

Montage visant à identifier le Blue Robe Guy (nous avons floutté son visage).

Montage visant à identifier le Blue Robe Guy (nous avons floutté son visage).

Des médias ont ainsi relaté l’histoire du «Blue Robe Guy», «l’homme en robe de chambre bleue», surnommé ainsi à cause de la veste bleue qu’il porte. Son sac à dos ressemble à celui retrouvé par les enquêteurs, il a été aperçu près du lieu des explosions. Certains ajoutent qu’il «correspond au profil du type de personnes ayant fait cela». Des éléments faibles, mais qui ont poussé des internautes à poster des photos de lui sur Facebook afin de l’identifier, sans précaution.

À mesure que cette enquête communautaire prend de l’ampleur, les critiques émergent. Y compris parmi les contributeurs: «Nous n’avons pas plus de dix sources», tempère un internaute, pour qui ce travail de recherche ne se fait pas «parce qu’on a une chance de trouver le terroriste», mais parce que «c’est rassurant». «Il y a plus de chance de “trouver le terroriste” en faisant ça qu’en ne le faisant pas», lui rétorque un autre utilisateur. Des phénomènes similaires avaient été observés lors de la tuerie de Newtown. Résultat: une mauvaise information sur le nom – Ryan Lanza au lieu d’Adam Lanza – avait mis à l’index toute une série d’innocents.

Voir également:

Explosions au marathon de Boston: le souvenir des attentats d’Atlanta 96

Yannick Cochennec

Slate

15/04/2013

On a encore que très peu de détails sur les explosions qui ont eu lieu ce 15 avril 2013 à la fin du marathon de Boston. Néanmoins, ce n’est pas la première fois qu’un événement sportif est endeuillé aux Etats-Unis. Au premier rang, bien sûr, les Jeux olympiques d’Atlanta, en 1996.

A la veille des JO, les autorités américaines avaient affiché leur sérénité dans le sillage de l’attentat à la bombe d’Oklahoma City, survenu le 19 avril 1995 et qui avait fait 168 morts et des centaines de blessés, carnage réalisé sous l’autorité de Timothy McVeigh. «Je pense pouvoir affirmer que nos plans de sécurité ont été conçus dès le début avec le potentiel d’une telle tragédie à l’esprit», avait déclaré A.D. Frazier, l’officier responsable de la sécurité au comité d’organisation des Jeux d’Atlanta.

L’explosion d’un Boeing de la TWA reliant New York à Paris à quelques heures du début des Jeux olympiques avait toutefois entraîné une vigilance encore plus accrue. Mais en dépit de la mise en place d’un dispositif très onéreux et contraignant, une bombe avait explosé en pleins Jeux, au parc du Centenaire, le 27 juillet à 1h09 du matin. Bilan: 2 morts et quelque 150 blessés.

L’affaire tourna d’abord à la confusion lorsqu’un procès médiatique fut intenté à Richard Jewells après l’attentat. Cet agent de sécurité avait trouvé un paquet suspect avant que les bombes n’explosent. Désigné «suspect numéro un» par le FBI, il était devenu la cible des médias américains qui avaient vite fait le raccourci entre suspect et coupable.

Le vrai coupable, Eric Rudolph, un militant anti-avortement, fut arrêté seulement le 31 mai 2003 après des années de traque. Lors de sa comparution, il lut cette déclaration au sujet de ses motivations au-delà d’autres crimes commis dans le sud des Etats-Unis contre des cliniques pratiquant l’avortement:

«A l’été 1996, le monde avait les yeux rivés sur Atlanta pour les Jeux olympiques. Sous la protection et les auspices du régime de Washington, des millions de personnes étaient venues pour célébrer les idéaux du monde socialiste. Les multinationales ont dépensé des milliards de dollars et Washington avait mis en place une armée de sécurité pour protéger le meilleur de ces jeux. (…) L’objectif de l’attaque du 27 juillet était de confondre, de mettre en colère et dans l’embarras le gouvernement de Washington aux yeux du monde pour son abominable autorisation de l’avortement à la demande. Le plan était de forcer l’annulation des Jeux, ou au moins de créer un état d’insécurité, pour vider les rues autour des lieux et ainsi rendre inutiles les vastes sommes d’argent investies.»

Eric Rudoph fut condamné à la prison à vie en 2005.

Wednesday, Apr 17, 2013 01:24 AM CEST

Voir aussi:

Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American

There is a double standard: White terrorists are dealt with as lone wolves, Islamists are existential threats

By David Sirota

Timothy McVeigh, Osama Bin Laden(Credit: AP/David Longstreath)

Updated: Sirota responds to critics of this piece over here.

As we now move into the official Political Aftermath period of the Boston bombing — the period that will determine the long-term legislative fallout of the atrocity — the dynamics of privilege will undoubtedly influence the nation’s collective reaction to the attacks. That’s because privilege tends to determine: 1) which groups are — and are not — collectively denigrated or targeted for the unlawful actions of individuals; and 2) how big and politically game-changing the overall reaction ends up being.

This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.

Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.

“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”

Because of these undeniable and pervasive double standards, the specific identity of the Boston Marathon bomber (or bombers) is not some minor detail — it will almost certainly dictate what kind of governmental, political and societal response we see in the coming weeks. That means regardless of your particular party affiliation, if you care about everything from stopping war to reducing the defense budget to protecting civil liberties to passing immigration reform, you should hope the bomber was a white domestic terrorist. Why? Because only in that case will privilege work to prevent the Boston attack from potentially undermining progress on those other issues.

To know that’s true is to simply consider how America reacts to different kinds of terrorism.

Though FBI data show fewer terrorist plots involving Muslims than terrorist plots involving non-Muslims, America has mobilized a full-on war effort exclusively against the prospect of Islamic terrorism. Indeed, the moniker “War on Terrorism” has come to specifically mean “War on Islamic Terrorism,” involving everything from new laws like the Patriot Act, to a new torture regime, to new federal agencies like the Transportation Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security, to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to mass surveillance of Muslim communities.

By contrast, even though America has seen a consistent barrage of attacks from domestic non-Islamic terrorists, the privilege and double standards baked into our national security ideologies means those attacks have resulted in no systemic action of the scope marshaled against foreign terrorists. In fact, it has been quite the opposite — according to Darryl Johnson, the senior domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, the conservative movement backlash to merely reporting the rising threat of such domestic terrorism resulted in DHS seriously curtailing its initiatives against that particular threat. (Irony alert: When it comes specifically to fighting white non-Muslim domestic terrorists, the right seems to now support the very doctrine it criticized Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry for articulating — the doctrine that sees fighting terrorism as primarily “an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, public-diplomacy effort” and not something more systemic.)

Enter the Boston bombing. Coming at the very moment the U.S. government is planning to withdraw from Afghanistan, considering cuts to the Pentagon budget, discussing civil liberties principles and debating landmark immigration legislation, the attack could easily become the fulcrum of all of those contentious policy debates — that is, depending on the demographic profile of the assailant.

If recent history is any guide, if the bomber ends up being a white anti-government extremist, white privilege will likely mean the attack is portrayed as just an isolated incident — one that has no bearing on any larger policy debates. Put another way, white privilege will work to not only insulate whites from collective blame, but also to insulate the political debate from any fallout from the attack.

It will probably be much different if the bomber ends up being a Muslim and/or a foreigner from the developing world. As we know from our own history, when those kind of individuals break laws in such a high-profile way, America often cites them as both proof that entire demographic groups must be targeted, and that therefore a more systemic response is warranted. At that point, it’s easy to imagine conservatives citing Boston as a reason to block immigration reform defense spending cuts and the Afghan War withdrawal and to further expand surveillance and other encroachments on civil liberties.

If that sounds hard to believe, just look at yesterday’s comments by right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham, whose talking points often become Republican Party doctrine. Though authorities haven’t even identified a suspect in the Boston attack, she (like other conservatives) seems to already assume the assailant is foreign, and is consequently citing the attack as rationale to slam the immigration reform bill.

The same Laura Ingraham, of course, was one of the leading voices criticizing the Department of Homeland Security for daring to even report on right-wing domestic terrorism. In that sense, she perfectly embodies the double standard that, more than anything, will determine the long-term political impact of the Boston bombing.

At 1:30 p.m. ET Wednesday, David Sirota will be debating Breitbart.com’s Ben Shapiro on guns here.

David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and the best-selling author of the books "Hostile Takeover," "The Uprising" and "Back to Our Future." E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website

Voir également:

Le fait – Atlanta 1996

Un attentat qui a fait craindre le pire.

Près d’un quart de siècle après le premier attentat terroriste de l’histoire olympique (Munich, 1972), les Jeux ont encore tremblé sur leur socle centenaire à Atlanta avec l’explosion d’une bombe artisanale dans un parc du centre-ville.

Samedi 27 juillet 1996. Neuvième jour des Jeux. Il est 01H20 locale (05H20 GMT) dans le parc du Centenaire, situé en plein coeur d’Atlanta. Un lieu très fréquenté où les touristes et les jeunes se retrouvent pour faire la fête depuis le début des Jeux. L’ambiance est joyeuse et animée lorsqu’une violente explosion se produit. La panique s’empare de tout le monde. L’attentat fera un mort et plus de 110 blessés. Un caméraman turc décèdera d’une crise cardiaque en courant pour se rendre sur les lieux du drame.

La vigilance des forces de sécurité –plus de 35.000 personnes– a été prise en défaut dans un endroit et à un moment où on s’y attendait le moins. Le fameux FBI et les plus hautes autorités américaines avaient pourtant assuré qu’Atlanta serait "la ville la plus sûre du monde".

La police prévenue.

C’est à proximité d’une scène où se déroulait chaque soir un spectacle que s’est produite l’explosion, au pied d’une tour de quatre étages utilisée pour les éclairages et le son. Le quartier est immédiatement bouclé. Les mesures d’évacuation ne seront prises qu’après l’alerte donnée par le garde Richard Jewell. Ce dernier deviendra rapidement le suspect numéro un lorsqu’il déclare avoir aperçu un sac et affirme avoir alerté les forces de sécurité. Peu avant l’explosion, la police reconnaîtra avoir reçu une alerte téléphonique mais l’appel n’a jamais été répercuté auprès de la police et des gardes du parc.

Selon le FBI, l’engin explosif, une bombe artisanale composée d’un tube en métal contenant des clous et des vis, était caché dans un sac à dos abandonné. Une personne, présentée comme un "Américain blanc, sans accent particulier", avait prévenu la police par téléphone de l’imminence de l’explosion.

Richard Jewell (34 ans) est alors présenté comme le principal suspect dans la presse nationale et locale. Il sera lavé de tout soupçon par le FBI en octobre 1996 et obtiendra d’importants dédommagements.

Ce nouvel acte de violence est condamné par les autorités du monde entier, à commencer par le président Bill Clinton qui dénonce "un acte de terreur maléfique et lâche". Le chef de l’état américain précise aussi que "toutes les mesures nécessaires" seront prises pour protéger les athlètes.

Les Jeux continuent.

Très vite, environ trois heures après, le CIO réagit par la voix de son vice-président, le prince Alexandre de Mérode, qui déclare que les Jeux d’Atlanta continueront. "Je viens d’avoir au téléphone le président Samaranch et je peux vous confirmer que les Jeux continueront", déclare-t-il à l’AFP.

Et, de fait, les compétitions reprennent. Une minute de silence est observée sur tous les sites et les drapeaux olympiques sont mis en berne en ce samedi 27 juillet, l’une des journées phares des JO avec notamment l’épreuve-reine: la finale du 100 mètres en athlétisme.

Lors de la cérémonie de clôture, Juan Antonio Samaranch reviendra sur cet attentat en faisant observer une minute de silence à la mémoire des victimes des attentats des JO de Munich et d’Atlanta. "Aucun acte de terrorisme n’a jamais détruit ni ne détruira jamais le Mouvement olympique, affirmera-t-il dans son allocution aux quelque 83.000 personnes du stade olympique. J’aimerais à présent vous demander de vous lever et d’observer une minute de silence à la mémoire des victimes de ces actes terribles".

Plus de deux ans après l’attentat, la justice américaine identifiera son auteur présumé. Il s’agit d’Eric Rudolph (32 ans), proche des milices et mouvements religieux extrémistes hostiles au gouvernement fédéral, également soupçonné de deux autres attentats commis dans la région d’Atlanta dans les mois suivants. Un mandat d’arrêt a été rendu public le 14 octobre 1998 contre Rudolph qui demeure toujours introuvable en dépit de recherches menées par des centaines d’agents des forces de l’ordre.

Voir encore:

L’auteur présumé de l’attentat des Jeux olympiques d’Atlanta a été arrêté

Eric Leser

Le Monde

03.06.03

Après cinq ans de recherches, la police américaine a capturé, samedi 31 mai, Eric Robert Rudolph. Ce « survivaliste », héros de l’extrême droite américaine, est accusé d’avoir fait exploser trois autres bombes

Après cinq années de cavale dans les forêts des Appalaches, le « survivaliste » Eric Robert Rudolph, 36 ans, a été arrêté par hasard, samedi 31 mai, dans la petite ville de Murphy, en Caroline du Nord. Un policier débutant, Jeffrey Postell, 21 ans, l’a interpellé à 3 heures du matin pour une simple tentative de vol dans un supermarché.

Il a été identifié un peu plus tard au commissariat. Avant les attaques du 11 septembre 2001, Eric Rudolph était l’un des hommes les plus recherchés par le FBI. Il est considéré comme étant l’auteur de quatre attentats à la bombe, dont celui en juillet 1996 à Atlanta pendant les Jeux olympiques. Il aurait au total tué deux personnes et blessé plus d’une centaine d’autres. La police fédérale s’était lancée à sa poursuite en 1998 avec des moyens considérables, mais avait été incapable de le retrouver. Il a disparu dans les montagnes, devenant aux yeux des organisations d’extrême droite américaines un héros, vivant dans la nature et narguant l’Etat fédéral. Au plus fort de la chasse à l’homme, les T-shirts et autres autocollants avec l’inscription « Run, Rudolph, run » (Cours, Rudolph, cours) et « Eric Rudolph the Hide and Seek Champion of the World » (Eric Rudolph champion du monde de cache-cache) se vendaient par milliers en Caroline du Nord. Deux chansons country ont même été écrites à sa gloire. Le FBI enquête sur les complicités dont il aurait bénéficié. Il pense avoir retrouvé son campement, à quelques centaines de mètres de la ville. Quand il a été interpellé, il était certes amaigri mais en parfaite santé, cheveux courts, et vêtements impeccables.

Selon les enquêteurs, Eric Rudolph aurait posé le 27 juillet 1996 la bombe remplie de clous et de morceaux de métal qui a tué Alice Hawthorne, 44 ans, et blessé plus d’une centaine de personnes au Parc olympique du centenaire à Atlanta. L’explosion s’était produite pendant un concert et avait provoqué une incroyable panique. A l’époque, l’arrêt des Jeux avait même été évoqué. Les autorités avaient rapidement arrêté Richard Jewell, un garde de sécurité, avant de le libérer et de le disculper après une controverse sur la façon dont l’enquête était menée. Six mois plus tard, le 16 janvier 1997, deux bombes explosaient à l’extérieur d’un centre de planning familial à Atlanta, blessant sept passants. Le 21 février, un autre attentat à l’explosif, toujours à Atlanta, était commis devant une boîte de nuit fréquentée par des homosexuels, blessant cinq personnes. Un deuxième engin, qui devait sauter à l’arrivée des équipes de secours, était rendu inoffensif au dernier moment par la police. Enfin, le 29 janvier 1998, une bombe sautait près d’un centre médical pratiquant l’avortement à Birmingham dans l’Alabama, tuant l’officier de police Robert Sanderson et rendant presque aveugle l’infirmière Emily Lyons.

Eric Rudolph, qui a abandonné le collège pour s’engager dans l’armée entre 1987 et 1989 avant d’être renvoyé pour avoir fumé de la drogue, était alors repéré alors qu’il s’enfuyait des abords de la clinique. Un témoin avait retenu le numéro de la plaque de son pick-up immatriculé en Caroline du Nord.

Les différents attentats avaient été revendiqués par une mystérieuse organisation baptisée l’« Armée de Dieu ». Les lettres envoyées aux médias utilisaient les mêmes termes et expressions qu’un groupe de suprématistes blancs opposé à l’avortement, à l’homosexualité et antisémite, Christian Identity, dont le quartier général se trouve près de la ville de Murphy. Le FBI faisait alors le rapprochement avec Eric Rudolph. Au printemps 1998, des centaines d’agents étaient envoyés à sa recherche dans la forêt nationale de Nantahala. Mais il échappait aux chiens, aux hélicoptères, aux détecteurs électroniques et aux patrouilles de volontaires. Une récompense de 1 million de dollars pour sa capture ne donnait pas non plus le moindre résultat. Après des mois d’échec, un agent du FBI évoquait même la possibilité qu’il soit mort dans les bois.

Eric Rudolph comparaît lundi 2 juin devant la Cour fédérale d’Asheville en Caroline du Nord et sera transféré ensuite à Birmingham ou à Atlanta. S’il est jugé coupable, il est passible de la peine de mort. « C’est un message à tous les terroristes, nationaux ou étrangers. Nous ne cesserons pas de les poursuivre », a déclaré, le 31 mai, John Ashcroft, le ministre américain de la justice.

Voir enfin:

Excerpts from Eric Rudolph’s statement

The Associated Press

USA today

4/13/2005

Excerpts from Eric Rudolph’s written statement, handed out by his attorneys Wednesday after his guilty pleas to four bombings across the South, including the deadly blast at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The statement marked the first time Rudolph has offered a motive for the attacks. He entered the pleas in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty:

"I have deprived the government of its goal of sentencing me to death."

"The fact that I have entered an agreement with the government is purely a tactical choice on my part and in no way legitimates the moral authority of the government to judge this matter or impute my guilt."

"Abortion is murder. And when the regime in Washington legalized, sanctioned and legitimized this practice, they forfeited their legitimacy and moral authority to govern."

"I am not an anarchist. I have nothing against government or law enforcement in general. It is solely for the reason that this government has legalized the murder of children that I have no allegiance to nor do I recognize the legitimacy of this particular government in Washington."

"There are those who would say to me that the system in Washington works. They say that the pro-life forces are making progress, that eventually Roe v. Wade will be overturned, that the culture of life will ultimately win over the majority of Americans and the horror of abortion will be outlawed. Yet, in the meantime thousands die everyday. … I ask these peaceful Christian law-abiding Pro-Life citizens, is there any point at which all of the legal remedies will not suffice and you would fight to end the massacre of children? How many decades have to pass, how many millions have to die? … I think that your inaction after three decades of slaughter is a sufficient answer to all of these questions."

"No politician in Washington will ever seriously threaten abortion on demand. And the fools who listen to them, in their hearts, know this but do not care. You so-called ‘Pro-Life,’ ‘good Christian people’ who point your plastic fingers at me saying that I am a ‘murderer,’ that ‘two wrongs don’t make a right,’ that even though ‘abortion is murder, those who would use force to stop the murder are morally the same,’ I say to you that your lies are transparent."

"Answer me, is the causus belli of promoting democracy in the Middle East more weighty for waging war than the systematic murder of your own citizens?"

"Along with abortion, another assault upon the integrity of American society is the concerted effort to legitimize the practice of homosexuality. Homosexuality is an aberrant sexual behavior, and as such I have complete sympathy and understanding for those who are suffering from this condition. Practiced by consenting adults within the confines of their own private lives, homosexuality is not a threat to society. Those consenting adults practicing this behavior in privacy should not be hassled by a society which respects the sanctity of private sexual life. But when the attempt is made to drag this practice out of the closet and into the public square in an "in your face" attempt to force society to accept and recognize this behavior as being just as legitimate and normal as the natural man/woman relationship, every effort should be made, including force if necessary, to halt this effort."

"Any conscientious individual afflicted with homosexuality should acknowledge that a healthy society requires a model of sexual behavior to be held up and maintained without assault. Like other humans suffering from various disabilities homosexuals should not attempt to infect the rest of society with their particular illness."

On the Olympic Park bombing, which killed one person and wounded 111:

"For many years I thought long and hard on these issues and then in 1996 I decided to act. In the summer of 1996, the world converged upon Atlanta for the Olympic Games. Under the protection and auspices of the regime in Washington millions of people came to celebrate the ideals of global socialism. Multinational corporations spent billions of dollars, and Washington organized an army of security to protect these best of all games. Even thought (sic) the conception and purpose of the so-called Olympic movement is to promote the values of global socialism, as perfectly expressed in the song "Imagine" by John Lennon, which was the theme of the 1996 Games — even though the purpose of the Olympics is to promote these despicable ideals, the purpose of the attack on July 27th was to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand."

"The plan was to force the cancellation of the Games, or at least create a state of insecurity to empty the streets around the venues and thereby eat into the vast amounts of money invested. The plan was conceived in haste and carried out with limited resources, planning and preparation — it was a monster that kept getting out of control the more I got into it. Because I could not acquire the necessary high explosives, I had to dismiss the unrealistic notion of knocking down the power grid surrounding Atlanta and consequently pulling the plug on the Olympics for their duration."

"The plan that I finally settled upon was to use five low-tech timed explosives to be placed one at a time on successive days throughout the Olympic schedule, each preceded by a forty to fifty minute warning given to 911. The location and time of detonation was to be given, and the intent was to thereby clear each of the areas, leaving only uniformed arms-carrying government personnel exposed to potential injury.

"The attacks were to have commenced with the start of the Olympics, but due to a lack of planning this was postponed a week. I had sincerely hoped to achieve these objections without harming innocent civilians."

"After the disaster at Centennial Park, I resolved to improve my devices and focus the blasts upon a very narrow target. Towards this end I acquired a quantity of high explosives (dynamite)."

On the 1997 bombing at a women’s health clinic in Sandy Springs, Ga., which involved two explosive devices and wounded six people:

"The abortion mill was closed that day but occasionally there was staff on hand to clean their blood-stained equipment, and these minions and the facility itself were the targets of the first device. The second device placed at the scene was designed to target agents of the Washington government."

On the 1997 bombing on the gay nightclub in Atlanta, which wounded five patrons:

"The first device was designed not necessarily to target the patrons of this homosexual bar, but rather to set the stage for the next device, which was again targeted at Washington agents. The attack itself was meant to send a powerful message in protest of Washington’s continued tolerance and support for the homosexual political agenda."

On the 1998 bombing at a women’s health clinic in Birmingham, Ala., which killed an off-duty police officer and maimed a nurse:

"The object was to target the doctor-killer, but because the device was prematurely discovered by the security guard, it had to be detonated with only the assistant-killers in the target area. … I had nothing against Lyons and Sanderson. They were targeted for what they did, not who they were as individuals."

On his five years on the lam:

"Washington was lucky that day in Birmingham, they had a witness who happened into a fortuitous position, and my truck was identified. I knew something was amiss based upon the early reports coming out of Birmingham so I prepared to make a move as I debated within myself whether or not to run or fight them in court. I chose the woods."

"The next year was a starving time. Hunted and haggard, I struggled to survive. But I am a quick study, and so I learned to adapt to my situation. I adapted so well, I decided to take my fight to my enemies.

Irak/10e: Attention, un mensonge peut en cacher un autre ! (When Everyone Agreed About Iraq)

La paix, bien sûr, mais la démocratie et la liberté ne sont-elles pas aussi des valeurs précieuses pour les chrétiens? Florence Taubman

If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow. Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal. President Clinton (February 1998)

Dans l’immédiat, notre attention doit se porter en priorité sur les domaines biologique et chimique. C’est là que nos présomptions vis-à-vis de l’Iraq sont les plus significatives : sur le chimique, nous avons des indices d’une capacité de production de VX et d’ypérite ; sur le biologique, nos indices portent sur la détention possible de stocks significatifs de bacille du charbon et de toxine botulique, et une éventuelle capacité de production.  Dominique De Villepin

Il est maintenant clair que les assurances données par Chirac ont joué un rôle crucial, persuadant Saddam Hussein de ne pas offrir les concessions qui auraient pu éviter une guerre et le changement de régime. Selon l’ex-vice président Tareq Aziz, s’exprimant depuis sa cellule devant des enquêteurs américains et irakiens, Saddam était convaincu que les Français, et dans une moindre mesure, les Russes allaient sauver son régime à la dernière minute. Amir Taheri

Comme l’exemple d’usage chimique contre les populations kurdes de 1987-1988 en avait apporté la preuve, ces armes avaient aussi un usage interne. Thérèse Delpech

Les inspecteurs n’ont jamais pu vérifier ce qu’il était advenu de 3,9 tonnes de VX (…) dont la production entre 1988 et 1990 a été reconnue par l’Irak. Bagdad a déclaré que les destructions avaient eu lieu en 1990 mais n’en a pas fourni de preuves. En février 2003 (…) un document a été fourni [par Bagdad] à l’Unmovic pour tenter d’expliquer le devenir d’environ 63 % du VX manquant. Auparavant, les Irakiens prétendaient ne pas détenir un tel document. » Idem pour l’anthrax, dont l’Irak affirmait avoir détruit le stock en 1991. Mais, « en mars 2003, l’Unmovic concluait qu’il existait toujours, très probablement, 10 000 litres d’anthrax non détruits par l’Irak... Comme pour le VX, l’Irak a fourni à l’ONU, en février 2003, un document sur ce sujet qui ne pouvait permettre de conclure quelles quantités avaient été détruites … Thérèse Delpech

Je pense que c’est à cause de l’unanimité, tout le monde était contre la guerre, les gens étaient contents de lire dans les journaux combien la guerre était mauvaise, comme le président français l’avait prédit. (…) Dans la phase du Saddamgrad Patrice Claude et Rémy Ourdan du Monde ont inventé des atrocités, produit des témoignages en phase avec ce qu’ils ne pouvaient voir. (…) Sur les fedayyin de Saddam, les gardes les plus brutaux du dictateur, ses SS, Ourdain a dit que les fedayyin n’ont pas combattu parce qu’ils étaient effrayés de la façon dont les GI’s tuaient tout le monde, dont un grand nombre de civils. Alain Hertoghe

Even when viewed through a post-war lens, documentary evidence of messages are consistent with the Iraqi Survey Group’s conclusion that Saddam was at least keeping a WMD program primed for a quick re-start the moment the UN Security Council lifted sanctions. Iraqi Perpectives Project (March 2006)

Captured Iraqi documents have uncovered evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some ways, a de facto link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.  Iraqi Perspectives Project (Saddam and Terrorism, Nov. 2007, released Mar. 2008)

Beginning in 1994, the Fedayeen Saddam opened its own paramilitary training camps for volunteers, graduating more than 7,200 « good men racing full with courage and enthusiasm » in the first year. Beginning in 1998, these camps began hosting « Arab volunteers from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, ‘the Gulf,’ and Syria. » It is not clear from available evidence where all of these non-Iraqi volunteers who were « sacrificing for the cause » went to ply their newfound skills. Before the summer of 2002, most volunteers went home upon the completion of training. But these camps were humming with frenzied activity in the months immediately prior to the war. As late as January 2003, the volunteers participated in a special training event called the « Heroes Attack. » This training event was designed in part to prepare regional Fedayeen Saddam commands to « obstruct the enemy from achieving his goal and to support keeping peace and stability in the province.  » Study (Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia)

The information that the Russians have collected from their sources inside the American Central Command in Doha is that the United States is convinced that occupying Iraqi cities are impossible, and that they have changed their tactic. Captured Iraqi document  (« Letter from Russian Official to Presidential Secretary Concerning American Intentions in Iraq », March 25, 2003)

Est-ce que les peuples du Moyen-Orient sont hors d’atteinte de la liberté? Est-ce que des millions d’hommes, de femmes et d’enfants sont condamnés par leur histoire et leur culture au despotisme? Sont-ils les seuls à ne pouvoir jamais connaître la liberté ou même à ne pas avoir le choix? Bush (2003)

La raison pour laquelle je continue de dire qu’il y a un lien entre l’Irak, Saddam et Al-Qaida est parce qu’il y a un lien entre l’Irak et Al-Qaida. (…) Cette administration n’a jamais dit que les attentats du 11/9 ont été orchestrés entre Saddam et Al Qaeda. Nous avons dit qu’il y avait de nombreux contacts entre Saddam Hussein et Al Qaeda. George W. Bush (Washington Post, 2004)

Avec notre aide, les peuples du Moyen-Orient s’avancent maintenant pour réclamer leur liberté. De Kaboul à Bagdad et à Beyrouth, il y a des hommes et des femmes courageux qui risquent leur vie chaque jour pour les mêmes libertés que nous apprécions. Et elles ont une question pour nous : Avons-nous le courage de faire  au Moyen-Orient ce que nos pères et grands-pères ont accompli en Europe et en Asie ? En prenant position avec les chefs et les réformateurs démocratiques, en donnant notre voix aux espoirs des hommes et des femmes décents, nous leur offrons une voix hors du radicalisme. Et nous enrôlons la force la plus puissante pour la paix et la modération au Moyen-Orient : le désir de millions d’être libres. (…) En ce tout début de siècle, l’Amérique rêve au jour où les peuples du Moyen-Orient quitteront le désert du despotisme pour les jardins fertiles de la liberté – et reprendront leur place légitime dans un monde de paix et de prospérité. Nous rêvons au jour où les nations de cette région reconnaitront que leur plus grande ressource n’est pas le pétrole de leur sous-sol – mais le talent et la créativité de leurs populations. Nous rêvons au jour où les mères et les pères de tout le Moyen-Orient verront un avenir d’espoir et d’opportunités pour leurs enfants. Et quand ce beau jour viendra, les nuages de la guerre seront balayés, l’appel du radicalisme diminuera… et nous laisserons à nos enfants un monde meilleur et plus sûr. Bush (11/9/2006)  

Le projet de révolution démocratique mondiale peut faire sourire. Mais ce n’est pas totalement sans raison que les néoconservateurs, qui l’ont inspiré, se targuent d’avoir contribué, sous le deuxième mandat de M. Reagan, à la démocratisation en Asie, en Amérique latine et en Europe. Ils souhaitent aujourd’hui mettre un terme à «l’exception moyen-orientale» : à la fois par intérêt et par idéalisme, l’Administration américaine veut rompre avec des décennies d’accommodement avec les dictatures de la région au nom de la stabilité (condition nécessaire, notamment, à l’accès régulier à un pétrole bon marché). Il s’agirait en effet de gagner la «quatrième guerre mondiale», comme a été gagnée la «troisième», c’est-à-dire la guerre froide. Le pari est évidemment difficile. Pour des raisons tactiques, les États-Unis doivent aujourd’hui ménager des régimes autoritaires tels que l’Arabie saoudite, dont ils ont besoin pour la lutte antiterroriste. (…) De ce fait, Paul Wolfowitz n’a pas tort de suggérer que le combat engagé par les États-Unis durera plus longtemps que la guerre froide et sera plus dur que la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Mais, si le résultat est incertain, le mouvement lui est bien engagé. Les révolutions pacifiques en Géorgie et en Ukraine ont été appuyées discrètement par des organisations publiques et privées américaines. Certes, ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler le «printemps arabe» repose aussi sur des dynamiques locales et a bien sûr bénéficié d’événements imprévus tels que la mort de Yasser Arafat ou l’assassinat de Rafic Hariri. Mais la pression américaine a joué un rôle non négligeable. En mai 2004, choisissant de «se couper les cheveux avant que les Américains ne les tondent» – selon les termes d’un diplomate, les dirigeants de la Ligue arabe se sont engagés à étendre les pratiques démocratiques, à élargir la participation des citoyens à la vie publique et à renforcer la société civile. Même le président Assad semble aux abois lorsqu’il dit publiquement qu’il «n’est pas Saddam Hussein» et qu’il «veut négocier»… (…). La question géopolitique centrale de notre temps reste donc bien celle qui avait été au coeur de l’affrontement franco-américain de 2002-2003 : faut-il préférer la stabilité au risque de l’injustice, ou la démocratisation au risque du chaos ? Optimiste et risqué, le pari américain n’en reste pas moins éthiquement défendable et met du coup l’Europe, qui se veut une «puissance morale» (si l’on en croit le président de la Commission, M. Barroso), en porte-à-faux. L’Union européenne s’est révélée être une force capable de promouvoir simultanément la stabilité et la démocratisation, mais seulement dans son environnement immédiat. Pour le reste, elle n’a pas de stratégie alternative, le «processus de Barcelone» ayant eu du point de vue politique des résultats plus que mitigés. Il lui reste donc à choisir entre approuver, s’opposer ou accompagner le combat américain. Bruno Tertrais (mars 2005)

By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction. Wired magazine (2010)

