{"id":1961,"date":"2016-04-04T12:56:47","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T09:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libridergi.org\/en\/2015-en\/trans-2015\/008"},"modified":"2016-07-12T14:03:16","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T11:03:16","slug":"008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.libridergi.org\/en\/2016-en\/008","title":{"rendered":"Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield<\/a><\/h2>\n

Jeremy SCAHILL<\/h3>\n
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ISBN: <\/strong>9781846688515
\nPage:<\/strong>\u00a0642
\nPublication Year:<\/strong> 2014
\nLocation:<\/strong>\u00a0London
\nPublisher:<\/strong> Profile Books<\/p><\/div>

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<\/div>\nLIBRI<\/em> II (2016) 107-132<\/strong>
\nDOI<\/strong>:\u00a010.20480\/lbr.2016008
\nReceived Date<\/strong>: 08.03.2016 |\u00a0Acceptance Date<\/strong>: 20.03.2016
\nOnline Publication Date<\/strong>: 04.04.2016
\nCopyright \u00a9 Journal of Book Notices, Reviews and Translations, 2016<\/p>\n

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\"info\"\u00a0 <\/a>Citation<\/a>
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J. SCAHILL, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield<\/em>. London 2014. Profile Books, 642 pages. ISBN: 9781846688515<\/strong><\/p>\n

Underestimating the Consequences in the 21st<\/sup> Century of the Middle Ages<\/p>\n

Jeremy Scahill\u2019s book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, (there is also the film from the book, entitled, \u201cDirty Wars\u201d<\/em>, a Sundance Film Festival official selection in 2013[1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>) is an exposure of an aspect of covert warfare, focusing upon targeted killings, meaning State sponsored-State directed assassinations, in the 21st<\/sup> century. Listed as a current affairs title, at more than six hundred pages with footnotes, index and 8 pages of colour photographs, it is certainly a book worth reading as contesting the current spin given to state sponsored assassination-murder since September 11th<\/sup> 2001[2]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. However, for those with more than a casual passing interested in this morally repellent policy of extra-judicial murder – targeted killings by a State, that is State sponsored assassinations, in modern language \u201cExecutive Action\u201d<\/em>[3]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, intentional killing \u2013 a practice that has its origin as a methodology of state policy in the Middle Ages, this book unfortunately fails to seriously address the Middle Ages, either in the matter of the historical precedent for this practice, nor in the historical record of the consequences for those states that have chosen to employ this methodology, in effect, if unintentionally, leading the reader to think this employment of a State policy of \u201cExecutive Action\u201d,<\/em> – murder incorporated is something relatively modern, belonging to the 20th<\/sup> -21st<\/sup> centuries. Admittedly within a book on current affairs published in 2013 a familiarity with the Middle Ages might seem somewhat irrelevant, if not obtuse and unexpected, given the march of technological fashion, but precedent remains of abiding consequence. As a result of this omission, this book provides a somewhat deceptive, a-historical, post-modern perspective for this practice, isolated from its origin in past precedent and practice, divorced as a practice from its historical origin within a meta-narrative and consequently seemingly lacking in any possible resolution. A few pages in the introduction, or in an afterward, placing this practice of State sponsored assassination within its historical context, setting and pattern, would have been a most valuable addition to this work for any of the many potentially deracinated modern western readers and the followers of The End of History[4]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> and the Last Man thesis of Francis Fukuyama[5]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, with the occluding thereby of the historical consequences of actions, through the alleged universalization of Western so-called liberal democracy, a form of consumerism[6]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, that Jeremy Scahill\u2019s book illuminates, through providing a look at the back-lighting and noises off, to the slogans, media sound-bites and glossy illusions. It is the absence of this historical context that this review makes some slight attempt to redress.<\/p>\n

It is of course a matter of the transference from one specific religious-cultural context into a subsequent and different one, the reasons for, the sponsors of, the means and the consequence of this transference that are of considerable interest, not least because the adoption of a State policy of assassination, of \u2018Executive Action\u2019 by the President of the Republic of the United States of America is a relatively recent, and a relatively well documented 20th<\/sup> c. development.<\/p>\n

There are serious matters raised by this book concerning the understanding of the historical past, with the inevitable implications for understanding the present and future, even if one evades the post-modernist trap of confusions and anachronisms of time and space, helicopters in World War Two etc<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For example, one reads on page 239, a quote from Al Shabaab (Xarakada Mujaahidiinta Alshabaab – The Youth Striving for the Religion – (striving in the sense of striving in the path described by the Almighty, so far as this can be understood by a human being) jihad fi sabil Allah<\/em>) describing the United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, later assassinated in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011:<\/p>\n

\u201cO Sheik, we would not only look at you as only a soldier, but as the likes of ibn Taymiya (an Islamic scholar known for resisting the Mongols in the thirteenth century)<\/em>\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, the gloss given to this statement by al-Shabaab, the explanatory description added in brackets to Al-Saabab\u2019s text by Jeremy Scahill is factually wrong. ibn Taymiyyah\u2019s three famous fatwas against the Mongols were probably all, two certainly, written in the first decades of the XIVth<\/sup> century[8]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, and he personally fought against the Mongols, matching words with deeds, at the Battle of Marj al-Saffar on the 20th<\/sup> of April 1303[9]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, that is, early in the XIVth<\/sup> century. The author provides in this gloss a somewhat limited and strange description of this Hanbali jurist and member of the Qadiriya Sufi Order, Taqi ud- D\u012bn Abu-l-\u2018Abbas Ahmad ibn \u2018Abd al-Halim ibn \u2018Abd as-Salam ibn Taymiyyah, who was born in Harran in south-eastern Anatolia (Jaz\u00eerah) in 1263, and who, because of his legal rulings (fatwas) spent time in Maml\u016bke Damascus in prison (1319-21 and 1326-8), where he died in 1328. He was concerned with the spiritual and moral regeneration and re-armament of the Muslim community in the period following the destruction of the Abbasid Caliphate by Pagan Mongol, Armenian and Georgian forces five years before his birth, with the Mongol execution of the last Abbasid Caliph al-Musta\u2019sim (1242-58), and of the matter of authority, Caliphal, from the Sultan, or from the religious scholars, drawn from the religion itself – essentially a man concerned with the sources of legitimacy being rooted in the Holy Koran and hadith for actions within and by the Muslim community of his day and of the community\u2019s return to, and its adherence to first principles. Consequently his concerns, like those of the founder of the Qadiriyya Order, Sheik al-Sayyid Muhiyud\u012bn Abu Muhammad Abdal Qadir al-Jilani al-Hasani wa\u2019l-Hussaini al-Baghdadi (1077-1166), were of a much deeper and of a far more long-lasting nature than simply resisting or combatting the Mongol onslaughts on the world of Islam through issuing legal rulings describing the Mongols as pagans against whom was invoked the duty of jihad. Ibn Taymiyyah having the clarity and strength of his faith to even rebuke in person the Mongol ruler Gh\u0101z\u0101n Kh\u0101n on the 1st<\/sup> of January 1300, as the single articulate member of an otherwise entirely silent delegation which had been sent from the city of Damascus to the Khan outside the city, to remonstrate against the probable Mongol slaughter of the civilian population of the city, to obtain protection – am\u0101n<\/em> for the civilians of Damascus from the Mongol ruler, who had accepted Islam in 694\/1295,[10]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> which he secured. The account of the actions of this delegation, with its single fearless member, is perhaps the most probable of the historical sources for the well-known teaching tale by the incomparable Mulla-Hoja Nasr ed-D\u012bn (more properly Nasir al-D\u012bn, meaning Defender of the Faith, i.e. Defender of Islam), concerning the delegation and the elephant and the Mongol ruler, today usually named Timur, but more probably, Gh\u0101z\u0101n Kh\u0101n, with the location likewise changed from Damascus to Ak\u015fehir:<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to one story, Timur had ordered his battle elephants to be quartered in the vicinity of his field quarters. Accordingly, one elephant was assigned to each nearby village. Since the elephants consume large amounts of food and are fond of tree bark, they began to inflict considerable damage to the crops, orchards and vineyards. The elders of a village, deciding that they could no longer withstand the ruination, sought out Nasreddin and asked him to be their spokesman, to relay their wish to Timur that their elephant be withdrawn. Nasreddin agreed on one condition. The entire delegation was to accompany him to Timur’s throne. Members of the delegation agree. Nasreddin takes the lead, with the elders in tow, and they begin their trek to the encampment. As the delegation approaches the multitudes of guards, some of which are mounted, others on foot, in full battle gear and colourful attires, the members of the delegation begin to have second thoughts. One by one they begin deserting the procession <\/em>(perhaps unsurprisingly resembling the fortunes of the individual birds in the course of their journey recorded in Farid ud-D\u012bn Attar\u2019s (ca.<\/em> 1120-1220) Mantiq ut-Tayr, or, \u201cThe conference of the birds\u201d<\/em>, on the language of the birds, that is, the language of peoples\u2019 spirits). As Nasreddin approaches Timur\u2019s resplendent throne, he realizes that he is alone. Feeling betrayed and becoming furious, he proceeds nonetheless. The Chamberlain announces Nasreddin. Timur queries majestically: \u201cState your business\u201d. After due and proper salutation, Nasreddin begins: \u201cYour Highness, the residents of this village asked me to relay their highest respects to you. They are quartering one of your battle elephants, but they have a small worry\u201d. \u201cMay they be blessed. What is their worry?\u201d \u201cYour Highness, they have noticed that the elephant in their charge appears to be unhappy with his lot. He may be suffering from loneliness. They desire a companion for him\u201d. \u201cLet it be\u201d. Timur seems pleased and orders a pouch of gold coins be given to Nasreddin along with a new suit of clothes. Nasreddin leaves the Presence of Timur and on the way back, the delegation reassembles the way it dispersed. They are very curious of the outcome and wish to share in the good fortune of their Chief-Emissary. Nasreddin observes wryly: \u201cYou harvest what you sow\u201d<\/em>[11]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Or, in a further version of the ending, the delegates ask,<\/p>\n

