Terrorist Recognition Handbook 344
| Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, Second Edition | |
| author | Malcolm Nance |
| pages | 480 |
| publisher | CRC |
| rating | 10 |
| reviewer | Ben Rothke |
| ISBN | 978-1420071832 |
| summary | Perhaps the definitive text on terrorist recognition. |
The
main theme of the book, as detailed in chapter 1 is
critical
awareness.
The book notes that criminal investigators spend years
studying criminal behavior to better understand and counter
crime. Nance writes that the
field of terrorism is no different as it is a specialized subject that
requires serious study and requires that those in the front line of defense be
as knowledge as possible.
In
a later chapter, Nance gives the Iraq war as an example of a group of leaders
that were not as knowledge as possible and ignored the advice of those that
were as knowledge as possible.
Had the Bush administration consulted Nance, a trillion
dollars and thousands of lives could have been saved in the Iraq
debacle.
The
book is divided into 5 sections comprising 21 heavily-detailed
chapters. Each chapter is a
progression in detailing, understanding and identifying
terrorists. In chapter after
chapter, the book details every aspect of terrorism and indentifies all of the
various elements. The various
aspects of different guns, explosives, and other elements are described and
categorized in detail.
In
the section on suicide bombers, an important point the book makes is that
contrary to popular belief, suicide bombers are rarely
insane. They are most often
intelligent, rational individuals with beliefs that those in the West finds
difficult to comprehend.
Nance does not for a second rationalize the actions of
such groups and individuals.
But notes that it is critical to understand why they do it
in order to prevent future attacks.
Chapter
8 is quite valuable in that it provides a comprehensive overview of how
terrorist cells operate and are organized.
While the cell is the fundamental unit of a terrorist
group; cell operations and their members are the least understood part of
terrorism. Their operations
are always secret and never seen, until they
attack. The chapter details
the many types of terrorist cells, operative membership pools, and how cells
and leadership communicate.
Chapter
19 is a fascinating primer on al-Qaeda and the global extremist
insurgency. The chapter
details how al-Qaeda divides its enemies into two categories:
Far Enemies and Near
Enemies. The terms are taken from the Islamic concept of the
community and those who oppose it.
While the far enemies of al-Qaeda are the USA, Australia,
UK, Europe and Israel, the near enemies are those Moslem's or nations that
al-Qaeda sees as corrupted governments or apostate
rules. These include the
governments of over 20 countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh,
India and many more comprising billions of people.
While
the post-9/11 attacks from coalition forces have indeed hurt al-Qaeda and
killed many of its top leaders, Nance notes that al-Qaeda now acts a terror
strategy consultancy. This
transformation of al-Qaeda is in response to the loss of its base of
operations in Afghanistan and the displacement of its leadership to the
Pakistani border.
The most significant
changes were a shift of operational responsibility from the regional terror
commanders, who executed a long awaited plan for jihad operations, to a more
radical and difficult to detect posture: jihadist who were self-starting and
worked independently from al-Qaeda.
The
most significant changes al-Qaeda's structure occurred when it was able to
co-opt the Jordanian Salafist group Tawhed Wal Jihad and organize the foreign
fighters into Iraq into al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
AQI changed the structure of the military committee's
roles dramatically and Iraq would become the cornerstone of al-Qaeda's global
operations. Much of the
invasion of Iraq was premised on a link between Iraq and
al-Qaeda. There was never
such a link, but the war turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as al-Qaeda
is now a mainstay in Iraq.
The
book writes that it is important to note that contrary to popular belief,
al-Qaeda is not a single terrorist group, rather a collection of like-minded
organizations that cooperate and receive funds, advice and orders from Osama
bin Laden and his supporters. al-Qaeda has transformed itself from a physical
chain of terrorist training camps to a virtual network that uses the Internet
to create a network centric information and advisory
body. Nance therefore notes
that al-Qaeda has transformed itself from a global terrorism operation into a
terrorism management consultancy.
The 6 main aspects of this
consultancy are that al-Qaeda: provides inspiration, contributes finances,
shares collective knowledge, provides weapons resource and contacts, accepts
responsibility and releases video propaganda.