It’s more than a little ironic that, with its newest document dump from the Iraq campaign, WikiLeaks may have just bolstered one of the Bush administration’s most controversial claims about the Iraq war: that Iran supplied many of the Iraq insurgency’s deadliest weapons and worked hand-in-glove with some of its most lethal militias. The documents indicate that Iran was a major combatant in the Iraq war, as its elite Quds Force trained Iraqi Shiite insurgents and imported deadly weapons like the shape-charged Explosively Formed Projectile bombs into Iraq for use against civilians, Sunni militants and U.S. troops. A report from 2006 claims “neuroparalytic” chemical weapons from Iran were smuggled into Iraq. (It’s one of many, many documents recounting WMD efforts in Iraq.) Others indicate that Iran flooded Iraq with guns and rockets, including the Misagh-1 surface-to-air missile, .50 caliber rifles, rockets and much more. As the New York Times observes, Iranian agents plotted to kidnap U.S. troops from out of their Humvees — something that occurred in Karbala in 2007, leaving five U.S. troops dead. (It’s still not totally clear if the Iranians were responsible.) Wired

A partir de la Guerre Froide, cette région est devenue stratégique de par ses ressources nécessaires au premier consommateur mondial d’énergie, mais aussi de par la rivalité idéologique entre l’URSS et les Etats-Unis. Cette époque fut dominée par la pensée de Kissinger qui prôna en conformité avec la « Realpolitik », l’immobilisme politique des régimes arabes comme option nécessaire à la consolidation de l’influence américaine. En échange d’une approbation de la diplomatie américaine, les régimes se voyaient soutenus. Les limites de cette politique ont commencé à se faire sentir lorsque les Etats-Unis en 1979 ont continué à appuyer le Shah d’Iran, ignorant alors qu’une population était en train de se soulever, donnant naissance à l’islamisme politique. Dans les années 80, le président Reagan introduisit une vision opposée au réalisme, attenant à une vision idéaliste d’une mission américaine d’exporter les justes valeurs au reste du monde. C’est dans son discours de Juin 1982 que Reagan parla « d’une croisade pour la liberté qui engagera la foi et le courage de la prochaine génération». Le président Bush père et Clinton reprirent une vision plus « réaliste » dans un nouveau contexte de sortie de Guerre Froide. Malgré « le nouvel ordre mondial » prôné par Bush père, son action n’alla pas jusqu’à Bagdad et préféra laisser un régime connu en place. Le 11 Septembre 2001 a révélé les limites de l’immobilisme politique des pays arabes, lorsque certains régimes soutenus n’ont pu s’opposer aux islamistes radicaux. Les néo-conservateurs qui participaient alors au gouvernement de G.W Bush, décidèrent de passer à l’action et de bousculer l’ordre établi dans la région, afin de pérenniser leur accès aux ressources énergétiques, mais aussi probablement pour d’autres raisons. Notamment selon G. Ayache « pour montrer (leur) force par rapport à la Chine dont le statut international ne cesse de croître et dont les besoins énergétiques sont appelés à concurrencer ceux des Etats-Unis(…), et dans l’objectif proclamé de lutte contre le terrorisme.» Les néo-conservateurs se sont dès le début prononcés pour la redistribution des cartes politiques dans cette région, donc un changement de régimes. Le nouveau président américain voulut se poser dans la lignée des présidents qui ont marqué l’histoire. Lors de son discours du 11 Septembre 2006, il s’est adressé en ces termes au peuple américain : « Ayez la patience de faire ce que nos pères et nos grands-pères ont fait pour l’Europe et pour l’Asie.» En fait, le vieux projet de Reagan d’exportation de la démocratie fut remis au goût du jour à travers l’annonce du projet de Grand Moyen-Orient en Novembre 2003 qui prôna la nécessité d’une démocratisation sans limites. Les néo-conservateurs qui avaient participé au deuxième mandat de Reagan revendiquèrent leur apport à la démocratisation en Asie, en Amérique latine et en Europe dans les années 80 et 90. Il était donc temps selon eux de mettre fin à la situation stagnante au Moyen-Orient. La théorie des dominos était censée s’appliquer à la région en partant de l’Irak, même si elle pouvait mettre un certain temps à se réaliser selon les dynamiques locales. Alia Al Jiboury

Depuis la chute de la dictature de Ben Ali en Tunisie, les dictateurs et autres despotes arabes tremblent devant le vent de liberté, transformé en tempête. Les peuples arabes, compressés depuis des décennies, rêvent de liberté et de démocratie. Ils finissent, à tour de rôle, par réaliser le projet de George W. Bush, qu’ils avaient tant dénoncé. Mediarabe.info (février 2011)

Though the Iraq War later became a favorite Democratic club for bashing George W. Bush, Republicans and Democrats alike had long understood that Saddam was a deadly menace who had to be forcibly eradicated. In 1998 President Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, making Saddam’s removal from power a matter of US policy. "If the history of the last six years has taught us anything," Kerry had said two years earlier, "it is that Saddam Hussein does not understand diplomacy, he only understands power." But bipartisan harmony was an early casualty of the war. Once it became clear that Saddam didn’t have the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that were a major justification for the invasion, unity gave way to recrimination. It didn’t matter that virtually everyone – Republicans and Democrats, CIA analysts and the UN Security Council, even Saddam’s own military officers – had been sure the WMD would be found. Nor did it matter that Saddam had previously used WMD to exterminate thousands of men, women, and children. The temptation to spin an intelligence failure as a deliberate "lie" was politically irresistible. When the relatively quick toppling of Saddam was followed by a long and bloody insurgency, opposition to the war intensified. For many it became an intractable article of faith that victory was not an option. The war to remove Saddam was not merely "Bush’s folly," but – as Senate majority leader Harry Reid called it in 2007 — "the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country." But then came Bush’s "surge," and the course of the war shifted dramatically for the better. By the time Bush left office, the insurgency was crippled, violence was down 90 percent, and Iraqis were being governed by politicians they had voted for. It was far from perfect, but "something that looks an awful lot like democracy is beginning to take hold in Iraq," reported Newsweek in early 2010. On its cover the magazine proclaimed: "Victory at Last." And so it might have been, if America’s new commander-in-chief hadn’t been so insistent on pulling the plug. In October 2011, President Obama – overriding his military commanders, who had recommended keeping 18,000 troops on the ground – announced that all remaining US servicemen would be out of Iraq by the end of the year. Politically, it was a popular decision; most Americans were understandably weary of Iraq. But abandoning Iraqis and their frail, fledgling democracy was reckless. (…) The invasion of Iraq 10 years ago ended the reign of a genocidal tyrant, and ensured that his monstrous sons could never succeed him. It struck a shaft of fear into other dictators, leading Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi, for example, to relinquish his WMD. It let Iraqis find out how much better their lives could be under democratic self-government. Like all wars, even wars of liberation, it took an awful toll. The status quo ante was worse. Jeff Jacoby

Iraq, I suggested, would wind up “at a bare minimum, the least badly governed state in the Arab world, and, at best, pleasant, civilized and thriving.” I’ll stand by my worst-case scenario there. Unlike the emerging “reforms” in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria, politics in Iraq has remained flawed but, by the standards of the grimly Islamist Arab Spring, broadly secular. So I like the way a lot of the trees fell. But I missed the forest. (…) Granted that most of the Arab world, from Tangiers to Alexandria, is considerably less “multicultural” than it was in mid century, the remorseless extinction of Iraq’s Christian community this last decade is appalling — and, given that it happened on America’s watch, utterly shameful. Like the bland acknowledgement deep in a State Department “International Religious Freedom Report” that the last church in Afghanistan was burned to the ground in 2010, it testifies to the superpower’s impotence, not “internationally” but in client states entirely bankrolled by us. Foreigners see this more clearly than Americans. As Goh Chok Tong, the prime minister of Singapore, said on a visit to Washington in 2004, “The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America’s credibility and will to prevail.” Just so. If you live in Tikrit or Fallujah, the Iraq War was about Iraq. If you live anywhere else on the planet, the Iraq War was about America, and the unceasing drumbeat of “quagmire” and “exit strategy” communicated to the world an emptiness at the heart of American power — like the toppled statue of Saddam that proved to be hollow. On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, mobs trashed U.S. embassies across the region with impunity. A rather more motivated crowd showed up in Benghazi, killed four Americans, including the ambassador, and correctly calculated they would face no retribution. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, these guys have reached their own judgment about American “credibility” and “will” — as have more potent forces yet biding their time, from Moscow to Beijing. (…) Nevertheless, in the grim two-thirds-of-a-century roll call of America’s un-won wars, Iraq today is less un-won than Korea, Vietnam, or Afghanistan, and that is not nothing. The war dead of America and its few real allies died in an honorable cause. But armies don’t wage wars, nations do. And, back on the home front, a vast percentage of fair-weather hawks who decided that it was all too complicated, or a bit of a downer, or Bush lied, or where’s the remote, revealed America as profoundly unserious. A senator who votes for war and then decides he’d rather it had never started is also engaging in “alternative history” — albeit of the kind in which Pam Ewing steps into the shower at Southfork and writes off the previous season of Dallas as a bad dream. In non-alternative history, in the only reality there is, once you’ve started a war, you have two choices: to win it or to lose it. Withdrawing one’s “support” for a war you’re already in advertises nothing more than a kind of geopolitical ADHD. Mark Steyn

Attention, un mensonge peut en cacher un autre !

Bill Clinton, le Congrès, Madeleine Albright, l’inspecteur nucléaire Richard Butler, Gore, Hillary Clinton, Kerry, Edward Kennedy, John Edwards, Tom Daschle, Biden, Harry Reid, Tom Harkin, Chris Dodd, Jay Rockefeller, 72% de l’opinion publique …

Y avait-il, aux Etats-Unis mêmes sans parler de notre Villepin national et des services secrets allemands, quelqu’un qui ne croyait pas en mars 2003 à l’existence (confirmée d’ailleurs depuis par Wikileaks) d’ADM en Irak ?

Retour, à la veille du 10e anniversaire du lancement de l’Opération Liberté pour l’Irak  et avec  le professeur du United States Naval War College  Stephen F. Knott, sur le mythe devenu depuis vérité d’évangile (et motivation d’ailleurs, pour le contrer, de tant de blogs dont celui-ci) des prétendus "mensonges" de l’Administration Bush sur les raisons de la guerre  …

Qui, avec tous ses risques, apporta le premier régime élu démocratiquement, Israël mis à part, du Moyen-Orient …

Et sans lequel il n’y aurait probablement pas eu, aussi mitigé soit son bilan, de "printemps arabe"…

When Everyone Agreed About Iraq

For years before the war, a bipartisan consensus thought Saddam possessed WMD.

Stephen F. Knott

WSJ

March 15, 2013

At 5:34 a.m. on March 20, 2003, American, British and other allied forces invaded Iraq. One of the most divisive conflicts in the nation’s history would soon be labeled " Bush’s War."

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime became official U.S. policy in 1998, when President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act—a bill passed 360-38 by the House of Representatives and by unanimous consent in the Senate. The law called for training and equipping Iraqi dissidents to overthrow Saddam and suggested that the United Nations establish a war-crimes tribunal for the dictator and his lieutenants.

The legislation was partly the result of frustration over the undeclared and relatively unheralded "No-Fly Zone War" that had been waged since 1991. Saddam’s military repeatedly fired on U.S. and allied aircraft that were attempting to prevent his regime from destroying Iraqi opposition forces in northern and southern Iraq.

According to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Hugh Shelton, in 1997 a key member of President Bill Clinton’s cabinet (thought by most observers to have been Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) asked Gen. Shelton whether he could arrange for a U.S. aircraft to fly slowly and low enough that it would be shot down, thereby paving the way for an American effort to topple Saddam. Kenneth Pollack, a member of Mr. Clinton’s National Security Council staff, would later write in 2002 that it was a question of "not whether but when" the U.S. would invade Iraq. He wrote that the threat presented by Saddam was "no less pressing than those we faced in 1941."

Radicalized by the events of 9/11, George W. Bush gradually concluded that a regime that had used chemical weapons against its own people and poison gas against Iran, invaded Iran and Kuwait, harbored some of the world’s most notorious terrorists, made lucrative payments to the families of suicide bombers, fired on American aircraft almost daily, and defied years of U.N. resolutions regarding weapons of mass destruction was a problem. The former chief U.N. weapons inspector, an Australian named Richard Butler, testified in July 2002 that "it is essential to recognize that the claim made by Saddam’s representatives, that Iraq has no WMD, is false."

In the U.S., there was a bipartisan consensus that Saddam possessed and continued to develop WMD. Former Vice President Al Gore noted in September 2002 that Saddam had "stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton observed that Saddam hoped to increase his supply of chemical and biological weapons and to "develop nuclear weapons." Then-Sen. John Kerry claimed that "a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his [Saddam's] hands is a real and grave threat to our security."

Even those opposed to using force against Iraq acknowledged that, as then-Sen. Edward Kennedy put it, "we have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing" WMD. When it came time to vote on the authorization for the use of force against Iraq, 81 Democrats in the House voted yes, joined by 29 Democrats in the Senate, including the party’s 2004 standard bearers, John Kerry and John Edwards, plus Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Sen. Joe Biden, Mrs. Clinton, and Sens. Harry Reid, Tom Harkin, Chris Dodd and Jay Rockefeller. The latter, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, claimed that Saddam would "likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years."

Support for the war extended far beyond Capitol Hill. In March 2003, a Pew Research Center poll indicated that 72% of the American public supported President Bush’s decision to use force.

If Mr. Bush "lied," as the common accusation has it, then so did many prominent Democrats—and so did the French, whose foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, claimed in February 2003 that "regarding the chemical domain, we have evidence of [Iraq's] capacity to produce VX and yperite [mustard gas]; in the biological domain, the evidence suggests the possible possession of significant stocks of anthrax and botulism toxin." Germany’s intelligence chief August Hanning noted in March 2002 that "it is our estimate that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years."

According to interrogations conducted after the invasion, Saddam’s own generals believed that he had WMD and expected him to use these weapons as the invasion force neared Baghdad.

The war in Iraq was authorized by a bipartisan congressional coalition, supported by prominent media voices and backed by the public. Yet on its 10th anniversary Americans will be told of the Bush administration’s duplicity in leading us into the conflict. Many members of the bipartisan coalition that committed the U.S. to invade Iraq 10 years ago have long since washed their hands of their share of responsibility.

We owe it to history—and, more important, to all those who died—to recognize that this wasn’t Bush’s war, it was America’s war.

Mr. Knott, a professor of national security affairs at the United States Naval War College, is the author of "Rush to Judgment: George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and His Critics" (University Press of Kansas, 2012).

Voir aussi:

WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results

Noah Shachtman

Wired

10.23.10

By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.

An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq. But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents.

In August 2004, for instance, American forces surreptitiously purchased what they believed to be containers of liquid sulfur mustard, a toxic “blister agent” used as a chemical weapon since World War I. The troops tested the liquid, and “reported two positive results for blister.” The chemical was then “triple-sealed and transported to a secure site” outside their base.

Three months later, in northern Iraq, U.S. scouts went to

look in on a “chemical weapons” complex. “One of the bunkers has been tampered with,” they write. “The integrity of the seal [around the complex] appears intact, but it seems someone is interesting in trying to get into the bunkers.”

Meanwhile, the second battle of Fallujah was raging in Anbar province. In the southeastern corner of the city, American forces came across a “house with a chemical lab … substances found are similar to ones (in lesser quantities located a previous chemical lab.” The following day, there’s a call in another part of the city for explosive experts to dispose of a “chemical cache.”

Nearly three years later, American troops were still finding WMD in the region. An armored Buffalo vehicle unearthed a cache of artillery shells “that was covered by sacks and leaves under an Iraqi Community Watch checkpoint. “The 155mm rounds are filled with an unknown liquid, and several of which are leaking a black tar-like substance.” Initial tests were inconclusive. But later, “the rounds tested positive for mustard.”

In WikiLeaks’ massive trove of nearly 392,000 Iraq war logs are hundreds of references to chemical and biological weapons. Most of those are intelligence reports or initial suspicions of WMD that don’t pan out. In July 2004, for example, U.S. forces come across a Baghdad building with gas masks, gas filters, and containers with “unknown contents” inside. Later investigation revealed those contents to be vitamins.

But even late in the war, WMDs were still being unearthed. In the summer of 2008, according to one WikiLeaked report, American troops found at least 10 rounds that tested positive for chemical agents. “These rounds were most likely left over from the [Saddam]-era regime. Based on location, these rounds may be an AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] cache. However, the rounds were all total disrepair and did not appear to have been moved for a long time.”

A small group — mostly of the political right — has long maintained that there was more evidence of a major and modern WMD program than the American people were led to believe. A few Congressmen and Senators gravitated to the idea, but it was largely dismissed as conspiratorial hooey.

The WMD diehards will likely find some comfort in these newly-WikiLeaked documents. Skeptics will note that these relatively small WMD stockpiles were hardly the kind of grave danger that the Bush administration presented in the run-up to the war.

But the more salient issue may be how insurgents and Islamic extremists (possibly with the help of Iran) attempted to use these lethal and exotic arms. As Spencer noted earlier, a January 2006 war log claims that “neuroparalytic” chemical weapons were smuggled in from Iran.

That same month, then “chemical weapons specialists” were apprehended in Balad. These “foreigners” were there specifically “to support the chemical weapons operations.” The following month, an intelligence report refers to a “chemical weapons expert” that “provided assistance with the gas weapons.” What happened to that specialist, the WikiLeaked document doesn’t say.

Voir également:

Chemical Weapons, Iranian Agents and Massive Death Tolls Exposed in WikiLeaks’ Iraq Docs

Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman

Wired

10.22.10

As the insurgency raged in Iraq, U.S. troops struggling to fight a shadowy enemy killed civilians, witnessed their Iraqi partners abuse detainees and labored to reduce Iran’s influence over the fighting.

None of these phenomena are unfamiliar to observers of the Iraq war. But this afternoon, the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks released a trove of nearly 392,000 U.S. military reports from Iraq that bring a new depth and detail to the horrors of one of America’s most controversial wars ever. We’re still digging through the just-released documents, but here’s a quick overview of what they contain.

(Our sister blog Threat Level looks at how Friday’s document dump could affect Bradley Manning, who’s already charged in other WikiLeaks releases.)

It Was Iran’s War, Too

No one would accuse WikiLeaks of being pro-war. Not when the transparency group titled its single most famous leak “Collateral Murder.” Not when its founder, Julian Assange, said that its trove of reports from the Afghan conflict suggested evidence for thousands of American “war crimes.”

So it’s more than a little ironic that, with its newest document dump from the Iraq campaign, WikiLeaks may have just bolstered one of the Bush administration’s most controversial claims about the Iraq war: that Iran supplied many of the Iraq insurgency’s deadliest weapons and worked hand-in-glove with some of its most lethal militias.

The documents indicate that Iran was a major combatant in the Iraq war, as its elite Quds Force trained Iraqi Shiite insurgents and imported deadly weapons like the shape-charged Explosively Formed Projectile bombs into Iraq for use against civilians, Sunni militants and U.S. troops.

A report from 2006 claims “neuroparalytic” chemical weapons from Iran were smuggled into Iraq. (It’s one of many, many documents recounting WMD efforts in Iraq.) Others indicate that Iran flooded Iraq with guns and rockets, including the Misagh-1 surface-to-air missile, .50 caliber rifles, rockets and much more.

As the New York Times observes, Iranian agents plotted to kidnap U.S. troops from out of their Humvees — something that occurred in Karbala in 2007, leaving five U.S. troops dead. (It’s still not totally clear if the Iranians were responsible.)

High Civilian Death Tolls

Over 66,000 deaths classified as “civilians” are listed in the documents, which span the years between 2004 and 2009. According to an initial assessment by the Iraq Body Count, an organization that tallies reports of civilian casualties, that’s 15,000 more dead Iraqi civilians than the United States has previously acknowledged.

“This data should never have been withheld from the public,” Iraq Body Count told the Guardian.

In one incident highlighted by The New York Times, Marines who couldn’t get a car carrying an Iraqi family to stop at a Fallujah checkpoint after warning them with a flare opened fire on the car, killing a woman and wounding her husband and two children. Confusion at checkpoints was a common feature of the Iraq war, placing U.S. troops who didn’t speak Arabic in a murky situation of judging who posed a threat to them.

Iraqi Detainee Abuse

The United States spent billions to train and equip Iraqi security forces, a mission that continues to this day. But while under U.S. tutelage, Iraqi soldiers and police abused detainees in their custody. And even after the 2004 Abu Ghraib detainee-abuse scandal, U.S. troops sometimes tolerated accounts of Iraqi abuse, writing “no investigation is necessary” in one case.

That wasn’t uniformly the case: In a 2005 report, U.S. troops discovered “a hand cranked generator with wire clamps” at an Iraqi police station in Baghdad where a detainee claimed to have been brutalized. The report says the Americans took the generator as evidence and reported the incident to a two-star general — but it doesn’t specify if the general was American or Iraqi.

As expected, the Pentagon denounced WikiLeaks’ disclosure of the nearly 400,000 documents. “We deplore Wikileaks for inducing individuals to break the law, leak classified documents and then cavalierly share that secret information with the world, including our enemies,” e-mails Geoff Morrell, spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert Gates. “We know terrorist organizations have been mining the leaked Afghan documents for information to use against us and this Iraq leak is more than four times as large. By disclosing such sensitive information, Wikileaks continues to put at risk the lives of our troops, their coalition partners and those Iraqis and Afghans working with us. The only responsible course of action for Wikileaks at this point is to return the stolen material and expunge it from their websites as soon as possible.”

WikiLeaks appears to have learned from the criticism of its last document dump, however. According to the Guardian, which has pored through the documents under a press blackout for weeks, WikiLeaks didn’t release all the information in an Iraq-deaths database, in order to protect the identities of Iraqis who worked with the United States — a correction for something that it didn’t sufficiently do when releasing U.S. military documents from Afghanistan this summer.

We’re still digging through the documents. We’ll bring you more soon. And in comments, tell us what you’re seeing — and what you’re interested in learning more about.

Voir encore:

WikiLeaks docs prove Saddam had WMD, threats remain

Seth Mandel

Weekly blitz

October 28, 2010

WikiLeaks’ latest publication of Iraq war documents contains a lot of information that most reasonable people would prefer remained unknown, such as the names of Iraqi informants who will now be hunted for helping the U.S.

And although the anti-war left welcomed the release of the documents, they would probably cringe at one of the most significant finds of this latest crop of reports: Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

"By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," Wired magazine’s Danger Room reports. "But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction."

That is, there definitively were weapons of mass destruction and elements of a WMD program in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq when U.S.-led coalition troops entered the country to depose Hussein.

Predictably, the liberal media did their best to either ignore the story–like the New York Times and Washington Post did–or spin it. It’s not an easy choice to make, since ignoring the story makes you look out of the loop and hurts your reputation as an informative publication, yet spinning the story means actively attempting to confuse and mislead your readers. CBS News chose the latter.

"WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs: No Evidence of Massive WMD Caches" read the headline on CBS News’ online. Here is the story’s opening paragraph:

"The nearly 400,000 Iraq war log documents released by WikiLeaks on Friday were full of evidence of abuses, civilian deaths and the chaos of war, but clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction–the Bush administration’s justification for invading Iraq–appears to be missing."

There are two falsehoods in that sentence, demonstrating the difficulty in trying to spin a clear fact. The Bush administration’s justification for invading Iraq was much broader than WMD–in fact, it was similar to the litany of reasons the Clinton administration signed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which specifically called for regime change in Iraq as the official policy of the United States government (Iraq had repeatedly violated international law, Iraq had failed to comply with the obligations that ended the Gulf War, Iraq had circumvented U.N. resolutions, etc.).

"If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow," President Clinton said in February 1998. "Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal."

The second falsehood was the phrase "appears to be missing." In August 2004, American soldiers seized a toxic "blister agent," a chemical weapon used since the First World War, Wired reported. In Anbar province, they discovered a chemical lab and a "chemical cache." Three years later, U.S. military found buried WMD, and even as recent as 2008 found chemical munitions.

This isn’t the first time Iraq war documents shattered a media myth about Saddam’s regime. In 2008, a Pentagon study of Iraqi documents, as well as audio and video recordings, revealed connections between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Called the Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP), the report–based on more than 600,000 captured original documents and thousands of hours of audio and video recordings–proved conclusively that Saddam had worked with terrorist organizations that were plotting attacks on American targets around the world.

One way to identify a media narrative in deep trouble is the naked attempt to draw conclusions for the reader instead of just presenting the story. The CBS report on the leaked WMD documents is a case in point of the reporter telling the reader what they ought to think, knowing full well that otherwise the facts of the case would likely lead the reader to the opposite conclusion.

"At this point," CBS reporter Dan Farber desperately pleads, "history will still record that the Bush administration went into Iraq under an erroneous threat assessment that Saddam Hussein was manufacturing and hoarding weapons of mass destruction."

That’s as close as the liberal mainstream media will get to admitting they were wrong. It’s their version of a confession. The myth that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was WMD-free has met its demise.

And these weapons couldn’t simply be the lost scraps of Saddam’s attempts to destroy the stockpile, as Ed Morrissey points out.

"Had Saddam Hussein wanted those weapons destroyed, no lower-ranking military officer would have dared defy him by keeping them hidden," he writes. "It would have taken dozens of officers to conspire to move and hide those weapons, as well as a like number of enlisted men, any and all of whom could have been a spy for the Hussein clique."

But now that we’ve answered the question of whether there were actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq–there were and are–we may have a more significant question to answer: Who has possession of these weapons now?

"But the more salient issue may be how insurgents and Islamic extremists (possibly with the help of Iran) attempted to use these lethal and exotic arms," Wired reports. In 2006, for example, "neuroparalytic" chemical weapons were brought in from Iran.

"That same month, then ‘chemical weapons specialists’ were apprehended in Balad," the Wired report continues. "These ‘foreigners’ were there specifically ‘to support the chemical weapons operations.’ The following month, an intelligence report refers to a ‘chemical weapons expert’ that ‘provided assistance with the gas weapons.’ What happened to that specialist, the WikiLeaked document doesn’t say."

Seth Mandel is the Washington DC based correspondent of Weekly Blitz.

COMPLEMENT (18.03.13):

Ten Years Ago, an Honorable War Began With Wide Support

Now the U.S. has bailed out of Iraq leaving behind little trace. And a strongman is in charge.

Fouad Ajami

The WSJ

March 18, 2013

Nowadays, few people step forth to speak well of the Iraq War, to own up to the support they gave that American campaign in the Arab world. Yet Operation Iraqi Freedom, launched 10 years ago this week, was once a popular war. We had struck into Afghanistan in 2001 to rout al Qaeda and the terrorists’ Taliban hosts—but the 9/11 killers who brought ruin onto American soil were not Afghan. They were young Arabs, forged in the crucible of Arab society, in the dictators’ prisons and torture chambers. Arab financiers and preachers gave them the means and the warrant for their horrific deeds.

America’s previous venture into Iraq, a dozen years earlier, had been a lightning strike: The Iraqi dictator was evicted from Kuwait and then spared. Saddam Hussein’s military machine was all rust and decay by 2003, but he swaggered and let the world believe that he had in his possession a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The Arab redeemer, as he had styled himself, lacked the guile that might have saved him. A great military expedition was being readied against him in London and Washington, but he gambled to the bitter end that George W. Bush would not pull the trigger.

On the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom—the first bombs fell on March 19—well over 70% of the American public supported upending the Saddam regime. The temptation to depict the war as George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s is convenient but utterly false. This was a war waged with congressional authorization, with the endorsement of popular acceptance, and with the sanction of more than a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for Iraq’s disarmament.

Those unburdened by knowledge of the ways of that region would come to insist that there had been no operational links between the Iraqi despot and al Qaeda. These newborn critics would insist on a distinction between secular terrorism and religious terrorism, but it was a distinction without a difference.

The rationale for the war sustained a devastating blow in the autumn of 2004 when Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. arms inspector for Iraq, issued a definitive report confirming that Saddam had possessed no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The war now stood on its own—and many of its former supporters claimed that this wasn’t what they had signed up for. Yet the "architects" of the war could not pull the plug on it. They soldiered on, offering a new aim: the reform and freedom of Iraq, and the example of a decent Iraq in the "heart of the Arab world."

President Bush, seen in this image from television, addresses the nation from the Oval Office at the White House, on March 19, 2003. Bush said U.S. forces launched a strike against targets of military opportunity in Iraq, describing the action as the opening salvo in an operation to disarm Iraq and to free its people.

There were very few takers for the new rationale. In the oddest of twists, American liberalism now mocked the very idea that liberty could put down roots in an Arab- Muslim setting.

Nor were there takers, among those watching from lands around Iraq, for the idea of freedom midwifed by American power. To Iraq’s east lay the Iranian despotism, eager to thwart and frustrate the American project. To the west in Syria there was the Baath dictatorship of the House of Assad. And beyond there was the Sunni Arab order of power, where America was despised for giving power to Shiites. For a millennium, the Shiite Arabs had not governed, and yet now they ruled in Baghdad, a city that had been the seat of the Islamic caliphate.

A stoical George W. Bush held the line amid American disaffection and amid the resistance of a region invested in the failure of the Iraq campaign. He doubled down with the troop "surge" and remained true to the proposition that liberty could stick on Arab soil.

There is no way of writing a convincing alternative history of the region without this war. That kind of effort is inherently speculative, subject to whim and preference. Perhaps we could have let Saddam be, could have tolerated the misery he inflicted on his people, convinced ourselves that the sanctions imposed on his regime were sufficient to keep him quarantined. But a different history played out. It delivered the Iraqis from a tyranny that they would have never been able to overthrow on their own.

The American disappointment with Iraq helped propel Barack Obama to power. There were strategic gains that the war had secured in Iraq, but Mr. Obama had no interest in them. Iraq was the "war of choice" that had to be brought to a "responsible close," he said. The focus instead would be on that "war of necessity" in Afghanistan.

A skilled politician, Mr. Obama made the Iraqi government an offer meant to be turned down—a residual American force that could hardly defend itself, let alone provide meaningful protection for the fledgling new order in Baghdad. Predictably, Iraq’s rulers decided to go it alone as 2011 drew to a close. They had been navigating a difficult course between Iran and the U.S. The choice was made easy for them, the Iranian supreme leader was next door, the liberal superpower was in retreat.

Heading for the exits, Mr. Obama praised Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as "the elected leader of a sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraq." The praise came even as Mr. Maliki was beginning to erect a dictatorship bent on marginalizing the country’s Kurds and Sunni Arabs and even those among the Shiites who questioned his writ.

Two weeks ago, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, issued his final report, called "Learning from Iraq." The report was methodical and detailed, interspersed with the testimonies of American and Iraqi officials. One testimony, by an Iraqi technocrat, the acting minister of interior, Adnan al-Asadi, offered a compelling image: "With all the money the U.S. has spent, you can go into any city in Iraq and you can’t find one building or project built by the U.S. government. You can fly in a helicopter around Baghdad or other cities, but you can’t point a finger at a single project that was built and completed by the United States."

It was no fault of the soldiers who fought this war, or of the leaders who launched it, that their successors lacked the patience to stick around Iraq and safekeep what had been gained at an incalculable cost in blood and treasure.

Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of "The Syrian Rebellion" (Hoover Press, 2012).

COMPLEMENT (20.03.13):

On balance, was the Iraq war worth it?

Jeff Jacoby

The Boston Globe

March 20, 2013

TEN YEARS AGO this week, the United States led an invasion of Iraq with the explicit purpose of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The preceding months had been filled with vehement protests against the impending war, expressed in editorials, in advertisements, and in rallies so vast that some of them made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. With so many people against the invasion, who supported it?

Well, if you were like the great majority of Americans – you did. In February and March 2003, Newsweek’s polls showed 70 percent of the public in favor of military action against Iraq; Gallup and Pew Research Center surveys showed the same thing. Congress had authorized the invasion a few months earlier with strong bipartisan majorities; among the many Democrats voting for the war were Senators John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.

The invasion of Iraq 10 years ago ended the reign of a genocidal tyrant, and ensured that his monstrous sons could never succeed him.

Though the Iraq War later became a favorite Democratic club for bashing George W. Bush, Republicans and Democrats alike had long understood that Saddam was a deadly menace who had to be forcibly eradicated. In 1998 President Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, making Saddam’s removal from power a matter of US policy. "If the history of the last six years has taught us anything," Kerry had said two years earlier, "it is that Saddam Hussein does not understand diplomacy, he only understands power."

But bipartisan harmony was an early casualty of the war. Once it became clear that Saddam didn’t have the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that were a major justification for the invasion, unity gave way to recrimination. It didn’t matter that virtually everyone – Republicans and Democrats, CIA analysts and the UN Security Council, even Saddam’s own military officers – had been sure the WMD would be found. Nor did it matter that Saddam had previously used WMD to exterminate thousands of men, women, and children. The temptation to spin an intelligence failure as a deliberate "lie" was politically irresistible.

When the relatively quick toppling of Saddam was followed by a long and bloody insurgency, opposition to the war intensified. For many it became an intractable article of faith that victory was not an option. The war to remove Saddam was not merely "Bush’s folly," but – as Senate majority leader Harry Reid called it in 2007 — "the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country."

But then came Bush’s "surge," and the course of the war shifted dramatically for the better.