\u201c-Please tell us, Hodja, what happened?<\/em><\/p>\n

-I have great news for you, beams the Hodja. To keep the male calamity company, a female calamity will soon arrive. Now you can rejoice<\/em>\u201d[12]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. The elephant symbolising the worldly appetite of the army of Mongol troops the Khan had quartered on the district, eating the population out of house and home etc<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more importantly, Ahmad ibn Taymiyya was imprisoned and died in prison in Damascus for having issued 17 years earlier an explosive legal ruling forbidding the visiting of graves, with certain clearly defined exceptions, <\/em>as any pilgrim undertaking any such visit to a grave, ie. ziyarat al-qubur<\/em>, would, in his ruling, be probably guilty of the sin of innovation (bidah<\/em>) and would in consequence, in his view, be a polytheist, practicing ziyara bid\u2019iya<\/em>\/Ziyarat al-mushrikin<\/em>[13]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Standing in the Hanbali school of law, extending from Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855), who was a collector of hadith and a volunteer in a ribat<\/em> on the frontier of Islam and one who survived the lashing and imprisonment meted out by the mihna<\/em> instituted by the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun to impose the doctrine of the Created-ness of the Holy Koran upon the jurists, a man deeply concerned with adhering to Prophetic precedent as distinct from innovation-bid\u2019at<\/em>, and passing through ibn Taymiyya who likewise was a physical participant in the jihad (in 1303 against the Mongols, as noted above) and experienced imprisonment, if Maml\u016bke rather than Caliphal, and extending via his follower, fellow prisoner and exegete Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292-1350), to Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-87) and the modern Ikwan, the Wahh\u0101bis and the Jihadists and Salafists of today, for Jeremy Scahill to characterise the life and work of Ahmad ibn Taymiyya as an, \u201cIslamic scholar known for resisting the Mongols in the thirteenth century<\/em>\u201d within this context, is not only historically somewhat inaccurate, but seems to be somewhat strange, within the context of this quote from al-Shabaab. Perhaps ibn Taymiyyah could rather to be characterised as an, \u201cIslamic scholar known for resisting what he understood as innovation-bid\u2019at in the religion and for aspiring thereby to return to first principles\u201d <\/em>or, alternatively, from a quite different perspective, Jeremy Scahill could have cited \u02beAb\u016b \u02bfAbd al-L\u0101h Mu\u1e25ammad ibn \u02bfAbd al-L\u0101h l-Law\u0101t\u012b \u1e6d-\u1e6can\u01e7\u012b ibn Ba\u1e6d\u016b\u1e6dah (1304-68), the Maliki jurist and famous traveller and chronicler, who reported that while ibn Taymiyyah was preaching from the mimber of the mosque in 1326 before he was imprisoned, he had said, \u201cGod comes down to the sky of this world\u00a0 just as I come down now<\/em>\u201d, and ibn Taymiyyah then descended one step of the mimber, leading to the charge of anthropomorphism; while ibn Battutah also notably remarked that Ibn Taymiyyah, being a man of some considerable intemperance, could be characterised as having a \u201cscrew loose<\/em>\u201d[14]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, a charge perhaps more related to the matter of realising a particular perspective than one might at first think.<\/p>\n

The Hanbalite ibn Taymiyyah can be seen as following on from, and building upon the Shafi-led Jihad preaching in Damascus of the XIIth<\/sup> century against the Fatimids, Niz\u0101ris and Crusaders, with works such as, Arba\u2018un fi l-ijtihad fi iqamat al-jihad<\/em>, Forty in the Cause of Jihad, a collection of 40 hadith, which were carefully selected by Imam Hafiz Abul Qasim \u2018Ali ibn Hasan ibn \u2018Asakir (1106-75), a Damascene Shafi\u2019i scholar and master of jihad propaganda for Sultan N\u016br ad-D\u012bn Ab\u016b al-Q\u0101sim Ma\u1e25m\u016bd ibn \u02bfIm\u0101d ad-D\u012bn Zangi (1118-74), chosen to serve the Sultan\u2019s purpose in Jihad against the Crusaders, Isma\u2019ilis, Fatimids and others. The Sultan had his Dar al-Hadith in Damascus built for ibn \u2018Asakir, following upon the functional precedent of the Fatimid-Isma\u2019ili Dar al-‘Ilm<\/em>, the House of Knowledge, Dar al-Hikma<\/em> – House of Isma\u2019ili Wisdom, Dar al-Dawa <\/em>\u2013 House of Propaganda, stemming from the Dar al-\u2018Ilm<\/em> founded by the Shii\u2019ite Vizier Ab\u016b Nasr S\u0101b\u016br ibn Ardash\u012br in Shii\u2019ite run Baghdad in 991-3[15]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, to produce propagandists equipped to pass on and deliver the Shii\u2019ite message, be it 12\u2019ver Imami, Fatimi or Niz\u0101ri, etc<\/em>. The importance of this selection of jihad hadith is that they don\u2019t identify the \u2018enemy\u2019, which are characterised simply as \u201cenemy, unbelievers, and tyrants<\/em>\u201d[16]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The danger inherent in this perspective was recognised by Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Tusi al-Shafi’i al-Ghazali (1058-1111) the Proof of Islam – Hujjat al-Islam, <\/em>\u00a0at a somewhat earlier date, in respect to the practice of the bidding to good and the forbidding of evil, \u201chizba<\/em>\u201d, in that there was and there is a certain potential towards a worldly anarchic chaos emerging if due restraint, a certain patience in respect to these matters was\/is not exercised and, in consequence, although recognising that a bad sultan in theory should indeed be deposed or be obliged to resign, the reality he stated was that:<\/p>\n

\u201cAn evil-doing and barbarous sultan, so long as he is supported by military force, so that he can only with difficulty be deposed, and that the attempt to depose him would create unendurable civil strife, must of necessity be left in possession, and obedience must be rendered to him<\/em>\u201d[17]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. So much, was al-Ghazali\u2019s recorded view of the merits of temporal events, such is the patience called for, together with Asharite occasionalism, the Almighty\u2019s on-going Creation – rather than for example the so-called \u201cArab Spring<\/em>\u201d unrolling from December 2010 onwards and its consequences for the individual believer and society.<\/p>\n

Another problematic passage of the few mentions of the Middle Ages in Jeremy Scahill\u2019s work occurs on page 390 where one reads:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other <\/em>(parcel bomb which was sent to the address of a Jewish organisation in 2010 in \u201cObama\u2019s city<\/em>\u201d[18]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> of Chicago) was addressed to Reynald Krak, a French knight of the Second Crusade known for his mass murder of Muslims. Krak was eventually beheaded by Saladin, the Muslim warrior who defeated the Crusaders in the twelfth century<\/em>\u201d[19]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The name of the intended recipient of the parcel bomb \u201cReynald Krak<\/em>\u201d is the Arabic name given to the French Crusader Renaud de Ch\u00e2tillon 1125-1187, who, while Prince of Antioch had been captured and imprisoned from 1161-76 by Sultan N\u016br ad-D\u012bn Ab\u016b al-Q\u0101sim Ma\u1e25m\u016bd ibn \u02bfIm\u0101d ad-D\u012bn Zangi (1118-74), but who after his release, when his ransom of 50 kg. of gold was paid, became, through marriage in 1177 to Stephanie (widow of both Humphrey III of Toron and Miles of Plancy, and the heiress of the lordship of Oultrejordain), the Lord of Oultrejordain and was then based in his fortress of Kerak (Krak des Moabiles Ar. Al Karak \u0627\u0644\u0643\u0631\u0643\u200e), 140 km south of Amman, a fort which had been constructed from 1142 onwards by Pagan le Bouteiller (the Butler). Hence where the passage reads, \u201cKrak was eventually beheaded by Saladin<\/em>\u201d, it should rather read, Renaud of Kerak or Renaud, Lord of Oultrejordain \u201cwas eventually beheaded by Saladin<\/em>\u201d. The Latin Crusader fortress of Kerak was \u2018beheaded\u2019, if these words could be understood as meaning such, when it was taken from the Crusaders who surrendered to the besieging Ayy\u016bbid forces in the winter of 1188-9 in the aftermath of Sultan \u1e62al\u0101\u1e25 ad-D\u012bn Y\u016bsuf ibn Ayy\u016bb\u2019s victory over the Latin Crusader army at the battle of the Horns of Hatt\u012bn on the 3rd<\/sup> and 4th<\/sup> of July 1187.<\/p>\n

It was from the fortress of Kerak that early in 1183 Renaud launched the raid that sealed his fate. Renaud after his years of imprisonment was a fluent Arabic speaker and he certainly understood the importance of the Haram and of pilgrimage to the Holy Cities and the importance of ensuring the protection of Muslim pilgrims for Muslim rulers. Consequently he ordered the construction, which took two years, and then the transport in sections, of five galleys overland from Kerak to Aylah on the Red Sea, where this Crusader fleet was launched in February. Two of these galleys, together with Renaud\u2019s land forces, blockaded the Muslim port of Aqaba-Eilat until it was relieved. The other three galleys, for a period of more than 6 weeks brought sack and pillage to the coastal villages of the Red Sea and death to its Muslim pilgrims, 16 ships were burnt, a pilgrim ship was captured and also a caravan coming from the Nile, and these Crusader raiders were thought to threaten the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina[20]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. The crews and Latin troops on these three galleys were forced to abandon them and flee overland on the approach of the Egyptian fleet of al-Adil, \u1e62al\u0101\u1e25 ad-D\u012bn Y\u016bsuf ibn Ayy\u016bb\u2019s brother, placed in charge of Egypt, whose ships from Fust\u0101t and Alexandria led by the Armenian Muslim Admiral of the Egyptian fleet, Hus\u0101m al-D\u012bn Lu\u2019lu\u2019, had been transported, in response to this Crusader fleet, overland from the Nile to search throughout the Red Sea for these galleys of the Latin pirate trespassers. The 170 survivors surrendered and were then executed on Sultan Salah ad-D\u012bn\u2019s orders, in Mecca, Medina, Cairo and Alexandria for public edification concerning the consequences of defiling the sacred territory. The last time such a threat to the Holy Places – after the news of a threatened Latin land invasion of the Hejaz in June 1181[21]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, followed by Renaud\u2019s reconnaissance of the overland route in the winter of 1181-2[22]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, and the sea raid of 1183 – had occurred 250 years earlier, when the Qarmatian, abu T\u0101hir Sulaym\u0101n from his capital of al-Ahs\u0101 where he had abolished Sharia law, cut the pilgrimage routes and in 930 raided, sacked and slaughtered perhaps 13,000 people in Mecca and removed the Black Stone (al-\u1e24ajar al-Aswad<\/em>) from the Ka\u2019bah (It was only returned 20 years later in 951 at the instigation of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mansur).<\/p>\n