Besides
a few minor historical errors, some grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and
not a lot of details about cyber-based terrorism,
Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual
for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities is a most
important book in that it avoids all of the hype, politics and bias that come
along with such titles, and simply focuses on its task at hand, to be a field
guide for anti-terrorist and counter-terrorist professionals to use to prevent
attacks.
Such
a title is sorely needed by groups such as the TSA, who still think that
anti-terrorism means having people remove their shoes at
airports. The book notes
that the European approach of guarded vigilance
via a sustained level of anti-terrorism readiness and
awareness is a much better concept than the US approach of spiking to
heightened alert levels.
The
Terrorist Recognition Handbook is a
must-read for anyone tasked with or interested in anti-terrorism
activities. One would hope
that every TSA and Homeland Security manager and employee get a copy of this
monumental reference.
It would change the face of TSA and the Department of
Homeland Security, and might perhaps really enable them to identify
terrorists, and not simply require the elderly to take off their support shoes
at airport checkpoints.
Ben Rothke is the author
of
Computer
Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should
Know.
You can purchase Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, Second Edition from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
No book necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Sad Part (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead it appears that his book is more oriented towards explaining the workings of a terrorist organization. How they think, how they act, how they recruit, and what factors increase the chances of a terrorist act.
Identifying terrorist doesn't solve the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Its like the problem with Vietnam for the US and Afghanistan for the Soviet. Sometimes you cannot win by force. Either it has to come to understand, negotiation, or at least putting them at arms length such as building a massive security wall like Israel.
Having military bases in these people's lands, other throwing legitimate governments for over 50 years, and backing unpopular dictators is what causes them to attack us. Not because we believe in freedom or a different religion. We stop messing with things over there and when we do that the common man who currently supports the terrorists and their Jihad will be more apathetic and the popular support base the terrorists enjoy now will go away.
thousands of lives could have been saved (Score:4, Insightful)
But now that Iraq is a terrorist training ground, it sounds like it'd be a good book for the Bush Administration to read. If only this were the kind of Administration that reads.
Re:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are nuts out there that pretend both things to be the same, but Pipes surely isn't among them.
Re:That's easy (Score:2, Insightful)
The truth about prevention... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing the TSA does is reduce the likelihood such an attack will occur on a plane. It's a huge waste of money that's simply a security blanket for the uninformed.
Re:The truth about prevention... (Score:5, Insightful)
People in security know full well that no method will guarantee 100% attack prevention. Reducing the likelihood and frequency of attacks is the goal.
Re:That's easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Identifying terrorist doesn't solve the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
> there is ten more to replace him.
While you are correct somewhat here your premise as how to combat it is flawed.
When dealing with terrorism you need to determine why those ten would want to replace him. For example if you were fire a missile into a market during its busy hours to kill one terrorist and maim/kill many bystanders. Actions like that is what grows more terrorists.
Even if you don't do this then the actions tend to be related to civil rights abuses. Terrorism is normally the weapon of the desperate against an opposing force. If they are on our side then we call them "freedom fighters".
Ignoring the middle east the best example of this is Northern Ireland. Prior to the civil rights abuses in Northern Ireland the IRA didn't really have any real following. Sure you still get the gangsters and loons joining, but those who would normally define as rational/sane would of been in the minority if at all. It took actions from the British like Internment and Bloody Sunday to really get the ranks of the IRA up. That lead to 30 years of violence.
Once civil rights abuses were addressed in Northern Ireland the violence and support went away. It is not gone. You will always have some level of people who will disagree with actions. But the point is to stop the recruits. That you can't fight with weapons.
I question Daniel Pipes being credited as expert.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Speaking of terrorists... (Score:5, Insightful)
Um...I have never claimed to be...and to the best of my knowledge, neither has Cory Doctorow.
Neither am I, for that matter...
So...what was your point, then?
but my wife went through several classes on statistics...
You're kidding, right?
their approach to statistics is not so simple as "accuracy" only. They have several different terms, all more or less seeming similar to the layman. I don't recall the words, but they more or less correlated to concepts such as:
False positive rate.
False negative rate.
Overall rate of accurate test.
Your objection does not invalidate the argument in my OP, it only strengthens it. The other concepts you listed do not mitigate the problem of false positives - on the contrary, they only exacerbate it.