By the time President Bush left office, Iraq had been transformed from a "republic of fear" into a relatively peaceful constitutional democracy.

By the time Bush left office, the insurgency was crippled, violence was down 90 percent, and Iraqis were being governed by politicians they had voted for. It was far from perfect, but "something that looks an awful lot like democracy is beginning to take hold in Iraq," reported Newsweek in early 2010. On its cover the magazine proclaimed: "Victory at Last."

And so it might have been, if America’s new commander-in-chief hadn’t been so insistent on pulling the plug.

In October 2011, President Obama – overriding his military commanders, who had recommended keeping 18,000 troops on the ground – announced that all remaining US servicemen would be out of Iraq by the end of the year. Politically, it was a popular decision; most Americans were understandably weary of Iraq. But abandoning Iraqis and their frail, fledgling democracy was reckless.

"It freed Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to be more of a Shiite sectarian than he could have been with the US looking over his shoulder," military historian Max Boot observed this week. And with Maliki moving against his Sunni opponents, some of them "are making common cause once again with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, [which] has recovered from its near-death experience" during the surge. It is cold comfort that so many urgently warned of just such an outcome in 2011.

So was the Iraq war worth it? On that, Americans are a long way from a consensus. It is never clear in the immediate aftermath of any war what history’s judgment will be. Two decades ago, the 1991 Gulf War was regarded as a triumph. In retrospect, the decision to leave Saddam in power – and to let him murderously crush an uprising we had encouraged – looks like a tragic blunder.

But this much we do know: The invasion of Iraq 10 years ago ended the reign of a genocidal tyrant, and ensured that his monstrous sons could never succeed him. It struck a shaft of fear into other dictators, leading Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi, for example, to relinquish his WMD. It let Iraqis find out how much better their lives could be under democratic self-government. Like all wars, even wars of liberation, it took an awful toll. The status quo ante was worse.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe. His website is http://www.JeffJacoby.com).

COMPLEMENT (22.03.13):

Geopolitical ADHD

Mark Steyn

National Review online

March 22, 2013

Ten years ago, along with three-quarters of the American people, including the men just appointed as President Obama’s secretaries of state and defense, I supported the invasion of Iraq. A decade on, unlike most of the American people, including John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, I’ll stand by that original judgment.

None of us can say what would have happened had Saddam Hussein remained in power. He might now be engaged in a nuclear-arms race with Iran. One or other of his even more psychotic sons, the late Uday or Qusay, could be in power. The Arab Spring might have come to Iraq, and surely even more bloodily than in Syria.

But these are speculations best left to the authors of “alternative histories.” In the real world, how did things turn out?

Three weeks after Operation Shock and Awe began, the early-bird naysayers were already warning of massive humanitarian devastation and civil war. Neither happened. Overcompensating somewhat for all the doom-mongering, I wrote in Britain’s Daily Telegraph that “a year from now Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs.” Close enough. Major General Andy Salmon, the British commander in southern Iraq, eventually declared of Basra that “on a per capita basis, if you look at the violence statistics, it is less dangerous than Manchester.”

Ten years ago, expert opinion was that Iraq was a phony-baloney entity imposed on the map by distant colonial powers. Joe Biden, you’ll recall, advocated dividing the country into three separate states, which for the Democrats held out the enticing prospect of having three separate quagmires to blame on Bush, but for the Iraqis had little appeal. “As long as you respect its inherently confederal nature,” I argued, “it’ll work fine.” As for the supposedly secessionist Kurds, “they’ll settle for being Scotland or Quebec.” And so it turned out. The Times of London, last week: “Ten Years after Saddam, Iraqi Kurds Have Never Had It So Good.” In Kurdistan as in Quebec, there is a pervasive unsavory tribal cronyism, but on the other hand, unlike Quebec City, Erbil is booming.

What of the rest of the country? Iraq, I suggested, would wind up “at a bare minimum, the least badly governed state in the Arab world, and, at best, pleasant, civilized and thriving.” I’ll stand by my worst-case scenario there. Unlike the emerging “reforms” in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria, politics in Iraq has remained flawed but, by the standards of the grimly Islamist Arab Spring, broadly secular.

So I like the way a lot of the trees fell. But I missed the forest.

On the previous Western liberation of Mesopotamia, when General Maude took Baghdad from the Turks in 1917, British troops found a very different city from the Saddamite squat of 2003: In a lively, jostling, cosmopolitan metropolis, 40 percent of the population was Jewish. I wasn’t so deluded as to think the Jews would be back, but I hoped something of Baghdad’s lost vigor might return. Granted that most of the Arab world, from Tangiers to Alexandria, is considerably less “multicultural” than it was in mid century, the remorseless extinction of Iraq’s Christian community this last decade is appalling — and, given that it happened on America’s watch, utterly shameful. Like the bland acknowledgement deep in a State Department “International Religious Freedom Report” that the last church in Afghanistan was burned to the ground in 2010, it testifies to the superpower’s impotence, not “internationally” but in client states entirely bankrolled by us.

Foreigners see this more clearly than Americans. As Goh Chok Tong, the prime minister of Singapore, said on a visit to Washington in 2004, “The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America’s credibility and will to prevail.” Just so. If you live in Tikrit or Fallujah, the Iraq War was about Iraq. If you live anywhere else on the planet, the Iraq War was about America, and the unceasing drumbeat of “quagmire” and “exit strategy” communicated to the world an emptiness at the heart of American power — like the toppled statue of Saddam that proved to be hollow. On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, mobs trashed U.S. embassies across the region with impunity. A rather more motivated crowd showed up in Benghazi, killed four Americans, including the ambassador, and correctly calculated they would face no retribution. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, these guys have reached their own judgment about American “credibility” and “will” — as have more potent forces yet biding their time, from Moscow to Beijing.

A few weeks after the fall of Saddam, on little more than a whim, I rented a beat-up Nissan at Amman Airport and, without telling the car-hire bloke, drove east across the Iraqi border and into the Sunni Triangle. I could not easily make the same journey today: Western journalists now require the permission of the central government to enter Anbar Province. But for a brief period in the spring of 2003 we were the “strong horse” and even a dainty little media gelding such as myself was accorded a measure of respect by the natives. At a rest area on the highway between Rutba and Ramadi, I fell into conversation with one of the locals. Having had to veer onto the median every few miles to dodge bomb craters, I asked him whether he bore any resentments toward his liberators. “Americans only in the sky,” he told me, grinning a big toothless grin as, bang on cue, a U.S. chopper rumbled up from over the horizon and passed high above our heads. “No problem.”

“Americans only in the sky” is an even better slogan in the Obama era of drone-alone warfare. In Iraq, there were a lot of boots on the ground, but when it came to non-military leverage (cultural, economic) Americans were content to remain “only in the sky.” And down on the ground other players filled the vacuum, some reasonably benign (the Chinese in the oil fields), others less so (the Iranians in everything else).

And so a genuinely reformed Middle East remains, like the speculative scenarios outlined at the top, in the realm of “alternative history.” Nevertheless, in the grim two-thirds-of-a-century roll call of America’s un-won wars, Iraq today is less un-won than Korea, Vietnam, or Afghanistan, and that is not nothing. The war dead of America and its few real allies died in an honorable cause. But armies don’t wage wars, nations do. And, back on the home front, a vast percentage of fair-weather hawks who decided that it was all too complicated, or a bit of a downer, or Bush lied, or where’s the remote, revealed America as profoundly unserious. A senator who votes for war and then decides he’d rather it had never started is also engaging in “alternative history” — albeit of the kind in which Pam Ewing steps into the shower at Southfork and writes off the previous season of Dallas as a bad dream. In non-alternative history, in the only reality there is, once you’ve started a war, you have two choices: to win it or to lose it. Withdrawing one’s “support” for a war you’re already in advertises nothing more than a kind of geopolitical ADHD.

Shortly after Gulf War One, when the world’s superpower assembled a mighty coalition to fight half-a-war to an inconclusive halt at the gates of Baghdad, Washington declined to get mixed up in the disintegrating Balkans. Colin Powell offered the following rationale: “We do deserts. We don’t do mountains.” Across a decade in Iraq, America told the world we don’t really do deserts, either.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon.

"Bus de l’aparheid": Pour d’obscures raisons, les Arabes se font exploser dans les bus et les Israéliens trouvent ça très gênant (How are you supposed to cohabit with people theologically, politically and culturally committed to your destruction ?)

Toutes choses égales par ailleurs, Chavez, c’est de Gaulle plus Léon Blum. De Gaulle parce qu’il a changé fondamentalement les institutions et puis Léon Blum, c’est-à-dire le Front populaire, parce qu’il lutte contre les injustices. Moi je dis, et ça pourra m’être reproché, (…) que le monde gagnerait à avoir beaucoup de dictateurs comme Hugo Chavez puisqu’on prétend que c’est un dictateur. Il a pendant ces quatorze ans respecté les droits de l’homme. Victorin Lunel (ministre de l’Outre-Mer, envoyé de la France à l’enterrement de Chavez)

La libération de la Palestine a pour but de “purifier” le pays de toute présence sioniste. (…) Le partage de la Palestine en 1947 et la création de l’État d’Israël sont des événements nuls et non avenus. (…) La Charte ne peut être amendée que par une majorité des deux tiers de tous les membres du Conseil national de l’Organisation de libération de la Palestine réunis en session extraordinaire convoquée à cet effet. Charte de l’OLP (articles 15, 19 et 33, 1964)

Les enfants de la nation du Hezbollah au Liban sont en confrontation avec [leurs ennemis] afin d’atteindre les objectifs suivants : un retrait israélien définitif du Liban comme premier pas vers la destruction totale d’Israël et la libération de la Sainte Jérusalem de la souillure de l’occupation … Charte du Hezbollah (1985)

Israël existe et continuera à exister jusqu’à ce que l’islam l’abroge comme il a abrogé ce qui l’a précédé. Hasan al-Bannâ (préambule de la charte du Hamas, 1988)

Le Mouvement de la Résistance Islamique est un mouvement palestinien spécifique qui fait allégeance à Allah et à sa voie, l’islam. Il lutte pour hisser la bannière de l’islam sur chaque pouce de la Palestine. Charte du Hamas (Article six, 1988)

If, and as long as between the Jordan and the sea, there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic…If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state. Ehud Barak (security conference, 2010)

"Separate but equal?" Yediot Ahranot

On the bus to Israeli apartheid. Haaretz

The separate bus lines for Palestinians that went into operation on Monday recall racial segregation in the United States and are bringing Israel closer to apartheid. Aeyal Gross (Haaretz)

Many people don’t class the Israeli situation as apartheid because for a long time, Israel refrained from the characteristics of petty apartheid, like separate roads, cafés and buses. This bus situation is a step in the direction of petty apartheid because people are being segregated in their daily activities. Ofra Yeshua-Lyth

For some strange reason, Arabs blow themselves up in buses and Israelis find that very unnerving. Yisrael Maida

The mayor told the government that people are afraid on the buses because of security problems and fights with Palestinians and he needs separate lines.  If you take a bus at five in the afternoon the bus is full of Arabs and there is no place to sit. And people are afraid someone will blow it up. Chen Keddem (spokeswoman for Eli Shaviro, the mayor of the West Bank settlement of Ariel)

Obviously, everyone will start screaming ‘apartheid’ and ‘racism’ now. This really doesn’t feel right, and maybe [the ministry] should find a different solution, but the situation right now is impossible. One driver (Ynet news service)

Driving a bus full of only Palestinians might turn out to be tricky. It could be unnerving and it might also create other problems. It could be a scary thing. Driver

There are two reasons for the move. First, there’s the obvious security issue: there is a dreadful history of Palestinian suicide bombing on Israeli buses. Israelis are understandably afraid, especially in the context of mass incitement by the Palestinian Authority, and would rather Palestinians took their trips to Israel on their own buses. (Are you absolutely sure you wouldn’t feel the same way?) The second reason, which explains why Israel has made its move now, is that due to more generous arrangements for the Palestinians, Israel is now granting more work permits. More workers, more buses. More Palestinian workers, more buses for Palestinians.  The Commentator

The situation in the past few months in which Israeli citizens have been compelled to ride on bullet-proof buses under IDF instruction and find buses full of people from the Arab population, is absurd, not to mention the security risk involved. On the other hand, the Arab population is compelled to pay a fortune for unlicensed drivers to pick them up straight from the crossing. The current solution is good for all. It allows Arabs to ride cheaper and regulated buses. Herzl Ben-Ari (Karnei Shomron Regional Council Chairman)

Maintaining tight security in one of the top terror targets in the world will inevitably bump up repeatedly – and unpleasantly – against issues of human rights.  Jake Wallis Simons

Critics note that the impetus behind the new lines wasn’t to ease the burden of Palestinian commuters, but rather a response to appeals by Jewish settler leaders who didn’t want to share buses with Palestinians. That point is accepted by the spokeswoman for Eli Shaviro, the mayor of the West Bank settlement of Ariel, who pushed for the lines, Ben Hur, the chairman of the Afakim Bus Co., which runs the lines, and the Transportation Ministry. Many settler leaders have long pushed for such a move, and the decision comes as their sway within Likud is on the rise. (…) A Palestinian placed a bomb on a Tel Aviv municipal bus last year that wounded 21. Between the late 1990s through the mid 2000s, Palestinian suicide bombers waged scores of attacks against Israeli targets, many of them public buses. Those attacks have since subsided. Palestinians and Israelis living side-by-side in the West Bank are governed by a dual system riven with inequalities that rarely make headlines in Israel. Parallel legal systems govern the lives of both peoples. Israelis charged with a crime in the West Bank are channeled into Israel’s criminal justice system, where the rights and legal protections are on par with any Western democracy. Palestinians are subjected to military courts, established after Israel won the West Bank from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. Many of the protections enshrined in Israel’s legal code don’t exist in the military courts, where military appellate court judges draw on Jordanian law, British-era laws and Israeli military decrees dating back to 1967. Israel says the dual systems are necessary to battle Palestinian terror networks. The WSJ

The term "apartheid state," as applied to Israel, gained traction largely as a result of former US President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book "Israel: Peace Not Apartheid." The term "apartheid" refers to the conditions that formerly existed in South Africa where a 20% white minority controlled the 80% black majority through a brutally oppressive regime, which included segregationist laws and police who routinely brutalized and killed them with impunity. Blacks could not vote own property or businesses under apartheid. Those who have used the same term to describe Israel have fundamentally misapplied its meaning, failing to take into account circumstances so incongruent to comparative realities on the ground it renders the user of said term illiterate, seriously prejudiced, or both. Indeed, how come virtually every group of people have at least one country they call home, but if the Jews want one they are deemed "racist?" Another under publicized fact is that the Arabs who live in Israel are quite content living under Israeli law. They vote, own property and businesses, and face no segregation. In fact, life in Israel is so appealing that on a couple of occasions when the Palestinian Authority publically threatened to annex east Jerusalem, the Israeli office of immigration was flooded by Arabs applying for citizenship in Israel, because they did not want to live under Arab rule. (…) In South Africa, the apartheid system was an outgrowth from the British Commonwealth. Its intent was to ensure whites remained in control. In Israel’s case its birth was approved by a 72% majority vote of the United Nations. The Arabs had already received almost 90% of the land originally set aside by the British as a national homeland for the Jewish people. Yet in spite of being overwhelming beneficiaries of what was to be Jewish land, the Arabs refused to accept a tiny partition for a Jewish state. They attacked Israel 24 hours after it declared statehood. Since then, the Arabs have made Israel’s destruction a cornerstone of their existence. Groups such as the PLO, Hamas, Fatah and Hezbollah have been birthed, each with charters requiring the destruction of Israel and the eradication of Zionism. Terror attacks have been perpetrated against Israeli civilians since it became a state. Between 1948 and 1999, some 2,000 Israelis had been killed by terrorists, which amounts to an average of 43 killings annually. In 2000, construction of Israel’s security barrier began. This is also when the second "Intifada" started. The year 2000 also saw a spike in the average of civilians killed from 43 to 288 per year, until 2003, when the first phase of the barrier was completed. That’s an increase of over 600% annually. Apparently Israel’s critics conveniently ignored this when making “apartheid wall” accusations. Today, with approximately 70% of the security barrier complete, the number of terror attacks has been dramatically reduced. In spite of the reduction in killings, Arab leaders continue to laud murderers as heroes, naming streets and public squares after them. When officials like Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas are publically honoring murderers, is it any wonder Israel has to take proactive measures to protect its civilians by constructing a security barrier? By attempting to ensure its survival as the only home of the Jewish people against Arabs who are theologically, politically and culturally committed to its destruction, Israel is labeled an "apartheid state." Dan Calic

Comment est-on censé cohabiter avec des gens "théologiquement, politiquement et culturellement engagés à la destruction" de son Etat ?

Après les freedom rides de Meat Shearim …

Et le passage catastrophique d’une comédienne suppléante d’un candidat à un poste de représentant des Français de l’étranger de toute évidence non préparée dans une émission de divertissement de France 2 …

Pendant que nos ministres socialistes se pâment sur les mérites du premier dictateur venu …

Et qu’en Israël même sans parler des retraités du FBI israélien qui se sentent obligés de jouer aux "juifs utiles", les dirigeants palestiniens peaufinent leur "nouvelle stratégie de "résistance populaire" qui évite de recourir aux attentats et aux armes à feu pour se concentrer sur des manifestations coordonnées contre la présence israélienne dans les Territoires" ….

Retour sur le dernier épisode de la campagne de diffamation contre Israël …

Suite aux accusations d’apartheid de journaux et groupes de défense des droits civiques israéliens contre, suite à la hausse des travailleurs de Cisjordanie autorisés à travailler en Israël et la pression des implantations israéliennes, l’instauration par le Ministère israélien de nouveaux bus pour les travailleurs palestiniens …

Où, comme précédemment pour la barrière de sécurité qui a presque totalement réduit les attentats dont le nombre de victimes au moment de sa construction en 2000 étaient montés à 288 par an, nombre de nos belles âmes oublient les conditions très particulières de cohabitation avec une population dont les dirigeants sont, comme le rappelle l’éditorialiste israélien Dan Calic, "théologiquement, politiquement et culturellement engagés à la destruction" de votre Etat …

Apartheid? Think again

Op-ed: Why is Israel considered racist for seeking to protect itself against hostile, murderous Arabs?

Dan Calic

04.03.13

The term "apartheid state," as applied to Israel, gained traction largely as a result of former US President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book "Israel: Peace Not Apartheid." The term "apartheid" refers to the conditions that formerly existed in South Africa where a 20% white minority controlled the 80% black majority through a brutally oppressive regime, which included segregationist laws and police who routinely brutalized and killed them with impunity. Blacks could not vote own property or businesses under apartheid.

Those who have used the same term to describe Israel have fundamentally misapplied its meaning, failing to take into account circumstances so incongruent to comparative realities on the ground it renders the user of said term illiterate, seriously prejudiced, or both.

Indeed, how come virtually every group of people have at least one country they call home, but if the Jews want one they are deemed "racist?"

Another under publicized fact is that the Arabs who live in Israel are quite content living under Israeli law. They vote, own property and businesses, and face no segregation. In fact, life in Israel is so appealing that on a couple of occasions when the Palestinian Authority publically threatened to annex east Jerusalem, the Israeli office of immigration was flooded by Arabs applying for citizenship in Israel, because they did not want to live under Arab rule.

By contrast, South Africa’s blacks certainly weren’t lining up at government offices desperate to remain subjugated under apartheid.

In South Africa, the apartheid system was an outgrowth from the British Commonwealth. Its intent was to ensure whites remained in control. In Israel’s case its birth was approved by a 72% majority vote of the United Nations. The Arabs had already received almost 90% of the land originally set aside by the British as a national homeland for the Jewish people.

Yet in spite of being overwhelming beneficiaries of what was to be Jewish land, the Arabs refused to accept a tiny partition for a Jewish state. They attacked Israel 24 hours after it declared statehood.

Killers honored

Since then, the Arabs have made Israel’s destruction a cornerstone of their existence. Groups such as the PLO, Hamas, Fatah and Hezbollah have been birthed, each with charters requiring the destruction of Israel and the eradication of Zionism.

Terror attacks have been perpetrated against Israeli civilians since it became a state. Between 1948 and 1999, some 2,000 Israelis had been killed by terrorists, which amounts to an average of 43 killings annually. In 2000, construction of Israel’s security barrier began. This is also when the second "Intifada" started.

The year 2000 also saw a spike in the average of civilians killed from 43 to 288 per year, until 2003, when the first phase of the barrier was completed. That’s an increase of over 600% annually. Apparently Israel’s critics conveniently ignored this when making “apartheid wall” accusations.

Today, with approximately 70% of the security barrier complete, the number of terror attacks has been dramatically reduced.

In spite of the reduction in killings, Arab leaders continue to laud murderers as heroes, naming streets and public squares after them. When officials like Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas are publically honoring murderers, is it any wonder Israel has to take proactive measures to protect its civilians by constructing a security barrier?

By attempting to ensure its survival as the only home of the Jewish people against Arabs who are theologically, politically and culturally committed to its destruction, Israel is labeled an "apartheid state." Yet it seems those who invoke such labels deserve a label of their own: Anti-Semites.

Voir aussi:

Slandering the Jewish state

Op-ed: Instead of criticizing ‘Israeli apartheid,’ rights group should focus on Syria, Saudi Arabia

Gerald M. Steinberg

Ynetnews

03.12.12

Over the past few weeks "Israeli apartheid week" events have occurred at a number of campuses throughout North America and Europe. This year’s timing is especially unfortunate: while this political warfare, accompanied by BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaign is happening, the Syrian regime is massacring its own people.

In light of this, it is especially sad that people who call themselves human rights activists waste their time and energy attacking Israel. It is clear that the campaign explicitly targets the existence of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. In the words of Professor Irwin Cotler, former Canadian attorney general, "Let there be no mistake about it: to indict Israel as an Apartheid State is prologue and justification for the dismantling of the Jewish State, for the criminalization of its supporters, and for the consequential silencing of their speech."

BDS Campaign

This campaign immorally exploits the suffering of the real victims of apartheid and racism, and transforms a complex political dispute between the Palestinians and Israel into a racial conflict. The comparison was categorically rejected and denounced by Judge Richard Goldstone in The New York Times. Goldstone, who is a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court, wrote that, "In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute…"

Goldstone added that "while ‘apartheid’ can have broader meaning, its use is meant to evoke the situation in pre-1994 South Africa. It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations."

Many others who had experienced the real apartheid expressed similar views. Benjamin Pogrund, who was a journalist in South Africa, wrote, "Use of the apartheid label is at best ignorant and naive and at worst cynical and manipulative."

Infinite hypocrisy

This cynicism is especially prominent now that Assad’s regime is mercilessly massacring its own people. During the past month, hundreds of people were murdered just in the city of Homs. But in Syria, where an Alawite minority has been oppressing the Sunni majority for decades, the regime – like other dictatorships – was immune to criticism until the outbreak of brutal violence in the recent months, especially from groups claiming to promote human rights.

Does a state in which a small minority violently oppresses the majority not deserve a week (in Israel’s case, actually a month) of attention focused on its crimes? And what about Saudi Arabia, which bans members of other religions from entering parts of the country, and where women are not allowed to drive or leave their house without a family member accompanying them? Where is “Saudi discrimination week”? And we haven’t even mentioned the situation of Christians in Israel’s neighbors, in Gaza and in the West bank. The examples are infinite, as is the hypocrisy.

In the face of these blatant double standards, the power of the "apartheid" campaign is derived from resources that are available in both political and financial forms. Politically, as noted, this divisive agenda is supported by the Arab and Islamic blocs in the United Nations and associated institutions, with active support from Russia and China. They firmly reject any attempt to condemn real human rights violations, and use anti-Israel campaigns to divert criticism.

Financially, the availability of significant European government funding allows ostensible human rights organizations to actively promote the "apartheid" libel. At the same time, these organizations are embarrassingly silent when faced with human rights violations in the Muslim-Arab world in general and in Syria specifically. At most, they issue belated and half-hearted condemnations.

Finally, the crude exploitation of the "apartheid" libel and the accompanying BDS campaigns are the antithesis of the mutual acceptance required for peace, and serve the purposes of murderous dictatorships. As Judge Goldstone wrote, "The mutual recognition and protection of the human dignity of all people is indispensable to bringing an end to hatred and anger. The charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that precludes, rather than promotes, peace and harmony."

Gerald M. Steinberg is the founder and president of NGO Monitor and professor of political science at Bar Ilan University

Voir également:

Palestinian-only buses: Israeli apartheid?

 Jake Wallis Simons

March 4th, 2013

Israel has been accused of encouraging racial segregation after a new Palestinian-only bus service was launched

The balance between security and civil liberties is a delicate one in Israel. A few years ago I was travelling there with a few friends from Britain. One of us happened to be of African Islamic heritage. The security personnel at Ben Gurion airport gave him an especially hard time, questioning him at length in private and searching his luggage forensically. It was unsettling for him, and awkward – to say the least – for the rest of us. Was this racism? Or the necessary evil of prudent security measures? I take no pleasure in suggesting that it was the latter. Actually, the friend in question feels the same way.

This is the episode that springs to mind when I learn that Israel has launched Palestinian-only buses on Highway Five between the West Bank and Tel Aviv. The Transport Ministry explained that the new bus service was intended to "improve public transport services for Palestinian workers entering Israel", replacing unofficial buses that were demanding "exorbitant prices". They also said that Palestinian workers would not be prevented from travelling on regular public transport, either in Israel or on the West Bank.

Palestinian rights groups, however, were concerned that this was a fig-leaf for what would become wholesale discrimination at checkpoints, with Israeli police taking matters into their own hands and forcing Palestinians to use the new buses exclusively.

Defenders of the plan offer a rationale that is largely security-based. As Yisrael Maidad, a prominent figure on the Israeli Right, sardonically put it, "since we ride buses with Arabs every day in Israel, it’s not a racist thing but for some strange reason, Arabs blow themselves up in buses and Israelis find that very unnerving."

The language is inflammatory, but the statement is not without its kernel of truth. Maintaining tight security in one of the top terror targets in the world will inevitably bump up repeatedly – and unpleasantly – against issues of human rights. The question, as with my experience at Ben Gurion airport, is where one draws the line. In Israel, this matter is debated frequently and officially by moral philosophers and religious figures, particularly when it comes to military operations. They get it wrong sometimes, and spectacularly so. But often, on a day-to-day basis, they get it right.

Nevertheless, it has to be noted that the timing is strange. Apart from the blast on the bus in Tel Aviv during the last Gaza offensive, there hadn’t been a suicide attack on Israel’s bus network for six and a half years, which is a striking figure given that 29,000 Palestinians commute to Israel daily. This suggests that although the new bus service is being used by some groups to highlight security concerns, its real purpose is far more practical. Having said that, the current plans are merely one step away from enforced segregation; this may very well cause more problems than it solves, and may set a troubling precedent.

But as the fur flies in the media and the blogosphere, it seems to me that one point has not been made clearly enough. It has become a cliché to criticise Israel for being an apartheid state. Given the fact that the introduction of a segregated bus route provokes such a domestic and international furore, does this epithet withstand scrutiny? Many, such as Aeyal Gross in Ha’aretz, are arguing vociferously that the current issue demonstrates that we are "on the bus to Israeli apartheid". Which suggests that we aren’t there yet.

Voir encore:

Split Israel Bus Lines Spur Segregation Debate

New Transport for Palestinian Workers From West Bank Brings Touchy Issue of Inequality Between Two Peoples to Forefront

Charles Levinson

Wall Street journal

March 4, 2013

TEL AVIV—New bus lines for Palestinians, created at the urging of Jewish settler leaders in the West Bank, have sparked a debate over segregation in Israel and refocused attention on the inequalities that govern Palestinians and Israelis in the territory.

The two new lines began operating on Monday, ferrying Palestinian day laborers commuting between the West Bank and blue-collar jobs in Tel Aviv. Previously, those Palestinians commuted via a series of private minibuses—whose fares are far higher than on the new public bus lines—or on public bus lines serving primarily Jewish settlers in the northern West Bank.

The new bus lines have created a controversy in Israel, rare in a country whose conflict-hardened citizens appear to have grown weary of headlines dealing with the daily grind of Israel’s management of the West Bank amid a low-intensity conflict with the Palestinians.

"Separate but equal?" asked Israel’s centrist daily Yediot Ahranot newspaper on Monday. "On the bus to Israeli apartheid," read an editorial headline in the left-of-center Haaretz paper.

Both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians can still ride on both the new and the old lines, said Israel’s Minister of Transportation Yisrael Katz, a conservative stalwart within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party. That means they are not legally segregated, he says.

"Adding new bus lines servicing Palestinian areas is not segregation," a Katz spokesman said. "Anyone can ride on any bus. There are now just more buses."

Indeed, several Palestinian laborers returning on the new bus line from Tel Aviv to the West Bank on Monday said the new lines appeared to be an improvement that will ease their arduous daily commute, at least a little.

But critics note that the impetus behind the new lines wasn’t to ease the burden of Palestinian commuters, but rather a response to appeals by Jewish settler leaders who didn’t want to share buses with Palestinians. That point is accepted by the spokeswoman for Eli Shaviro, the mayor of the West Bank settlement of Ariel, who pushed for the lines, Ben Hur, the chairman of the Afakim Bus Co., which runs the lines, and the Transportation Ministry.

Many settler leaders have long pushed for such a move, and the decision comes as their sway within Likud is on the rise.

"The mayor told the government that people are afraid on the buses because of security problems and fights with Palestinians and he needs separate lines," said Shaviro spokeswoman Chen Keddem.

The roughly 50,000 Palestinians who have permits to work in Israel have been carefully screened and vetted by Israeli security services.

Ms. Keddem said that verbal squabbles—but not physical ones—do take place on mixed Palestinian-Israeli buses, but mostly over competition for seats. Ms. Keddem said she wasn’t aware of any more serious security incidents.

"If you take a bus at five in the afternoon the bus is full of Arabs and there is no place to sit," she said. "And people are afraid someone will blow it up."

A Palestinian placed a bomb on a Tel Aviv municipal bus last year that wounded 21. Between the late 1990s through the mid 2000s, Palestinian suicide bombers waged scores of attacks against Israeli targets, many of them public buses. Those attacks have since subsided.

Palestinians and Israelis living side-by-side in the West Bank are governed by a dual system riven with inequalities that rarely make headlines in Israel.

Parallel legal systems govern the lives of both peoples. Israelis charged with a crime in the West Bank are channeled into Israel’s criminal justice system, where the rights and legal protections are on par with any Western democracy. Palestinians are subjected to military courts, established after Israel won the West Bank from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli war in 1967.

Many of the protections enshrined in Israel’s legal code don’t exist in the military courts, where military appellate court judges draw on Jordanian law, British-era laws and Israeli military decrees dating back to 1967. Israel says the dual systems are necessary to battle Palestinian terror networks.

"Buses are a symbol of segregation," said Hagit Ofran, of Peace Now, an Israeli pro-peace group. "That may be the reason we get so much interest about it. Segregation is all over the occupation, but when it comes to buses it looks very bad."

Anything that hints at segregation, with its historical connection to South African apartheid and the American civil-rights movement, is a particularly explosive issue in a country that takes pride in being a Western-style democracy.

But the issue has increasingly sneaked into the public debate. The country’s Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, was perhaps the first senior Israeli leader to publicly warn that Israel’s policies in the West Bank risked leading Israel toward being "an apartheid state."

"If, and as long as between the Jordan and the sea, there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic…If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state," Mr. Barak said at a security conference in 2010.

All six living ex-directors of Israel’s internal Shin Bet security service, the lead agency in fighting Palestinian terror, recently participated in the Oscar-nominated documentary The Gatekeepers, to warn against Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank.

Voir de plus:

Separate but equal bus lines?

Ynetnews

03.04.13

Palestinian workers travelling between West Bank, Israel to use separate public transportation after settlers complain of potential security risks. Leftists call these ‘apartheid lines’, Transportation Minister Katz says ‘Palestinians entering Israel will be able to ride on all public transportation lines’

Reuters, Itamar Fleishman

Tension, delays and chaos ensue on the first day segregated, Palestinian-Israeli bus lines are operated in the West Bank.

On Monday morning, a riot broke out at the exit point of the Eyal crossing, adjacent to Qalqilya after numerous Palestinian laborers could not get to work within the Green Line. They protested the fact that as of now, they must arrive at the crossing from far-off places in the West Bank since the new bus lines are their only means of entering central Israel.

In response, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said that "Palestinians entering Israel will be able to ride on all public transportation lines, including all those already existing in the West Bank."

In addition, according to a Transport Ministry announcement, Katz instructed that all new Afikim bus company lines will be reinforced immediately according to demand. "In light of the great overflow on the few lines operated this morning, the ministry will asses the possibility that lines will leave from additional West Bank points, making it easier for the travelers."

Israel launched two Palestinians-only bus lines in the West Bank on Monday, a step an Israeli rights group described as racist and which the Transport Ministry called an improvement in service.