It was because Sultan \u1e62al\u0101\u1e25 ad-D\u012bn had sworn to slay with his own hand Renaud, Lord of Oultrejordain, because he knew that Renaud was the planner responsible for this, in Muslim eyes, sacrilegious operation, the breaker of the truce, that Renaud was beheaded on July the 4th<\/sup> 1187 following his capture at the Crusader defeat at the Horns of Hatt\u012bn. \u1e62al\u0101\u1e25 ad-D\u012bn had written to his brother al-Adil, \u201cTheir attack was an unparalleled enormity in the history of Islam<\/em>\u201d[23]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. Renaud was personally executed by Sultan Salah ad-D\u012bn\u00a0 (1169-93) being quite beyond the reach of the Sultan\u2019s mercy for his actions, having transgressed all bounds in launching his heart stopping Crusader naval attack on the pilgrimage route and threatening the Haram of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. This presents us with a rather different picture from that which is presented to the reader in this book by J. Scahill, that Saladin\u00a0 personally executed Renaud because he was, \u201cknown for his mass murder of Muslims<\/em>\u201d, mass murder of Muslims which seems to be otherwise unrecorded of Renaud. Which is not to say Renaud, Lord of Oultrejordain,\u00a0 wasn\u2019t an intemperate, violent man, a killer, he was recorded as such, ordering some of his prisoners thrown off the battlements of his castle of Kerak etc<\/em>., but he was not recorded by contemporaries as being a mass murderer of Muslims. Consequently this parcel bomb was not \u2018addressed,\u2019 to a \u2018mass murderer of Muslims\u2019<\/em> but, within this historical context one may rather suggest, to the violators of the Haram, the Noble Sanctuary (al-Haram al-Sharif) at al-Quds-Jerusalem, and so was presumably intended to mark opposition to the passage of Israeli legislation giving the city, al-Quds, legally divided since 1947 between the Palestinian East and Israeli West Jerusalem, the highest national priority status in Israel, through the 2010 law prioritizing Israeli construction throughout the city, and offering grants and tax benefits to Israeli residents to make housing, infrastructure, education, employment, business, tourism, and cultural events more affordable, to completely overwhelm the diminished Muslim population of the city, building more Israeli \u201cfacts<\/em>\u201d on the ground in complete disregard of international law.<\/p>\n

It should also be noted that neither the jurist, ibn Taymiya <\/em>(ibn Taymiyya\/ ibn Taym\u012bya), nor the Lord of Oultrejordain, Reynald Krak <\/em>(Renaud de Ch\u00e2tillon), nor yet Sultan Saladin <\/em>(\u1e62al\u0101\u1e25 ad-D\u012bn Y\u016bsuf ibn Ayy\u016bb) are to be found listed in the index to this book, an index extending over 27 pages, yet an index which fails to register these seminal Medieval figures which are mentioned in the text; yet an index which does however register the Salahuddin Centre<\/em>, run by al Shabaab in 2004 in Mogadishu, Somalia, as being found on page 200. The Salah ud-Din\/Saladin Centre was named after the leader of the jihad that reclaimed from Latin Catholic rule, the third holiest city in the world for Islam, al-Quds-Jerusalem, on Friday the 2nd<\/sup> of October 1187, that is, Sultan \u1e62al\u0101\u1e25 ad-D\u012bn Y\u016bsuf ibn Ayy\u016bb (Salah ud-Din\/Saladin<\/em>), whose name is not itself otherwise listed in this index.<\/p>\n

The Original Assassin State<\/p>\n

As Umberto Eco wrote a quarter of a century ago in respect to the \u2018Western world\u2019:\u00a0 \u201cThe Middle Ages are the root of all our contemporary \u201chot\u201d problems<\/em>\u201d[24]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>; these problems not derived from antiquity[25]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, as, \u201cboth Americans and Europeans are inheritors of the Western legacy, and all the problems of the Western world emerged in the Middle Ages: Modern languages, merchant cities, capitalistic economy (along with banks, cheques <\/em>(saqh), and prime rate) are inventions of medieval society. In the Middle Ages we witness the rise of modern armies, of the modern concept of the nation state, as well as the idea of a supernatural federation; the struggle between poor and rich, the concept of heresy or ideological deviation, even our contemporary notion of love as a devastatingly unhappy happiness<\/em>\u201d[26]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. Consequently, the contextualisation, even if only briefly, of the first assassin state, the historical precedent for this modern policy and polity of assassination in the 21st<\/sup> century, could have aided the diligent reader of this book. Two hundred years ago in a book entitled \u201cAn History of Muhammadism (sic)<\/em>\u201d, written by the historian and follower of Edward Gibbon, Charles Mills (1788\u20131826), to be read for example by those setting out from London in the course of the long voyage by sailing ship around the Cape of Good Hope to make their grave and\/or fortune working for the Hon. East India Company in India, there is a passage of some considerable relevance:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Assassins appeared in the north of Persia, under the title of Hussunees <\/em>(from Hussan Subah, their founder), and have obtained eternal infamy, by the introduction of a corruption’ of their name <\/em>(Assassins) into most of the modern European languages\u2026 A blind obedience to the will of their leader was therefore naturally their first principle of action, and the passport to future happiness. He sent them into foreign courts, in order to kill the objects of his hate. Other princes hired them for the same purposes. Their murders and pillages have filled many a dismal page of Oriental history<\/em>\u201d[27]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

This passage describes the notorious actions of the original Assassin state, as distinct from the modern examples that likewise employ assassination as State policy, pruning dissent and steering the course. It was founded at the end of the XIth<\/sup> c. by the Niz\u0101ri Isma\u2019ili and Fatimid Shii\u2019ite trained, Hasan-i Sabb\u0101h, the originator of the New Preaching (ad-dawah al-jadidah<\/em>). Neither the Assassin state, nor Alamut its capital from 1090 onwards, nor the Sh\u012b’a Im\u0101m\u012b Ism\u0101’\u012bl\u012b \u1e6car\u012bqah-the Isma\u2019ilis, nor the Niz\u0101ri Isma\u2019ili da\u2019wah-<\/em>preaching-mission-propaganda, nor yet Hasan-i Sabb\u0101h, nor his Daylamite and Turkoman\u00a0 fida\u2019i<\/em>, nor their satellite state-let in the Nusairi Mountains (Jabal al-An\u1e63\u0101riyyah) of Northern Syria from 1106 onwards, nor its leader R\u0101shid al-D\u012bn Sin\u0101n b. Salman (or Sulayman) b. Muhammad Abir al-Hasan al-Basri (d.1193), nor the fort of al-Qadm\u016bs and its fida\u2019i<\/em>, nor the revenue raised through their policy of exploiting the fear-threat they generated, are mentioned in this book, yet it was this medieval assassin state which was the source of this modern practice. To paraphrase the flyleaf synopsis of Bernard Lewis\u2019s book[28]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, the Niz\u0101ri Isma\u2019ili Assassins were the first group to make planned, systematic and long term use of assassination (targeted killing[29]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> – a \u201cliquidations policy\u201d, <\/em>– \u201cExecutive Action\u201d,<\/em> – terminations – pre-emptive assassinations – extrajudicial killings and the fear of and the threat thereof) employed as a political weapon, using the fida\u2019i <\/em>(in Arabic and Persian, meaning literally, \u201cone who sacrifices himself in the name of a faith or an idea<\/em>\u201d; as described in the XIIIth<\/sup> c. in Jelal ad-D\u012bn Rumi’s Mathnavi: \u201cMen are amazed at the Fida’i, but every one of us is a Fida’i in his behaviour, — inasmuch as everyone is devoted to some calling wherein he spends his life and is killed\u201d[30]<\/sup><\/strong><\/sup><\/a>.<\/em> And, \u201cSeveral men rushed forward, like Fida’is <\/em>(desperate assassins), and flung themselves into combat with him\u201d[31]<\/sup><\/strong><\/sup><\/a>.<\/em>) to change the political landscape, both through the actual assassination of key figures, including Caliphs, both Abbasid and Fatimid, Sultans, Viziers, Atabe\u011fs, Emirs, judges and religious scholars and Latin Catholic rulers, the Templar Raymond of Tripoli, with the Norman Baron Ralph of Merle in 1152, Prince Edward of England at Acre in 1172, Conrad of Montferrat, the elected king of Jerusalem in 1192, Raymond, son of Prince Bohemond IV of Antioch, in Tortosa, in 1213\u00a0 and, probably, Phillip de Montford, Lord of Tyre in 1270, and, through the fear that these assassinations caused to the elite and rulers of both East and West, fundamentally changing the balances within state and society through the employment of the politics of fear. In the face of the New Preaching, rulers, Sunni, Shii\u2019ite, Catholic, came under personal threat, while those actively preaching against the New Preaching could be threatened into silence, such as the scholar Fakhr al-D\u012bn Razi (1149-1209), or were assassinated, such as Ubayd Allah al-Khatib, Qadi of Isfahan in 1108-9. Shades one may think of the fate of the United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, for vocally criticising policy and so assassinated in a drone attack in 2011[32]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018The World is a Battlefield<\/em>\u2019 is the subtitle of this book and in the XIIth<\/sup> and XIIIth<\/sup> centuries, the world likewise was a battlefield and likewise a public theatre that resounded from the shocking actions of these assassins, the fida\u2019i, <\/em>the targeted assassination of key figures from Jerusalem to Merv, Mardin to Damascus, Cairo to Isfahan, Tiflis to Quhistan, Ghazni, Tabriz and Tyre, the fida\u2019i<\/em> were seen in Diyarbak\u0131r, Mongolia, Marseilles and Antalya, whose envoys reached both England and France. In 1195, Walter Hemingford, the English chronicler recorded the correspondence between the assassin leader in Syria, Rashid al-D\u012bn Sinan and all the Princes of Europe, as, in the days before mail planes, CNN and the world wide web there was a global audience and the Mongols listened in; as at times the Catholic Order of the Temple, the Knights Templars collected 2,000 gold besants per year from the Syrian branch of the Assassins following the assassination of Count Raymond II of Tripoli in 1152[33]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, the Assassins fought alongside the Crusader Raymond of Antioch against Sultan N\u016br ad-D\u012bn Zangi in 1149 and in which both Raymond of Antioch and Ali ibn Wafa, the Assassin leader were killed; they threatened Sultan \u1e62al\u0101\u1e25 ad-D\u012bn with assassination in both 1175 and 1176; received protection money from the Rum Seljuk Sultan Ala\u2019 ad- D\u012bn Keykubat I[34]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, as also from the Holy Roman Emperor and Crusader, Frederick II Hohenstaufen in 1228; and fought together with the Order of the Hospitaller Knights of St. John of Jerusalem against the Catholic Bohemond IV of Antioch (d.1233) in 1230.<\/p>\n