The argument in the OP assumed (for argument's sake) that while the false positive rate was 1%, the false negative rate was 0%. If you want to make the false negative rate a non-zero number, go ahead, but you'll quickly find that it makes the overall results even worse, not better.
Using the correct, field-specific term may eliminate some of your objection.
Actually, the terms are quite correct, and your argument only succeeds in raising additional objections.
Re:Learn English!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
in the spirit of the book review...
4000+ dead
over a trillion $ spent,
all u got to say is about gaffes?
Re:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, although Pipes recognizes pretty clearly the distinction between, on one side, the moderate religious Muslims, and on the other the radical authoritarian pseudo-religious political nuts we all despise, he doesn't like the term "Islamofascism", as what they pursue isn't a fascist regime proper.
Basically, fascism was/is always nationalistic, and bound to the concept of a totalitarian central government ruling society. What these guys pursue, on the contrary, is a kind of stateless internationalistic decentralized totalitarianism. Thus, not quite the same thing. Both authoritarian, both totalitarian, but in very different ways.
He has some suggestions for naming this thing, basically variations around the word "Islamist", "Militant Islam", "Militant Islamism" etc., but I don't think any of those sound right. "Islamofascism" might not be accurate, but I guess we'll have to stick to it for se simple lack of a better alternative.
Re:Speaking of terroists... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's Cory's math, not mine.
What should we do? Stick our heads in the sand and ignore the threat? Rationalize that you are more likely to die in a car accident, so take no action?
I'm not advocating a course of action here...I'm merely pointing out that a "terrorist test" is doomed to failure.
If the DHS is set up to fail, they appear to have not had any failures in the last few years. May not be perfect, but maybe it is working?
Excellent point. On a related noted, I have a rock that repels tigers...perhaps you would be interested in purchasing it.
Seriously, can you point out any successes? After all, if I put on a bulletproof vest, and spend the next few hours without someone shooting at me, that cannot be taken as proof that the vest can successfully stop bullets.
Re:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh. (Score:3, Insightful)
He absolutely is a hack, and his primary agenda is disenfranchisement and marginalization of American Muslims. He thinks every mosque in the US is infiltrated with radicals and "Islamists" who want to overthrow our government. Doubtful Pipes has ever set foot in a mosque, though he's been invited.
His idea of a moderate Muslim is someone who calls himself Muslim but doesn't practice Islam, e.g., people like Irshad Manji -- the heroine of the anti-Muslim bigots in our country. (sorry if you like her -- she has nothing to do with mainstream Islam in the US or anywhere else).
Pipes is fine as long as the conversation is one-way with him spewing propaganda and fear-mongering -- challenge anything he says and he resorts to hostility (see other posts in this thread).
Re:The truth about prevention... (Score:3, Insightful)
The likelyhood of an attack on a plane. The TSA does, on the other hand, provide tempting targets in the form of people waiting in line for security checks.
I, for one, actually believe a government can significantly reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks.
Yeah, well, the chance of getting killed in a terrorist attack in the US is actually lower than the chance of accidentally drowning in a bathtub, so one can question the merits of wasting any money on it at all.
In fact, had islamic fundamentalists really wanted to efficiently kill or maim hundreds of thousands of Americans every year they'd be selling something that could power those mobile deathmachines called 'cars'. Oh, wait...
Re:Speaking of terroists... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are more options for what to do than "anything" and "nothing". We should do things that make sense, and that work. If someone points out that one thing we could do doesn't work, it does not make sense to say "Oh well, we gotta do something". We shouldn't do things that don't work, not even if we can't think of anything that does.
"I think people that pay cash for a one-way airline ticket need extra scrutiny."
How much extra scrutiny, at how much extra cost? It depends on how likely they are to be bad guys, doesn't it? People who buy one way tickets with cash are almost guaranteed to not be terrorists, because a lot of people do that every day for perfectly reasonable reasons, and there aren't very many terrorists. That's not even considering that actual terrorists can trivially adapt to your test and avoid scrutiny by not doing that. Spending any resources looking at last-minute one-way ticket buyers is a waste.
"If the DHS is set up to fail, they appear to have not had any failures in the last few years. May not be perfect, but maybe it is working?"