The ministry opened the lines, to be used by Palestinian laborers travelling between the West Bank and Israel, after settlers complained that Palestinians on mixed buses were a security risk.

The separate Palestinian bus line initiative aroused a wave of reactions from both sides of the Israeli political spectrum. Leftists called upon the Transport Ministry to cancel what they call "Apartheid lines."

Meretz Chairwoman Zahava Gal-On turned to Katz and demanded that he "immediately cancel the segregated lines in the West Bank. Separate bus lines for Palestinians prove that occupation and democracy cannot coexist," she said.

According to Gal On, the decision to separate between Jews and Arabs stems from settler pressure and not from the desire to improve upon services for the Palestinians. "Separation on buses based on ethnicity was customary in the past in racist regimes around the world and is unacceptable in a democratic country."

Peace Now activists also protested the operation of these lines and said, "the decision to (operate) separate bus lines in the territories is shocking and turns racism into the norm. A Palestinian Rosa Parks is needed to insist upon sitting on Jewish bus lines, (someone) who won’t surrender to discrimination."

Conversely, Karnei Shomron Regional Council Chairman Herzl Ben-Ari, one of the leading pressure-putters on the Transport Ministry for finding a solution to the overload and the tension on the regular West Bank bus lines commented as well.

Ben-Ari said that "the situation in the past few months in which Israeli citizens have been compelled to ride on bullet-proof buses under IDF instruction and find buses full of people from the Arab population, is absurd, not to mention the security risk involved. On the other hand, the Arab population is compelled to pay a fortune for unlicensed drivers to pick them up straight from the crossing. The current solution is good for all. It allows Arabs to ride cheaper and regulated buses."

"Creating separate bus lines for Israeli Jews and Palestinians is a revolting plan," Jessica Montell, director of the B’Tselem rights group, said on Army Radio. "This is simply racism. Such a plan cannot be justified with claims of security needs or overcrowding."

עומס בעלייה לאוטובוס. הבוקר במעבר אייל (צילום: גור דותן)

Overload on Palestinians-only buses (Photo: Gur Dotan)

Ibrahim, from the West Bank village of Bidya said, "it is impossible for to make it all the way here. I need to leave an hour and a half earlier because I live far from the Eyal crossing, and if I miss the bus – my whole workday is gone."

Fauzi, who lives in the village of Zaita, adjacent to the West Bank city of Ariel, requested to arrive to work in Israel and was also delayed at the Eyal crossing. He expressed his frustration regarding the situation and said "this chaos is unclear to me. I need to drive an hour and a half just to get to the bus, and now it is not clear if there are even enough buses."

Additional laborers who arrived at the crossing, verbally confronted Transport Ministry and Afikim bus company representatives, who were guarded by police officers who arrived at the scene to maintain order.

"The Ministry of Transport has not issued any instruction or prohibition that prevents Palestinian workers from travelling on public transport in Israel nor in Judea and Samaria," it said, referring to the West Bank.

"Furthermore, the Ministry of Transport is not authorized to prevent any passenger from using public transport services."

Rights groups, however, voiced concern that Israeli police at checkpoints in the West Bank would remove Palestinian passengers from regular bus lines and order them to use the new ones.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said all Palestinians returning to the West Bank would be searched for stolen property, describing this as a routine Israeli precaution.

He said he did not know whether and how this might affect Palestinian travel on regular buses.

Voir de plus:

Penser qu’il s’agit de ségrégation est d’une incongruité absolue

Gilles-William Goldnadel

Avocat franco-israélien, essayiste et militant associatif

Newsring

07 mars 2013

D’après ce que je sais, il ne s’agit pas du tout de ségrégation, c’est un service de transport qui a été mis en place, à des prix particuliers, pour les Arabes de Cisjordanie. Pour autant, si un Arabe de Cisjordanie veut prendre un bus israélien ou avec des Juifs, il ne va pas être rejeté. Donc, de ce point de vue-là, le parallèle avec l’apartheid sud-africain de la grande époque ou bien avec la ségrégation dans le Sud des Etats-Unis est particulièrement injuste et injustifié. C’est une facilité qui a été faite pour améliorer le sort des Palestiniens et on est en train de transformer ça, de manière totalement abusive, en un outil de ségrégation, ce qui est faux.

Qu’il y ait un climat de peur parce que des Palestiniens se sont fait sauter dans des bus, je peux parfaitement le comprendre. De la même manière qu’il est très compréhensible qu’un Palestinien qui n’a rien à se reprocher n’aime pas se voir regarder de travers. C’est la situation qui veut cela mais nous sommes ici à des années lumières du principe juridique d’une ségrégation entre telle ou telle ethnie. Justement, les choses étant ce qu’elles sont dans ce bas monde, on a sans doute en raison de cela voulu faciliter la vie des Arabes, et de manière assez perverse, ça se retourne contre l’autorité qui veut améliorer la situation. Je pressens qu’en raison de cette polémique on finisse par revenir sur cette décision et les premiers perdants seront, une fois de plus, les Arabes de Palestine.

Concernant les deux bus incendiés, il y a des gens qui ont envie de jeter de l’huile sur le feu et, comme la polémique a l’air de prendre, ils appuient là où ça fait mal. Mais ça ne valide en rien l’hypothèse de la ségrégation. Pour bien connaître Israël et les israéliens, je sais qu’il ne leur serait jamais venu à l’idée de faire un bus qui serait strictement autorisé pour telle ethnie et strictement prohibé pour une autre. C’est une incongruité absolue quand on connaît le système israélien et, d’ailleurs, ce serait contraire à la loi.

On a voulu mettre en place un service qui était objectivement pour faciliter la vie des Arabes donc des esprits chagrins ont considéré que, puisqu’il s’agissait de bus pour des Arabes, cela voulait dire que l’on séparait les Juifs des Arabes Dès lors, la polémique s’est enflammée.

Nous ne sommes pas dans une situation actuelle où les Arabes viennent se faire sauter dans les bus. Heureusement, cela fait des années que ce n’est pas arrivé. Donc le fantasme en question ou la peur, même compréhensible, ne sont pas prégnants. A l’époque où les bus explosaient sans cesse, je comprends très bien qu’un israélien qui voyait un Arabe rentrer dans un bus avec un grand anorak se demandait ce qu’il y avait dessous. Mais quel rapport avec la ségrégation? C’est simplement la crainte et le soupçon qui prévalent évidemment dans ce type de situation. Les choses étaient-elles bien différentes après l’explosion du métro de Saint Michel en 1995?

Voir aussi:

Israël: deux bus destinés aux travailleurs palestiniens incendiés

L’Express

05/03/2013

Deux bus destinés aux travailleurs palestiniens se rendant en Israël ont été incendiés dans le nord du pays. La mise en place de ces lignes lundi avait provoqué la colère des Palestiniens et des défenseurs des droits de l’homme.

ISRAEL – Le lancement des lignes reliant le passage d’Eyal, près de Qalqiliya, à Tel-Aviv fait suite à des protestations de colons mécontents de devoir partager les transports avec les Palestiniens.

Les véhicules n’auront roulé que quelques heures. Deux bus, utilisés sur les nouvelles lignes destinées aux travailleurs palestiniens se rendant en Israël, ont "apparemment été incendiés" dans le nord du pays, dans la nuit de lundi à mardi.

"Nous explorons toutes les pistes", a indiqué la porte-parole de la police, Louba Samri. Celle-ci précise qu’une enquête sur le sinistre, dans le village arabe israélien de Kfar Qassem, a été ouverte et qu’aucun suspect n’a été arrêté.

Des sources policières citées par la radio militaire estiment que les véhicules ont été incendiés en signe de protestation: Israël a lancé lundi un service de bus destiné aux travailleurs palestiniens, s’attirant des accusations de "ségrégation" dans les transports, de la part d’organisations de défense des droits de l’homme.

"Une mesure raciste"

"C’est une politique de ségrégation raciste qu’appliquent tous les gouvernements israéliens consécutifs", a déclaré mardi le vice-ministre palestinien du Travail Assef Saïd. Le secrétaire général du Syndicat des travailleurs palestiniens a de son côté dénoncé "une mesure raciste" dans une déclaration à la radio officielle Voix de la Palestine, soulignant que "les bus utilisés par les travailleurs sont souvent visés par les colons et les extrémistes israéliens".

Le lancement des lignes reliant le passage d’Eyal, près de Qalqiliya, dans le nord de la Cisjordanie, à l’agglomération de Tel-Aviv fait suite à des protestations de colons mécontents de devoir partager les transports avec les Palestiniens, invoquant des risques d’attentat. Jusqu’à présent, les travailleurs palestiniens empruntant ce passage se rendaient jusqu’à un arrêt de bus proche d’une colonie juive, où ils embarquaient avec les passagers israéliens, ou utilisaient des transporteurs clandestins.

"Les nouvelles lignes de bus ne sont pas deux lignes séparées pour les Palestiniens mais plutôt deux lignes dédiées, destinées à améliorer les services de transports offerts aux travailleurs palestiniens qui entrent en Israël par le passage d’Eyal", s’est défendu Israël Katz, le ministre israélien des Transports.

Le maire d’une colonie a demandé l’aide de l’armée

Celui-ci a affirmé que ces nouvelles lignes visaient à "remplacer les opérateurs pirates qui transportent les travailleurs à des prix exorbitants", et a indiqué s’assurer que "les Palestiniens entrant en Israël puissent circuler à bord de tous les transports publics, y compris les lignes opérant en Judée-Samarie [Cisjordanie]".

Le maire de la colonie d’Ariel, dans le nord de la Cisjordanie, Ron Nachman, décédé depuis, avait indiqué en novembre sur sa page Facebook avoir demandé à l’armée, à la police et au ministère des Transports, d’"empêcher les Palestiniens de monter dans des bus desservant Ariel". Il avait assuré que ses interlocuteurs "travaillaient à une solution".

En 2011, des activistes palestiniens ont été arrêtés pour être montés dans des bus israéliens en Cisjordanie, en signe de protestation contre la ségrégation.

Avec AFP

Voir enfin:

Israël craint le début d’une nouvelle intifada

Adrien Jaulmes

Le Figaro

24/02/2013

La mort d’un jeune Palestinien dans une prison israélienne intervient dans un climat déjà très détérioré.

De notre correspondant à Jérusalem

La mort d’un détenu palestinien dans une prison israélienne a fait encore monter la tension en Cisjordanie ce week-end, où les incidents entre Palestiniens et soldats israéliens se sont récemment multipliés au point de faire craindre à Israël le début d’une nouvelle intifada.

Arafat Jaradat, un Palestinien âgé de 30 ans, est mort samedi après-midi dans la prison israélienne de Meggido, officiellement d’un arrêt cardiaque.

Résidant d’un village proche de Hébron, Jaradat avait été arrêté lundi près de la colonie de Kiryat Arba pour avoir jeté des pierres contre des soldats et des civils israéliens. Ayant reconnu les faits, il avait été incarcéré à la prison de Meggido en attendant d’être jugé. Selon les autorités israéliennes, il souffrait de traumatismes dus à des blessures anciennes et, après son examen par un médecin, son interrogatoire avait été suspendu. Cette version des faits n’a pas convaincu la famille de Jaradat, qui a affirmé qu’il était en parfaite santé. Les autorités palestiniennes ont demandé l’ouverture d’une enquête. Le ministre palestinien des Prisonniers, Issa, Qaraqaë, a affirmé dimanche soir lors d’une conférence de presse que l’autopsie du détenu avait révélé «des fractures sur tout le corps et sur le crâne» de la victime, ce qui, selon lui «prouve qu’Israël l’a assassiné».

Des milliers de détenus en grève de la faim

Plusieurs milliers de détenus Palestiniens ont annoncé qu’ils suivraient une journée de grève de la faim en solidarité avec Jaradat. Cette mort survient dans un climat déjà particulièrement tendu. Depuis plusieurs jours, les manifestations se multiplient en Cisjordanie pour réclamer la libération de quatre détenus palestiniens en grève de la faim intermittente depuis plusieurs mois.

Deux de ces détenus, Samir Issaoui et Iman Sharouna, font partie du millier de prisonniers palestiniens libérés en échange du soldat Gilad Shalit. Ils ont été de nouveau arrêtés pour avoir repris leurs activités clandestines. Les deux autres, Jafar Ezzedine et Tariq Kaadan, membre du Djihad islamique, ont été arrêtés ces derniers mois pour avoir fomenté des attentats en Cisjordanie.

Les manifestations de soutien à ces quatre détenus se sont multipliées. Vendredi, la police israélienne est intervenue devant la prison d’Ofer, à côté de Ramallah, et dans la Vieille Ville de Jérusalem pour disperser des manifestants palestiniens. La mort de Jaradat a donné le signal d’autres manifestations en Cisjordanie.

Pour ajouter à la détérioration du climat, trois Palestiniens ont été blessés par balles près de la colonie de Shilo, dans le nord de la Cisjordanie. Les colons sont soupçonnés d’avoir ouvert le feu.

Les incidents se sont multipliés en Cisjordanie depuis la fin de l’opération «Pilier de défense» lancée par Israël en novembre 2012 contre le Hamas à Gaza. À plusieurs reprises, ces derniers mois, l’armée israélienne a mis en garde contre la possibilité d’une troisième intifada. Les Israéliens accusent l’Autorité palestinienne de fomenter ces troubles, selon la nouvelle stratégie de «résistance populaire», qui évite de recourir aux attentats et aux armes à feu pour se concentrer sur des manifestations coordonnées contre la présence israélienne dans les Territoires.

Impostures médiatiques: Dans combien d’autres pays un tel film aurait-il pu voir le jour? (Anyone for a Michael Moore hatchet job on the Israeli FBI ?)

La grande incertitude [liée au manque] d’informations en période de guerre est d’une difficulté particulière parce que toutes les actions doivent dans une certaine mesure être planifiées avec une légère zone d’ombre qui (…) comme l’effet d’un brouillard ou d’un clair de lune, donne aux choses des dimensions exagérées ou non naturelles. Carl von Clausewitz ("Sur la guerre")

Plus on est loin de la scène de l’horreur, plus c’est facile de parler. Paul Fussell

Les documentalistes d’Apocalypse n’ont choisi que des images authentiques, mais le montage de deux authenticités qui n’ont rien à voir – par exemple tel visage et tel nom propre – n’est que pur mensonge au regard de l’histoire. Georges Didi-Huberman

Post-war filmmakers gave us the documentary, Rob Reiner gave us the mockumentary and Moore initiated a third genre, the crockumentary. Jean-Luc Godard

The problem with “The Fog of War” isn’t one of balance. (…) But, as in his other films, Morris feels much more concerned with aesthetics than with moral or historical questions. The interviews with McNamara were filmed with the gizmo Morris calls the “Interrotron.” Morris places his subject in one room in front of a camera and conducts the questioning from another room. There is a small monitor above the camera lens on which the interviewee sees Morris asking the questions. The filmed result is the subject speaking directly to the camera, and in effect to the audience. Morris has said that he believes this results in true first-person cinema. Well, that’s nonsense. The interviewee is still presented as Morris wants him to be seen and through the footage Morris surrounds the interview clips with. The director remains free to take any attitude he wishes toward his subjects. Furthermore, if one of the aims of a good interviewer is to get the subject into a state where he or she is receptive to being questioned, you can’t expect that of a person sitting alone in a room talking to a camera. What seems so strange about Morris’ claim that his method results in more natural interviews is how much it fails to take into account. People engaged in the rhythms of an interview reveal themselves in ways that the audience can see (if Morris were dealing with fiction, the supposition of his method would be that a dialogue couldn’t possibly be as revealing as a monologue). And Morris doesn’t seem much interested in naturalism when he shoots McNamara from skewed camera angles, or layers Philip Glass’ noodling (which Morris praises in the production notes for its “existential dread”) on the soundtrack. (…) There’s nothing objectionable about documentarians who try to give their work aesthetic value. (…) The trouble comes when the aesthetics come first. Several times during “The Fog of War,” Morris includes montages of charts and documents relating to the period McNamara is discussing (the World War II firebombing of Tokyo under Gen. Curtis LeMay; various bombings in Vietnam). The montages increase in speed as they go on. The meaning of these sequences seems to be that the specifics of each mission are beside the point, that they are just facts and figures which can’t square with the attendant bloodshed. Perhaps this is not what Morris intends, but the questions Morris is debating in these sections about the morality and effectiveness of the bombings makes you want more information, not less — and this reduction of everything to a blur of documents comes across as a too easy point. And there’s something cheap about the repeated visual of dominoes falling across a map of Southeast Asia, one Morris returns to again and again and again, long after we’ve grasped its somewhat paltry import. If you can scrape off the movie’s aesthetic pretension and its portentous longueurs, there are hard questions being investigated here. (…) What may be so hard to accept here is that LeMay’s thinking is appropriate to war. Put in its crudest terms, it is the belief that the object of war is to kill more of the enemy than they kill of you. But as Paul Fussell observed in his essay “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” “the farther from the scene of the horror, the easier the talk,” by which he means that it’s easy to condemn anyone’s actions from a distance. There is, as Fussell recognized, a moral cushiness to the sensibility that deplores the Tokyo bombing (and also, of course, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs) that helped bring the war to a speedy conclusion, and would have accepted much higher casualties on both the American and Japanese sides in the planned land invasion of Japan. Unfortunately, that cushiness can be heard in Morris’ questioning during this section, a barely repressed incredulity at McNamara’s explication of LeMay’s insistence that his duty was to defeat the Japanese while saving as many American lives as he could. What comes through in that section is Morris’ distance from the experience he is describing, how easy it is for him to make a moral judgment in a situation with no clean alternatives. (…) Even the division of the movie into 11 “lessons” smacks of a design being imposed where no design really fits. It’s not that Errol Morris is intellectually incapable of delving into the unanswerable questions this movie poses. And no one could have held “The Fog of War” wanting if Morris had concluded that it’s impossible to get all the way to the bottom of Robert McNamara. But explicating an enigma is not the same thing as blurring it with artistic ambitions. The thickest fog in this documentary has been conjured not by McNamara, but by Errol Morris. Charles Taylor

On ne fait pas la paix avec des méthodes militaires. La paix se construit sur la confiance. Moi qui connaît bien les Palestiniens, je pense que ça ne devrait pas être difficile d’instaurer avec eux une véritable relation de confiance. Avi Dichter (patron du Shin Bet de 2000 à 2005)

Le futur est sombre. Noir est l’avenir. Le service militaire façonne la mentalité de toute la population. L’immense majorité de nos jeunes gens est incorporée dans l’armée. Ce qu’ils voient là-bas, c’est tout et son contraire. D’un côté, une armée qui se veut populaire comme l’étaient les unités du Nahal. Et de l’autre, une armée d’occupation cruelle, semblable à l’armée allemande pendant la Seconde guerre mondiale – semblable, pas identique. Et je ne parle pas de son comportement avec les juifs qui était tout à fait hors norme, avec ses spécificités. Je parle de sa façon de traiter les Polonais, les Belges, les Hollandais, les Tchèques. Avraham Shalom (91e minute)

Du jamais vu. Un peu comme si en France les anciens responsables de la Direction centrale des renseignements généraux (DCRI) dévoilaient les coulisses des affaires de sécurité intérieure auxquelles ils ont été confrontés depuis trois décennies. On en rêve. (…) Dans combien d’autres pays un tel film aurait-il pu voir le jour? Télérama

Le réalisateur israélien ne cache pas s’être inspiré de The Fog of War (Brumes de guerre) remarquable documentaire de l’Américain Errol Morris, qui raconte l’histoire de l’Amérique vue par Robert S. McNamara, ancien secrétaire de la Défense américaine, un des personnages les plus controversés et les plus influents de la scène politique internationale de l’après-guerre. Au départ, la difficulté de The Gatekeepers consistait à faire parler des hommes plus habitués à faire parler les autres qu’à prendre eux-mêmes la parole. Après des semaines de siège, Dror Morey finit par obtenir un entretien avec Ami Ayalon, dirigeant du Shin Beth entre 1996 et 2000. Coïncidence ou non, l’homme était un admirateur de The Fog of war qui, selon lui, méritait d’être montré dans les académies militaires du monde entier. « Si votre objectif est de réaliser un film de ce type. J’en suis », lui déclare-t-il. Télérama

Les anciens responsables du FBI israélien sont-ils de vrais juifs utiles ou,  devant l’inrefusable bonheur de jouer les McNamara dans leur "Fog of war" à eux, se sont-ils fait avoir par nos embrumeurs de guerre professionnels?

Responsables (à la retraite) répondant à des questions que le spectateur ignore, lien entre ces monologues assuré par des morceaux d’archives (dont on ne sait si elles sont tirées d’images de l’armée ou de films de fiction ?) qui conduisent l’argumentation, aucune discussion entre les "confessés" ou d’éventuels contradicteurs des questions qui font débat, citations tronquées et utilisées à contresens, partis pris, anachronismes, techniques du montage et du dossier exclusivement à charge à la Michael Moore …

Au lendemain de la diffusion sur Arte (visionnable toute la semaine sur leur site) du fameux documenteur du Michael Moore (ou Mordillat) israélien Dror Moreh ("The Gatekeepers/Israel confidential) …

Et du procès en béatification du maitre imposteur français Stéphane Hessel …

Pendant que 60 ans après on attend toujours le Nuremberg du communisme et que coulent, avant celles des frères Castro, les larmes de crocodile pour l’autocrate d’opérette anitisémite de Caracas …

Comment ne pas se poser la question que comme souvent personne ne semble se poser …

Du choix de quelles paroles des "confessés" ont été retenues ou passées à l’as  ? (Ou de quelles questions des "confesseurs" n’ont pas été posées ?)

Sur les quelque "douze à quinze heures d’entretien" de chacun d’eux ?

Notamment, pour ne prendre qu’un exemple, sur la notoire duplicité d’Arafat et de ses hommes de main …

“The Gatekeepers”, un documentaire ravageur pour les dirigeants israéliens

FIPA | Présenté au Fipa, ce documentaire donne la parole à six anciens dirigeants des services de contre-espionnage israéliens. Explosif.

Olivier Milot

Télérama

23/01/2013

The Gatekeepers a-t-il eu une influence sur le résultat des élections législatives israéliennes qui ont vu ce mardi 22 janvier 2013, Benyamin Nétanyahou décrocher à l’arraché un troisième mandat à la tête d’Israël ? Le documentaire diffusé en pleine campagne électorale fait en tous cas salles combles et a perturbé le ronron d’une élection dont le héros n’aura pas été le Premier ministre sortant, mais Yair Lapid, chef du parti centriste, Yesh Atid (« Il y a un futur ») devenu moins d’un an après sa création, le deuxième parti du pays avec dix-neuf députés élus à la Knesset.

Pourquoi le contenu de The Gatekeepers présenté ce mercredi 23 janvier 2013 au Fipa à Biarritz et diffusé le 5 mars sur Arte est-il si explosif ? Tout simplement parce qu’il raconte une histoire inédite d’Israël et du conflit israélo-palestinien. Six anciens dirigeants du Shin Beth, l’agence de renseignements chargée de la défense d’Israël contre le terrorisme et l’espionnage, se mettent à table sans esquiver les questions qui fâchent, les échecs sur le terrain, les bavures et les doutes sur le bien-fondé de la politique menée depuis trente ans par leurs dirigeants politiques. Du jamais vu. Un peu comme si en France les anciens responsables de la Direction centrale des renseignements généraux (DCRI) dévoilaient les coulisses des affaires de sécurité intérieure auxquelles ils ont été confrontés depuis trois décennies. On en rêve.

Dror Morey lui l’a fait. Et bien fait. Le réalisateur israélien ne cache pas s’être inspiré de The Fog of War (Brumes de guerre) remarquable documentaire de l’Américain Errol Morris, qui raconte l’histoire de l’Amérique vue par Robert S. McNamara, ancien secrétaire de la Défense américaine, un des personnages les plus controversés et les plus influents de la scène politique internationale de l’après-guerre. Au départ, la difficulté de The Gatekeepers consistait à faire parler des hommes plus habitués à faire parler les autres qu’à prendre eux-mêmes la parole. Après des semaines de siège, Dror Morey finit par obtenir un entretien avec Ami Ayalon, dirigeant du Shin Beth entre 1996 et 2000. Coïncidence ou non, l’homme était un admirateur de The Fog of war qui, selon lui, méritait d’être montré dans les académies militaires du monde entier. « Si votre objectif est de réaliser un film de ce type. J’en suis », lui déclare-t-il. Le réalisateur israélien a trouvé sa porte d’entrée. Avec l’aide d’Avi Ayalon et beaucoup de patience, il obtient ensuite que six des sept derniers dirigeants du Shin Beth acceptent de lui parler. Il recueille auprès de chacun d’eux douze à quinze heures d’entretien. Une mine d’information incroyable dont Dror Morey va faire un film intelligemment construit et surtout un véritable pamphlet contre la politique israélienne à l’égard des palestiniens. Car si sur la forme, The Gatekeepers n’a rien d’un réquisitoire, sur le fond il l’est. Les responsables du Shin Beth n’ont aucune considération pour les dirigeants politiques de leur pays et jugent suicidaire et sans avenir la politique menée par leurs gouvernements depuis l’assassinat de Yitzhak Rabin.

Ce qui rend le film passionnant, c’est précisément la personnalité de ceux qui en arrivent à ces conclusions. Les anciens dirigeants du Shin Beth ne sont ni des enfants de choeur, ni des idéalistes. Au contraire. Ils ont le patriotisme dans leur ADN et la sécurité d’Israël comme obsession. En son nom, ils soutiennent sans ciller qu’en matière de lutte contre le terrorisme "la morale n’existe pas" et ont planifié méthodiquement les assassinats de nombreux dirigeants palestiniens. Leur analyse est froide, pragmatique, uniquement fondée sur leur connaissance du terrain depuis trente ans. Et ce qu’ils disent est terrible pour Israël et la politique de ses dirigeants. Extraits :

- « Les premiers ministres d’Israël se sont succédés sans jamais prendre en considération le peuple palestinien, ni en deça des frontières de 1967, ni au-delà. » Avraham Shalom (patron du Shin Bet de 1980 à 1986)

- « Nous rendons la vie de millions de gens insupportables. Leurs souffrances sont permanentes. Et nous laissons un soldat qui n’est à l’armée que depuis quelques mois décider de ce qui est admissible ou non. Dans le meilleur des cas, il a passé son bac l’année précédente. Il est là devant un père avec un bébé dans les bras et il doit décider s’il le fouille ou non, s’il le laisse passer ou non. Ça me rend malade. » Carmi Gillon (patron du Shin Bet de 1994 à 1996)

- « Le futur est sombre. Noir est l’avenir. (…) Nous sommes devenus cruels envers nous-mêmes mais surtout envers la population que nous contrôlons sous prétexte de lutter contre le terrorisme. » Avraham Shalom

- « On ne fait pas la paix avec des méthodes militaires. La paix se construit sur la confiance. Moi qui connaît bien les Palestiniens, je pense que ça ne devrait pas être difficile d’instaurer avec eux une véritable relation de confiance. » Avi Dichter (patron du Shin Bet de 2000 à 2005)

- « Je suis prêt à tous les interlocuteurs possibles. Il n’y a pas d’alternative au fait de se parler. Il faut parler avec tout le monde, ça inclut même Ahmadinejad, n’importe qui.» Avraham Shalom

- « La tragédie du débat public sur la sécurité est que nous ne comprenons pas que nous sommes dans une situation frustrante où nous gagnons chaque bataille, mais nous perdons la guerre. » Ami Ayalon (patron du Shin Bet de 1996 à 2000).

Les anciens dirigeants du Shin Beth seront-ils entendu? La réélection de Benyamin Nétanyahou à la tête d’Israël et la poussée – moindre qu’attendue mais réelle – de l’extrême droite nationaliste et religieuse, laisse peu d’espoir. A rebours de ce qu’analysent froidement ceux qui l’ont protégé pendant trente ans, Israël semble bien parti pour une nouvelle fuite en avant dans sa politique suicidaire à l’égard des Palestiniens (lire à ce sujet l’excellent numéro de Books du mois de janvier. Elle n’en reste pas moins une démocratie imparfaite mais authentique. Dans combien d’autres pays un tel film aurait-il pu voir le jour?

Voir aussi:

"The Gatekeepers": les guerriers de l’ombre d’Israël plaident pour la paix

Pierre Haski

Rue89

05/03/2013

C’est un passage exceptionnel de l’autre côté du miroir, dans la tête de six hommes qui ont eu à connaître, et à agir brutalement, au cœur du conflit israélo-palestinien. Ces anciens patrons du Shin Bet, le service de renseignement israélien chargé de la lutte antiterroriste, se livrent avec une déconcertante franchise dans un documentaire diffusé ce mardi soir sur Arte.

Le documentaire, signé Dror Moreh, sélectionné pour les Oscars, montre des hommes qui admettent avoir ordonné des assassinats ciblés, avoir opéré des rafles, et même avoir torturé pour obtenir des informations afin d’empêcher des attentats.

Mais, surtout, « The Gatekeepers », c’est l’histoire d’un pays qui, depuis sa victoire historique de la « Guerre des six jours » de juin 1967, n’en finit pas de chercher des réponses sécuritaires à des questions politiques.

C’est la principale leçon de ces entretiens fascinants avec ces hommes qui ont dirigé le Shin Bet entre 1980 et 2011. Maîtres d’une action de renseignement et d’action de plus en plus sophistiquée et de plus en plus efficace, ils expriment, chacun à leur manière, un pessimisme de la raison.

« On ne fait pas la paix avec des méthodes militaires »

L’un d’eux exprime tout simplement la leçon d’une vie dans la guerre de l’ombre :

« On ne fait pas la paix avec des méthodes militaires. La paix repose sur des relations de confiance. Avec les Palestiniens, ça ne devrait pas être si difficile à construire. »

Prononcé par toute autre personne qu’un ancien patron du Shin Bet, un tel propos pourrait être aisément balayé d’un revers de manche. On a affaire ici à des hommes qui ont été confrontés à la vie et à la mort tout au long de leur carrière.

Et, à contre courant de ce que pense la majorité des Israéliens, si l’on prend pour référence les dernières élections, ils estiment qu’il faut « parler avec tout le monde », y compris le Hamas ou le Jihad islamique, « et même [le président iranien] Ahmadinejad », dit l’un d’eux.

Pour en arriver là, ils sont passés par une lutte à mort avec leurs ennemis, d’abord le Fatah de Yasser Arafat jusqu’aux accords d’Oslo de 1993, puis les islamistes du Hamas ou du Jihad islamique jusqu’à aujourd’hui.

Ils ont constaté les limites des assassinats ciblés qu’ils ont eux-mêmes ordonnés – c’est immoral et en plus c’est « inefficace », dit Ami Ayalon, l’un des plus impressionnants ;

ils se sont confrontés aux questions éthiques de la guerre de l’ombre, de la torture, de l’arbitraire ;

ils ont constaté le vide de la pensée politique, la lâcheté des dirigeants qui refusent d’assumer leurs erreurs, et la transformation de la lutte antiterroriste comme une fin en soi.

Assassinats entre juifs

Parmi les aspects les plus inquiétants de ce documentaire, l’épisode de l’assassinat du premier ministre Yitzhak Rabin par un extrémiste juif en 1995, qui a pris le Shin Bet par surprise, et qui fait dire à l’un de ses anciens patrons qu’il y aura d’autres assassinats politiques entre juifs si, un jour, Israël choisit de se retirer des territoires occupés palestiniens.

Et cette stupéfiante conclusion d’un de ces ex-patrons de la lutte antiterroriste, à qui l’auteur lit une phrase prophétique du philosophe Yeshayahou Leibowitz, qui avait prédit dès 1967 qu’en choisissant l’occupation et la colonisation après sa victoire, Israël perdrait son âme et irait au désastre.

L’un des anciens chefs du Shin Bet réfléchit, et dit qu’il est d’accord « avec chaque mot » prononcé par ce philosophe, aujourd’hui disparu, longtemps considéré comme un affreux gauchiste. Il ajoute, avec le sourire :

« Quand tu quittes le Shin Bet, tu deviens un peu gauchiste… »

Comme l’armée allemande…

Mais sur un mode plus sombre, plus tragique au regard de l’histoire, l’un de ces anciens patrons de la lutte antiterroriste va jusqu’à comparer l’armée israélienne à… l’armée allemande, non pas dans son traitement des juifs, mais dans son rapport aux peuples occupés en Pologne, Tchécoslovaquie ou Belgique.

Ce message n’est pas audible aujourd’hui pour la plupart des Israéliens qui ont choisi les partis qui leur promettent la sécurité plutôt que la paix. Ce qui fait dire à l’un de ces hommes de l’ombre :

« Ça me rend malade, le futur est sombre, l’avenir noir. »

Le titre anglais "The Gatekeepers" a été bizarrement traduit en français : "Israël confidentiel", comme un vulgaire thriller, alors que l’idée est plutôt celle des "Gardiens du temple", qui sonnent l’alarme mais que personne n’écoute.