A first-hand account from the XIVth<\/sup> c. is provided by ibn Battuta:<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Aleppo I travelled north, visiting Antioch, then turned south once more and entered the mountains. Here I passed by the castle of al-Qadmus, the castle of al-Mainaqah, the castle of al-Ullaiqahy, the castle of Masyaf, and the castle of al-Khaf. These castles belong to a sect called the Isma\u2019iliyah, known as the Fidawis, and none may visit them there save members of their sect[35]<\/sup><\/strong><\/sup><\/a>. They are the arrows of al-Malik al-Nasir <\/em>(the Maml\u016bke Sultan Muhammad I b. Qalawun, Nasir al-D\u012bn d.1341), by means of whom he strikes down those of his enemies who take refuge from him in al-Iraq and other lands <\/em>(like the extra-judicial killings and drone strikes of the 21st<\/sup> c.), and they receive fixed emoluments. When this Sultan desires to send one of them to assassinate some foe of his, he pays him his blood money. If he escapes after carrying out what is desired of him, the money is his, but if he is caught it goes to his children. They have poisoned knives, with which they strike the victim of their mission, but sometimes their devices do not succeed and they themselves are killed<\/em>\u201d[36]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

A Passport of Fear: The Modern Omissions<\/p>\n

George Bernard Shaw in his 1911 one-act play entitled, Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet: A Sermon in Crude Melodrama, not only recorded a century ago that, \u201cwe clearly cannot, or at all events will not, tolerate assassination of rulers on the ground that it is \u201cpropaganda by deed\u201d or sociological experiment\u2026because no case can be made out in support of assassination as an indispensable instrument of progress<\/em>\u201d, as Charles Mills had noted a century earlier, but also, and most accurately described the fact that \u201cAssassination is the extreme form of censorship<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

In terms of the English speaking world the key change in the relationship between honour, morality, civic courage and the state and its policies, came in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the response to the realization of, and articulation of fear at the disproportion in numbers\/force\/power\/legitimacy between ruling minority and ruled over majority in the India of the Honourable East India Company, as in British India from 1858, as elsewhere in the British Empire, the consequent descent into fearfulness, and the consequent response, the development of a policy and practice of asymmetrical warfare, \u201ca passport of fear\u201d[37]<\/sup><\/strong><\/sup><\/a>, \u201cWhatever happens we have got The Maxim Gun, and they have not<\/em>\u201d[38]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, \u201cno holds barred<\/em>\u201d, \u201cno restraint<\/em>\u201d, \u201cthe gloves are off<\/em>\u201d, \u201cnothing is ruled in or ruled out<\/em>\u201d, \u201cplaying to win<\/em>\u201d, \u201cplaying for keeps<\/em>\u201d,\u00a0 as likewise, General Powell and General Schwarzkopf in the 1991 Gulf War, said that they had brought all the \u201ctools in a toolbox<\/em>\u201d[39]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, as in 2007, \u201cWe have to use all of the tools in our tool kit, as the 9\/11 Commission said<\/em>\u201d[40]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

This modern worldview is a combination of fear[41]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> and of the modern perception that the world is all that there is, together with the imperative to exercise power\/control over as much of it (Full-spectrum dominance[42]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>) and over the peoples inhabiting it, by any and every, that is, by all possible means.<\/p>\n

This is the modern phraseology, with this modern phraseology clearly a quite distinct vocabulary from: \u201can officer and a gentleman<\/em>\u201d, \u201cplay up play up and play the game<\/em>\u201d[43]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, \u201chonour not honours<\/em>\u201d, \u201cto fight a clean fight\u201d, \u201cto keep a straight bat\u201d, \u201cto maintain a stiff upper lip\u201d, \u201cto be magnanimous towards a beaten foe<\/em>\u201d. These two vocabularies inhabit entirely different worlds, in civilizational and moral terms, in the perspective on \u201cthe other<\/em>\u201d, quite simply light-years apart.<\/p>\n

To personalise this watershed in thought and conduct, even more than language, it is perhaps the difference between General Gordon (Chinese or Gordon of Khartoum) and the New World Order represented by the officer sent to rescue him, the then Baron Wolseley of Cairo, Adjutant-General to the Forces, commanding the Nile Expedition of 1884, with his publicised meticulous planning of details[44]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> who was the figure responsible for the late Victorian byword for a smart operation of any kind, \u201cEverything\u2019s all Sir Garnet\u201d<\/em>[45]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> meaning, \u201call is in order<\/em>\u201d – even if in fact it wasn\u2019t[46]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

This New Thinking, the modern version of the Niz\u0101ri Isma\u2019ili\u2019s New Propaganda was clearly articulated by the subsequent Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st<\/sup> Viscount Wolseley, KP, GCB, OM, GCMG, VD, PC, (1833 \u2013 1913) of Anglo-Irish descent, who was \u201ca deeply religious Irish protestant, (with) a profound belief in a destiny willed by God<\/em>\u201d[47]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. The New Thinking is related in his book, The Soldiers’ Pocket Book for Field Service. This volume which was first published in 1869 when he was a Colonel aged 36, after his experience of the Indian Mutiny in 1857-8, including action in the Relief of Lucknow[48]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, and then in China in the Second Opium War 1860-61[49]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, and this was a book that was repeatedly republished, going through five editions[50]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. This volume carried the New Thinking throughout the ranks of the officers and gentlemen of the British Army and was the seminal official text on this matter for several generations, it was the key military text for officers and it was read and remembered, its most considerable influence and consequences over the subsequent 150 years, most simply put, were extensive, for it is no flight of hyperbole to describe him thus: \u201cAlmost single-handedly, Wolseley transformed the British army from a gentleman’s army into a modern fighting machine<\/em>\u201d[51]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. There was no place for officers and gentlemen in the modern fighting machine that Wolseley was building under Queen Victoria, there were to be – only fanatics.<\/p>\n

In Col. Wolseley\u2019s words from his Soldier\u2019s Pocket Book:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cHe <\/em>(the soldier) must be taught to despise all those of civil life. Soldiers, like missionaries, must be fanatics. An army thoroughly imbued with fanaticism can be killed, but never suffer disgrace<\/em>\u201d[52]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. It carries the same tone as a letter written to the Times (of London) in 1859 after members of the British and French invasion force in June 1859 in the Second Opium War (1856-60) had suffered losses from the Qing fire from the forts guarding Beijing, \u201cthe name of European will hereafter be a passport of fear, if it cannot be of love, throughout their land<\/em>\u201d[53]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet us sink as far as possible the respective titles of officers, sergeants and pri\u00advates, merging them into the one great professional cognomen of soldier\u2026let us give up the phrase \u2018officer and gentleman\u2019 substituting the title of \u2018soldier\u2019 for it;<\/em>\u2026\u201d[54]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a nation we are bred up to feel it a disgrace ever to succeed by falsehood; the word \u201cspy\u201d conveys something as repulsive as \u201cslave\u201d; we will keep hammering along with the conviction that \u2018honesty is the best policy\u2019; and the truth always wins in the long run. These pretty little sentiments do well for a child’s copy book, but a man who acts on them had better sheathe his sword forever<\/em>\u201d[55]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

A plaque of this same text, \u201cAs a nation\u2026\u201d <\/em>by Col. Wolseley from his Soldier\u2019s Pocket Book of 1869 was hung in the Operations Room of the LCS – London Controlling Section, in charge of the secret policy of strategic deception in 1944 during World War Two, as 75 years after it was first penned, this remained a guiding text, defining the principles of, or rather the lack of them, the culture and doctrine of dishonesty of the modern world\u2019s warfare, that is of modernity and its politics[56]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

William Blum cites the U.S.A. parallel text to, \u201cAs a nation\u2026\u201d <\/em>by Col. Wolseley, a reworking of this same perspective, a trans-Atlantic shared view, a policy that was adopted in 1948-9,[57]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> the same world-view which was published in the Report of the Special Study Group (The four panel members were Lt. Gen. James H. Doolittle[58]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, William B. Franke[59]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, Morris Hadley[60]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> and William D. Pawley[61]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>) on the Covert Activity of the Central Intelligence Agency, September 30th<\/sup> 1954[62]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of \u201cfair play\u201d must be reconsidered<\/strong>. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant policy<\/strong><\/em>\u201d[63]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In effect, it is the implementation of this post-1857 Indian Mutiny policy, the acme of realpolitik, which requires one to believe – that all is possible in a climate of fear and all means are justified – which stands as the justification for the modern state policy of assassinations. There is of course fear, not honour in it, and it represents in a clear and naked fashion the change wrought by modernity, the post 1857 Indian Mutiny military world view spread across the globe, West-Way in action.<\/p>\n

Concerning the nature of worldly fear[64]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> there is a teaching story related by the incomparable late XIIIth<\/sup> \u2013 early XIVth<\/sup> c. Mulla\/Hoja Nasreddin (more properly Nasir al-D\u012bn, meaning Defender of the Faith, i.e. Defender of Islam), entitled \u201cFear has No Favourites<\/em>\u201d it exhibits the fact that with fear there can be no discrimination and had its source within the cultural climate generated by the Niz\u0101ri Isma\u2019ili assassinations and the Pagan Mongols, it remains alas and alack, rather fitting for the 20th<\/sup> and 21st<\/sup> centuries:<\/p>\n