I wore my lucky red shirt to the doctors office again, and again I didn't have cancer...
DHS/TSA, for all I know, may be doing various effective, but less visible things. The specific, visible task of identifying terrorists at airport security checkpoints is basically impossible.
Terrorists stand in line? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really effective security would be to bring every last troop home, and place them in every port and border crossing into the US. Even more effective than their inspections would be the fact that they aren't in foreign countries blowing stuff up. It's very difficult to recruit people to kill the infidel when he's across the ocean behind hundreds of thousands of highly trained Marines, minding his own business.
Unfortunately this would require leaders in government (Republicans and Democrats) to do an about-face on how they deal with terrorism, and as anyone knows, getting a politician to admit a mistake is harder than getting one to tell the truth in the first place. But we're the ones to blame - when the greatest threat to our way of life, according to Sean Hannity, is that "we may be driving around in Yugos," you wonder if the society is worth saving in the first place.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who thinks that Daniel Pipes is (Score:3, Insightful)
He invented and promulgates the cognitive dissonance that is summarised by the phrase: "Islamofascism."
He's a real Israeli, dual-loyalist and "newspeak" maker of the first (lowest) rank. Pipes was teh founder of The Middle East Forum - purportedly a 'think-tank', really a propaganda and media policing agent for radical Israeli military/political objectives.
Who's next on teh
Re:Speaking of terroists... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not 'rationalizing.' That's proper allocation of resources. I could spend a really long time optimizing code that access data in memory and get it to be a few milliseconds faster, but if most of the time spent in the code is writing to disk, then I would be an idiot to not work on optimizing that aspect of the program instead.
I think people that pay cash for a one-way airline ticket need extra scrutiny.
I think people that move money around internationally through sketchy banks need some examination.
I'm not willing to jeopardize the freedoms and the privacy of thousands of innocent people to catch one or two criminals. The cure you're proposing is worse than the disease.
If you can identify who is paying for one-way airline tickets and a way of knowing who is paying cash for their tickets, or knowing where I'm moving my money to, then that's already an unacceptable intrusion into my life. That's before the "extra scrutiny" you think I deserve if I did any of those things. You should have to acquire some reason to suspect me of any wrongdoing and then go to a court and get a warrant in order to find out where I'm traveling to, and where I'm sending my money to.
If the government has enough reason to suspect that anyone has terrorist ties, they should have no problem getting warrants and requesting information from banks and airlines as to where these people are going and where they're sending they're money. They can also get a legal wiretap. But they need to have that terrorist connection suspicion first, and then they need to get individual warrants.
Re:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh. (Score:5, Insightful)
And this was a bad thing because... ?
Re:Speaking of terroists... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're joking, right? The only references on that page I saw pertaining to foiled terrorist attacks were the case of the "binary explosives" plot and the case of the Fort Dix Six. Regarding the former, it has already been debunked so many times that I'm surprised the DHS hasn't removed the reference from sheer shame. In the case of the latter, six guys who plotted to take on a military base with a couple of firearms, and were caught because they took their jihad training video to Circuit City to burn to DVD? Seriously? We're supposed to buy this?
Every single "terrorist threat" since 9/11 (which is itself suspect) has been either a ridiculous exaggeration, an entrapment scheme, or an outright hoax.
If you live in a war zone, I would keep my bulletproof vest on. Just because you did not get shot at today does not mean you are safe for tomorrow.
1) I don't live in a war zone. Neither do you.
2) You missed my point most spectacularly. Until a real bullet hits that vest, there is no proof that it can deflect bullets.
Re:So... test them again! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Review nitpick (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No book necessary (Score:3, Insightful)
As a counterpoint to your statement about very few governmental agencies being considered sponsors of terrorism, consider the number of people on government maintained no fly lists. You don't necessarily have to be a member of a foreign government to be opposed to US foreign policy and because of that opposition to be considered a threat.
Re:Daniel Pipes? (Score:1, Insightful)
And where was he wrong on this?
Multiple Wives
Female Circumcision
A culture of allowing slavery of non-Abrahmic peoples
And of course, the big one, Sharia.
So tell me how many of those things you'd tolerate a western country allowing? Fess up and be honest.