Voir également:

"The Gatekeepers" : le film qui dérange Netanyahou

Danièle Kriegel

Le Point

05/03/2013 à 08:55

Le documentaire diffusé mardi soir sur Arte regroupe les confessions de six anciens chefs du Shin Beth sur les dessous du conflit israélo-palestinien.

De notre correspondante à Jérusalem, Danièle Kriegel

La droite israélienne n’a pas aimé le film. Face à la caméra : Avraham Shalom, Yaacov Peri, Avraham Dichter, Youval Diskin, Ami Ayalon, Carmi Gillon, six anciens "patrons" du Shin Beth, la sécurité intérieure israélienne, racontent pendant une heure et demie dans The Gatekeepers ("Les gardiens"), leur lutte contre le terrorisme palestinien mais aussi contre l’extrême droite religieuse juive. Une histoire secrète de trente ans qui débute avec l’occupation de la Cisjordanie et de Gaza, à la suite de la guerre des Six-Jours de 1967, et court jusqu’à fin 2011.

Entre répression au quotidien d’une population de plus en plus hostile, deux intifadas, la multiplication des attentats anti-israéliens avec en représailles les liquidations ciblées, exécutions sommaires, bavures, détentions administratives sans acte d’accusation ni procès, interrogatoires implacables et mise en place d’informateurs palestiniens. En parallèle, ils doivent également neutraliser un mouvement terroriste juif qui ira jusqu’à tenter de faire sauter le dôme du Rocher, sur le Haram El Sharif (l’esplanade des Mosquées en pleine vieille ville de Jérusalem, le mont du Temple pour les Israéliens juifs). Une lutte de l’extrême droite juive qui s’affichera au grand jour lors de l’assassinat d’Yitzhak Rabin, en novembre 1995, par Yigal Amir.

Mais le plus étonnant de la part de ces six "gardiens", au-delà de l’évocation sans fard de leurs échecs et de leurs succès, c’est le jugement qu’ils portent sur la politique des différents gouvernements qu’ils ont servis. "Uniquement de la tactique, jamais de stratégie", déclare Yaacov Peri, chef du Shin Beth entre 1988 et 1994. Pour Youval Diskin comme pour le plus ancien d’entre eux, Avraham Shalom, des batailles ont été gagnées, mais la guerre a été perdue. Autrement dit, Israël n’a pas su créer une situation politique meilleure. En conclusion, tous font le même constat : celui d’une désespérance politique qui ne pourra se résoudre qu’en parlant avec tout le monde : le Fatah, le Hamas, le Hezbollah et… Ahmadinejad. "Même s’ils répondent mal, il faut continuer à parler, il n’y a pas d’autres choix."

Feu aux poudres

Projeté l’été dernier au festival international du film de Jérusalem, ce documentaire réalisé par Dror Moreh est d’abord passé quasiment inaperçu. Arrive la fin de l’année et la décision de la cinémathèque de Jérusalem de le programmer. Très vite les séances ont lieu pratiquement à guichet fermé. On refuse du monde. Un succès dû au bouche-à-oreille et à quelques bonnes critiques. Mais il faudra attendre sa nomination aux Oscars pour que Israël confidential (The Gatekeepers pour la version anglaise) fasse vraiment du bruit. En moins d’un mois, plus de 50 000 Israéliens vont se précipiter dans les sept salles qui désormais assurent sa diffusion.

Les télés et les radios, nomination aux Oscars oblige, finissent par en parler et surtout font réagir les politiques. À droite, c’est glacial et unanime : un film "orienté", "tendancieux". À la présidence du Conseil, Benyamin Netanyahou laisse son porte-parole déclarer : "Le Premier ministre n’a pas vu le film et il n’a pas l’intention de le voir." Au lendemain de la cérémonie des Oscars, la droite fait des gorges chaudes du fait que Dror Moreh, le réalisateur du film, est reparti les mains vides. "Nous ne verserons pas une larme", dit-on en coeur… Quelques jours plus tard, Limor Livnat, la ministre de la Culture, met le feu aux poudres. Après avoir dénoncé "ces films qui salissent l’image d’Israël", elle appelle les réalisateurs à s’autocensurer. Les professionnels du cinéma lui répondent par une lettre ouverte dans laquelle ils rappellent que "le rôle du ministre de la Culture est de promouvoir l’art, pas de censurer" ! Si elle conserve son portefeuille, Limor Livnat a annoncé son intention de changer la composition de la commission d’attribution des subventions aux projets cinématographiques.

Voir encore:

Le documentaire qui trouble Israël

Baudouin Loos

13 février 2013

Avec The Gatekeepers (les Gardiens), Dror Moreh secoue Israël. Ses témoins: les six anciens chefs de la sécurité israélienne intérieure. Qui parlent face caméra et contre l’occupation. « Car ils sont inquiets pour l’avenir d’Israël », dit le réalisateur.

Un documentaire peut-il changer la face du monde? Certes non. Mais il peut susciter une prise de conscience salutaire. Dror Moreh, le réalisateur israélien qui a filmé The Gatekeepers (1) a sans aucun doute fait oeuvre utile, en jetant ce pavé dans la mare, ou plutôt en apportant cette pierre dans l’édifice encore à bâtir qui s’appellerait la paix au Proche-Orient. Parce que ses « acteurs », les témoins qu’ils a interrogés avec minutie pendant trois ans, ne sont pas n’importe qui. Ce ne sont pas ceux qui argumentent en général pour la paix israélo-palestinienne. Ce ne sont pas « des juifs qui cultivent la haine de soi », ou quelques gauchistes mal dégrossis. Non. Ce sont les six ex-chefs du Shin Beth encore en vie. Le Shin Beth, aussi appelé la Shabak, ce sont les services de sécurité intérieure. Des durs.

Le documentaire choc qui, signe des temps, a vaincu sans problème la censure militaire israélienne, connaît un beau succès en Israël. Une quinzaine de cinémas le diffusent et font salles combles…

Nous voilà donc en présence de ceux qui ont, des années durant, dirigé les services qui espionnaient la société palestinienne, réprimaient, arrêtaient, torturaient, tuaient des Palestiniens. Accessoirement aussi, ils s’occupaient des extrémistes israéliens juifs. Six anciens responsables qui ont voué leur vie à la défense de la sécurité d’Israël. Et qui disent, chacun à sa façon, comment, comme le proclame l’un d’eux en conclusion du film, « nous avons gagné toutes les batailles mais nous perdons la guerre ».

La plongée dans les « batailles » du Shin Beth ne laisse pas indemne. C’est la lutte « contre le terrorisme ». A savoir le monde des exécutions (plus ou moins bien) ciblées, du recrutement intensif de collaborateurs, de la torture. Les chefs à la retraite en parlent. Tous avec réalisme. Certains aussi avec cynisme. Comme celui qui sourit au souvenir de l’assassinat par téléphone piégé de « l’ingénieur » du Hamas Yehya Ayache, en janvier 1996, « un beau travail, très propre, élégant ». Les représailles du Hamas, sans doute moins « élégantes », allaient faire des dizaines de morts dans des bus israéliens et ramener la droite extrémiste israélienne au pouvoir…

« L’avenir est noir, dit l’un des anciens responsables. Nous sommes devenus une force brutale d’occupation. Comparable à l’armée allemande durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, du moins pour ce qu’elle fit aux populations polonaise, belge, hollandaise ou tchèque. » Un autre lâche: « Nous rendons la vie de millions de gens insupportable, nous les maintenons dans une souffrance humaine prolongée et ça me tue ».

Les six hommes n’affichent pas tous contrition ou résipiscence. Et puis, leurs états d’âme pourraient être considérés comme tardifs, ainsi que l’estime Gideon Levy, un chroniqueur du quotidien Haaretz qui n’a pas l’habitude de dissimuler ses sentiments: « Ils roulent des yeux, écrivait-il le 30 décembre dernier, et rejettent la responsabilité sur les dirigeants politiques comme s’ils n’auraient pas pu les influencer, comme s’ils n’auraient pas pu moins torturer, moins tuer ».

Binyamin Netanyahou a fait savoir par un communiqué qu’il n’avait pas vu le film et qu’il n’avait pas l’intention de le voir. On peut comprendre le Premier ministre israélien. Que des experts israéliens bien plus qualifiés que lui en matière de sécurité, de terrorisme, viennent proclamer face caméra, après mûres réflexions, que « l’occupation est mauvaise pour Israël » ne peut résonner agréablement à ses oreilles.

(1) La RTBF figure parmi les coproducteurs de ce documentaire. La Une le diffusera le 27 février à 22 heures, sous le titre Israel Confidential. Trois jours plus tôt, le réalisateur de The Gatekeepers saura s’il a reçu à Hollywood l’oscar du meilleur documentaire, catégorie dans laquelle il est nommé.

Voir par ailleurs:

“The Fog of War”

Errol Morris tries to pin down Vietnam War chess-master Robert McNamara, and the results are fascinating — also troubling, deeply confusing and way too artistically precious.

Charles Taylor

Salon

Dec 19, 2003

Among the insults directed at Robert S. McNamara during his years as secretary of defense for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson was that he was less a man than an IBM machine with legs. To the people who came to call the Vietnam conflict “McNamara’s war,” the man was the epitome of the soulless technocrat. Having come to the Department of Defense straight from the presidency of Ford Motor Company, McNamara was seen as treating war like a corporate enterprise, coldly detached from the human cost of his decisions.

That’s why it’s ironic that, of all the documentary filmmakers he should agree to sit down and be interviewed by, McNamara should give his consent to Errol Morris, whose work has always been so distanced from the people he puts on screen.

“The Fog of War,” which is subtitled “Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara,” isn’t a hatchet job. Morris isn’t out to “get” McNamara. He doesn’t trap McNamara in the frame and turn him into a caricature, as he did with the interviewees in pictures like “Gates of Heaven” and “The Thin Blue Line.” It might have been pointless to try, since, unlike most of the people who appear in Morris’ films, McNamara is used to appearing in the public eye and knows how to handle himself.

The problem with “The Fog of War” isn’t one of balance. Barring the convictions people already hold about the former secretary of defense, it would be very hard to come away from the movie feeling it either fully condemns or fully exculpates McNamara. The man himself is both distant and frequently emotional (his voice breaks with tears several times in the course of the film), willing to examine his actions — not just in Vietnam but during World War II and the Cuban missile crisis — and stubbornly unwilling to issue a mea culpa (that itself seems both arrogant and humble). The McNamara we see in “The Fog of War” is as much of a pickle as he’s always been, seeming both searching and blind, hounded and complacent. He isn’t haughty and dismissive in the way that still makes Henry Kissinger so hateful. McNamara’s actions may fill us with repugnance, but you’d have to blindly hate the man not to acknowledge his intelligence or his willingness to talk, often bluntly, about his time in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

If Morris had simply concluded that he was dealing with an enigma, this investigation into McNamara’s psyche might have been intellectually satisfying. But, as in his other films, Morris feels much more concerned with aesthetics than with moral or historical questions.

The interviews with McNamara were filmed with the gizmo Morris calls the “Interrotron.” Morris places his subject in one room in front of a camera and conducts the questioning from another room. There is a small monitor above the camera lens on which the interviewee sees Morris asking the questions. The filmed result is the subject speaking directly to the camera, and in effect to the audience. Morris has said that he believes this results in true first-person cinema. Well, that’s nonsense. The interviewee is still presented as Morris wants him to be seen and through the footage Morris surrounds the interview clips with. The director remains free to take any attitude he wishes toward his subjects. Furthermore, if one of the aims of a good interviewer is to get the subject into a state where he or she is receptive to being questioned, you can’t expect that of a person sitting alone in a room talking to a camera.

What seems so strange about Morris’ claim that his method results in more natural interviews is how much it fails to take into account. People engaged in the rhythms of an interview reveal themselves in ways that the audience can see (if Morris were dealing with fiction, the supposition of his method would be that a dialogue couldn’t possibly be as revealing as a monologue). And Morris doesn’t seem much interested in naturalism when he shoots McNamara from skewed camera angles, or layers Philip Glass’ noodling (which Morris praises in the production notes for its “existential dread”) on the soundtrack.

The strangest thing about Morris’ method is that it undervalues his considerable abilities as an interviewer. Frequently in the course of “The Fog of War,” we hear Morris’ disembodied voice interrogating McNamara, and he’s an alert, astute interviewer. That was obvious from a recorded conversation toward the end of Morris’s “The Thin Blue Line,” where Morris is heard talking with the convict David Harris. Morris brings Harris very close to confessing to the murder that the film’s subject, Randall Adams, was charged with. (The critic Ray Sawhill said that he listened to this exchange and thought, “My God, Morris is thinking on his feet while talking to a psychopath.”)

There’s nothing objectionable about documentarians who try to give their work aesthetic value. The film “Lodz Ghetto,” while being a devastating account of life in the Polish ghetto, had a beautiful poetic structure. The trouble comes when the aesthetics come first. Several times during “The Fog of War,” Morris includes montages of charts and documents relating to the period McNamara is discussing (the World War II firebombing of Tokyo under Gen. Curtis LeMay; various bombings in Vietnam). The montages increase in speed as they go on. The meaning of these sequences seems to be that the specifics of each mission are beside the point, that they are just facts and figures which can’t square with the attendant bloodshed.

Perhaps this is not what Morris intends, but the questions Morris is debating in these sections about the morality and effectiveness of the bombings makes you want more information, not less — and this reduction of everything to a blur of documents comes across as a too easy point. And there’s something cheap about the repeated visual of dominoes falling across a map of Southeast Asia, one Morris returns to again and again and again, long after we’ve grasped its somewhat paltry import.

If you can scrape off the movie’s aesthetic pretension and its portentous longueurs, there are hard questions being investigated here. Morris has included some extraordinary recordings made in the Kennedy White House during the debates over the Cuban missile crisis. They will not do much to strengthen the argument of those who claim that it was Kennedy’s steadfastness that averted Armageddon. Hard on the heels of each other, the White House received two contradictory telexes from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The first promised to withdraw missiles from Cuba in exchange for the Americans’ promise not to invade the island. The second, bearing Khrushchev’s name but apparently written by Kremlin hard-liners, threatened to retaliate for any nuclear strike on the USSR. We hear Kennedy meeting with his staff and saying that he doesn’t believe Khrushchev will back down.

Tommy Thompson, a specialist on the USSR who was advising the president, states his disagreement and argues that the U.S. should simply ignore the second, more aggressive telex and respond to the conciliatory first one. Kennedy has been so widely praised for the courage he showed during the crisis (among other places, in the film “Thirteen Days”) that it may be tough for some to acknowledge the voice here of the cold warrior willing to risk nuclear war, even when faced with a solution that would allow both countries to save face. This may not be a popular view, but it isn’t pro-communist to conclude that, from what we hear in the movie, Khrushchev had a much better grasp of what was really at stake.

Inevitably, most of the interest in “The Fog of War” will focus on McNamara and Vietnam. But it’s the section on the fire-bombing of Tokyo during World War II that is the most provocative and provides an insight into the mindset of McNamara. He is at his most straightforward, his most unflinchingly honest, in this section, and any decent person will be repelled by what he has to say. I don’t mean to criticize him. Virtually all the great memoirs and great literature to emerge from the two world wars — I’m thinking of work by Robert Graves, E.B. Sledge, Paul Fussell, William Manchester and James Jones, and the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Edmund Blunden — would affirm that view of war.

This section is complicated by the presence of Gen. Curtis LeMay. The “bomb ‘em all” reputation LeMay garnered during Vietnam made him seem to be a liberal’s nightmare version of a military man. The images we see of him here — stout, with a stogie stuck in his unforgiving face — are exactly what an antiwar caricaturist might come up with. LeMay conducted (and McNamara helped to plan) the March 1945 bombing of Tokyo that killed 100,000 civilians and burned 50 square miles of the city, whose buildings were largely made of wood. McNamara says that LeMay’s rationale is not one sensitive people could abide. And he quotes LeMay as telling him that if the Allies had lost, both he and McNamara would have been prosecuted as war criminals.

What may be so hard to accept here is that LeMay’s thinking is appropriate to war. Put in its crudest terms, it is the belief that the object of war is to kill more of the enemy than they kill of you. But as Paul Fussell observed in his essay “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” “the farther from the scene of the horror, the easier the talk,” by which he means that it’s easy to condemn anyone’s actions from a distance. There is, as Fussell recognized, a moral cushiness to the sensibility that deplores the Tokyo bombing (and also, of course, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs) that helped bring the war to a speedy conclusion, and would have accepted much higher casualties on both the American and Japanese sides in the planned land invasion of Japan.

Unfortunately, that cushiness can be heard in Morris’ questioning during this section, a barely repressed incredulity at McNamara’s explication of LeMay’s insistence that his duty was to defeat the Japanese while saving as many American lives as he could. What comes through in that section is Morris’ distance from the experience he is describing, how easy it is for him to make a moral judgment in a situation with no clean alternatives.

Morris doesn’t fall into that during the Vietnam sections, and it’s fair to say that what we’ve learned about McNamara by then — his acceptance of duty to his superiors, his understanding that grasping the essential ugliness of war can exist side by side with waging it — leads into the hubris of Vietnam. Morris adopts something close to the standard distaste for LBJ, presenting him as a gung-ho warrior, and McNamara and others in his Cabinet as working to serve his wishes. What he doesn’t consider, as Robert Dallek details in his two-volume biography of Johnson, is how much Johnson, the graduate of a Texas teachers’ college, felt himself the intellectual inferior of all the Ivy League men who worked for him.

It’s here, though, that the paradox of McNamara really opens up. His private pessimism about winning the war contrasts sharply with the public optimism we see in newsreel clips from the time. Watching these, it’s hard not to feel as appalled as McNamara’s critics have always been about the discrepancy between his knowledge and his public statements. Morris makes it difficult, though, to dismiss McNamara’s contention that his job was strictly to do the bidding of the president. McNamara also feels it would have been disloyal to criticize the war after he had left the Pentagon, and you understand why he would not want to betray the people he worked with. On the other hand, it’s reasonable to ask whether McNamara’s moral qualms about such a betrayal might not have been outweighed by his historical responsibility to speak out on the deepening futility of the war.

McNamara doesn’t provide an easy answer. You could see, as many have, the grudging mea culpas he has offered as too little, too late. But the reluctant quality of those pronouncements may be a reflection of just that: McNamara’s realization that an apology is a meager thing in the face of war. Similarly, his refusal to give his personal feelings about the war suggests, as his critics have said, a man divorced from the human consequences of his actions but also a recognition that he must be judged on his actions rather than his private feelings.

This is the frustration of Robert McNamara, his simultaneous ability to seem obsequious and weirdly honorable, honest and evasive. But any serious plumbing of this enigma gets lost in Morris’ quest for aesthetics. The clips of McNamara’s battered old bullfrog countenance come to seem like just another of Morris’s visual motifs. Even the division of the movie into 11 “lessons” smacks of a design being imposed where no design really fits.

It’s not that Errol Morris is intellectually incapable of delving into the unanswerable questions this movie poses. And no one could have held “The Fog of War” wanting if Morris had concluded that it’s impossible to get all the way to the bottom of Robert McNamara. But explicating an enigma is not the same thing as blurring it with artistic ambitions. The thickest fog in this documentary has been conjured not by McNamara, but by Errol Morris.

Charles Taylor is a columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger.

Voir encore:

The fog around Robert McNamara

Director Errol Morris discusses how his Oscar-winning "The Fog of War" resonates with George W. Bush’s foreign policy in Iraq, and the complicated morality of his film’s star.

David Talbot

Salon

Feb 28, 2004

Toward the end of “The Fog of War,” Errol Morris’ deeply important and haunting documentary about the hard-won lessons of history, the subject of the film, former Defense Secretary Robert Strange McNamara — shrunken and liver-spotted, but older and wiser now — quotes from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

In “The Fog of War,” Morris, who throughout his career has raised documentary filmmaking to the level of art, succeeds in showing us well-worn pages from our past — the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War — in such a way that we know them for the first time. Though McNamara has not fully come to terms with his past as the numbers-driven architect of the Vietnam War, his impassioned grappling with that war and the rest of his defense record make for a uniquely fascinating history lesson. Morris began his interviews with McNamara before 9/11 and the war in Iraq. But the film, with its insights into how even the most rational officials can blunder and deceive themselves and the public into epic tragedies, has struck a chord that Morris could not have predicted.

Salon spoke to Morris (before “The Fog of War” won the Oscar on Sunday for best documentary) by phone in Cambridge, Mass., where he works and lives with his wife, art historian Julia Sheehan, and their son Hamilton.

You are responsible, in a way, for rehabilitating Robert McNamara. And yet he still remains a troubling figure for many people, who criticize him for not speaking out during the Vietnam War about his growing doubts about the war — even after he left office in 1968. You must have a pretty good sense of the man by now. What prevented him from speaking out?

It’s a question that I certainly would like to answer, but I’m not sure I can answer. If it was a mystery when I started making this movie, it remains a mystery having finished the movie. McNamara was up in my office yesterday for a number of hours, and the issue comes up again and again and again and again: Why didn’t you speak out back then against the war in Vietnam? You talk to different people, they have different complaints about McNamara, different reasons why they hate him.

I know when I spoke to [Vietnam War correspondent] Frances Fitzgerald while I was making this movie, she said it was the fact that she would get off these transports from Vietnam at Andrews Air Force Base, where there would be crowds of reporters, and McNamara would say over and over again, “Things are improving. We’re winning the war” — when he knew otherwise. Basically, he lied to the American people, and possibly to himself. For other writers, like my friend Ron Rosenbaum, it’s the fact that he didn’t speak out after he left office in 1968. The fact that he continued to serve Johnson despite his doubts about the war, that’s maybe OK, but it’s not beyond the pale. What for him is beyond the pale is that he left in early ’68, and we all know that the war went on and on and on and on — ’69, ’70, ’71, ’72, ’73. And he still did not speak out. Fifty-eight thousand American dead, millions of Vietnamese, and there he was, safely ensconced as president of the World Bank. For him, that is inexcusable.

What do you feel?

You know, it depends on which day you ask me. Someone asked me this earlier today — that I should talk more about my father. My father died when I was 2 years old. I have no memories of my father. McNamara is perhaps the ultimate father figure. He was the father figure in some way for a generation. Maybe that’s making too much of it. But for me, having this relationship with him — and it is a relationship, it would be incorrect to claim otherwise — produces such a range of emotion for me. It’s not as if, say, close to 40 years later, I’ve come to love the Vietnam War, a war which I demonstrated against in the late ’60s and early ’70s. I found the war appalling then, I find the war appalling now, I’ve had no reason to change that view. That has been a constant.

It’s not only people on the left who are deeply disturbed by McNamara, of course. He’s also vilified by the right, who believe that he forced the military to fight with one hand tied behind its back, out of fear of widening the war.

Absolutely. As I point out often, McNamara got the hat trick. He’s hated by the left, the right and the center. Congratulations!

“The Fog of War” focuses of course on McNamara’s career, but I think it’s touched a public chord because the lessons of Vietnam resonate in Bush’s America. Was that your intention?

I started my interviews with McNamara well before 9/11, but as we worked on the film, I would show various sections of the movie, and eventually rough cuts of the movie, to different people, and they would constantly point out, “This is incredibly relevant … The movie should be out today.”

I don’t believe that history exactly repeats itself. That’s not the argument. History’s like the weather — it never exactly repeats itself. And there’s a danger in making inappropriate and false analogies, but it’s really hard to look at this story without seeing parallels, common themes. I think about why I was attracted to doing this movie with McNamara in the first place. One of the reasons most certainly is that his stories, whether he knows it clearly or not, his stories are about error, confusion, mistakes, self-deception, wishful thinking, false ideology. It’s a cornucopia of bad stuff, of human failings. And what’s so interesting is that in some form or another, we see them in play today.

You see in the film the story behind the imagined attack by the North Vietnamese on two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 4, 1964. Never happened. We imagined it. We imagined something that wasn’t there. Sound familiar?

Another riveting section of your film deals with the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, when McNamara says we were a hair’s breadth away from nuclear holocaust. It’s startling for people today to realize how close we were, and how hard-pressed Kennedy and his inner circle, including McNamara, were by the military hard-liners to go to war.

There’s an amazing moment if you listen to the recordings when the Joint Chiefs confront Kennedy. And it’s really, really, really frightening.

What do they say?

They’re basically saying that Kennedy should invade and bomb Cuba. And he should do it sooner rather than later. All he’s doing through delay is giving the Soviets more time to get ready to launch an attack on the United States. That delay is unconscionable, and that anything other than a military response is unconscionable. There’s a moment — you listen to the tapes, you can imagine what that scene must’ve been like — when Curtis LeMay [the famously zealous Air Force chief] says to Kennedy, “This is worse than Munich.”

And of course, he knew what a slap in the face that was to Kennedy, whose father, Joe, was considered a Nazi appeaser before World War II.

Yes, indeed. That is part of that story. Thank you very much.

How does Kennedy respond?

Kennedy does not respond. There’s silence. Kennedy says very little to the generals.

One of the things that really fascinates me about that moment, where LeMay says this is worse than Munich, is that it goes right back to a question you asked me at the beginning of our conversation about historical analogies. Iraq, Vietnam, Munich, the Cuban missile crisis, the danger of this sort of thing. But let’s look at the reality here.

First of all, the Kennedy administration had been given faulty information by the CIA. They had been told there were no Soviet warheads on Cuba. OK, so what should the president conclude? Perhaps the Joint Chiefs are absolutely right. Act sooner rather than later. Take out the missiles, take out the missile launchers and the missile sites before the warheads arrive. Although in fact several of those Joint Chiefs wanted to go a little further than Cuba, they wanted to go take out the Soviet Union and China as well. They had big appetites. But we now know that if LeMay and the other Joint Chiefs had had their way, and there was bombing and an invasion, the local Soviet commanders who had autonomy would have used those missiles with warheads against the United States. Can I say this with certainty? No. But was there a good likelihood if we invaded and bombed that they would reply? Yep. So that in this instance, “appeasement” averted a catastrophe. The analogy to Munich isn’t an analogy at all. People often make these analogies. What is Munich? It’s a way of calling a leader like Kennedy a candy-ass. And because of your weakness, because of your policies, everyone will have to suffer. It will lead to an even worse catastrophe than you can imagine. In this instance — wrong! The diplomatic solution proved to be the correct one.

So during the Cuban missile crisis, “The Fog of War” makes clear that the Kennedys and McNamara acted heroically, and by defying the generals, saved the world.

Yes. You know, I worry for many reasons about being seen as a McNamara apologist. But based on the research that I’ve done, I do not see McNamara in the same way I saw him years ago. I see him quite differently. I no longer see him as the chief architect of the war in Vietnam. I no longer see it the way that ["The Best and the Brightest" author] David Halberstam sees the Vietnam War, for instance, that it was the product of a bellicose McNamara and a vacillating Johnson. I believe it was the other way around. And I believe that McNamara, throughout the Cuban missile crisis, was a restraining force on the military. And helped keep us out of war.

Now I also believe that McNamara willingly implemented Johnson’s Vietnam policies. Why? Why is the question. If he was so opposed in Oct. 2, 1963, while Kennedy was still president, not just to the escalation of the war, but to our continued presence in Vietnam past 1965, how is it that he becomes the enabler in the Johnson administration? How the hell does this come to be? I have my answers. Are they conclusive answers? They aren’t. But it does go back to these questions of McNamara’s personal code of honor — if you’re rule-bound, when does loyalty to the public, when does loyalty to the republic, when does loyalty to the truth trump responsibility and loyalty to the president. As one Harvard historian, Peter Hall, very kindly said about my movie, it is one of the very few works of history — and he did consider it a work of history — that shows clearly the complexity of the decisions that people had to make.

Speaking of McNamara’s role as a restraining force on the military, it’s ironic — today, in the Bush administration, the situation is reversed. It’s the military commanders who are the voice of reason, and the civilians like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and the others who are the crazies.

They’re like cheerleaders. They’re out there with short skirts and pompoms and letter sweaters, urging the country into war. The one military leader in a civilian post in the Bush administration [Colin Powell] has been marginalized because of his reluctance to go to war. It’s ironic. It’s even funny in a grim sort of way. And it’s goddamn frightening.

But perhaps not as frightening as the Cuban missile crisis, when the entire world was on the brink.

Yes. And you don’t know whether it was a ploy, of course, a way to wring concessions from the Soviets. But in the middle of that crisis, Bobby Kennedy told the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, that Moscow had to understand that if there is not some kind of resolution quickly to this, there is a risk of a coup in the U.S. The military will topple JFK. I like to say that we have come to realize that “Dr. Strangelove” is not a drama, it’s a documentary.

McNamara speaks most clearly about himself when he’s speaking about others. There’s a moment in my movie when Johnson gives McNamara the Medal of Freedom at his farewell ceremony and he’s unable to speak. And then in the movie he says what he would’ve said to Johnson if he had been able to speak. He would have said that people should understand that he had reasons for what he did. That there were people who wished for a war with the Soviet Union and Red China, and he was determined to prevent it. And if you like McNamara, if you’re sympathetic to him, it’s a key moment. If you hate him, if you dislike him, it is seen as one more pathetic excuse among many. But there’s a reason why General LeMay is in this movie so prominently, because he represents a dark part of American history that was there, it was real. This was not a figment of McNamara’s imagination. He knew all too well what he was dealing with.

Voir enfin:

An Interview with Dror Moreh

The director talks about his film, ‘Sharon," which will be screened tonight in San Jose

Danny Wool

San Jose.com

Nov 10, 2009

Sharon plays Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 7:30pm at Camera 12 in San Jose as part of the 18th Annual Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival.

Anyone who ever encountered Ariel Sharon is left with an image that betrays conventional wisdom. To many in the Arab world, he was the "Butcher of Beirut," big-headed, belligerent, and brutal. It was this very image that served as the basis of Time Magazine’s controversial assertion that he was directly responsible for the Sabra and Shatilla massacre—an assertion ruled false by an American court—or why another court in Belgium was prepared to try him as a war criminal. But even in the Israeli media he was often portrayed as an opportunistic politician, whose ill-considered jaunt on the contested Temple Mount with an escort of over 1,000 Israeli police launched the Second Intifada.

Which is why it is all the more startling that anyone who ever met Sharon has a very different image of him. I met him at least twice, and I most recall his smile and his stomach, so very different from the iconographic photos of a bandaged Israeli commander, standing with his troops at the Suez Canal. Yet even now when I remember Sharon, I immediately think of the Hartzufim, a popular Israeli political comedy, based on Britain’s Spitting Image. Who can forget that corpulent puppet—a beardless Santa in a business suit—with his trademark call of "Ho hooooo!" (that’s two ho’s, as opposed to Santa’s three)?

Sharon was all of these, but he was also none of these, because each of these images portrays a single aspect of a complex man, larger than life, whose story, for better or for worse, has so many of the features of a classic Greek tragedy. This is the man that Israeli director Dror Moreh captures in his documentary film Sharon, which will be screening at 7:30 pm, November 10, at Camera 12 in San Jose, as part of the Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival.

Moreh, who also coproduced the film, had unusual access to Sharon and the people who surrounded him in the final, most critical stage of his career. He was cinematographer for the election campaign that brought Sharon’s Likud Party to power in 2001. While doing this, he followed Sharon and his entourage through all the major campaign events, but he also filmed Sharon in his most intimate, on his beloved farm in southern Israel.

What’s interesting is that while he was doing this, Moreh was not an ardent fan of "Arik," as Sharon was commonly called by the press and the Israeli public. In fact, Moreh identified—and continues to identify—with the left wing of the Israeli political spectrum, the very people who were terrified of a possible Sharon victory.

"Sharon is one of the most fascinating historical figures in Israel," he told me. "After his victory in the ’73 war, people cheered him as ‘Arik King of Israel,’ but nine years later, after Sabra and Shatilla, he was vilified by all but the far right. For years he was a hero of the settler movement in the West Bank and Gaza, but rejected by much of the Israeli mainstream." I thought back to where I first encountered Sharon—in the dark alleyways of the casbah in occupied Hebron, during the heyday of the settler movement.

"Once Sharon became prime minister," Moreh continues, "he underwent an insane transformation." Change and transformation were two words that came up again and again in my chat with Moreh. "He was ready to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, even if it meant painful concessions, even if it meant giving up the land he’d fought for and tearing down the very settlements that he was so instrumental in building."

"People usually remember how Sharon evacuated all the Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip [in September 2005]," Moreh continued, "but by that point just about everyone realized that Israel had to get out of Gaza. What they forget is that Sharon also dismantled four Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank, and that if the Palestinians responded positively to this, he was ready to take it a step further and perhaps even to dismantle more settlements. He believed that he was the only person who could determine the permanent boundaries of the State of Israel—without the Occupied Territories. He was willing to take responsibility for this, and for every other decision he made as prime minister. Once he assumed that ultimate position of power, he refused to play all the little games that characterize most politicians. ‘The buck stops here,’ he used to say, quoting the famous sign on Truman’s desk."