\u201cA lady brought her small son to the Mulla\u2019s school.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018He\u2019s very badly behaved,\u2019 she explained, \u2018and, I want you to frighten him\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Mulla assumed a threatening posture, eyes flaming and face working. He jumped up and down, and suddenly ran out of the building. The woman fainted. When she had come to, she waited for the Mulla, who returned slowly and gravely.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018I asked you to frighten the boy, not me!<\/em>\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018Dear Madam,\u2019 said the Mulla, \u2018did you not see how afraid I was of myself as well? When fear (danger) threatens, it threatens all alike<\/em>\u2019[65]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Winston Churchill’s words spoken in the climate of fear at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, \u201cIn wartime truth is so precious that she should be attended by a bodyguard of lies\u201d, <\/em>and of course, in 2015 with,\u00a0 \u201ca counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war<\/em>\u201d[66]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> within a climate of fear extending over generations from the A-bomb holocaust threat of the Post-World War II period, down to post 9-11, considerably more is required today than just, \u201ca bodyguard of lies\u201d; <\/em>dissimulation and deceit as policy and praxis perhaps?<\/p>\n

Assassination has of course remained an \u201ceternal infamy\u201d <\/em>and, as a policy of state is a \u201cfundamentally repugnant policy\u201d<\/em> the only cause for its employment being overwhelming fear. However, this abnormality is being quite rapidly normalised for the youth of today, who are being most speedily acculturated to this practice, seeing this policy as being entirely unsurprising and usual, rather than it being one of \u201ceternal infamy\u201d<\/em> and of being \u201cfundamentally repugnant\u201d.<\/em> This process is speeded through glimpses on the news, the diet of assassin films, computer games and related books, Assassin’s Creed etc<\/em>. and the extensive diet of Ninja Assassin films, computer games and related books, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles etc.<\/em>[67]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is unfortunate that one of the more characteristic, but in this case more fully recorded, incidents of the modern on-going state policy of assassination is unmentioned in this book. It is recorded on the 12th<\/sup> August 1990 in the course of the planning conducted for launching Operation Instant Thunder:<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, he<\/em> (Lt. General Jimmy Adams, USAF) saw the air campaign <\/em>(Instant Thunder) as a unilateral effort\u2014one that called for the takedown of Saddam Hussein<\/strong> but ignored the Iraqi troops poised on the Saudi borders<\/em>\u201d(my emphasis)[68]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The \u2018takedown<\/em>,\u2019 aka, the assassination, of Saddam Hussein, through bombing his known and suspected residences was an unchanging part of the USAF plans in 1990 for the bombing campaign, as was the case subsequently in the course of the 2003 \u201cshock and awe<\/em>\u201d air campaign[69]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, precursor to the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, termed \u201cOperation Iraqi Freedom\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The military objectives defined in the early versions of Operation Instant Thunder in 1990 were clearly expressed:<\/p>\n

\u201c1. Force Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Degrade Iraq\u2019s offensive capability.<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. Secure oil facilities.<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. Render Hussein ineffective as an Arab leader<\/em>\u201d[70]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Point four of these objectives, defined as a \u2018military\u2019 objective and implemented throughout the course of the Operation Desert Storm Air Campaign from January the 17th<\/sup>, 1991 onwards, but which, as was the case subsequently in 2003, signally failed in its objective, was that of assassinating President Saddam Hussein. The choice of the word \u2018render<\/em>\u2019 in this statement of military objectives is noteworthy, if fortuitous, one may think the verb to render, relates to the policy of rendition, or is it render, as in making chicken soup, to rip (render) the flesh into pieces, or simply, to make?<\/p>\n

    Further, perhaps, Jeremy Scahill could also have mentioned the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General Michael J. Dugan, formerly director of United States Air Force Plans and Operations, who became the thirteenth Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force for 79 days, from 1st<\/sup> July to the 17th<\/sup> of September 1990, before he was dismissed by the United States Secretary of Defence, Dick Cheney, after freely telling reporters that the U.S. military planned to target (= eliminate-assassinate-liquidate-terminate, that is plan the extrajudicial murder of) Saddam Hussein, his family, and even his mistress[71]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. The Washington Post quoted officials on General Dugan’s plane as saying that Israeli officials had advised that the \u201cbest way to hurt Saddam was to target his family, personal guards and even his mistress<\/em>\u201d[72]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>,<\/em> together apparently with the planned bombing of the shrines of Najaf and Kerbela[73]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

    This plan and the attempt at assassination simply followed on from the earlier equally unsuccessful attempt to target\/eliminate\/assassinate Col. Muammar Gaddafi through bombing. The Libyan Head of State being a target in the United States bombing of Libya, code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon, on Tuesday, the 15th<\/sup> of April 1986 nearly 30 years ago. Muammar Gaddafi was warned by a telephone call from the Italian socialist politician Bettino Craxi and, moments before the bombs dropped at 2 am, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, together with members of his family rushed out of their residence in the Bab al-Azizia compound in Tripoli which was bombed[74]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. Of course the text of President Jimmy Carter\u2019s executive order, renewed under President Regan 5 years earlier in 1981, banning assassinations of Heads of State was adhered to, in the breach, if not in its observance, a matter of the terminology employed rather than the deed attempted. The practice of assassination as an arm of state policy for the Republic of the United States of America seems to have sprung out of the Second World War, with the wartime OSS that became the CIA, as from President Truman (1945-53) onwards, notwithstanding the Church Committee\u2019s Assassination Report of 1975[75]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, and notwithstanding the Presidential findings against this practice[76]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, assassination has since the Second World War been an integral part of presidential policy, with both civilian and military components[77]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

    The current Presidential somewhat impersonal drone based system of targeted assassinations as state policy[78]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, so vividly described by Jeremy Scahill in this book, although at times an advance upon some other methods of \u201ctargeted killing\u201d – \u201cextrajudicial execution\u201d<\/em> – assassination which have been employed in this 21st<\/sup> century, such as the 22nd<\/sup> of July, 2002 assassination through the release of a 2,000-pound bomb dropped from an F-16 on an apartment building in a residential area, obliterating it, together with the Hamas leader Sheik Salah Mustafa Muhammad Shehade (1952-2002), and also murdering at least 14 civilians, including his wife and his daughter and also eight other children, while somewhere between 50 and 150 other human beings were injured in this assassination[79]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>; and, with the world perceived by some as a battlefield, and the opponents and suspected opponents of \u2018West-way\u2019, together with entirely innocent bystanders (so-called \u2019collateral damage\u2019<\/em>), blown into pieces by the appropriately named, Hellfire missiles fired from drones, it seems that we lack today in the 21st<\/sup> century, both the skill and the precision, as also the courage of the personal touch employed by the originators of the retributive state built through assassination and fear of assassination in the XIth<\/sup> to XIVth<\/sup> centuries, the Isma\u2019ili fida\u2019i<\/em>. The use of drones being perhaps further evidence, not only of the inability to engage in a dialogue, the handicap of the fearful, but also of a fear of taking casualties that will doubtless over time prove counter-productive, as was noted decades ago by James Clavell in his novel set in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 entitled Whirlwind[80]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, and which is also clearly recorded in this book[81]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

    The CIA Director John Brennan gave a televised press conference on the 11th<\/sup> of December 2014 from his agency\u2019s headquarters in response to the release by the United States of America\u2019s Senate Intelligence Committee on the 9th<\/sup> of December of the damming report concerning the matter of CIA torture, (Enhanced interrogation Techniques EIT), and the calls for the prosecution of the responsible high-ranking state officials who both ordered and oversaw the torture program, such as President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden and others, and, in the course of his conference the CIA Director John Brennan declared his nominal support for President Obama\u2019s decision to end the Bush-era program of \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques<\/em>\u201d (EIT), while at the same time fiercely defending the administration\u2019s expanded program of drone assassinations. He said, \u201cthe US military has done some wonderful things with these platforms<\/em>\u201d[82]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. \u201cAnd in terms of precision of effort, accuracy and making sure that this country, this country\u2019s military does everything<\/em> possible to minimize to the great extent possible the loss of life of non-combatants, I think there\u2019s a lot for this country and this White House and the military to be proud of<\/em>\u201d[83]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

    In 1818 a state policy of assassinations was something which was described by an educated man as earning \u2018eternal infamy\u2019;<\/em> a century later by another educated man in 1911 as, \u2018the extreme form of censorship<\/em>\u2019, while a century later, in 2014, this same state policy of assassinations under the New World Order, is publicly stated by a high-ranking state official as being \u2018some wonderful things,\u2019 <\/em>as being something \u2018to be proud of<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n

    Such has been the course of the Anglo-Saxon world\u2019s Orwellian progress[84]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> over the last two centuries, with the actualisation of the slogans of the Orwellian doublespeak of the Party in George Orwell\u2019s novel 1984: \u201cWAR IS PEACE[85]<\/sup><\/strong><\/sup><\/a> – FREEDOM IS SLAVERY – IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH\u201d<\/em>[86]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, and so, perhaps inevitably in 2014, it can be stated by a high state official in public that, ETERNAL INFAMY IS SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF.<\/p>\n

    Likewise, if suspected of being \u201coff message<\/em>\u201d, circumstances can certainly conspire to a death sentence without trial for some, for, as Amin Maalouf wrote in his novel Samarkand, but which is as pertinent today as a reflection of the conformist state of mind brought about by a pervasive climate of fear and self-censorship, as it was a millennium ago in the days of the Isma\u2019ili assassins:<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe live in the age of the secret and of fear. You must have two faces. Show one to the crowd, and keep the other for yourself and your Creator. If you want to keep your eyes, your ears and your tongue, forget that you have them<\/em>\u201d[87]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

    The whole question, not of the justification by a state itself for the practice of assassinating its opponents, but rather of the consequences over time of doing so, surely requires both consideration and mention, both in respect to the state and its population(s), of the healthiness of a certain \u2018civilizational\u2019 perspective; as also in respect to the nature of the interstate relationships between practitioners of this policy amongst themselves and between those states that do not practice this policy; together with the consequences not only upon the recipients of this attention \u2013 individuals, societies and states – but also upon the practitioners and those who come to know about it, in respect to their views of the state, of policy, morality, hypocrisy and justice, judicial and extra-judicial, and realpolitik, and facing the question as to if the resultant corrosive public cynicism and scepticism towards a state that employs the politics of fear and termination as a policy and methodology of censorship-retribution, acknowledged or unacknowledged, outweighs any alleged short term advantage.<\/p>\n