I'd guess you're pretty big on the concept of separation of Church and State, correct? Then why are you giving Islam a pass when that faith explicitly denies any such separation? In the Koran, there's no difference between political and religious leadership. They're one in the same, for the whole body, the Umah. Sharia is both a religious and a civil law.
And suppose you say "but Muslim immigrants will westernize"... and many new immigrants do. But the biggest rise in fundamentalism is among the western born children of those Muslim immigrants. The London bombings were carried out by young men born in Britain, well educated, with all of the advantages that citizenship and life in Britain could provide them. Many of them had parents that set up happy lives and successful businesses here.
And yet they chose Jihad and Sharia in their Mosques. They chose to bring the sword of Islam to the people of London. So please don't make the tired old argument that Islamic terrorism is mainly about poverty or secular politics. Islamic terrorism is mainly about religious ideas, and in short, mainly about Islam, or at least their idea of what pure Islam really is.
So... why is Pipes, or anyone else for that matter, guilty of racism or one of your other isms for pointing out that there are major, and in some cases, irreconcilable differences between us? After all, something has to give. Either we have to accept things like Sharia, or Muslim immigrants have to give it up. Why is it wrong to point that out?
Re:zeitgeist? (Score:3, Insightful)
All of you other countries lost the right to have the US stay out of world affairs. The US tried to avoid both world wars, and was brought in by plots of other nations. Now, the US is going to have its hands in whatever it can reach. We get attacked when we leave the rest of you alone, and we get attacked when we don't. We might as well sway some things in our favor, then.
Before you start mouthing off about human rights abuses and "terrorist acts" by the US, you should look up some other countries. I suggest you start with China, Myanmar, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Mexico [amnesty.org] , Brazil [amnesty.org], Colombia [amnesty.org], and Peru [ipsnews.net].
Re:Review nitpick (Score:2, Insightful)
Suicide describes what type of bomber. Bomber means someone who kills with explosives. I don't really see how changing suicide to homicide makes it any "worse".
Anyways, any media that would call them "homicide bombers" aren't the ones that will be followed by the group that produces the suicide bombers.
It's just emotional gut-thinking that just makes you feel better.
What term do you use to describe the kamikaze of WW2? Divine Wind is a pretty romantic term, especially when you consider the first Kamikaze and what it meant for Japan. Are they homikaze? Last-ditch-act-of-desperation-due-to-lack-of-resources-including-veteran-pilots-kaze?
I can look at the term "suicide bomber" and not think: oh, the poor lad went so emo, the only way for him to describe his anguish to another was with the destructive blast and shrapnel of an explosives vest, I really should feel sorry for him and subscribe to his newsletter. All this bellyfeel claptrap will be the end of western civilization, not some schmuck wearing a few pounds of C-4.
Re:The Sad Part (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There are no terrorists (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:thousands of lives could have been saved (Score:1, Insightful)
> insurgents use the same methods, but it's not terrorism
How do you define terrorism? I think the general idea is to shock a population by committing spectacularly violent attacks against its civilians. Whether the attacker is from Belfast, Bethlehem or Baghdad, terrorism is about killing non-combatants.
> The insurgency in Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism
If they're not targeting civilians I don't call them terrorists. But in the intertwining subplots of this bloodbath, we also have a Sunni vs Shi'a civil war, Kurdish aggression against Turks, a group that calls itself "Al Qaeda in Iraq", and lots of goons and freelancers who probably aren't quite sure what they want.
And we have tens of thousands of dead civilians.
Re:Speaking of terroists... (Score:2, Insightful)
You will save more lives if you spend the money on preventing car accidents than spending on anti terrorism. I assume the aim of the game is to save lives?
It should all be about bang for your buck. You can only do so much, so do the most effective.
Re:Anyone who thinks that Daniel Pipes is (Score:1, Insightful)
moderator abuse (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Terrorists stand in line? (Score:3, Insightful)
Call me when this revolution of yours starts, I want to post it on youtube.
But seriously, I wonder at the loud scoffing denials heard from most people at the mention of an "american empire"--and then I remember that very few know that the USA occupies portions (large and small) of over 100 different nations. By invitation, of course!