I asked Moreh why Sharon is still vilified today. He didn’t think he is. "The fact is that the response to Sharon is far from homogeneous. The Talmud says: ‘Where the penitent stand, even the righteous cannot stand.’ World leaders came to realize that Sharon was a ‘penitent.’ By undergoing such an abrupt transformation, Sharon had redeemed himself, even to his harshest critics, even to the Arab world. He may not have been forgiven for all that he did in the past, but they were ready to work with him. They knew that he, more than anyone, had the courage that it takes to move things forward. That is why, when he spoke at the UN, all the European leaders rushed to shake his hand." I wasn’t convinced, so he started to outline the history of Sharon’s evolution, as it appears in his film.

"[Prime Minister Ehud] Barak had destroyed the peace process. After the failed Camp David talks with Yasser Arafat, he returned to Israel and announced to the country that ‘We have no partner for peace,’ and that a violent clash with the Palestinians was inevitable. Then Sharon was elected. Two weeks later he told President Bush that he would be willing to take the bold steps necessary to create a new reality in the Middle East. He was prepared to take down settlements as far back as then."

"There are two issues here," Moreh continued. "The first is that in this fast-paced, media-driven world, people want to hear soundbytes, not some lengthy explanation. They want to be able to catalogue people and ideas instantly into black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. The problem is that conflicts, especially Middle Eastern conflicts, can’t be pigeonholed like that. The problem is that the news media doesn’t take the time to delve into those complexities." I immediately thought of Jon Stewart a few weeks ago, riffing on CNN’s famous line, "We’ll have to leave it there." As John Stewart asked: "You have 24 hours in a day! How much more time do you need?"

"Then there is the fact that Sharon spent most of his adult life as a soldier, and war inevitably leads to mistakes. The Israeli army has made many mistakes, under all its generals, including Sharon. It’s the nature of the beast, just like the U.S. made and continued to make many mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan with the support of its European allies. The challenge is to rise above those mistakes, to correct them, and to put a stop to them. That is what Sharon began to do by recognizing the rights of the Palestinian people."

Many people in Israel claim that only the right wing parties can make peace. People were terrified when Begin came to power, but he ended up returning the Sinai to Egypt and negotiating Israel’s first peace treaty with an Arab State. I asked Moreh if he felt that was true of Sharon as well.

"There’s no doubt that Sharon was willing and able to bear the burden of doing what was necessary in order to arrive at some modus vivendi with the Palestinians. But it wasn’t a question of him being aligned with the right or the left. Actually, the spirit of the Mapai Party [the precursor to Israel's Labor Party] flowed in his veins, and the positions he took were actually quite far to the left of Labor Party leadership in the 1970s. What set Sharon apart was that he was a genuine leader with real moral authority to make decisions that were needed. Left or right, there are no real leaders left. He was the last of the giants."

Describing those decisions, he added: "People tend to think that Sharon was headstrong, and that he made his decisions on the spur of the moment. People called him a "bulldozer." In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. He took a long time before deciding anything, consulted with people, and considered what other people had done throughout history. But once he finally made up his mind, even if that meant he had changed his mind from one extreme to the other, he proceeded without hesitation—even if he had to rein in his own instincts. It took him a long time before he could even utter the term, ‘Palestinian state,’ but once he did, he said it with the confidence of a leader. He got up and he said to his colleagues and the public, ‘People, we are occupiers!’ And the people listened."

Why did they listen to him? Just a few years earlier, Yitzhak Rabin, another giant, also tried to make concessions, and he was mowed down by an assassin’s bullet at a peace demonstration, of all places.

"Sharon had a rare gift of charisma, and this was recognized even by his greatest rivals. One of them," said Moreh, "Asaf Shariv, the current consul in New York, had long been identified with the Israeli left. Nevertheless, he told me that he would dive on a grenade if it would save Sharon’s life. Sure he had his fatal flaws, like the hero of any Greek tragedy, and in some way perhaps these flaws did him in, but he was also marked by greatness. What stands out about Sharon is that he was a man of contradictions. He was, first and foremost, a fighter, a warrior, but he also loved poetry. He was truly larger than life: he was often described as grandiose. But he also had a rich sense of humor and a genuine feeling of warmth for everyone he met."

To illustrate that humor and warmth, Moreh told me a story about Sharon that never made it into the film. One day at a cabinet meeting, a woman came in to serve the ministers their tea, but one senior minister scolded her because the tea was lukewarm. Sharon noticed, even if no one else did. Twenty minutes later, he started telling a story about a battle he was in during the War of Independence. He had just been wounded in the stomach during the fierce fighting at Latrun, so he and an adjutant tried to crawl to safety. They made their way in the hot afternoon across the bodies of their Jewish comrades and the Arab Legionnaires they were fighting, but it had taken them hours. They were thirsty, and when they finally came across a pool of water, they dived in and began to refresh themselves. Only after they had started to drink, did they notice the body of a dead Legionnaire sprawled in the water beside them. "So what did I do?" Sharon asked the ministers. "I kept on drinking, and let me tell you. Only after you’ve had water seasoned with the blood of a dead enemy can you truly appreciate the tea we were just served."

Although he has disappeared from the headlines, Arik Sharon is not dead. In January 2006, he suffered a stroke, probably brought on by his obesity and high cholesterol, and has been lingering in a coma ever since. In some ways this reminded me of Ronald Reagan, a hero to so many Americans, who spent the last years of his life withering away from Alzheimer’s disease. I asked Moreh about this: "In his book, Tear Down This Myth, Will Bunch argues that much of the myth of Ronald Reagan is just that—a myth—that the Ronald Reagan that so many Americans look back on so fondly is far removed from the Ronald Reagan of history. He is remembered as a hawk, but he also withdrew American forces from Lebanon after the barracks bombing of 1983 and kidnappings of 1984, because he finally concluded, as his economic adviser Bruce Bartlett later wrote, ‘that you cannot undo a mistake by continuing to make it. All you can do is stop making the mistake, cut your losses and move on.’ Is it possible," I went on, "that a similar mythology could emerge around Sharon—one that he cannot challenge?"

Moreh did not think so. He stressed again that what was most important about Sharon’s life was not all the events, great and small, that happened before he became prime minister but the change that took place in those very last years, when he finally realized that force is not the answer to everything—that it has its limitations. It was this final realization in the twilight of his life that consummated everything that came before it and transformed Sharon’s story from the epic tale of an unrepentant warrior into the saga of a long and arduous quest in search of coexistence. While Reagan’s story follows a straight path, Sharon’s is marked by a remarkable turning point just as he reached the pinnacle of power. In some way, Sharon was like Moses, climbing to the heights to see the Promised Land lain—only to find out that it wasn’t the same Promised Land that he’d spent his whole life struggling to achieve. And unlike Moses, Arik had no Joshua to lead the people there after he was gone. "Even the left still misses his leadership," said Moreh.

But is there really no one? I know Dror Moreh through Philippa Kowarsky, a close friend and colleague, who is also co-producer, together with Arte, of Dror’s upcoming film, The Gatekeepers. In that film, Dror interviews all the surviving heads of Israel’s Secret Service and finds that, despite minor differences between them, they all agree that the time has come to make painful concessions in order to reach peace with the Palestinians. Ironically, these are the very same people behind such controversial policies as targeted assassinations and the interrogation through torture of thousands of Palestinians.

Yaakov Peri was one of these men. In a 2003 interview he said: "It is interesting that everyone—heads of the Secret Service, former chiefs-of-staff, veteran security officers—became flag-bearers of reconciliation with the Palestinians. Why is that? Because we were there; we know both sides: the material, the people, the terrain." It was at about this time that Prime Minister Sharon began to plan Israel’s disengagement from Gaza. Could men like Peri—real generals, not armchair generals, who understand the brutality and futility of war—be the key to peace?

I thought back on my first encounter with Sharon in the winding casbah of Hebron two and a half decades ago. I remember the settlers hoisting him in the air—no easy task—and singing, "Arik King of Israel will live for ever and ever!" Many of those very same settlers would later lead the protests against him during the withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria. It’s hard to imagine, but maybe one of them will lead us to peace. If there is one thing we can learn from Sharon, it’s that salvation sometimes comes from the least expected quarters.

Today Arik King of Israel is lying unconscious in a hospital bed. Gaza has since erupted in flames, and peace seems as remote as ever. But as Dror Moreh’s film Sharon shows, it just takes one bold man with a vision to change that, in Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Afganistan, America, or anywhere.

Opération Géronimo: Oui, Ben Laden était bien un lâche (Navy Seal who killed Bin Laden reveals scariest prospect of his trade: civilian life)

Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended. George Bush

Connaissez votre ennemi, enseigne Clausewitz, et vous pourrez le combattre. Malgré nos premiers succès en Afghanistan, il n’est pas sûr que nous comprenions très bien le nôtre. En effet, cette incompréhension américaine est devenue flagrante dans les jours qui ont suivi le 11 septembre, lorsque nos dirigeants et experts n’ont cessé de marteler que les terroristes étaient des " lâches ", des " lâches anonymes ". Le président Bush a été le premier à employer cette expression, largement répétée par la suite. L’idée sous-jacente est que les terroristes ont visé lâchement des femmes et des enfants. Ce qu’ils n’ont pas fait, bien entendu. Qui se trouvait à bord des avions détournés ou dans le World Trade Center ne leur importait guère. De fait, la plupart des victimes furent des hommes. Les cibles des terroristes représentaient les symboles du capitalisme et du gouvernement américains. L’une d’elles était le Pentagone, c’est-à-dire, sans doute possible, un objectif militaire. En règle générale, nous traitons de lâches ceux qui s’en prennent aux femmes et aux enfants parce qu’ils cherchent à parvenir à leurs fins à moindres risques. En l’espèce, cependant, les terroristes sont allés au-devant d’une mort certaine avec une apparente égalité d’âme. A l’exemple des kamikazes, ils étaient des fanatiques, certainement pas des lâches. Dinesh D’Souza

C’est nous qui sommes lâches en envoyant des missiles à 2000 miles de distance. Ça, c’est de la lâcheté. Rester dans un avion qui va se crasher dans un building, on peut dire ce qu’on veut, ce n’est pas de la lâcheté.  Bill Maher

Que nous ayons rêvé de cet événement, que tout le monde sans exception en ait rêvé, parce que nul ne peut ne pas rêver de la destruction de n’importe quelle puissance devenue à ce point hégémonique, cela est inacceptable pour la conscience morale occidentale, mais c’est pourtant un fait, et qui se mesure justement à la violence pathétique de tous les discours qui veulent l’effacer. A la limite, c’est eux qui l’ont fait, mais c’est nous qui l’avons voulu. (…) Il faut se rendre à l’évidence qu’est né un terrorisme nouveau, une forme d’action nouvelle qui joue le jeu et s’approprie les règles du jeu pour mieux le perturber. Non seulement ces gens-là ne luttent pas à armes égales, puisqu’ils mettent en jeu leur propre mort, à laquelle il n’y a pas de réponse possible ("ce sont des lâches"), mais ils se sont approprié toutes les armes de la puissance dominante. L’argent et la spéculation boursière, les technologies informatiques et aéronautiques, la dimension spectaculaire et les réseaux médiatiques : ils ont tout assimilé de la modernité et de la mondialité, sans changer de cap, qui est de la détruire. Comble de ruse, ils ont même utilisé la banalité de la vie quotidienne américaine comme masque et double jeu. Dormant dans leurs banlieues, lisant et étudiant en famille, avant de se réveiller d’un jour à l’autre comme des bombes à retardement. La maîtrise sans faille de cette clandestinité est presque aussi terroriste que l’acte spectaculaire du 11 septembre. Car elle jette la suspicion sur n’importe quel individu : n’importe quel être inoffensif n’est-il pas un terroriste en puissance ? Si ceux-là ont pu passer inaperçus, alors chacun de nous est un criminel inaperçu (chaque avion devient lui aussi suspect), et au fond c’est peut-être vrai. Cela correspond peut-être bien à une forme inconsciente de criminalité potentielle, masquée, et soigneusement refoulée, mais toujours susceptible, sinon de resurgir, du moins de vibrer secrètement au spectacle du Mal. Ainsi l’événement se ramifie jusque dans le détail – source d’un terrorisme mental plus subtil encore. La différence radicale, c’est que les terroristes, tout en disposant des armes qui sont celles du système, disposent en plus d’une arme fatale : leur propre mort. S’ils se contentaient de combattre le système avec ses propres armes, ils seraient immédiatement éliminés. S’ils ne lui opposaient que leur propre mort, ils disparaîtraient tout aussi vite dans un sacrifice inutile – ce que le terrorisme a presque toujours fait jusqu’ici (ainsi les attentats-suicides palestiniens) et pour quoi il était voué à l’échec. Tout change dès lors qu’ils conjuguent tous les moyens modernes disponibles avec cette arme hautement symbolique. Celle-ci multiplie à l’infini le potentiel destructeur. C’est cette multiplication des facteurs (qui nous semblent à nous inconciliables) qui leur donne une telle supériorité. La stratégie du zéro mort, par contre, celle de la guerre "propre", technologique, passe précisément à côté de cette transfiguration de la puissance "réelle" par la puissance symbolique. La réussite prodigieuse d’un tel attentat fait problème, et pour y comprendre quelque chose il faut s’arracher à notre optique occidentale pour voir ce qui se passe dans leur organisation et dans la tête des terroristes. Une telle efficacité supposerait chez nous un maximum de calcul, de rationalité, que nous avons du mal à imaginer chez les autres. Et même dans ce cas, il y aurait toujours eu, comme dans n’importe quelle organisation rationnelle ou service secret, des fuites et des bavures. Donc le secret d’une telle réussite est ailleurs. La différence est qu’il ne s’agit pas, chez eux, d’un contrat de travail, mais d’un pacte et d’une obligation sacrificielle. Une telle obligation est à l’abri de toute défection et de toute corruption. Le miracle est de s’être adapté au réseau mondial, au protocole technique, sans rien perdre de cette complicité à la vie et à la mort. A l’inverse du contrat, le pacte ne lie pas des individus – même leur "suicide" n’est pas de l’héroïsme individuel, c’est un acte sacrificiel collectif scellé par une exigence idéale. Et c’est la conjugaison de deux dispositifs, celui d’une structure opérationnelle et d’un pacte symbolique, qui a rendu possible un acte d’une telle démesure. Tout est bon pour déconsidérer leurs actes. Ainsi les traiter de "suicidaires" et de "martyrs". Pour ajouter aussitôt que le martyre ne prouve rien, qu’il n’a rien à voir avec la vérité, qu’il est même (en citant Nietzsche) l’ennemi numéro un de la vérité. Certes, leur mort ne prouve rien, mais il n’y a rien à prouver dans un système où la vérité elle-même est insaisissable – ou bien est-ce nous qui prétendons la détenir ? D’autre part, cet argument hautement moral se renverse. Si le martyre volontaire des kamikazes ne prouve rien, alors le martyre involontaire des victimes de l’attentat ne prouve rien non plus, et il y a quelque chose d’inconvenant et d’obscène à en faire un argument moral (cela ne préjuge en rien leur souffrance et leur mort). (…) C’est donc exactement le contraire de la lâcheté dont on les accuse, et c’est exactement le contraire de ce que font par exemple les Américains dans la guerre du Golfe (et qu’ils sont en train de reprendre en Afghanistan) : cible invisible, liquidation opérationnelle. Jean Baudrillard

Les attaques n’avaient rien de lâche; elles témoignaient plutôt d’un courage incroyable, quoique pervers.There was nothing cowardly about the attacks, which were deeds of incredible — albeit perverted — bravery. Daniel Pipes

"We were less than five steps from getting to the top when I heard suppressed shots. BOP. BOP," writes Owen. "I couldn’t tell from my position if the rounds hit the target or not. The man disappeared into the dark room." Team members took their time entering the room, where they saw the women wailing over Bin Laden, who wore a white sleeveless T-shirt, loose tan pants and a tan tunic, according to the book. Despite numerous reports that bin Laden had a weapon and resisted when Navy SEALs entered the room, he was unarmed, writes Owen. He had been fatally wounded before they had entered the room. "Blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull” and he was still twitching and convulsing, Owen writes. While bin Laden was in his death throes, Owen writes that he and another SEAL "trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless." Then the SEALS repeatedly examined his face to make sure he was truly bin Laden. They interrogated a young girl and one of the women who had been wailing over Bin Laden’s body, who verified that it was the terror leader. (…) Searching bin Laden’s neatly organized room, Owen found two guns -– an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol -– with empty chambers. “He hadn’t even prepared a defense. He had no intention of fighting. He asked his followers for decades to wear suicide vests or fly planes into buildings, but didn’t even pick up his weapon. In all of my deployments, we routinely saw this phenomenon. The higher up the food chain the targeted individual was, the bigger a pussy he was.” The Huffington Post

I’m not religious, but I always felt I was put on the earth to do something specific. After that mission, I knew what it was. The Shooter

There was bin Laden standing there. He had his hands on a woman’s shoulders, pushing her ahead, not exactly toward me but by me, in the direction of the hallway commotion. It was his youngest wife, Amal. The SEALs had nightscopes, but it was coal-black for bin Laden and the other residents. He can hear but he can’t see. He looked confused. And way taller than I was expecting. He had a cap on and didn’t appear to be hit. I can’t tell you 100 percent, but he was standing and moving. He was holding her in front of him. Maybe as a shield, I don’t know. (…) I’m just looking at him from right here [he moves his hand out from his face about ten inches]. He’s got a gun on a shelf right there, the short AK he’s famous for. And he’s moving forward. I don’t know if she’s got a vest and she’s being pushed to martyr them both. He’s got a gun within reach. He’s a threat. I need to get a head shot so he won’t have a chance to clack himself off [blow himself up]. In that second, I shot him, two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! The second time as he’s going down. He crumpled onto the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again, Bap! same place. That time I used my EOTech red-dot holo sight. He was dead. Not moving. His tongue was out. I watched him take his last breaths, just a reflex breath. The Shooter

"Jesus, these women are jumping in front of these guys. They’re trying to martyr themselves. Another sign that this is a serious place. Even if bin Laden isn’t here, someone important is. Navy Seal member

(Opening a closet door once, team members found a boy inside) The natural response was ‘C’mon kid.’ Then, boom, he blows himself up. Suicide bombers are fast. Other rooms and other places, "we’d go in and a guy would be sleeping. Up against the wall were his cologne, deodorant, soap, suicide vest, AK-47, and grenades. The Shooter

"When we first started the war in Iraq, we were using Metallica music to soften people up before we interrogated them. Metallica got wind of this and they said, ‘Hey, please don’t use our music because we don’t want to promote violence.’ I thought, Dude, you have an album called Kill ‘Em All. But we stopped using their music, and then a band called Demon Hunter got in touch and said, ‘We’re all about promoting what you do.’ They sent us CDs and patches. I wore my Demon Hunter patch on every mission. I wore it when I blasted bin Laden. The Shooter

The bad part was security. He was their prophet, basically. Now we killed him and I have to worry about this forever. Al Qaeda, especially these days, is 99 percent talk. But that 1 percent of the time they do shit, it’s bad. They’re capable of horrific things. We listened to the Al Qaeda phone calls where one guy is saying, "We gotta find out who ratted on bin Laden." The other guy says, "I heard he did it to himself. He was locked up in that house with three wives." Funny terrorists.

"Our marriage was definitely a casualty of his career," says the Shooter’s wife. They are officially split but still live together. Separate bedrooms, low overhead. "Somewhere along the line we lost track of each other." She holds his priorities partially responsible: SEAL first, father second, husband third. This part of the Shooter’s story is, as his wife puts it, "unique to us but unfortunately not unique in the community." SEAL operators are gone up to three hundred days a year. And when they’re not in theater, they’re training or soaking in the company of their buds in the absorbing clubhouse atmosphere of ST6 headquarters. "We can’t talk with anyone else about what we do," the Shooter says, "or about anything else other than maybe skydiving and broken spleens. When it comes to socializing, it’s really tight." His wife understands that "so much of their survival is dependent on the fact that their friends and their jobs are so intertwined." And that "we lived our lives under a veil of secrecy." SEAL Team 6 spouses are nicknamed the Pink Squadron, because the women also rely on their hermetic connections to other wives. When you have no idea where your husband is or what he’s doing, other than that it’s mortally dangerous, and you can’t discuss it — not even with your own mother — your world can feel desperately small.

"My wife doesn’t want me to stay in one more minute than I have to. (But he’s several years away from official retirement) "I agree that civilian life is scary. And I’ve got a family to take care of. Most of us have nothing to offer the public. We can track down and kill the enemy really well, but that’s it. If I get killed on this next deployment, I know my family will be taken care of." (The Navy does offer decent life-insurance policies at low rates.) "College will be paid for, they’ll be fine. "But if I come back alive and retire, I won’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out for the rest of my life. Sad to say, it’s better if I get killed." Navy Seal member

"It’s criminal to me that these guys walk out the door naked," says retired Marine major general Mike Myatt. "They’re the greatest of their generation; they know how to get things done. If I were a Fortune 500 company, I’d try to get my hands on any one of them." The general is standing in the mezzanine of the Marines Memorial building he runs in San Francisco. He’s had to expand the memorial around the corner due to so many deaths over the past eleven years of war. He is furious about the high unemployment rate among returning infantrymen, as well as homelessness, PTSD, and the other plagues of new veterans. General Myatt believes "the U.S. military is the best in the world at transitioning from civilian to military life and the worst in the world at transitioning back." And that, he acknowledges, doesn’t even begin to consider the separate and distinct travesty visited on the Shooter and his comrades. The Special Operations men are special beyond their operations. "These guys are self-actualizers," says a retired rear admiral and former SEAL I spoke with. "Top of the pyramid. If they wanted to build companies, they could. They can do anything they put their minds to. That’s how smart they are." But what’s available to these superskilled retiring public servants? "Pretty much nothing," says the admiral. "It’s ‘Thank you for your service, good luck.’" (…) One third-generation military man who has worked both inside and outside government, and who has fought for vets for decades, is sympathetic to the problem. But he notes that the Pentagon is dealing with two hundred thousand new veterans a year, compared with perhaps a few dozen SEALs. "Can and should the DOD spend the extra effort it would take to help the superelite guys get with exactly the kind of employers they should have? Investment bankers, say, value that competition, drive, and discipline, not to mention people with security clearances. They [Tier One vets] should be plugged in at executive levels. Any employers who think about it would want to hire these people."

when a SEAL Team 6 movie character yells, "Breacher!" for someone to blow one of the doors of the Abbottabad compound, the Shooter says loudly, "Are you fucking kidding me? Shut up!" He explains afterward that no one would ever yell, "Breacher!" during an assault. Deadly silence is standard practice, a fist to the helmet sufficient signal for a SEAL with explosive packets to go to work. (…) But his criticisms at dinner afterward are minor. "The tattoo scene was horrible," he says about a moment in the film when the ST6 assault group is lounging in Afghanistan waiting to go. "Those guys had little skulls or something instead of having some real ink that goes up to here." He points to his shoulder blade. "It was fun to watch. There was just little stuff. The helos turned the wrong way [toward the target], and they talked way, way too much [during the assault itself]. If someone was waiting for you, they could track your movements that way." The tactics on the screen "sucked," he says, and "the mission in the damn movie took way too long" compared with the actual event. The stairs inside bin Laden’s building were configured inaccurately. A dog in the film was a German shepherd; the real one was a Belgian Malinois who’d previously been shot in the chest and survived. And there’s no talking on the choppers in real life. There was also no whispered calling out of bin Laden as the SEALs stared up the third-floor stairwell toward his bedroom. "When Osama went down, it was chaos, people screaming. No one called his name." "They Hollywooded it up some." The portrayal of the chief CIA human bloodhound, "Maya," based on a real woman whose iron-willed assurance about the compound and its residents moved a government to action, was "awesome" says the Shooter. "They made her a tough woman, which she is."

Most of our former or retired NSW members find a suitable second career without compromising the ideals of their active service – honor, courage and commitment. ‘Concerning recent writing and reporting on ‘The Shooter’ and his alleged situation, this former SEAL made a deliberate and informed decision to leave the Navy several years short of retirement status. Months ahead of his separation, he was counseled on status and benefits, and provided with options to continue his career until retirement eligible. Claims to the contrary in these matters are false. Rear Admiral Sean Pybus

Là, dans une chambre, il y avait Ben Laden, debout, tenant une femme par l’épaule et la poussant devant lui. Sa plus jeune femme, Amal. L’Express

Oui, Ben Laden était bien un lâche.

A l’heure où après l’hommage mérité du film de Kathyn Bigelow aux "petites gens qui font advenir les grands évènements" et qui ont permis il y a bientôt deux ans l’élimination d’un des plus grands criminels de l’histoire …

Chacun, entre livres et interviews, tente de se positionner pour l’inévitable exploitation du filon qui va suivre …

Retour, avec la toute récente interview par le magazine américan Esquire de l’homme qui a tué Ben Laden et derrière la polémique sur l’ingratitude supposée de l’Etat américain pour ses héros mais aussi la réelle inquiétude de ces derniers pour leur avenir et l’avenir de leur famile, sur un petit fait que nos belles âmes amnésiques se garderont probablement bien de rappeler …

A savoir, contre les inepties débitées jusqu’ici par nos D’Souza et nos  Baudrillard ou même nos Daniel Pipes, la confirmation de visu de la lâcheté de ces prétendus terroristes d’un nouveau genre …

Dont le principal titre de gloire, comme l’avait bien vu dès le début le tant honni George Bush, se résume pour les uns à l’attaque suicide totalement indiscriminée de civils désarmés et pour les autres, comme Ben Laden lui-même derrière sa plus jeune femme, à la dissimulation derrière des boucliers humains …

Comment l’Amérique abandonne celui qui l’a vengée de Ben Laden

Celui qui a lavé l’honneur des Américains est aujourd’hui pratiquement démuni, abandonné, victime de l’ingratitude de ceux qui ont commandité sa mission.

Marion Cocquet

Le Point

16/02/2013

Par sécurité, dans la longue interview qu’il a accordée au magazine Esquire, on l’appelle "the shooter", le tireur. D’ailleurs, dans l’équipe ST6 des Navy Seals, dont il faisait partie, sa fonction était "sniper", tireur d’élite. Des missions clandestines pour abattre un responsable ennemi, avec le commando qu’il avait intégré, il en a fait des dizaines, en ex-Yougoslavie, en Irak, en Afghanistan. Combien de morts à son actif ? Il dit qu’il n’a pas compté. Mais il prétend qu’avec son équipe, ils ne sont pas pour rien dans la capacité qu’ont eue les Américains de se désengager d’Irak plus rapidement. Parce que les chefs qui semaient la terreur à Bagdad ou ailleurs avaient été systématiquement éliminés. En somme, il est la version humaine des drones tueurs dont se sert Obama aujourd’hui pour se débarrasser des responsables d’al-Qaida au Pakistan ou au Yémen.

Il a intégré les Navy Seals à 19 ans. Parce qu’une fille l’avait plaquée, il s’est présenté à un sergent recruteur de l’US Navy. "Vous vous rendez compte, plaisante-t-il, c’est parce qu’on m’a brisé le coeur qu’al-Qaida a été décapité !" C’est le 1er avril 2011, alors qu’il s’entraînait à des exercices de plongée à Miami, qu’il a été convoqué avec ses compagnons au quartier général des Seals à Virginia Beach. Tout de suite, il a su que cette fois c’était du gros gibier, parce que, quelques jours plus tard, il s’est retrouvé dans un centre de la CIA à Harvey Point, en Caroline de Nord. Et surtout parce que c’est le général commandant des opérations spéciales qui s’est chargé du briefing habituel avant toute mission, dans une salle de conférences sévèrement gardée et sécurisée. Il a tout de suite annoncé la couleur : "Okay, nous n’avons jamais été aussi près d’OBL", les initiales d’Oussama Ben Laden. Suivirent des précisions sur le domaine d’Abbottabad, au Pakistan, dans lequel le terroriste avait été presque à coup sûr repéré, comment on observait l’endroit, analysait les allées et venues, la manière dont on avait reconstitué la configuration de la maison.

"Il n’y a aucun doute, c’est bien lui"

Le reste est routine : l’entraînement dans le Nevada sur une réplique de la maison d’Abbottabad. Les gestes cent fois répétés, les procédures précises pour chaque pièce de l’habitation, chaque porte à forcer ou à faire sauter, la localisation probable des habitants, leur nombre, combien de femmes, combien d’enfants. Puis c’est le départ pour la base de Jalalabad, en Afghanistan, dans un avion cargo C17 inconfortable. Là-bas, il rencontre Maya, l’analyste de la CIA qui traque Ben Laden depuis des mois et qui deviendra en 2013 l’héroïne du film Zero Dark Thirty. "À 100 %, lui dit-elle, il est au troisième étage. Il faut absolument que vous parveniez là-haut." Elle lui dit qu’elle est étonnée de le voir si calme. Le "shooter" lui répond qu’avec ses camarades ils ont fait cela tant de nuits : "L’hélico nous dépose près d’une maison, on liquide ceux qui s’y trouvent et puis on s’en va. C’est juste un vol un peu plus long que d’habitude."

Dans le récit qu’il fait à Esquire, c’est en effet une opération de routine, même si la cible est cette fois l’ennemi numéro un de l’Occident, le responsable de milliers de morts innocents. Après 90 minutes dans un hélicoptère, dont il redoute à tout moment qu’il ne soit repéré par les Pakistanais, c’est l’assaut de la villa d’Abbottabad. Le "shooter" n’est pas de la première équipe qui investit le bâtiment. Quand il y pénètre, il y a déjà des cadavres dans les escaliers, des femmes qui hurlent, des enfants qui pleurent. Il n’a qu’un obsession : le troisième étage. "Et là, dans une chambre, il y avait Ben Laden, debout, tenant une femme par l’épaule et la poussant devant lui. Sa plus jeune femme, Amal. Il est plus grand que je le pensais. Mais il n’y a aucun doute, c’est bien lui. Quand nous nous nous entraînions au tir, les cibles avaient son visage." Grâce à ses lunettes de vision nocturne, il a évidemment l’avantage sur Ben Laden, qui entend mais ne voit rien car c’est le noir complet dans sa chambre. C’est au moment où le terroriste fait un geste en direction de son AK47 posé sur une étagère que l’Américain tire. Deux balles dans la tête presque coup sur coup, puis une troisième par sécurité quand l’homme glisse à terre, à côté de son lit. "Je me souviens que je l’ai regardé tenter de respirer une dernière fois et je me suis dit, est-ce la meilleure chose ou la pire que j’aie faite de ma vie ?"

"Qui a tué Ben Laden ? Nous tous ici"

À son retour de mission aux États-Unis, le "shooter" sera comme ses compagnons félicité par le président, lors d’une cérémonie très privée à la base de Fort Campbell, dans le Kentucky. Mais quand un des conseillers d’Obama posera la question : "Qui a tué Ben Laden ?" il répondra : "Nous tous ici."

Mais on ne rentre pas indemne d’une telle affaire qui vient couronner des dizaines d’opérations commando du même genre. Le "shooter" ne veut plus entendre parler de ces actions pour tuer qu’autrefois il accomplissait sans états d’âme. En septembre 2012, il décide de démissionner des Navy Seals, après 16 ans de service actif. Il lui manque 36 mois pour atteindre la retraite. Et la loi américaine est implacable : il n’a droit à rien. Le vendredi où il démissionne, on l’avertit que le soir même sa couverture médicale et celle de sa famille cessent d’être valables et qu’il vient de toucher sa dernière solde. Aujourd’hui, d’après Esquire, il n’a pas retrouvé de job et se demande comment il va payer la pension de sa femme dont il est séparé et nourrir ses enfants.

"Aucun de ceux qui ont combattu pour leur pays dans des opérations lointaines ne doit avoir à se battre pour trouver un travail", avait déclaré Barack Obama lors d’une cérémonie en hommage aux anciens combattants. Celui qui a vengé l’Amérique du 11 Septembre en abattant son pire ennemi est pourtant aujourd’hui le symbole de l’extrême ingratitude que peuvent avoir parfois les États pour ceux qui ont risqué leur vie pour eux. D’autant que sa vie est constamment en danger, car, si l’Amérique l’a oublié, comme le dit, à la fin du film Zero Dark Thirty, un analyste de la CIA, "le shooter sera toujours pour les djihadistes du monde entier en tête de la liste des hommes à abattre".

Voir aussi:

The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden… Is Screwed

For the first time, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden tells his story — speaking not just about the raid and the three shots that changed history, but about the personal aftermath for himself and his family. And the startling failure of the United States government to help its most experienced and skilled warriors carry on with their lives.

Phil Bronstein

The Shooter

Esquire

March 2013

Phil Bronstein is the former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and currently serves as executive chairman of the Center for Investigative Reporting. This piece was reported in cooperation with CIR.

The man who shot and killed Osama bin Laden sat in a wicker chair in my backyard, wondering how he was going to feed his wife and kids or pay for their medical care.