    Since 2010 it has been the \u201clife patterns<\/em>\u201d of suspects that has justified their \u201cpre-crime<\/em>\u201d assassinations[88]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>. Like \u201canticipatory self-defence<\/em>\u201d, this concept of pre-crime criminality obtains to a degree of doublespeak that has rarely been encountered in human history and was previously unknown to the world of assassins. It is of course this \u2018pre-crime criminality<\/em>\u2019 that justifies the so-called \u2018collateral damage<\/em>\u2019 experienced by those who are killed or wounded through being, often purely coincidentally, if unfortunately for themselves, their friends and relations, in some proximity to the supposed target of the assassination, and so are also assassinated, maimed or otherwise damaged for life, as these people, adults, children and babies are evidently guilty through having some proximate association in space and time, to \u2018pre-crime criminality,<\/em>\u2019 the co-ordinates show proximity and therefore guilt, and so, in consequence, in this exercise of \u2018justice\u2019, LIFE PATTERN IS DEATH PATTERN, and so inevitably perhaps, \u201ca group of \u201cmilitary-aged males\u201d in a particular region of Pakistan would be enough evidence of terrorist activity to trigger a drone strike<\/em>\u201d[89]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, although \u201ca group of \u201cmilitary-aged males\u201d in a particular region of Chicago\u201d <\/em>would of course not \u201cbe enough evidence of terrorist activity to trigger a drone strike\u201d, <\/em>the co-ordinates are at present on a different map.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Evidently from the evidence compiled by J. Scahill in Dirty Wars, the world is seen by some as a war-game, \u201cwe all played space invaders as kids<\/em>\u201d said the generals, who now, like Obama are playing golf, when not pressing the exterminate button and watching with their associates the deed done on a \u2018live link\u2019, the latest White House snuff movie[90]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>; and it is both evident and indubitable that Obama has the Orwellian, if not entirely the Hasan-i Sabb\u0101h, nor yet the fida\u2019i <\/em>touch of R\u0101shid al-D\u012bn Sin\u0101n, as he \u201chas institutionalised the highly classified practice of targeted killing <\/em>(aka assassination), transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war<\/em>\u201d[91]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>; with, for any reasonable person, the mind-boggling statement that placed, \u201cassassination as the centre piece of US National Security Policy<\/em>\u201d[92]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> in the first year of the Democrat Barack Obama\u2019s Presidency. It certainly reads like a paraphrase from some late XIth<\/sup> \u2013 early XIIth<\/sup> c. chronicle, \u201cassassination as the centre piece of <\/em>Isma\u2019ili Niz\u0101ri retributive security policy\u201d <\/em>recording the first years of Hasan-i Sabb\u0101h\u2019s New Preaching from the \u201cWhite House<\/em>\u201d of Alamut.<\/p>\n

    Some Conclusions<\/p>\n

    In conclusion, this book relates in a clear and substantiated manner the practice of assassination utilised as an arm of Presidential policy by successive Presidents of the Republic of the United States of America in the 21st<\/sup> century. However, something of quite considerable importance has been missed, the unmentioned historical precedents for this practice, which would, if they could have been presented in this book, lead one almost inevitably to suggest, that any state that choses to employ a policy of assassination, is, quite regardless of appearances, a failing state, a declining power, with a leader or ruling clique living in fear bordering upon paranoia, and in the passage of time preceding that state\/regime\u2019s dissolution dispersing fear outwards across the world.<\/p>\n

    This was the case for the state and the state-let of the Isma\u2019ili Niz\u0101ri Assassins, the somewhat wild and isolated Imami-messianic offshoot of the Shii\u2019ite Fatimid state; the Fatimid state which in the Xth<\/sup> c. had controlled much of the Mahgrib, Egypt, the Hejaz, Sicily, Syria, Palestine, and which, together with the Shii\u2019ite-leaning Buwayhid (Buyyids) dynasty of mercenary soldiers from the Caspian province of Daylam, (whose descendants went on to provide for Hasan-i Sabb\u0101h many of his cadre of fida\u2019i, <\/em>in addition to Turkmen and Kurds), who had controlled both the Sunni Abbasid Caliphs in Bagdad and western Iran and Iraq from the mid-Xth<\/sup> c. (until displaced in the mid-XIth<\/sup> c. by the arrival of the Sunni Great Seljuks), had established over most of the Islamic world between the mid-Xth<\/sup> and the mid-XIth<\/sup> centuries a considerable degree of Shii\u2019ite rule. The Niz\u0101ri assassin mini-state[93]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> was founded when the wheel had turned, the sands had run-out for Shii\u2019ite control over most of the Islamic world, although leaving a lasting legacy, and the Imami-messianic offshoot of the Niz\u0101ri Assassins consequently employed in the face of the powerful Sunni resurgence, the worldview and weapons to be expected of an endangered voluntarily isolated and threatening and therefore threatened minority.<\/p>\n

    Likewise in the last years of the British Mandate in Palestine, in the declining days of the British Empire, the state use of what could be characterised as death squads or assassination squads[94]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, to combat the assassinations being carried out by the Zionist Stern Gang, the Irgun zvai Leumi and Lehi, after the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and then the British Embassy in Rome in 1946, following on from the assassination of Walter Edward Guinness, Lord Moyne, British Minister in Cairo in 1944, that is, a state using assassination against a state being established through, and which, as is noted above, continues to employ assassination as standard practice and which also recommends the use of assassination to others[95]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 It does seem rather extraordinary that the \u201cdoyen of Middle East historians\u201d<\/em> Bernard Lewis could research and then author a book on the Isma\u2019ili Niz\u0101ri assassins[96]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, and then write that the problems in the Islamic world did not stem in part from the politics of intellectual conformity, of silence and fear that developed, to some considerable degree, from the consequences, amongst others, of the actions of the assassins of the Nizari Isma\u2019ili state and state-let and the consequences thereof[97]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>, while acting as \u00e9minence grise on the Islamic world to those people, including George Bush junior and Dick Cheney, who have now institutionalised and applied this same practice of assassination as state policy in the first decades of the 21st<\/sup> century, mirroring that practiced by Zionist Israel.<\/p>\n

    It was likewise the case in the latter years of the Apartheid regime in South Africa where assassination also became state policy, the assassinated including: ANC activist Vernon Nkadimeng assassinated by a car bomb in Botswana in 1985; ANC representative Dulcie Evonne September, aged 52 shot 5 times in the back in Paris, France in 1988; ANC activist David Webster assassinated in 1989; Chris Hani critic of Apartheid assassinated in 1993; theologian, Johan Adam Heyns, critic of Apartheid assassinated in 1994, in the year the Apartheid constitution was dismantled.<\/p>\n

    A state-regime employing a policy of assassination, although not noted in this book, would seem to be one of history\u2019s markers, as it seems that the adoption by a state\/regime of a policy of assassination can be associated with the decline of the state that employs it, together with isolation – the bunker-mentality and with some threatened, or perceived as threatened formerly powerful minority ideology or faction.<\/p>\n

    Notlar<\/h3>\n

    [1]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 See: dirtywars.org<\/p>\n

    [2]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Since Jeremy Scahill\u2019s work appeared in 2013, some of the matters concerning drone strikes have been further investigated, see Starr-Deelen 2014, 159-192.<\/p>\n

    [3]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The title of the CIA Project from the 1950\u2019s to assassinate foreign leaders including Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.<\/p>\n

    [4]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhat we may be witnessing is not just the end of the cold war, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

    [5]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fukuyama 1992. The liberal theory of the 1990\u2019s that with the fall of communism history had ended, \u201cshe (Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright) was a trailblazer in the effort to keep America engaged in the world, at a time at the end of the Cold War when many wondered whether America\u2019s leadership was still needed at the end of history<\/em>\u201d spoken by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the 14th<\/sup> of April, 2008, Source: http:\/\/2001-2009.state.gov\/secretary\/rm\/2008\/04\/103554.htm; \u201cWhen the West won that struggle, it was natural for it to interpret the collapse of Communism as the end of history (when, as Francis Fukuyama himself warned, life would probably become very boring)<\/em>\u201d Pfaff 2000. As to if the West in any real sense won that struggle, or the rising proportion of Muslims within the population of the Soviet Union, when combined with military defeat in Afghanistan by the mujahidin, funded in blood and treasure in large part by Muslim states led to Slavic separation and Soviet collapse is however somewhat unclear. But this thesis formed a part of the near systematic assault upon the study and the relevance of history towards the end of the 20th<\/sup> c. in the United States, and in other parts of Echelon-the English speaking intelligence block, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK, largely propagated through the phantom of post-modernist relativism in a process of the detachment of actions from consequences, displacement and amnesia, together with the associated abdication of responsibility that is quite strange, but quite possibly related to the threats inherent through the on-going exposure of the \u201cprovidential empty land<\/em>\u201d for white settlers as the \u2018big lie\u2019 with of course consequences in respect to a recently founded settler state in the Middle East. As to if this was a re-run of the 1950\u2019s CIA-MI6 Operation Mockingbird researchers will doubtless determine, years after the damage done to the trust of innocent participants, intellectual collateral damage. Academic responses against the marginalisation and the diminishing of the importance of the understanding of our common history include, Churchill 1997; Evans 2000.<\/p>\n

    [6]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For Plato\u2019s comments on the alimentary tract, of the money men in respect to the ideal city-country-world, \u201cthe public city will be just when there is agreement as to which shall rule, and there is no confusion of functions but every occupation is a vocational responsibility. Not, then, where there are no \u2018classes\u2019 or \u2018castes\u2019 but where everyone is a responsible agent in some special field. A city can no more be called a \u2018good\u2019 city if it lacks this \u2018justice\u2019 (dikaiosyn\u0113) than it could be were it wanting wisdom, sobriety or courage; and these four are the great civic virtues. Where occupations are thus vocations \u2018more will be done, and better done, and with more ease than in any other way<\/em>\u201d (Republic, 370C). \u201cthe establishment of justice and well-being of the whole in each case depends upon the answer to the question, Which shall rule, the better or the worse, a single Reason and Common Law or the multitude of moneyed men in the outer city and of desires in the individual (Republic, 441, etc.)?<\/em>\u201d \u201cWhat is to be done is primarily one of purgation, to drive out the\u00a0 money changers (middle-men, komisyoncular), all who desire power and office, and all representatives of special interests; and secondly, when the city has been thus \u2018cleaned up\u2019, one of considered imitation of the natural forms of justice, beauty, wisdom and other civic virtues; amongst which we have here considered justice, beauty, wisdom and other civic virtues; amongst which we have here considered justice, or as the word dikaiosyn\u0113 is commonly translated in Christian contexts, righteousness<\/em>\u201d. The problem stemming fundamentally from rule by the unfit, \u201cif one who is by nature a craftsman or some sort of businessman be tempted and inflated by wealth or by his command of votes or by his own might or any such thing\u2026<\/em>\u201d, fn. 35, it is worth reading the chapter \u201cWhat is Civilisation?<\/em>\u201d 1-12, in Coomaraswamy 1989, 1-2; 5-6.<\/p>\n

