Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review by Fred Edwards

Crosshairs
Military Matters in Review

by Fred Edwards

The mission of Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review is to enhance the military defense of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This ambitious goal covers every aspect of U.S. and foreign military matters. It has filled my agenda with more than two dozen topics from which I draw to write my columns, such as:

* U.S. Armed Forces

* Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran

* Pakistan

* China

* Russia

* Western Pacific

* Latin America

* Cyberwar

* Energy

* Space

* Special operations

* WMD

* Radical Islamism

* Problem regimes such as Syria, North Korea, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and the Taliban

The latest Crosshairs column is to the right. To see previous columns click here for the online archives.

My book: The Bridges of Vietnam: from the Journals of a U.S. Marine Intelligence Officer

Buy from Amazon.com $39.95 (hardcover), $18.95 (softcover)

My book: The Buffie Brigade. Big Ugly Fragile Elephants, glazed, crazed and grazed in Vietnam.

Buy from Amazon.com $10.95

My book: It's My Story and I'm Stuck With It!: A Boy Trades His Superman Cape for Manhood

Buy from Amazon.com $13.95

My book: Sailors are Reasonable (SAR): The Saga of Foredeck Fred

SAR cover

Buy from Amazon.com $9.95

My book: Amy Utter's Journeys: TB and Other Tragedies in Rural America's Heartland

Buy from Amazon.com $13.95

Special from the publisher of Armed Forces News

"Fred Edwards has proved himself on the battlefield as an effective military leader and in the newsroom as a talented writer, superb reporter and keen-eyed columnist. As our Senior Associate Editor, retired Marine Lt. Col. Fred Edwards is an insightful observer of the military, whose global perspective provides readers with a deeper understanding of the issues that both divide and separate us in today's world."
Don Mace
Publisher
Armed Forces News

Armed Forces News provides military personnel with the latest news to inform them about their pay and benefits, as well as to alert them to developments in their military careers.

To receive future columns by e-mail click here.

A tale of two of America's enemies:

An American turncoat and a Japanese patriot

by Fred Edwards

Sept. 3, 2010 - During the Cold War the Soviets maintained an American town where their diplomats and undercover trainees lived, worked, attended school, and even talked like Americans. In the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, the United States provided the town. Al-Awlaki was born in Las Cruces, N.M., a desert city of less than 100,000 people, where he lived for his first six or seven years. Then his father and mother took him to their homeland, Yemen. By the time al-Awlaki was twenty, he was back in the United States, attending Colorado State University.

Today al-Awlaki has reached the forefront as America's most dangerous enemy, because he is busy recruiting followers and inspiring attacks, according to the CIA. He knows how Americans think and how to talk to them. He is so good at it that the Arabic satellite network Al Arabiya calls him the "bin Laden of the Internet."

The FBI had kept a watch on al-Awlaki for years, but moved only when U.S. Army Major Nidal Hassan was charged with the November Fort Hood massacre. Hassan had e-mailed al-Awlaki for advice before the attack, and afterwards al-Awlaki praised Hassan, and exhorted other Muslim soldiers to launch similar attacks.

The FBI also connected al-Awlaki with other terrorist activities as follows:

* He preached to two of the 9/11 hijackers -- Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar - at the Rabat Mosque in San Diego. Also, according to the 9/11 panel report, he helped several hijackers obtain money and apartments while he was the chief cleric of the mosque.

* He met with Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before Abdulmutallab was arrested for attempting to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight last Christmas.

* His online lectures inspired Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, to try to explode a car bomb in New York City's Times Square last May.

Al-Awlaki returned to Yemen in 2004, where he was arrested on kidnapping charges. He was released in 2007 after 18 months in jail, and is believed to be hiding in Yemen. The Obama administration has named him, now 39, as a global terrorist and has targeted him for assassination.

ACLU Deputy Director Jameel Jaffer has taken great affront to this. "The power that the administration is claiming is essentially the power to effectively invoke the death penalty without charge, without trial," he said.

Robert Grenier, former director of the CIA's counterterrorism center, says that, if al-Awlaki was in the United States, he might deserve a trial with constitutional protections. But, since he is overseas, he can be treated like any other military enemy. "Awlaki is outside U.S. jurisdiction and so beyond the reach of U.S. law," he said. "If you are not subject to U.S. law, you lose the protections of U.S. law."

On April 18, 1943, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamato boarded a Mitsubishi medium bomber to fly to the Northern Solomons for an inspection tour. Yamamato, the architect of the attack against Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was considered to be the most dangerous admiral in the Japanese fleet. U.S. code breakers had discovered his itinerary, so American P-38s flew more than 600 miles over open ocean to intercept his aircraft and blow it out of the sky. That mission was approved by President Roosevelt.

Yamamoto also had attended an American university -- Harvard -- from 1919 to 1921, and had returned to live in the United States -- as the Japanese naval attaché -- from 1925 to 1928. He was assassinated as America's most dangerous enemy -- and Americans rejoiced when he was gone.

To the very end, Yamamoto put his homeland before everything else. But al-Awlaki turned against the land of his birth without even bothering to renounce his citizenship.

This article may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review at www.milmat.net by Fred Edwards.

Other content of Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review may be copied or retransmitted for information purposes, but may not be used for any commercial purpose without my written permission. Please credit the source as "Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review" at www.milmat.net by Fred Edwards.

To receive future columns by e-mail click here.

Fred Edwards is a military columnist and journalist. He has contributed articles to more than two dozen periodicals and has written eight books, including The Bridges of Vietnam: From the Journals of a U.S. Marine Intelligence Officer, The Buffie Brigade, Sailors are Reasonable (SAR): The Saga of Foredeck Fred, and his latest, It's My Story and I'm Stuck With It! A Boy Trades His Superman Cape for Manhood

Top