It was a mild spring day, April 2012, and our small group, including a few of his friends and family, was shielded from the sun by the patchwork shadows of maple trees. But the Shooter was sweating as he talked about his uncertain future, his plans to leave the Navy and SEAL Team 6.

He stood up several times with an apologetic gripe about the heat, leaving a perspiration stain on the seat-back cushion. He paced. I didn’t know him well enough then to tell whether a glass of his favorite single malt, Lagavulin, was making him less or more edgy.

We would end up intimately familiar with each other’s lives. We’d have dinners, lots of Scotch. He’s played with my kids and my dogs and been a hilarious, engaging gentleman around my wife.

In my yard, the Shooter told his story about joining the Navy at nineteen, after a girl broke his heart. To escape, he almost by accident found himself in a Navy recruiter’s office. "He asked me what I was going to do with my life. I told him I wanted to be a sniper.

"He said, ‘Hey, we have snipers.’

"I said, ‘Seriously, dude. You do not have snipers in the Navy.’ But he brought me into his office and it was a pretty sweet deal. I signed up on a whim."

"That’s the reason Al Qaeda has been decimated," he joked, "because she broke my fucking heart."

I would come to know about the Shooter’s hundreds of combat missions, his twelve long-term SEAL-team deployments, his thirty-plus kills of enemy combatants, often eyeball to eyeball. And we would talk for hours about the mission to get bin Laden and about how, over the celebrated corpse in front of them on a tarp in a hangar in Jalalabad, he had given the magazine from his rifle with all but three lethally spent bullets left in it to the female CIA analyst whose dogged intel work and intuition led the fighters into that night.

When I was first around him, as he talked I would always try to imagine the Shooter geared up and a foot away from bin Laden, whose life ended in the next moment with three shots to the center of his forehead. But my mind insisted on rendering the picture like a bad Photoshop job — Mao’s head superimposed on the Yangtze, or tourists taking photos with cardboard presidents outside the White House.

Bin Laden was, after all, the man CIA director Leon Panetta called "the most infamous terrorist in our time," who devoured inordinate amounts of our collective cultural imagery for more than a decade. The number-one celebrity of evil. And the man in my backyard blew his lights out.

ST6 in particular is an enterprise requiring extraordinary teamwork, combined with more kinds of support in the field than any other unit in the history of the U.S. military.

Similarly, NASA marshaled thousands of people to put a man on the moon, and history records that Neil Armstrong first set his foot there, not the equally talented Buzz Aldrin.

Enough people connected to the SEALs and the bin Laden mission have confirmed for me that the Shooter was the "number two" behind the raid’s point man going up the stairs to bin Laden’s third-floor residence, and that he is the one who rolled through the bedroom door solo and confronted the surprisingly tall terrorist pushing his youngest wife, Amal, in front of him through the pitch-black room. The Shooter had to raise his gun higher than he expected.

The point man is the only one besides the Shooter who could verify the kill shots firsthand, and he did just that to another SEAL I spoke with. But even the point man was not in the room then, having tackled two women into the hallway, a crucial and heroic decision given that everyone living in the house was presumed to be wearing a suicide vest.

But a series of confidential conversations, detailed descriptions of mission debriefs, and other evidence make it clear: The Shooter’s is the most definitive account of those crucial few seconds, and his account, corroborated by multiple sources, establishes him as the last man to see Osama bin Laden alive. Not in dispute is the fact that others have claimed that they shot bin Laden when he was already dead, and a number of team members apparently did just that.

What is much harder to understand is that a man with hundreds of successful war missions, one of the most decorated combat veterans of our age, who capped his career by terminating bin Laden, has no landing pad in civilian life.

Back in April, he and some of his SEAL Team 6 colleagues had formed the skeleton of a company to help them transition out of the service. In my yard, he showed everyone his business-card mock-ups. There was only a subtle inside joke reference to their team in the company name.

Unlike former SEAL Team 6 member Matt Bissonnette (No Easy Day), they do not rush to write books or step forward publicly, because that violates the code of the "quiet professional." Someone suggested they might sell customized sunglasses and other accessories special operators often invent and use in the field. It strains credulity that for a commando team leader who never got a single one of his men hurt on a mission, sunglasses would be his best option. And it’s a simple truth that those who have been most exposed to harrowing danger for the longest time during our recent unending wars now find themselves adrift in civilian life, trying desperately to adjust, often scrambling just to make ends meet.

At the time, the Shooter’s uncle had reached out to an executive at Electronic Arts, hoping that the company might need help with video-game scenarios once the Shooter retired. But the uncle cannot mention his nephew’s distinguishing feature as the one who put down bin Laden.

Secrecy is a thick blanket over our Special Forces that inelegantly covers them, technically forever. The twenty-three SEALs who flew into Pakistan that night were directed by their command the day they got back stateside about acting and speaking as though it had never happened.

"Right now we are pretty stacked with consultants," the video-game man responded. "Thirty active and recently retired guys" for one game: Medal of Honor Warfighter. In fact, seven active-duty Team 6 SEALs would later be punished for advising EA while still in the Navy and supposedly revealing classified information. (One retired SEAL, a participant in the bin Laden raid, was also involved.)

With the focus and precision he’s learned, the Shooter waits and watches for the right way to exit, and adapt. Despite his foggy future, his past is deeply impressive. This is a man who is very pleased about his record of service to his country and has earned the respect of his peers.

"He’s taken monumental risks," says the Shooter’s dad, struggling to contain the frustration that roughs the edges of his deep pride in his son. "But he’s unable to reap any reward."

It’s not that there isn’t one. The U.S. government put a $25 million bounty on bin Laden that no one is likely to collect. Certainly not the SEALs who went on the mission nor the support and intelligence experts who helped make it all possible. Technology is the key to success in this case more than people, Washington officials have said.

The Shooter doesn’t care about that. "I’m not religious, but I always felt I was put on the earth to do something specific. After that mission, I knew what it was."

Others also knew, from the commander-in-chief on down. The bin Laden shooting was a staple of presidential-campaign brags. One big-budget movie, several books, and a whole drawerful of documentaries and TV films have fortified the brave images of the Shooter and his ST6 Red Squadron members.

There is commerce attached to the mission, and people are capitalizing. Just not the triggerman. While others collect, he is cautious and careful not to dishonor anyone. His manners come at his own expense.

"No one who fights for this country overseas should ever have to fight for a job," Barack Obama said last Veterans’ Day, "or a roof over their head, or the care that they have earned when they come home."

But the Shooter will discover soon enough that when he leaves after sixteen years in the Navy, his body filled with scar tissue, arthritis, tendonitis, eye damage, and blown disks, here is what he gets from his employer and a grateful nation:

Nothing. No pension, no healthcare for his wife and kids, no protection for himself or his family.

Since Abbottabad, he has trained his children to hide in their bathtub at the first sign of a problem as the safest, most fortified place in their house. His wife is familiar enough with the shotgun on their armoire to use it. She knows to sit on the bed, the weapon’s butt braced against the wall, and precisely what angle to shoot out through the bedroom door, if necessary. A knife is also on the dresser should she need a backup.

Then there is the "bolt" bag of clothes, food, and other provisions for the family meant to last them two weeks in hiding.

"Personally," his wife told me recently, "I feel more threatened by a potential retaliatory terror attack on our community than I did eight years ago," when her husband joined ST6.

When the White House identified SEAL Team 6 as those responsible, camera crews swarmed into their Virginia Beach neighborhood, taking shots of the SEALs’ homes.

After bin Laden’s face appeared on their TV in the days after the killing, the Shooter cautioned his older child not to mention the Al Qaeda leader’s name ever again "to anybody. It’s a bad name, a curse name." His kid started referring to him instead as "Poopyface." It’s a story he told affectionately on that April afternoon visit to my home.

He loves his kids and tears up only when he talks about saying goodbye to them before each and every deployment. "It’s so much easier when they’re asleep," he says, "and I can just kiss them, wondering if this is the last time." He’s thrilled to show video of his oldest in kick-boxing class. And he calls his wife "the perfect mother."

In fact, the couple is officially separated, a common occurrence in ST6. SEAL marriages can be perilous. Husbands and fathers have been mostly away from their families since 9/11. But the Shooter and his wife continue to share a house on very friendly, even loving terms, largely to save money.

"We’re actually looking into changing my name," the wife says. "Changing the kids’ names, taking my husband’s name off the house, paying off our cars. Essentially deleting him from our lives, but for safety reasons. We still love each other."

When the family asked about any kind of government protection should the Shooter’s name come out, they were advised that they could go into a witness-protection-like program.

Just as soon as the Department of Defense creates one.

"They [SEAL command] told me they could get me a job driving a beer truck in Milwaukee" under an assumed identity. Like Mafia snitches, they would not be able to contact their families or friends. "We’d lose everything."

"These guys have millions of dollars’ worth of knowledge and training in their heads," says one of the group at my house, a former SEAL and mentor to the Shooter and others looking to make the transition out of what’s officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. "All sorts of executive function skills. That shouldn’t go to waste."

The mentor himself took a familiar route — through Blackwater, then to the CIA, in both organizations as a paramilitary operator in Afghanistan.

Private security still seems like the smoothest job path, though many of these guys, including the Shooter, do not want to carry a gun ever again for professional use. The deaths of two contractors in Benghazi, both former SEALs the mentor knew, remind him that the battlefield risks do not go away.

By the time the Shooter visited me that first time in April, I had come to know more of the human face of what’s called Tier One Special Operations, in addition to the extraordinary skill and icy resolve. It is a privileged, consuming, and concerning look inside one of the most insular clubs on earth.

And I understood that he would face a world very different from the supportive one President Obama described at Arlington National Cemetery a few months before.

As I watched the Shooter navigate obstacles very different from the ones he faced so expertly in four war zones around the globe, I wondered: Is this how America treats its heroes? The ones President Obama called "the best of the best"? The ones Vice-President Biden called "the finest warriors in the history of the world"?

1 APRIL 2011: THE MISSION

The reason we knew this was a special mission, the Shooter said as our interviews about the bin Laden operation began, is because we’d just finished an Afghanistan deployment and were on a training trip, diving in Miami, when a few of us got recalled to the Command in Virginia Beach. Another ST6 team was on official standby — normally that’s the team that blows out for a contingency operation. But they were not chosen, to better cloak what was going to happen.

There was so much going on — the Libya thing, the Arab Spring. We knew something good was going to go down. We didn’t know how good.

The first day’s briefing, they actually kind of lied to us, being very vague. They mentioned underwater cables because of the earthquake in Japan or some craziness. They hinted at Libya. They said it was a compound somewhere in a bowl and we were going to have two aircraft get us there and we don’t know how many are inside but we have to get something out. You won’t have any air support.

I assumed it was WMD, a nuke, because why else are they sending us to Libya?

Every question the Red Squadron ST6 members asked was answered with, "Well, we can’t tell you that." Or: "We don’t know."

It was also weird that the entire Red Squadron was in town, but they kicked everyone out of the briefing except those guys who were going, twenty-three and four backups. We’d leave the room to get coffee and stuff, and the other guys were like, "Well, what are you guys doing?" We were telling them, "I have no idea."

The Shooter was a mission team leader. Almost everyone chosen had a one or two ranking in the squadron, the most experienced guys. The group was split into four tactical teams, with the Shooter as leader of the external-security group — the dog, Cairo, two snipers, and a CIA interpreter to keep whoever might show up in the area out of the internal action.

The group left Virginia on a Sunday morning, April 10, to drive to the CIA’s Harvey Point, North Carolina, center for another briefing and the start of training. The Master Chief was saying JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] would be there, the Secretary of Defense might be there, the Pak/Afghan CIA desk, too. That’s when the wheels started spinning for me: This is big.

I’ve had some close calls with death, bullets flying past my head. Even just driving, weird stuff. Every time, I would tell my mother, "There’s no way I’m going to die, because I’m here to do something." I’ve been saying that for twenty years. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something important.

By Monday the team was assembled in a big classroom inside a one-story building. They actually had security sitting outside. No one else was allowed in. A JSOC general, Pak/Afghan and other D.C. officials, and the ST6 commanding officer were there. The SEAL commander, cool as ever, said, "Okay, we’re as close as we’ve ever been to UBL." And that was it. He kind of looked at us and we looked at him and nodded. There was none of that cheering bullshit. We were thinking, Yeah, okay, good. It’s about time that we kill this motherfucker. It was simple.

This is what I came for. Jealousies aside, one of us is going to have the best chance of killing this guy.

During the daylong briefing, the SEALs heard how the government found the compound in Abbottabad, how they were watching it, analyzing it, why they believed bin Laden might be there. He, UBL, had become known as the Pacer, the tall guy in satellite imagery who neither left nor mixed with the others.

It was the CIA woman, now immortalized in books and movies, who gave the briefing. "Yeah," she told us. "We got him. This is him. This is my life’s work. I’m positive."

By then, government and military officials had been considering four options. They were either going to bomb the piss out of the compound with two-thousand-pound ordnance, they were going to send us in, do some kind of joint thing with the Pakis, or try what was called a "hammer throw," where a drone flies by and chucks one fucking bomb at the guy. But they didn’t want any collateral damage. And they wanted to make sure he was dead and not in a cave or a safe room.

After the group settled into "motel-like" rooms, with common areas that had TVs and a kitchen, the team started strategizing with a model of the compound on a large table. Then they drove to a full-scale mock-up for a walk-through. The next day the helos came and we started doing iteration training based on how we wanted to hit it.

Once I realized what was going on, I actually moved myself to one of the assault teams, even if I was no longer a team leader. We didn’t need that many guys on the exterior team, and I’ll go fast-rope on the roof with what I started calling the Martyrs Brigade, because as soon as we landed, I figured the house was going to blow up. But we were also going to be the guys in there first to kill him.

One sniper would also be on the roof to lean over and try to take a shot upside down. The rest of the team would rope again down to the third-floor windows and get your gun up fast because he’s probably standing there with his gun. If you fell, it would suck.

If the group made it inside, there were other issues. I’ve been in houses before with IEDs in them designed to blow everything up. They’d hang them in the middle of the room so it’s a bigger explosion.

I was usually the guy to joke around when we were planning these things — we all dick around a lot. But I was like, "Hey guys, we have to take this fucking serious. There’s a 90 percent chance this is a one-way mission. We’re gonna die, so let’s do this right."

The discussions went on, almost a luxury. We’re used to going on the fly, five, six nights a week on deployment. Here’s your target, we’re leaving in twenty minutes. Come up with a plan. This compound was pretty easy, though we had no clue about the inside layout.

The group reviewed contingencies: How do we handle cars? What if a helo went down? What do we do if the helo doors don’t open? Shit like that.

The first helicopter was going to land in front of the house. We were going to put our external security out and our bird was going to go back up and we’d fast-rope onto the roof. So we’d have one assault team from the other chopper coming up the stairs, and we’d be going down.

It was March 2012, a blossoming time of year in the capital of the free world. The intimate dinner party was already under way at a stylish split-level apartment one block from the Washington Hilton. The hostess was a military contractor, and there was a lobbyist there, along with another young woman, a Capitol Hill veteran.

The Shooter’s mentor was behind the kitchen counter, putting a final grill-sauce flair on some huge slabs of red meat when four men, all of them imposing and fit, came through the front door.

The Shooter is thick, like a power lifter, with an audacious set of tattoos. He can be curt and dismissive as his default, but also wickedly funny. It’s instantly easy to see why he’s considered both a rebellious, pushy pain in the ass by his command and even some of his colleagues, but also a natural leader. An outgoing, charismatic, and determined alpha male in the ultimate alpha crowd.

He and his three friends were all active ST6 members that night, though none of the others present had been on the bin Laden mission.

This was my first face-to-face meeting with the Shooter, following several phone conversations and much checking on my journalism background, especially in war zones. In a corner, pouring drinks, he and I established some rules. He would consider talking to me only after his last, upcoming four-month deployment to Afghanistan had ended and he had exited the Navy. And he would not go public; he would not be named. That would be counter to the team’s code, and it would also put a huge "kill me" target on his back.

During the dinner, he told mostly personal stories and took care not to talk in terms of operational security: the deal about the gun magazine and the CIA analyst, the experience of eyeballing bin Laden.

"Three of us were driving to our first briefing on the mission," he said. "We were thinking maybe it was Libya, but we knew there would be very high-level brass there. One of my guys says, ‘I bet it’s bin Laden.’" Another guy told the Shooter, "If it’s Osama bin Laden, dude, I will suck yo’ dick."

"So after I shoot UBL, I bring him over to see his body. ‘Okay,’ I told him, ‘now is as good a time as any.’"

The group talked about hairy moments during other missions, stories soldiers and foreign correspondents enjoy swapping. But from the start something was obvious, not just about the Shooter but about his fellow SEALs, too: These men who had heroically faced death and exercised extraordinary violence in almost continuous battle for years on end were fearful of life after war.

This is a problem that is becoming more critical as the "best of the best" start leaving the most extended wartime careers in the history of the United States. And it is a problem not just for these men and their families but for the American government, which has come to rely heavily on a steady stream of Tier One special operators (including the Army’s Delta Force and the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron) — men of rarefied toughness and training like these — to maintain a sense of international security in an asymmetrical battlefield. The American way of war has changed radically in the past decade, so that in the future, "boots on the ground" will more and more mean special operators. Which means that there will be increasing numbers of vets in the Shooter’s circumstance: abandoned, with limited choices.

That night, one of the Shooter’s comrades, lantern-jawed, articulate, with a serious academic pedigree, told me: "I’ve seen a lot of combat, been in some pretty grisly circumstances. But the thing that scares me the most after fifteen years in the SEALs?

"Civilian life."

2. "100 PERCENT, HE’S ON THE THIRD FLOOR."

The Shooter and the rest of the team made one last night run on the mock-up of the compound in North Carolina, then drove back to their homes and headquarters in Virginia for a brief break.

There were goodbyes to his wife and sleeping children. Normally she’d say, ‘I’m fine, just go.’ This time there was nothing fine about her. Like this would be the last time we’d see each other.

Saying goodbye is just horrible. I don’t even want to talk about it… this is the last time I’m going to see these children.

The Shooter had bought himself $350 Prada sunglasses over the weekend, and much less expensive gifts for his kids. Which makes me a horrible father. But really, he just figured he’d die with some style on.

And think of the ad campaign: "If you only have one day to live…"

When we got to Nevada a few days later, where the team trained on another full-scale compound model, but this one crudely fashioned from shipping containers, we turned the corner, saw the helos we’d actually use, and I started laughing. I told the guys, "The odds just changed. There’s a 90 percent chance we’ll survive." They asked why. I said, "I didn’t know they were sending us to war on a fucking Decepticon."

For the mission, they’d be slipping through the night in the latest model of stealth Black Hawk helicopters.

There were days more training, run after run, punctuated by briefings by military brass. They asked us if we were ready. We told them, "Yeah, absolutely. This is going to be easy."

This was ultimately an assault mission like hundreds he’d been on, different in only one respect.

A critical moment for the mission came when the tireless SEAL Red Team Squadron leader briefed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and Pentagon undersecretary Mike Vickers. He was going to sell it right then. Not just to his superiors but, through them, to the president.

We’re all in uniform to look professional, and our CO, working on no sleep for days, hit it out of the park. There’s no doubt in my mind we’re going to go because of his presentation.

The group discussed what would happen if they were surrounded by Pakistani troops. We would surrender. The original plan was to have Vice-President Biden fly to Islamabad and negotiate our release with Pakistan’s president.

This is hearsay, but I understand Obama said, Hell no. My guys are not surrendering. What do we need to rain hell on the Pakistani military? That was the one time in my life I was thinking, I am fucking voting for this guy. I had a picture of him lying in bed at night, thinking, You’re not fucking with my guys. Like, he’s thinking about us.

We got word that we’d be scrambling jets on the border to back us up.

An Ambien, a C-17 cargo-plane ride, a short stop in Germany, and they were in Afghanistan.

At Jalalabad, the Shooter saw the CIA analyst pacing. She asked me why I was so calm. I told her, We do this every night. We go to a house, we fuck with some people, and we leave. This is just a longer flight. She looked at me and said, "One hundred percent he’s on the third floor. So get to there if you can." She was probably 90 percent sure, and her emotion pushed that to 100.

Another SEAL squadron, which was already in Afghanistan and would have normally been the assaulters, were very welcoming to us. They would form the Quick Reaction Force flying in behind, on the 47′s. The Red Team visitors stayed in "transient" housing.

During the day, the group would work with our gear, work out. Nighttime was poker and refreshments, or what is called "fellowship," while they waited for a go from Obama himself. On the treadmill, the Shooter listened to "Red Nation" by the rapper Game. It’s about leaving blood on the ground. We were the Red Team and we were going to leave some blood.

Other guys ginned up some mixed-martial-arts practice or stretched over foam rollers to keep their joints in good shape.

We all wrote letters. I had my shitty little room and I’m sitting on my Pelican case with all my gear, a manila envelope on my bed, and I’m writing letters to my kids. They were to be delivered in case of my death, something for them to read when they’re thirty-five. I have no idea what I said except I’m explaining everything, that it was a noble mission and I hope we got him. I’m saying I wish I could be there for them.

And the tears are hitting the page, because we all knew that none of us were coming back alive. It was either death or a Pakistani prison, where we’d be raped for the rest of our lives.

He gave the letters to an intel guy not on the mission, with instructions. He would shred them if he made it back.

You write it, it’s horrible, you hand it off, and it’s like, Okay, that part’s over. And I’m back, ready to roll.

By early September of last year, the Shooter was out, officially. Retired.

He had survived his last deployment, and there was a barbecue near his house to celebrate with about thirty close friends from "the community." The Redskins were on, his favorite team, and there was lots of Commando ale, brewed by a former SEAL.

"I left SEALs on Friday," he said the next time I saw him. It was a little more than thirty-six months before the official retirement requirement of twenty years of service. "My health care for me and my family stopped at midnight Friday night. I asked if there was some transition from my Tricare to Blue Cross Blue Shield. They said no. You’re out of the service, your coverage is over. Thanks for your sixteen years. Go fuck yourself."

The government does provide 180 days of transitional health-care benefits, but the Shooter is eligible only if he agrees to remain on active duty "in a support role," or become a reservist. Either way, his life would not be his own. Instead, he’ll buy private insurance for $486 a month, but some treatments that relieve his wartime pains, like $120 for weekly chiropractic care, are out-of-pocket. Like many vets, he will have to wait at least eight months to have his disability claims adjudicated. Or even longer. The average wait time nationally is more than nine months, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The Center for Investigative Reporting’s interactive map of U.S. veterans still waiting for help due to backlogged disability claims.

Anyone who leaves early also gets no pension, so he is without income. Even if he had stayed in for the full twenty, his pension would have been half his base pay: $2,197 a month. The same as a member of the Navy choir.

Still, on this early fall weekend, he does not want to commit to publishing any information from or about him. The book by a friend and fellow ST6 member, Matt Bissonnette, who claims to have shot bin Laden in the chest when the Al Qaeda leader was already down and bleeding profusely, will go on sale in a few days. The Department of Defense was threatening legal action over breach of confidentiality agreements and revelation of supposedly classified material. And the Shooter refuses to identify Bissonnette by name or confirm that he is the colleague who wrote the book. "I still want him and his family to be safe no matter what," he says. "If he didn’t want [his name] out, I shouldn’t either. That is my thinking, anyway."

Many in the community are also infuriated, the Shooter says. "There’s a shitstorm around this." It has also come to his attention that Bissonnette’s account tends to gloss over — if not erase — the Shooter’s central role in bin Laden’s death.

"I don’t know why he’d do that," the Shooter says.

Almost since the mission was done, the Shooter himself was suspected by the SEAL command and other team members of being the one who was writing a book, the one who would be first to market, spinning gold off Abbottabad.

CIA and FBI officials called to ask whether he was going to appear with Bissonnette on 60 Minutes.

When it became clear that he wasn’t the opportunist, there was an official effort at apology from his superiors and some individual SEALs.

The Shooter had long ago decided not to write a book out of the gate, though he is keenly aware that Bissonnette’s book will make millions. There is still loyalty and safety to consider. He also wanted to see how Bissonnette fared with his colleagues, the U.S. government, and others.

Bissonnette’s pseudonym — Mark Owen — lasted about a day before his real name surfaced and was promptly posted on a jihadi Web site.

But it was his official separation from the Navy that convinced the Shooter that he should get his story down somewhere, both for history and for a potential "greater good," to both humanize his warrior friends as something more complex than Jason Bourne cartoon superheroes, and call attention to what retiring SEALs don’t get in their complex bargain with their country.

3."HEY, MAN, I JUST SHOT A WOMAN."

Waiting in Jalalabad, the teams were getting feedback from Washington. Gates didn’t want to do this, Hillary didn’t want to do that.

The Shooter still thought, We’d train, spin up, then spin down. They’d eventually tank the op and just bomb it.

But then the word came to Vice Admiral William McRaven, head of Joint Special Operations Command. The mission was on, originally for April 30, the night of the White House Correspondents’ dinner in Washington.

McRaven figured it would look bad if all sorts of officials got up and left the dinner in front of the press. So he came up with a cover story about the weather so we could launch on Sunday, May 1, instead.

There was one last briefing and an awesome speech from McRaven comparing the looming raid and its fighters to the movie Hoosiers.

Then they’re gathered by a fire pit, suiting up. Just before he got on the chopper to leave for Abbottabad, the Shooter called his dad. I didn’t know where he was, but I found out later he was in a Walmart parking lot. I said, "Hey, it’s time to go to work," and I’m thinking, I’m calling for the last time. I thought there was a good chance of dying.

He knew something significant was up, though he didn’t know what. The Shooter could hear him start to tear up. He told me later that he sat in his pickup in that parking lot for an hour and couldn’t get out of the car.

The Red Team and members of the other squad hugged one another instead of the usual handshakes before they boarded their separate aircraft. The hangars had huge stadium lights pointing outward so no one from the outside could see what was going on.

I took one last piss on the bushes.

Ninety minutes in the chopper to get from Jalalabad to Abbottabad. The Shooter noted when the bird turned right, into Pakistani airspace.

I was sitting next to the commanding officer, and he’s relaying everything to McRaven.

I was counting back and forth to a thousand to pass the time. It’s a long flight, but we brought these collapsible camping chairs, so we’re not uncomfortable. But it’s getting old and you’re ready to go and you don’t want your legs falling asleep.

Every fifteen minutes they’d tell us we hadn’t been painted [made by Pakistani radar].

I remember banking to the south, which meant we were getting ready to hit. We had about another fifteen minutes. Instead of counting, for some reason I said to myself the George Bush 9/11 quote: Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended. I could just hear his voice, and that was neat. I started saying it again and again to myself. Then I started to get pumped up. I’m like: This is so on.

I was concerned for the two [MH-47 Chinook] big-boat choppers crossing the Pakistani border forty-five minutes after we did, both full of my guys from the other squadron, the backup and extraction group. The 47′s have some awesome antiradar shit on them, too. But it’s still a school bus flying into a sovereign nation. If the Pakistanis don’t like it, they can send a jet in to shoot them down.

Flying in, we were all just sort of in our own world. My biggest concern was having to piss really bad and then having to get off in a fight needing to pee. We actually had these things made for us, like a combination collapsible dog bowl and diaper. I still have mine; I never used it. I used one of my water bottles instead. I forgot until later that when I shot bin Laden in the face, I had a bottle of piss in my pocket.

I would have pissed my pants rather than trying to fight with a full bladder.

Above the compound, the Shooter could hear only his helo pilot in the flight noise. "Dash 1 going around" meant the other chopper was circling back around. I thought they’d taken fire and were just moving. I didn’t realize they crashed right then. But our pilot did. He put our five perimeter guys out, went up, and went right back down outside the compound, so we knew something was wrong. We weren’t sure what the fuck it was.

We opened the doors, and I looked out.

The area looked different than where we trained because we’re in Pakistan now. There are the lights, the city. There’s a golf course. And we’re, This is some serious Navy SEAL shit we’re going to do. This is so badass. My foot hit the ground and I was still running [the Bush quote] in my head. I don’t care if I die right now. This is so awesome. There was concern, but no fear.

I was carrying a big-ass sledgehammer to blow through a wall if we had to. There was a gate on the northeast corner and we went right to that. We put a breaching charge on it, clacked it, and the door peeled like a tin can. But it was a fake gate with a wall behind it. That was good, because we knew that someone was defending themselves. There’s something good here.

We walked down the main long wall to get to the driveway to breach the door there. We were about to blow that next door on the north end when one of the guys from the bird that crashed came around the other side and opened it.

So we were moving down the driveway and I looked to the left. The compound was exactly the same. The mock-up had been dead-on. To actually be there and see the house with the three stories, the blacked-out windows, high walls, and barbed wire — and I’m actually in that security driveway with the carport, just like the satellite photos. I was like, This is really cool I’m here.

While we were in the carport, I heard gunfire from two different places nearby. In one flurry, a SEAL shot Abrar al-Kuwaiti, the brother of bin Laden’s courier, and his wife, Bushra. One of our guys involved told me, "Jesus, these women are jumping in front of these guys. They’re trying to martyr themselves. Another sign that this is a serious place. Even if bin Laden isn’t here, someone important is."

We crossed to the south side of the main building. There the Shooter ran into another team member, who told him, "Hey, man, I just shot a woman." He was worried. I told him not to be. "We should be thinking about the mission, not about going to jail."

For the Shooter personally, bin Laden was one bookend in a black-ops career that was coming to an end. But the road to Abbottabad was long, starting with the guys who tried and failed to make it into the SEALs in the first place. Up to 80 percent of applicants wash out, and some almost die trying.

In fact, during the Shooter’s Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training in the mid-nineties, the torture-chamber menu of physical and emotional resistance and resolve required to get into the SEALs, there was actually a death and resurrection.

"One of the tests is they make you dive to the bottom of a pool and tie five knots," the Shooter says. "One guy got to the fifth knot and blacked out underwater. We pulled him up and he was, like, dead. They made the class face the fence while they tried to resuscitate him. The first words as he spit out water were ‘Did I pass? Did I tie the fifth knot?’ The instructor told him, ‘We didn’t want to find out if you could tie the knots, you asshole, we wanted to know how hard you’d push yourself. You killed yourself. You passed.’"

"I’ve been drown-proofed once, and it does suck," the Shooter says.

Then there is Green Team, the lead-heavy door of entry for SEAL Team 6. Half of the men who are already hardened SEALs don’t make it through. "They get in your mind and make you think fast and make decisions during high stress."

There have been SEAL teams since the Kennedy years, when they got their first real workout against the Vietcong around Da Nang and in the Mekong Delta, and even during periods of relative peace since Vietnam, SEAL teams have been deployed around the world. But at no time have they been more active than in the period since 2001, in the longest war ever fought by Americans.

If the surge in Iraq ordered by President Bush in 2007 was at all successful, that success is owed significantly to the night-shift work done by SEAL Team 6.

"We would go kill high-value targets every night," the Shooter tells me. He and other ST6 members who would later be on the Abbottabad trip lived in rough huts with mud floors and cots. "But we were completely disrupting Al Qaeda and other Iraqi networks. If we only killed five or six guys a night, we were wasting our time. We knew this was the greatest moment of our operational lives."

From Al Asad to Ramadi to Baghdad to Baquba — Al Qaeda central at the time — the SEALs had latitude to go after "everyone we thought we had to kill. That’s really a major reason the surge was going so well, because terrorists were dying strategically."

During one raid, accompanied by two dogs, the Shooter says that he and his team wiped out "an entire spiderweb network." Villagers told Iraqi newspapers the next day that "Ninjas came with lions."

It is important to him to stress that no women or children were killed in that raid. He also insists that when it came to interrogation, repetitive questioning and leveraging fear was as aggressive as he’d go. "When we first started the war in Iraq, we were using Metallica music to soften people up before we interrogated them," the Shooter says. "Metallica got wind of this and they said, ‘Hey, please don’t use our music because we don’t want to promote violence.’ I thought, Dude, you have an album called Kill ‘Em All.

"But we stopped using their music, and then a band called Demon Hunter got in touch and said, ‘We’re all about promoting what you do.’ They sent us CDs and patches. I wore my Demon Hunter patch on every mission. I wore it when I blasted bin Laden."

On deployment in Afghanistan or Iraq, they would "eat, work out, play Xbox, study languages, do schoolwork." And watch the biker series Sons of Anarchy, Entourage, and three or four seasons of The Shield.

They were rural high school football stars, backwoods game hunters, and Ivy League graduates thrown together by a serious devotion to the cause, and to the action. Accessories, upbringing, and cultural tastes were just preamble, though, to the real work. As for the Shooter, he jokes that his choice in life was to "go to the SEALs or go to jail." Not that he would have ever found himself behind bars, but he points out traits that all SEALs seem to have in common: the willingness to live beyond the edge, and to do anything, and the resolve to never quit.

The bin Laden mission was far from the most dangerous of his career. Once, he was pinned down near Asadabad, Afghanistan, while the SEALs were trying to disrupt Al Qaeda supply lines used to ambush Americans.