    [7]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 570, source cited: Al-Shabaab: Reply to the Greeting and Advice of Sheikh Anwar, Imam Anwar\u2019s blog. Source: anwar-alawlaki.com, December 27, 2008.<\/p>\n

    [8]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 See on this: Aigle 2007, 195-214. The three Mongol invasions were in: December of 1299 to April 1300 (mid-699 A.H.); October 1300 to January 1301 (first half of 700 A.H.) and, from February to April 1303 (mid-702 A.H.). For further dating of two of these fatwas to the XIVth<\/sup> century, and one possibly to 1299, see for example; source: https:\/\/sites.google.com\/site\/jhoover363\/taymiyyan-studies\/jihad-against-the-mongols.<\/p>\n

    [9]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Aigle 2004, 294.<\/p>\n

    [10]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Aigle 2004, 293.<\/p>\n

    [11]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 H. B. Paksoy, Keloglan: The Bald Boy and The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. Texas 2003. Source: http:\/\/ www.lightmillennium.org\/2004_14th_issue\/hbpaksoy_keloglan.html; \u201cOne day Sultan Timur presented the people of Ak\u015fehir with what he thought was a very wonderful gift, a large male elephant. Of course the poor people of this town couldn\u2019t afford to feed such a large animal and they wanted to get rid of it somehow. They were afraid to approach the King about this, however, as they thought that he might be offended and thereby punish them for not being thankful for the King\u2019s present. So some of the townspeople came up to the Hodja and asked him if he would be their representative and mouthpiece before the king. Nasreddin Hodja agreed but made a condition that fifteen of them must accompany him.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So the Hodja led the way with all the others following behind. During the journey however, one by one they all disappeared. When the Hodja arrived at the palace he turned around and noticed that he was alone. He became very angry and came before the Sultan and said:<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 -O King, the people of my town have pleaded with me that I come and talk to you.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 -Yes, continue, said the King.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 -Well, the people of my town are very pleased and grateful that you have given us such a wonderful present. The problem is that now we have had pity on the poor animal, seeing that it is male and it has no female partner.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Sultan was overjoyed when he heard these words and told the Hodja:<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 -That is no problem. I will be pleased to present you with another gift by giving you a female elephant!<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 -Oh, thank you, your Majesty, that is most kind of you! Said the Hodja.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then the Hodja strutted back into town and told all the people the good news<\/em>\u201d. 202 Jokes of Nasreddin Hodja, No. 77. For a further version see; source: http:\/\/www.readliterature.com\/h010622.htm<\/p>\n

    [12]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Source: http:\/\/www.naqshbandi.ca\/pages\/print.php?id_article=281&language=English#sthash.O06ni9Jj.dpuf<\/a><\/p>\n

    [13]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 On this matter of continuing importance see for example: Saleh as-Saleh, \u201cPoints of Benefit Regarding Visiting the Graves<\/em>\u201d, (28th<\/sup> Dhul Qi’dah 1427, Dec. 19th<\/sup>, 2006) 1-4 at http:\/\/abdurrahman.org\/finaljourney \/VisitingThe Graves.pdf<\/a>, Dr. Saleh as-Saleh being a pupil of\u00a0 Shaykh Ibn ul-Uthaymeen (d. 2000) of the salafi da\u2019wah; Beranak \u2013 Tupek 2009, 1-40.<\/p>\n

    [14]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Little 1975, 95.<\/p>\n

    [15]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Halm 2001, 71-4, where the precedent in a sense at least of the Abbasid Mutazalite Caliph al-Ma\u2019mun\u2019s bayt al-Hikma<\/em> is noted. It is perhaps a matter of the tools employed, to borrow the opponent\u2019s tools and to re-use them, has perhaps sometimes something of the slave and something of the amorality of Shakespeare\u2019s Edmund in King Lear about it, \u201cAll with me’s meet that I can fashion fit<\/em>\u201d. Act 1, sc. II, 174, perhaps exhibiting a certain lack of hygiene-of discrimination.<\/p>\n

    [16]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Mourad \u2013 Lindsay 2012, 50-58.<\/p>\n

    [17]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Black 2001, 104.<\/p>\n

    [18]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 391.<\/p>\n

    [19]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 390, note, citing R. Grossman and C. Parsons, Bomb Plot Becomes Historical Jigsaw Puzzle.<\/em> Chicago 2010, 593.<\/p>\n

    [20]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Lyons \u2013 Jackson 1997, 185.<\/p>\n

    [21]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Lyons \u2013 Jackson 1997, 157.<\/p>\n

    [22]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Lyons \u2013 Jackson 1997, 185.<\/p>\n

    [23]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Lyons \u2013 Jackson 1997, 187.<\/p>\n

    [24]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Eco 1987, 65.<\/p>\n

    [25]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 \u201cFrom ancient Greece and Rome we acquired a certain idea of tragedy (but our own theatre is based on a medieval model) and an ideal of beauty, as well as our basic philosophical concepts. But from the Middle Ages we learnt how to use them<\/em>\u201d. Eco 1987, 65; \u201cIn the case of the remains of classical antiquity we reconstruct them but, once we have rebuilt them we don\u2019t dwell in them, we only contemplate them as an ideal model and a masterpiece of faithful restoration. On the contrary, the Middle Ages have never been reconstructed from scratch. We have always patched them up, as something in which we still live<\/em>\u201d. ibid 67-8.<\/p>\n

    [26]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Eco 1987, 64.<\/p>\n

    [27]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Mills 1818, 68-69.<\/p>\n

    [28]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Lewis 2001.<\/p>\n

    [29]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Kendall 2001-2002. See also: Byman 2006, 95-112.<\/p>\n

    [30]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Mathnawi<\/em> V. 3542.<\/p>\n

    [31]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Mathnawi<\/em> VI. 3037.<\/p>\n

    [32]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 367-374; 498-506.<\/p>\n

    [33]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Barber 2010, 102-3.<\/p>\n

    [34]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Daftary 2007, 390, citing Abu\u2019l Fada\u2019il<\/em> 335-6.<\/p>\n

    [35]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 For remarks concerning the relationship between the Alev\u012b and the proto-Isma\u2019ilis, see for example, \u2018Alaw\u012b in, Glass\u00e9 2003, 36-37.<\/p>\n

    [36]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Battutah 33.<\/p>\n

    [37]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Letter to the Times, \u201cAllied Expedition to China<\/em>\u201d, The Times, 16th<\/sup> September, 1859: \u201cWe shall teach such a lesson to these perfidious hordes that the name of Europe will hereafter be a passport of fear<\/em>\u201d, cited, Lovell 2011, 405, fn. 81.<\/p>\n

    [38]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), in the words of the figure \u201cBlood\u201d<\/em> in his poem \u201cThe Modern Traveller\u201d<\/em> of 1898, (see Belloc 1898).<\/p>\n

    \u201cBlood thought he knew the native mind;<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He said you must be firm, but kind.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A mutiny resulted.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I shall never forget the way<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That Blood stood upon this awful day\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Preserved us all from death.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He stood upon a little mound\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast his lethargic eyes around,\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And said beneath his breath:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ‘Whatever happens, we have got\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Maxim Gun, and they have not<\/em>\u201d,<\/p>\n

    The Maxim Gun being the first recoil-operated machine gun adopted by the British Army in 1889 it fired 11 shots per second. Subsequently, in place of the Maxim Gun, one can substitute as time passes: phosgene and other varieties of poison gas-atom bomb-hydrogen-neutron bomb-Agent Orange-fuel air devices-cluster bombs-cruise missiles- etc.<\/em><\/p>\n

    [39]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Source: http:\/\/pages.gseis.ucla.edu\/faculty\/kellner\/papers\/gulfwar6.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

    [40]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Spoken 10th<\/sup> of Oct., 2007, by Hon. John F. Tierney, House of Representatives, Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform<\/em>. Washington, DC. \u201cSix Years Later: Assessing Long-Term Threats, Risks and the U.S. Strategy for Security in a Post-9\/11 World<\/em>\u201d Source: http:\/\/www.gpo.gov\/fdsys\/pkg\/CHRG-110hhrg47590\/html\/CHRG-110hhrg47590.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

    [41]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 As Harry Parkes, a proponent of the Second Opium War put it in 1857 the year of the Indian Mutiny: \u201cit is only by maintaining it and working on the fears of the people that we can be successful or escape defeat which would be most injurious to our interests<\/em>\u201d Lovell 2011, 257.<\/p>\n

    [42]<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 J. Garamone, American Forces Press Service. Washington, June 2, 2000, \u201cJoint Vision 2020 Emphasizes Full-spectrum Dominance\u201d \u2013 \u201cFull-spectrum dominance\u201d is the key term in \u201cJoint Vision 2020\u201d the blueprint DoD (Department of Defense) will follow in the future. Joint Vision 2020, released May 30 and signed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry Shelton, extends the concept laid out in Joint Vision 2010. Some things will not change. The mission of the U.S. military today and tomorrow is to fight and win the nation’s wars. How DoD goes about doing this is 2020’s focus. Full-spectrum dominance means the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations\u201d. Source: http:\/\/www.defense.gov\/news\/newsarticle.aspx?id=45289<\/a> Apart from the mind warping hubris this doctrine embodies, one would find it somewhat hard to reconcile this desire to exercise control over the planet with the Almighty\u2019s omnipotence, the All-Knowing. And the authors of the thoughts expressed in this document are perhaps in ignorance of, or find irrelevant the Holy Koran, Surah 8, S\u016brat I-anf\u0101l (The Spoils of War) 30, \u201cBut they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners<\/em>\u201d. Likewise Surah 35, S\u016brat f\u0101tir (The Originator) 43.<\/p>\n

    [43]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 From Vitae Lampada, published 1888, by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938). The sense made explicit in the American Grantland Rice\u2019s poem entitled Alumnus football, it\u2019s final verse, from the 1920\u2019s<\/p>\n

    \u201cFor when the One Great Scorer comes<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To write against your name,<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He marks \u2014 not that you won or lost \u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But how you played the game<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