Doesn't address the fundamental problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The truth is, we are not going to win any war against terrorism - it's like the 'Gumby Brain Surgery'(ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumbys [wikipedia.org]). We have to understand why something so utterly irrational as terrorism can not only exist, but spread rapidly; really, I would have thought that much was obvious. The good news is that it isn't impossible; as the book suggests, these people are rational, often intelligent, and if they can arrive at the conclusion that they have to go and blow themselves and other people up, then we can follow their logic. I should think that there is a good chance that we will discover one or two points that we can address intelligently, thus breaking the rationale of their reasoning. This is all about popular support - the terrorists have popular support because they can argue strongly for their goals; we can make their arguments weak if we know what we are doing, and once they lose popular support, they will soon cease to be a threat.
Is it historically rigorous? (Score:2, Insightful)
Can we classify the various Haiti independence movements during the 1700s as terrorists? Do we?
Would similar procedures apply to Tsarist Russia? When Tsar Alexander II had been killed in a bomb blast in Nevsky Prospekt on March the third, 1881?
In post-Krakatau-eruption Dutch East Indies? When there where a significant number of disaffected Javanese?
What about the Moro resistance to the US annexation of Mindanao? The Cebuan resistance to the US annexation of Cebu?
In the south of China around the time of the Long March?
During the Mau-Mau in Kenya?
You see, as they say, "One man's terrorist is another man's guerilla/Freedom Fighter/useful idiot/Republican senator/US President" etc, ad nauseam
At various times, apparently terrorists were obviously Jews and homosexuals and Catholics and Protestants and Poles and Marxists and voodun priests and
We have some downright brilliant people in power, and they won't stop until everybody's been fucked up the arse with curare-tipped depleted uranium-covered thermonuclear fenceposts - themselves excluded, naturally.
Re:Speaking of terroists... (Score:2, Insightful)
This administration has lied through their collective teeth to us about everything else...but when it comes to the events surrounding 9/11, the administration's Official Version of Events is sacrosanct.
Not all advocates of 9/11 truth are raving loons that maintain that there were no planes and that space beams destroyed the Towers...although this administration would very much like you to believe that that is the case.
Re:Terrorists stand in line? (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm.. Yes. By invitation. With the possible exception of the two bases in Okinawa, Japan and Ramstein, Germany. These two bases were granted to us as part of the surrender treaties from both countries at the end of WW2. However, I can assure you that if either Germany or Japan were to ask us to leave, we would. Leaving behind the multi-million dollar military bases that we set up there, taking only the movable equipment.
How do I know this would happen? Because it's happened MULTIPLE TIMES in the past. Indeed, just in the past year in Iraq alone the US military has turned over no less than 13 military bases to the fledgling Iraqi army. Here [wikipedia.org] is an incomplete list of JUST Air Force bases closed worldwide. Discounting the ones in the United States (Which, admittedly, make up the majority of the list), there are at least 25 bases that have been closed worldwide, with most of them turned over in whole to the host country.
Of course, Those that say we are "Imperialists" also discount the BILLIONS annually that the United States government pumps into the economies of foreign countries through aid, grants, and (of course) RENT AND TAXES for the land the military bases are on. Yep, that's right. We PAY RENT AND TAXES to the host countries for that land. Not exactly the behavior of an Imperialist country, wouldn't you say? Indeed , an "Empire" is defined as a nation state that has political control over other nation states, and uses that political control to extract the wealth and resources from the subjugated country . How the hell does paying THEM money and giving THEM resources make the U.S. an "Empire"?
It doesn't. Indeed, the whole Imperialism argument is nothing more than intellectual dishonesty and mental masturbation by those that have their hate on for America. Get the facts straight bub. No Imperialism here.
Re:Terrorists stand in line? (Score:3, Insightful)
More currently, the proposed "Iraqi" oil law is a 100% American creation that tilts the playing field in the favor of Exxon et al.
Oh and the so called "aid" money is usually nothing more than subsidies for well-connected American businesses. They'll announce a few billion in aid to country X. That money goes straight to favored American compainies for over inflated goods and services that country X often doesn't even need.
American imperialism is a fact. Paying rent for bases doesn't change anything. Its a token gesture that you've seized on. Its sad though that nothing makes Americans more rabid than being reminded of their sins.