"Bullets flew between my gun and my face," he says, just as he was inserting some of his favorite Copenhagen chew and then open-field sprinting to retrieve some special equipment he had dropped. That fight ended when he called in air strikes along the eastern Afghan border to light up the enemy.

Opening a closet door once, team members found a boy inside. "The natural response was ‘C’mon kid.’ Then, boom, he blows himself up. Suicide bombers are fast. Other rooms and other places, "we’d go in and a guy would be sleeping. Up against the wall were his cologne, deodorant, soap, suicide vest, AK-47, and grenades."

He’s also had to collect body parts of his close friends, most notably when a SEAL team chopper was shot down in Afghanistan’s Kunar province in June 2005, killing eight SEALs. "We go to a lot of funerals."

But for all the big battle boasts that become a sort of currency among SEALs, the Shooter has a deep fondness for the comedy that comes from being around the bunch of guys who are the only people in the world with whom you have so much in common and the only people in the world who can know exactly what you do for a living.

"I realized when I joined I had to be a better shot and step up my humor. These guys were hilarious."

There are the now-famous pranks with a giant dildo — they called it the Staff of Power — discovered during training in an abandoned Miami building. SEALs would find photos of it inserted into their gas masks or at the bottom of a barrel of animal crackers they were eating. Goats were put in their personal cages at ST6 headquarters. Uniforms were borrowed and dyed pink. Boots were glued to the floor. Flash-bang grenades went off in their gear.

The area near the Shooter’s cage was such a target for outlandish stunts that it was called the Gaza Strip.

Even in action, with all their high state of expertise and readiness, "we’re normal people. We fall off ladders, land on the wrong roof, get bitten by dogs." In Iraq, a breacher was putting a charge on a door to blow it off its hinges when he mistakenly leaned against the doorbell. He quickly took off the charge and the target opened the door. We were like, "You rang the fucking doorbell?!" Maybe we should try that more often, the Shooter thought to himself.

The dead can also be funny, as long as it’s not your guys. "In Afghanistan we were cutting away the clothes on this dead dude to see if he had a suicide vest on, only to find that he had a huge dick, down to his knees. From then on, we called him Abu Dujan Holmes.

And then there was the time that the Shooter shit himself on a tandem jump with a huge SEAL who outweighed him by sixty pounds. "The goddamn main chute yanked so hard he slipped two disks in his neck and I filled my socks with human feces. I told him, ‘Hey, dude, this is a horrible day.’ He said if I went to our reserve chute, ‘you’re gonna fucking kill me.’ He was that convinced his head was going to rip off his body.

"Okay, so I’m flying this broken chute, shitting my pants with this near-dead guy connected to me. And we eat shit on the landing. We’re lying there and the chute is dragging us across the ground. I hear him go, ‘Yeah, that’s my last jump for today.’ And I said, ‘That’s cool. Can I borrow your boxers?’

"We jumped the next day."

The Shooter’s willingness to endure comes from a deep personal well of confidence and drive that seems to also describe every one of his peers. But his odyssey through countless outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq to skydives into the Indian Ocean — situations that are always strewn with violence and with his own death always imminent — is grounded by a sense of deep confederacy.

"I’m lucky to be with these guys. I’m not going to let them down. I was going to go in for a few years, but then I met these other guys and stuck around because of them." He and one buddy made their first kills at exactly the same time, in Ramadi. Shared bloodletting is as much a bonding agent as shared blood.

After Team 6 SEAL Adam Brown was killed in March 2010, Brown’s squadron members approached the dead man’s kids at the funeral. They were screaming and inconsolable. "You may have lost a father," one of them said, "but you’ve gained twenty fathers."

Most of those SEALs would be killed the next year when their helicopter was shot down in eastern Wardak province.

The Shooter feels both the losses and connections no less keenly now that he’s out. "One of my closest friends in the world I’ve been with in SEAL Team 6 the whole time," he says.

The Shooter’s friend is also looking for a viable exit from the Navy. As he prepared to deploy again, he agreed to talk with me on the condition that I not identify him.

"My wife doesn’t want me to stay in one more minute than I have to," he says. But he’s several years away from official retirement. "I agree that civilian life is scary. And I’ve got a family to take care of. Most of us have nothing to offer the public. We can track down and kill the enemy really well, but that’s it.

"If I get killed on this next deployment, I know my family will be taken care of." (The Navy does offer decent life-insurance policies at low rates.) "College will be paid for, they’ll be fine.

"But if I come back alive and retire, I won’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out for the rest of my life. Sad to say, it’s better if I get killed."

4."IS THIS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER DONE, OR THE WORST?"

When we entered the main building, there was a hallway with rooms off to the side. Dead ahead is the door to go upstairs. There were women screaming downstairs. They saw the others get shot, so they were upset. I saw a girl, about five, crying in the corner, first room on the right as we were going in. I went, picked her up, and brought her to another woman in the room on the left so she didn’t have to be just with us. She seemed too out of it to be scared. There had to be fifteen people downstairs, all sleeping together in that one room. Two dead bodies were also in there.

Normally, the SEALs have a support or communications guy who watches the women and children. But this was a pared-down mission intended strictly for an assault, without that extra help. We didn’t really have anyone that could stay back.

So we’re looking down the hallway at the door to the stairwell. I figured this was the only door to get upstairs, which means the people upstairs can’t get down. If there had been another way up, we would have found it by then.

We were at a standstill on the ground floor, waiting for the breacher to do his work.

We’d always assumed we’d be surrounded at some point. You see the videos of him walking around and he’s got all those jihadis. But they weren’t prepared. They got all complacent. The guys that could shoot shot, but we were on top of them so fast.

Right then, I heard one of the guys talking about something, blah, blah, blah, the helo crashed. I asked, What helo crashed? He said it was in the yard. And I said, Bullshit! We’re never getting out of here now. We have to kill this guy. I thought we’d have to steal cars and drive to Islamabad. Because the other option was to stick around and wait for the Pakistani military to show up. Hopefully, we don’t shoot it out with them. We’re going to end up in prison here, with someone negotiating for us, and that’s just bad. That’s when I got concerned.

I’ve thought about death before, when I’ve been pinned down for an hour getting shot at. And I wondered what it was going to feel like taking one of those in the face. How long was it going to hurt? But I didn’t think about that here.

One of the snipers who’d seen the disabled helo approached just before they went into the main building. He said, "Hey, dude, they’ve got an awesome mock-up of our helo in their yard." I said, "No, dude. They shot one of ours down." He said, "Okay, that makes more sense than the shit I was saying."

The breacher had to blast the door twice for it to open. We started rolling up.

Team members didn’t need much communication, or any orders, once they were on line. We’re reading each other every second. We’ve gotten so good at war, we didn’t need anything more.

I was about five guys back on the stairway when I saw the point man holding up. He’d seen Khalid, bin Laden’s [twenty-three-year-old] son. I heard him whisper, "Khalid… come here…" in Arabic, then in Pashto. He used his name. That confused Khalid. He’s probably thinking, "I just heard shitty Arabic and shitty Pashto. Who the fuck is this?" He leaned out, armed with an AK, and he got blasted by the point man. That call-out was one of the best combat moves I’ve ever seen. Khalid had on a white T-shirt and, like, white pajama pants. He was the last line of security.

I remember thinking then: I wish we could live through this night, because this is amazing. I was still expecting all kinds of funky shit like escape slides or safe rooms.

The point man moved past doors on the second floor and the four or five guys in front of me started to peel off to clear those rooms, which is always how the flow works. We’re just clearing as we go, watching our backs.

They step over and past Khalid, who’s dead on the stairs.

The point man, at that time, saw a guy on the third floor, peeking around a curtain in front of the hallway. Bin Laden was the only adult male left to find. The point man took a shot, maybe two, and the man upstairs disappeared back into a room. I didn’t see that because I was looking back.

I don’t think he hit him. He thinks he might have.

So there’s the point man on the stairs, waiting for someone to move into the number-two position. Originally I was five or six man, but the train flowed off to clear the second floor. So I roll up behind him. He told me later, "I knew I had some ass," meaning somebody to back him up. I turn around and look. There’s nobody else coming up.

On the third floor, there were two chicks yelling at us and the point man was yelling at them and he said to me, "Hey, we need to get moving. These bitches is getting truculent." I remember saying to myself, Truculent? Really? Love that word.

I kept looking behind us, and there was still no one else there.

By then we realized we weren’t getting more guys. We had to move, because bin Laden is now going to be grabbing some weapon because he’s getting shot at. I had my hand on the point man’s shoulder and squeezed, a signal to go. The two of us went up. On the third floor, he tackled the two women in the hallway right outside the first door on the right, moving them past it just enough. He thought he was going to absorb the blast of suicide vests; he was going to kill himself so I could get the shot. It was the most heroic thing I’ve ever seen.

I rolled past him into the room, just inside the doorway.

There was bin Laden standing there. He had his hands on a woman’s shoulders, pushing her ahead, not exactly toward me but by me, in the direction of the hallway commotion. It was his youngest wife, Amal.

The SEALs had nightscopes, but it was coal-black for bin Laden and the other residents. He can hear but he can’t see.

He looked confused. And way taller than I was expecting. He had a cap on and didn’t appear to be hit. I can’t tell you 100 percent, but he was standing and moving. He was holding her in front of him. Maybe as a shield, I don’t know.

For me, it was a snapshot of a target ID, definitely him. Even in our kill houses where we train, there are targets with his face on them. This was repetition and muscle memory. That’s him, boom, done.

I thought in that first instant how skinny he was, how tall and how short his beard was, all at once. He was wearing one of those white hats, but he had, like, an almost shaved head. Like a crew cut. I remember all that registering. I was amazed how tall he was, taller than all of us, and it didn’t seem like he would be, because all those guys were always smaller than you think.

I’m just looking at him from right here [he moves his hand out from his face about ten inches]. He’s got a gun on a shelf right there, the short AK he’s famous for. And he’s moving forward. I don’t know if she’s got a vest and she’s being pushed to martyr them both. He’s got a gun within reach. He’s a threat. I need to get a head shot so he won’t have a chance to clack himself off [blow himself up].

In that second, I shot him, two times in the forehead. Bap! Bap! The second time as he’s going down. He crumpled onto the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again, Bap! same place. That time I used my EOTech red-dot holo sight. He was dead. Not moving. His tongue was out. I watched him take his last breaths, just a reflex breath.

And I remember as I watched him breathe out the last part of air, I thought: Is this the best thing I’ve ever done, or the worst thing I’ve ever done? This is real and that’s him. Holy shit.

Everybody wanted him dead, but nobody wanted to say, Hey, you’re going to kill this guy. It was just sort of understood that’s what we wanted to do.

His forehead was gruesome. It was split open in the shape of a V. I could see his brains spilling out over his face. The American public doesn’t want to know what that looks like.

Amal turned back, and she was screaming, first at bin Laden and then at me. She came at me like she wanted to fight me, or that she wanted to die instead of him. So I put her on the bed, bound with zip ties. Then I realized that bin Laden’s youngest son, who is about two or three, was standing there on the other side of the bed. I didn’t want to hurt him, because I’m not a savage. There was a lot of screaming, he was crying, just in shock. I didn’t like that he was scared. He’s a kid, and had nothing to do with this. I picked him up and put him next to his mother. I put some water on his face.

The point man came in and zip-tied the other two women he’d grabbed.

The third-floor action and killing took maybe fifteen seconds.

The Shooter’s oldest child calls the place his dad worked "Crapghanistan," maybe because his deployments meant he regularly missed Christmases, birthdays, and other holidays.

"Our marriage was definitely a casualty of his career," says the Shooter’s wife. They are officially split but still live together. Separate bedrooms, low overhead. "Somewhere along the line we lost track of each other." She holds his priorities partially responsible: SEAL first, father second, husband third.

This part of the Shooter’s story is, as his wife puts it, "unique to us but unfortunately not unique in the community."

SEAL operators are gone up to three hundred days a year. And when they’re not in theater, they’re training or soaking in the company of their buds in the absorbing clubhouse atmosphere of ST6 headquarters.

"We can’t talk with anyone else about what we do," the Shooter says, "or about anything else other than maybe skydiving and broken spleens. When it comes to socializing, it’s really tight."

His wife understands that "so much of their survival is dependent on the fact that their friends and their jobs are so intertwined." And that "we lived our lives under a veil of secrecy."

SEAL Team 6 spouses are nicknamed the Pink Squadron, because the women also rely on their hermetic connections to other wives. When you have no idea where your husband is or what he’s doing, other than that it’s mortally dangerous, and you can’t discuss it — not even with your own mother — your world can feel desperately small.

But his wife’s concerns, and her own narrative, convey a faithfulness that extends beyond marital fidelity.

She has comforted him when he was "inconsolable" after a mission in which he shot the parents of a boy in a crossfire. "He was reliving it, as a dad himself, when he was telling me." Not long after, she tended to him when she found him heavily sedated with an open bottle of Ambien and his pistol nearby.

The command had mandatory psych evaluations. During one of those, the Shooter told the psychologist, "I was having suicidal thoughts and drinking too much." The doctor’s response? "He told me this was normal for SEALs after combat deployment. He told me I should just drink less and not hurt anybody."

The Shooter’s wife is indignant. "That’s not normal!" Though she knows that "every time you send your husband off to war, you get a slightly different person back."

The alone times are deeply trying.

Several years ago, a SEAL friend had died in a helicopter crash. The Shooter’s wife had just been to his funeral, consoling his widow. The Shooter was on the same deployment, and she had not heard anything about his status.

"I came home and was inside holding our infant child. Our front door is all glass, and I see a man in a khaki uniform coming up the steps. All I could do was think, I’d better put the baby down because I’m going to faint. So I set the baby on the floor and answered the door. It was a neighbor with a baby bib I’d dropped outside. I swore at him and slammed the door in his face."

It was four days more before she heard that her husband was safe.

Given all of that, she has a surprising equanimity about her life. Talking with them separately, the couple’s love for each other is evident and deep. "We’ve grown so much together," she says. "We’ll always be best friends. I’ll love him till the day I die."

She remains in awe of "the level of brilliance these men have. To be surrounded by that caliber of people is something I’ll always be grateful for."

Her husband’s retirement has been no less jarring for her. "He gave so much to his country, and now it seems he’s left in the dust. I feel there’s no support, not just for my family but for other families in the community. I honestly have nobody I can go to or talk to. Nor do I feel my husband has gotten much for what he’s accomplished in his career."

Exactly what, if any, responsibility should the government have to her family?

The loss of income and insurance and no pension aside, she can no longer walk onto the local base if she feels a threat to her family. They’ve surrendered their military IDs. If something were to happen, the Shooter has instructed her to take the kids to the base gate anyway and demand to see the commanding officer, or someone from the SEAL team. "He said someone will come get us."

Because of the mission, she says that "my family is always going to be at risk. It’s just a matter of finding coping strategies."

The Shooter still dips his hand in his pocket when they’re in a store, checking for a knife in case there’s an emergency. He also keeps his eyes on the exits.

He’s lost some vision, he can’t get his neck straight for any period of time. Right now, she’s just waiting to see what he creates for himself in this new life.

And she’s waiting to see how he replaces even the $60,000 a year he was making (with special pay bonuses for different activities). Or how they can afford private health insurance that covers spinal injections she needs for her own sports injuries.

"This is new to us, not having the team."

5."WE ALL DID IT."

Within another fifteen seconds, other team members started coming in the room. Here, the Shooter demurs about whether subsequent SEALs also fired into bin Laden’s body. He’s not feeding raw meat to what is an increasingly strict government focus on the etiquette of these missions. But I would have done it if I’d come in the room later. I knew I was going to shoot him if I saw him, regardless.

I even joked about that with the guys before we were there. "I don’t give a shit if you kill him — if I come in the room, I’m shooting his ass. I don’t care if he’s deader than fried chicken."

In the compound, I thought about getting my camera, and I knew we needed to take pictures and ID him. We had a saying, "You kill him, you clean him." But I was just in a little bit of a zone. I had to actually ask one of my friends who came into the room, "Hey, what do we do now?" He said, "Now we go find the computers." And I remember saying, "Yes! I’m back! Got it!" Because I was almost stunned.

Then I just wanted to go get out of the house. We all had a DNA test kit, but I knew another team would be in there to do all that. So I went down to the second floor where the offices were, the media center. We started breaking apart the computer hard drives, cracking the towers. We were looking for thumb drives and disks, throwing them into our net bags.

In each computer room, there was a bed. Under the beds were these huge duffel bags, and I’m pulling them out, looking for whatever. At first I thought they were filled with vacuum-sealed rib-eye steaks. I thought, They’re in this for the long haul. They’ve got all this food. Then, wait a minute. This is raw opium. These drugs are everywhere. It was pretty funny to see that. Altogether, he helped clean three rooms on the second floor.

The Shooter did not see bin Laden’s body again until he and the point man helped two others carry it, already bagged, down the building’s hallways and out into the courtyard by the front gate. I saw a sniper buddy of mine down there and I told him, "That’s our guy. Hold on to him." Others took the corpse to the surviving Black Hawk.

With one helo down, the Shooter was relieved to hear the sound of the 47 Chinook transports arriving. His exfil (extraction) flight out was on one of the 47′s, which had almost been blown out of the sky by the SEALs’ own explosive charges, set to destroy the downed Black Hawk.

One backup SEAL Team 6 member on the flight asked who’d killed UBL. I said I fucking killed him. He’s from New York and says, "No shit. On behalf of my family, thank you." And I thought: Wow, I’ve got a Navy SEAL telling me thanks?

"You probably thought you’d never hear this," someone piped through the intercom system over an hour into the return flight, "but welcome back to Afghanistan."

Back at the Jalalabad base, we pulled bin Laden out of the bag to show McRaven and the CIA. That’s when McRaven had a tall SEAL lie down next to bin Laden to assess his height, along with other, slightly more scientific identity tests.

With the body laid out and under inspection, you could see more gunshot wounds to bin Laden’s chest and legs.

While they were still checking the body, I brought the agency woman over. I still had all my stuff on. We looked down and I asked, "Is that your guy?" She was crying. That’s when I took my magazine out of my gun and gave it to her as a souvenir. Twenty-seven bullets left in it. "I hope you have room in your backpack for this." That was the last time I saw her.

From there, the team accompanied the body to nearby Bagram Airfield. During the next few hours, the thought that hit me was "This is awesome. This is great. We lived. This is perfect. We just did it all."

The moment truly struck at Bagram when I’m eating a breakfast sandwich, standing near bin Laden’s body, looking at a big-screen TV with the president announcing the raid. I’m sitting there watching him, looking at the body, looking at the president, eating a sausage-egg-cheese-and-extra-bacon sandwich thinking, "How the fuck did I get here? This is too much."

I still didn’t know if it would be good or bad. The good was having done something great for my country, for the guys, for the people of New York. It was closure. An honor to be there.

I never expected people to be screaming "U.S.A.!" with Geraldo outside the White House.

The bad part was security. He was their prophet, basically. Now we killed him and I have to worry about this forever. Al Qaeda, especially these days, is 99 percent talk. But that 1 percent of the time they do shit, it’s bad. They’re capable of horrific things.

We listened to the Al Qaeda phone calls where one guy is saying, "We gotta find out who ratted on bin Laden." The other guy says, "I heard he did it to himself. He was locked up in that house with three wives." Funny terrorists.

At Bagram, the point man asked, "Hey, was he hit when you went into the room? I thought I shot him in the head and his cap flew off." I said I didn’t know, but he was still walking and he had his hat on. The point man was like "Okay. No big deal."

By then we had showered and were having some refreshments. We weren’t comparing dicks. I’ve been in a lot of battles with this guy. He’s a fucking amazing warrior, the most honorable, truthful dude I know. I trust him with my life.

The Shooter said he and the point man participated in a shooters-only debrief with military officials around a trash can in Jalalabad and then a long session at Bagram Airfield, but they left some details ambiguous. The point man said he took two shots and thought one may have hit bin Laden. He said his number two went into the room "and finished him off as he was circling the drain." This was not exactly as it had gone down, but everyone seemed satisfied.

Early government versions of the shooting talked about bin Laden using his wife as protection and being shot by a SEAL inside the room. But subsequent accounts, from officials and others like Bissonnette, further muddied the story and obscured the facts.

What the two SEALs did discuss after the action was why there’d been a short gap before more assaulters joined them on the third floor. "Where was everybody else?" the point man asked. I told him we just ran thin.

Guys went left and right on the second floor and it was just us. Everything happened really fast. Everybody did their jobs. Any team member would have done exactly what I did.

At Jalalabad, as we got off the plane there was an air crew there, guys who fix helicopters. They hugged me and knew I’d killed him. I don’t know how the hell word spread that fast.

McRaven himself came over to me, very emotional. He grabbed me across the back of my neck like a proud father and gave me a hug. He knew what had happened, too.

Not long after, a senior government official had an unofficial phone call with the mentor. "Your boy was the one," the mentor says he was told. The Shooter was alternately shocked and pleased to know that word got back to the States before I did. "Who killed bin Laden?" was the first question, and then the name just flies.

And it was the Shooter who, when an Obama administration official asked for details during the president’s private visit with the bin Laden team at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, said "We all did it."

The SEAL standing next to the Shooter would say later, "Man, I was dying to tell him it was you."

From the moment reporters started getting urgent texts hours before President Obama’s official announcement on May 1, 2011, the bin Laden mission exploded into public view. Suddenly, a brilliant spotlight was shining where shadows had ruled for decades.

TV trucks descended on the SEAL Team 6 community in Virginia Beach, showing their homes and hangouts.

"The big mission changed a lot of attitudes around the command," the Shooter says. "There were suspicions about whether anyone was selling out."

It had begun "when we were still in the Jalalabad hangar with our shit on. There was a lot of ‘Don’t let this go to your head, don’t talk to anyone,’ not even our own Red Team guys who hadn’t gone with us."

The assaulters "were immediately put in a box, like a time-out," says the Shooter’s close friend, who was not on the mission. "‘Don’t open your mouth.’ I would have flown them to Tahoe for a week."

But even with the SEALs’ strong history of institutional modesty, there was no unringing this bell.

The potential for public fame was too great, and suspicion was high inside SEAL Team 6.

The Shooter was among those reprimanded for going out to a bar to celebrate the night they got back home. And he was supposed to report for work the next morning, but instead took the day off to spend with his kids.

Twenty-four hours later came the offer of witness protection, driving the beer truck in Milwaukee. "That was the best idea on the table for security."

"Maybe some courtesy eyes-on checks" of his home, he thought. "Send some Seabees over to put in a heavier, metal-reinforced front door. Install some sensors or something. But there was literally nothing."

He considered whether to get a gun permit for life outside the perimeter.

The SEALs are proud of being ready for "anything and everything." But when it came to his family’s safety? "I don’t have the resources."

With gossip and finger-pointing continuing over the mission, the Shooter made a decision "to show I wasn’t a douchebag, that I’m still part of this team and believe in what we’re doing."

He re-upped for another four-month deployment. It would be in the brutal cold of Afghanistan’s winter.

But he had already decided this would be his last deployment, his SEAL Team 6 sayonara.

"I wanted to see my children graduate and get married." He hoped to be able to sleep through the night for the first time in years. "I was burned out," he says. "And I realized that when I stopped getting an adrenaline rush from gunfights, it was time to go."

May 1, 2012, the first anniversary of the bin Laden mission. The Shooter is getting ready to go play with his kids at a water park. He’s watching CNN.

"They were saying, ‘So now we’re taking viewer e-mails. Do you remember where you were when you found out Osama bin Laden was dead?’ And I was thinking: Of course I remember. I was in his bedroom looking down at his body."

The standing ovation of a country in love with its secret warriors had devolved into a news quiz, even as new generations of SEALs are preparing for sacrifice in the Horn of Africa, Iran, perhaps Mexico.

The Shooter himself, an essential part of the team helping keep us safe since 9/11, is now on his own. He is enjoying his family, finally, and won’t be kissing his kids goodbye as though it were the last time and suiting up for the battlefield ever again.

But when he officially separates from the Navy three months later, where do his sixteen years of training and preparedness go on his résumé? Who in the outside world understands the executive skills and keen psychological fortitude he and his First Tier colleagues have absorbed into their DNA? Who is even allowed to know? And where can he go to get any of these questions answered?

There is a Transition Assistance Program in the military, but it’s largely remedial level, rote advice of marginal value: Wear a tie to interviews, not your Corfam (black shiny service) shoes. Try not to sneeze in anyone’s coffee. There is also a program at MacDill Air Force Base designed to help Special Ops vets navigate various bureaucracies. And the VA does offer five years of health care benefits—through VA physicians and hospitals—for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but it offers nothing for the shooter’s family.

"It’s criminal to me that these guys walk out the door naked," says retired Marine major general Mike Myatt. "They’re the greatest of their generation; they know how to get things done. If I were a Fortune 500 company, I’d try to get my hands on any one of them." The general is standing in the mezzanine of the Marines Memorial building he runs in San Francisco. He’s had to expand the memorial around the corner due to so many deaths over the past eleven years of war.

He is furious about the high unemployment rate among returning infantrymen, as well as homelessness, PTSD, and the other plagues of new veterans. General Myatt believes "the U.S. military is the best in the world at transitioning from civilian to military life and the worst in the world at transitioning back." And that, he acknowledges, doesn’t even begin to consider the separate and distinct travesty visited on the Shooter and his comrades.

The Special Operations men are special beyond their operations. "These guys are self-actualizers," says a retired rear admiral and former SEAL I spoke with. "Top of the pyramid. If they wanted to build companies, they could. They can do anything they put their minds to. That’s how smart they are."

But what’s available to these superskilled retiring public servants? "Pretty much nothing," says the admiral. "It’s ‘Thank you for your service, good luck.’"

One third-generation military man who has worked both inside and outside government, and who has fought for vets for decades, is sympathetic to the problem. But he notes that the Pentagon is dealing with two hundred thousand new veterans a year, compared with perhaps a few dozen SEALs. "Can and should the DOD spend the extra effort it would take to help the superelite guys get with exactly the kind of employers they should have? Investment bankers, say, value that competition, drive, and discipline, not to mention people with security clearances. They [Tier One vets] should be plugged in at executive levels. Any employers who think about it would want to hire these people."

For officials, however, everyone signing out of war is a hero, and even for the masses of retirees, programs are sporadic and often ineffectual. Michelle Obama and Jill Biden have both made transitioning vets a personal cause, though these efforts are largely gestural and don’t reach nearly high enough for the skill sets of a member of SEAL Team 6.

The Virginia-based Navy SEAL Foundation has a variety of supportive programs for the families of SEALs, and the foundation spends $3.2 million a year maintaining them. But as yet they have no real method or programs for upper-level job placement of their most practiced constituency.

A businessman associated with the foundation says he understands that there is a need the foundation does not fill. "This is an ongoing thing where lots of people seem to want to help but no one has ever really done it effectively because our community is so small. No one’s ever cracked it. And there really needs to be an education effort well before they separate [from the service] to tell them, ‘The world you’re about to enter is very different than the one you’ve been operating in the last fifteen or twenty years.’" One former SEAL I spoke with is a Harvard MBA and now a very successful Wall Street trader whose career path is precisely the kind of example that should be evangelized to outgoing SEALs. His own life reflects that "SpecOps guys could be hugely value-added" to civilian companies, though he says business schools — degrees in general — might be an important step. "It would be great to get a panel of CEOs together who are ready to help these guys get hired." Some big companies do have veteran-outreach specialists — former SEAL Harry Wingo fills that role at Google.

But these individual and scattered shots still do not provide what is needed: a comprehensive battle plan.

In San Francisco recently, I talked about the Special Ops issue with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and venture capitalist and Orbitz chairman Jeff Clarke. Both are very interested in offering a business luminary hand to help clandestine operators make their final jump. There is enthusiastic consensus among the business and military people I have canvassed that this kind of outside help is required, perhaps a new nonprofit financed and driven by the Costolos and Clarkes of the world.

Even before he retired, the Shooter’s new business plan dissolved when the SEAL Team 6 members who formed it decided to go in different directions, each casting for a civilian professional life that’s challenging and rewarding. The stark realities of post-SEAL life can make even the blood of brothers turn a little cold.

"I still have the same bills I had in the Navy," the Shooter tells me when we talk in September 2012. But no money at all coming in, from anywhere.

"I just want to be able to pay all those bills, take care of my kids, and work from there," he says. "I’d like to take the things I learned and help other people in any way I can."

In the last few months, the Shooter has put together some work that involves a kind of discreet consulting for select audiences. But it’s a per-event deal, and he’s not sure how secure or long-term it will be. And he wants to be much more involved in making the post — SEAL Team 6 transition for others less uncertain.

The December suicide of one SEAL commander in Afghanistan and the combat death of another — a friend — while rescuing an American doctor from the Taliban underscore his urgent desire to make a difference on behalf of his friends.

He imagines traveling back to other parts of the world for a few days at a time to do dynamic surveys for businesses looking to put offices in countries that are not entirely safe, or to protect employees they already have in place.

But he is emphatic: He does not want to carry a gun. "I’ve fought all the fights. I don’t have a need for excitement anymore. Honestly."

After all, when you’ve killed the world’s most wanted man, not everything should have to be a battle.

"They torture the shit out of people in this movie, don’t they? Everyone is chained to something."

The Shooter is sitting next to me at a local movie theater in January, watching Zero Dark Thirty for the first time. He laughs at the beginning of the film about the bin Laden hunt when the screen reads, "Based on firsthand accounts of actual events."

His uncle, who is also with us, along with the mentor and the Shooter’s wife, had asked him earlier whether he’d seen the film already.

"I saw the original," the Shooter said. As the action moves toward the mission itself, I ask the Shooter whether his heart is beating faster. "No," he says matter-of-factly. But when a SEAL Team 6 movie character yells, "Breacher!" for someone to blow one of the doors of the Abbottabad compound, the Shooter says loudly, "Are you fucking kidding me? Shut up!"

He explains afterward that no one would ever yell, "Breacher!" during an assault. Deadly silence is standard practice, a fist to the helmet sufficient signal for a SEAL with explosive packets to go to work.

During the shooting sequence, which passes, like the real one, in a flash, his fingers form a steeple under his chin and his focus is intense.

But his criticisms at dinner afterward are minor.

"The tattoo scene was horrible," he says about a moment in the film when the ST6 assault group is lounging in Afghanistan waiting to go. "Those guys had little skulls or something instead of having some real ink that goes up to here." He points to his shoulder blade.

"It was fun to watch. There was just little stuff. The helos turned the wrong way [toward the target], and they talked way, way too much [during the assault itself]. If someone was waiting for you, they could track your movements that way."

The tactics on the screen "sucked," he says, and "the mission in the damn movie took way too long" compared with the actual event. The stairs inside bin Laden’s building were configured inaccurately. A dog in the film was a German shepherd; the real one was a Belgian Malinois who’d previously been shot in the chest and survived. And there’s no talking on the choppers in real life.

There was also no whispered calling out of bin Laden as the SEALs stared up the third-floor stairwell toward his bedroom. "When Osama went down, it was chaos, people screaming. No one called his name."

"They Hollywooded it up some."

The portrayal of the chief CIA human bloodhound, "Maya," based on a real woman whose iron-willed assurance about the compound and its residents moved a government to action, was "awesome" says the Shooter. "They made her a tough woman, which she is."

The Shooter and the mentor joke with each other about the latest thermal/night-vision eyewear used in the movie, which didn’t exist when the older man was a SEAL.

"Dude, what the fuck? How come I never got my four-eye goggles?"

"We have those." "Are you kidding me?"

"SEAL Team 6, baby."

They laugh, at themselves as much as at each other.

The Shooter seems smoothed out, untroubled, as relaxed as I’ve seen him.

But the conversation turns dark when they discuss the portrayal of the other CIA operative, Jennifer Matthews, who was among seven people killed in 2009 when a suicide bomber was allowed into one of their black-ops stations in Afghanistan.

They both knew at least one of the paramilitary contractors who perished with her.

The supper table is suddenly flooded with the surge of strong emotions. Anguish, really, though they both hide it well. This is not a movie. It’s real life, where death is final and threats last forever.

The blood is your own, not fake splatter and explosive squibs.

Movies, books, lore — we all helped make these men brilliant assassins in the name of liberty, lifted them up on our shoulders as unique and exquisitely trained heroes, then left them alone in the shadows of their past.

Uncertainty will never be far away for the Shooter. His government may have shut the door on him, but he is required to live inside the consequences of his former career.

One line from the film kept resonating in my head.

An actor playing a CIA station chief warns Maya about jihadi vengeance.

"Once you’re on their list," he says, "you never get off."

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the extent of the five-year health care benefits offered to cover veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of Veterans Affairs offers comprehensive health care to eligible veterans during that period, though not to their families. In light of this change, we have also revised an earlier passage in the story referring to the shooter’s post-service benefits. Also, the original version of this story did not include a few sentences that ran in the issue printed last week. They have now been restored.

http://www.esquire.com/features/man-who-shot-osama-bin-laden-0313