The notion of the US exporting terrorism will take many aback. But, the latest Wikileaked documents confirm the fact. Surprising? Perhaps not when one reflects on the matter.
Paul Pillar, writing in the column Argument on FP, considers what the latest Wikileak revelations reveal from the CIA's Red Cell:
"Partly because the deadliest attack in the history of modern international terrorism was against the United States, Americans tend to see their own country as the center of the counterterrorist universe. It was a U.S. president who declared a "war on terror," led by the United States. Although U.S. officials have said a lot about international cooperation, the cooperation they have had in mind has been mostly a matter of the United States leading, pushing, or insisting, and other countries conforming or complying. The same U.S. president summarized his standard for other countries' counterterrorist performance with the phrase "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists" -- the "us" of course being the United States -- and the United States has shown a tendency to lord that standard over its foreign counterterrorist partners. The transition from George W. Bush to Barack Obama has softened these hard edges, but Americans still take a very U.S.-centric approach to the subject."
And:
"The Red Cell assessment notes that some pushing back already has occurred, probably spurred by annoyance over the asymmetry in how the United States handles renditions and information sharing. It cites the example of Italy issuing criminal warrants in 2005 for the arrest of U.S. officials involved in the abduction and rendering to Egypt of an Egyptian cleric. Again, think of the roles being reversed: It would be a subject of great outrage, to put it mildly, in the United States if Italian officers were found to have secretly abducted someone from U.S. soil and flown him out to be locked up in someone else's prison. The assessment correctly observes that the price of contretemps arising from such disagreements includes damage to bilateral relations as well as more specific damage to counterterrorist cooperation."
Paul Pillar, writing in the column Argument on FP, considers what the latest Wikileak revelations reveal from the CIA's Red Cell:
"Partly because the deadliest attack in the history of modern international terrorism was against the United States, Americans tend to see their own country as the center of the counterterrorist universe. It was a U.S. president who declared a "war on terror," led by the United States. Although U.S. officials have said a lot about international cooperation, the cooperation they have had in mind has been mostly a matter of the United States leading, pushing, or insisting, and other countries conforming or complying. The same U.S. president summarized his standard for other countries' counterterrorist performance with the phrase "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists" -- the "us" of course being the United States -- and the United States has shown a tendency to lord that standard over its foreign counterterrorist partners. The transition from George W. Bush to Barack Obama has softened these hard edges, but Americans still take a very U.S.-centric approach to the subject."
And:
"The Red Cell assessment notes that some pushing back already has occurred, probably spurred by annoyance over the asymmetry in how the United States handles renditions and information sharing. It cites the example of Italy issuing criminal warrants in 2005 for the arrest of U.S. officials involved in the abduction and rendering to Egypt of an Egyptian cleric. Again, think of the roles being reversed: It would be a subject of great outrage, to put it mildly, in the United States if Italian officers were found to have secretly abducted someone from U.S. soil and flown him out to be locked up in someone else's prison. The assessment correctly observes that the price of contretemps arising from such disagreements includes damage to bilateral relations as well as more specific damage to counterterrorist cooperation."
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