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June 19, 2005

Sidel And Thier Take A Look at 'Fallout From The War on Terror'

Yale Global Online, the prestigious publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, published an important excerpt from More Secure, Less Free? Antiterrorism Policy and Civil Liberties After September 11 (University of Michigan Press, 2004), a book by Mark Sidel, professor of law at the University of Iowa 2004). It is part of the Yale Global Online's two-part series headlined "Fallout from the War on Terror," which suggests that the Bush Administration "Antiterrorism policy has taken its toll on foreign enrollment in U.S. universities." According to Mr. Sidel:

Washington's war on terror may be quietly taking a toll on unsuspecting quarters its universities. To understand the effects of anti-terror policies on the U.S. academic sector, it helps to spend time on university campuses in Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, or other countries. From Melbourne to Edinburgh, those institutions are now filled with foreign students, many of whom would have come to the US, had they not been deterred by restrictive visa policies.

Part II of the "Fallout from the War on Terror" is an article by J. Alexander Thier, a Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He is also a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served as legal adviser to the Afghan Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions from 2002-2004, according to Yale Global Online.

Mr. Thier maintains that "a pattern of human rights violations and prisoner abuse risks hurting US credibility in the Muslim world." He argues:

The spasm of protest and violence that swept through the Islamic world from Afghanistan to Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, and Indonesia in reaction to the Newsweek Quran abuse piece reveals something critical: the Muslim world is a powder-keg of anti-American sentiment. But rather than improve relations, the Bush administration continues to play with fire." Mr. Thier thinks, "the real "war on terror" is about culture, ideas, and perceptions as much as bombs and spies. While it is critical to fight the committed terrorists, abhorrent incidents of abuse by members of the US military play directly into the hands of the Islamic extremists who are competing for the hearts and minds of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Mr. Thier contends that, "the US only has so many chances to deliver its message, and in the information-poor and conspiracy-rich environments of the Middle East, actions speak much louder than rhetoric."

I highly recommend the scholars' articles. They add sober discourse in what is often a cacophony of rhetoric in the Blogosphere in the ongoing discussion on the so-called "War on Terror."

Posted by Munir Umrani at June 19, 2005 03:39 PM

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