    [44]<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 W. S. Gilbert and A. Sullivan’s comic opera of 1879, The Pirates of Penzance contains the song, \u201cI am the very model of a modern Major General<\/em>\u201d reportedly a\u00a0 satire in a lampoon of the then Sir Garnet Wolseley, and it may be that the lines:<\/p>\n

    \u201cIn short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am the very model of a modern Major-General\u201d<\/em> there was the deliberate pointer in the lyric to a perceived intellect without a heart, nor any feeling for humanity, which the lyricist W. S. Gilbert did his best to remind the public.<\/p>\n

    [45]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Hence the title of Lehmann\u2019s (1964) biography.<\/p>\n

    [46]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 The bifurcation of reality and PR with PR replacing the reality, as on Wolseley\u2019s Nile Expedition, \u201cwhere sick and wounded men died of starvation and the advance guard went without food for forty hours in the desert heat<\/em>\u201d. Home 1982, 58, but all was in order with the very model of a modern Major General; \u201cWolseley at Ashanti (1874) had learned, if reluctantly, how to court the newspapermen<\/em>\u201d Ibid 98.<\/em><\/p>\n

    [47]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Oxford DNB. http:\/\/odnb2.ifactory.com\/view\/article\/36995?&docPos=2&backToResults=list=yes|group=|fe<\/a> ature=|aor=|orderField=alpha \u201cHe despised foreigners and especially Irish nationalists, frequ\u00adent\u00adly alluding to the desirability of his filling some proconsular role in Ireland and, on at least one occasion, of putting himself at the head of the loyalists to resist the raising of a \u2018filthy green rag<\/em>\u201d. Ibid.<\/p>\n

    [48]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 \u201cA letter from him at Lucknow gleefully described the sport of peppe<\/em>ring \u2018niggers\u2019 trying to escape by swimming the river<\/em>\u201d. Kiernan 1998, 164.<\/p>\n

    [49]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 On the Second Opium War see: Lovell 2011, 257-266.<\/p>\n

    [50]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWritten at the suggestion of Sir Richard Airey, the army’s quartermaster-general, Wolseley added to his military reputation through the publication of his Soldier’s Pocket Book. A practical manual of soldiering, which was to go through five editions, it was the only guide of its kind to military organization and tactics in the kind of small wars in which the army was increasingly involved<\/em>\u201d. Oxford DNB; Heathcote 1999, 312.<\/p>\n

    [51]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Encyclopedia of World Biography<\/a>. In Lehmann\u2019s (1964) biography is the self-explanatory sentence: \u201cMan shooting is the finest sport of all; there is a certain amount of infatuation about it, the more you kill the more you wish to kill<\/em>\u201d. Source: http:\/\/biography.yourdictionary.com\/garnet-wolseley<\/a> Clearly not the kind of sportsman that Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton (1653) would have recognised as a sportsman in his The Compleat Angler or Contemplative Man\u2019s Recreation, published in 1653, rather a somewhat dishonest angler, if an angler at all, one who fishes by throwing the grenade in the trout stream and collects the dead, in modern parlance, \u201ca signature strike<\/em>\u201d. He also wrote after the First Ashanti (Ghana) War in 1874-6, \u201cIt is only through experience of the sensation that we learn how intense, even in anticipation, is the rapture-giving delight which the attack upon the enemy affords\u2026all other sensations are but the tinkling of a doorbell in comparison with the throbbing of Big Ben<\/em>\u201d cited, Lindquist 1997, 54, fn. 27. The thoughts of a thoroughly modern man, doubtless a worthy topic of Freudian analysis, together with the firearm and camera. He married Louisa Erskine in 1867, they had one daughter Frances Garnet Wolseley, who became the 2nd<\/sup> Viscountess Wolseley (1872-1936) a teacher of, and writer on gardening, with no direct descendants.<\/p>\n

    [52]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Wolseley 1871, 5. For the revolutionary Christian Protestant Evangelical fervour in the lead up to the Mutiny itself, see Dalrymple 2007, 58-84. The degree of change in attitude towards the local inhabitants is most evident if one reads his White Mughals, see Dalrymple 2003, before the sequel, The Last Mughal, a change in attitude within 60 years perhaps only matched by the global changes in attitude over the past 60 years.<\/p>\n

    [53]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Lovell 2011, 259.<\/p>\n

    [54]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Wolseley 1871, 1.<\/p>\n

    [55]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Wolseley 1871, 81; Kerr 1991, 364; Farrer 1885, 144.<\/p>\n

    [56]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Cave-Brown 1975. For possible establishment panic concerning the publication of this substantial work on deception, that subsequently reappeared in the controversy surrounding the so-called missile gap, with the various allegations of disinformation, one can perhaps peruse the reviews at this source: http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/1976\/oct\/14\/bodyguard-of-lies-an-exchange\/<\/a> For the 2007 CIA assessment-review of this book by R. J. Bowen: Source: https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/library\/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence\/kent-csi\/vol20no1\/html\/v20i1a04p<\/a><\/p>\n

    The position in respect to these two ways of thinking, the civilised and the other, that of \u2018All with me\u2019s meet that I can fashion fit.<\/em>\u2019 King Lear, Act.1 Sc. 2, the matter of, \u201cthe one desired nothing and whole world was too little for the other<\/em>\u201d of Diogenes and Alexander, was brilliantly described by the Irish Dublin born Protestant mathematician and physicist, J. L. Synge (1897-1995) author of Synge’s theorem in 1936, in 1943 officially appointed Chairman of the Mathematics Department of Ohio State University and US Air Force ballistic mathematician between 1944 and 1945, one of John Nash\u2019s teachers and likewise a thinker in codes and cyphers, in a short story entitled: s.v.<\/em> \u201cNoblesse Oblige<\/em>\u201d (Synge 1970, 45-46) concerning the chess playing friends Blogs and Snogs, who in 1930 played a game where Snogs, on the point of being defeated deliberately played a false move. At which Blogs understood, he realised Snogs was not playing the game, but rather was concerned with the winning, with victory at any cost. Their friendship was terminated, as there are certain things that one cannot do. In 1940 in the Blitz in London Blogs was playing solitaire chess, a fragment of burning material from an exploding bomb fell on the chessboard and, rather than play a false move in the game, extinguishing the burning fragment, the board burned, the house burned and Blogs died in the fire and, \u201cnothing now remains of him but the memory of a man who always played the game<\/em>\u201d. The death of a gentleman. Expediency survives of course, but the choices made in the face of the reductionisms of expediency mean there are certain things that simply cannot be done by a human being, quite simply disregarding any of the suspected or inevitable consequences, a matter of mental and moral clarity and of civil courage, that belongs to a person of principle, unless of course, one chooses to think that this here is all that there is, and so principle has no root or source, it\u2019s only an affectation. And of course, if this is the case, the game certainly isn\u2019t worth the candle. Op. cit. fn. 44.<\/p>\n

    [57]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Porter 1989, 189-190.<\/p>\n

    [58]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 USAF, Leader of the 1942 bombing raid on Japan and friend of Frank G. Wisner, former Wall Street lawyer, head of OSS operations in south-eastern Europe (he worked in Turkey in 1944) at the end of World War II, the precursor of the CIA. In 1947, Wisner established Operation Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and foreign media, including the literary journal Encounter, the CCF, Congress for Cultural Freedom etc.<\/em>, see, F. Stonor Saunders 1999 passim. Around the same time he oversaw the creation of stay-behind networks all over Europe, Gladio, and then became the head of the Directorate of Plans of the CIA during the 1950\u2019s directing pro-American forces who brought down Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh leader of the National Front in Iran in 1953.<\/p>\n

    [59]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 A public accountant and subsequent to this report, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Financial Management and Comptroller) from 1954 to 1957.<\/p>\n

    [60]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 A New York lawyer and friend of the head of the CIA, Allen W. Dulles<\/p>\n

    [61]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Adventurer, entrepreneur and U.S. Ambassador to Peru in 1945, named Ambassador to Brazil in 1948. A close friend of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and CIA director Allen W. Dulles, he took part in a policy that later become known as Executive Action, the plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power. Pawley played a role in Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA plot to overthrow the Guatemalan government of Jacobo \u00c1rbenz Guzm\u00e1n in 1954 after Arbenz introduced land reforms and nationalized the United Fruit Company. Pawley is thought to have served in Peru, Brazil, Panama, Guatemala, Cuba and Nicaragua between 1945 and 1960.<\/p>\n

    [62]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Commissioned by the 34th<\/sup> President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61) on July the 26th<\/sup> 1954, report presented Sept, 1954, released 2007 at: Source: archive.org\/…Doolittle…\/doolittle_report_djvu<\/p>\n

    [63]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Blum 2003, 42, citing from, Corson 1977, 347; also cited in James A. Barry, Managing Covert Political Action, with the comment, \u201cBut it is clear that even the authors of the Doolittle Report were uncomfortable with the \u201crepugnant philosophy\u201d that they deemed necessary. Indeed, although covert political action became an important tool of US policy America never completely abandoned its moral traditions<\/em>\u201d. Source: https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/library\/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence\/kent<\/a>csi\/vol36no3\/html\/v36i3a05p_0001.htm. One perhaps should pass rather quickly over the expressed opinion, \u201cnever completely abandoned<\/em>\u201d an altogether interesting if not entirely comforting US official opinion; one rather wonders what the rescuing of its partially abandoned moral traditions amounts to? Also quoted in, Leary 1984, 144. Porter 1989, 189-190, who however incorrectly states (much prior to the report\u2019s release from secrecy) that this report was produced by a committee chaired by Gen. Mark Clark, who was also tasked in 1954 with investigating aspects of the CIA which was headed by the 31st<\/sup> USA President, Herbert Hoover, it forming a part of the Hoover Commission, but did not address its covert activities and remit as an aspect of its task.<\/p>\n

    [64]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 As distinct from the fear of the Almighty, regarded as the beginning of wisdom,<\/p>\n

    \u201cO sons of men,<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When you give yourselves to the sweet trap of life<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Leave one limb free for God.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The fear of death is the beginning of wisdom<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And the fair things you do<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Shall blow and smell like flowers<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the dry and fiery day<\/em>\u201d quoted in, The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night<\/em> vol. 2 (Trans. J. C. Mardrus \u2013 P. Mathers 1996), The Extraordinary Tale of the City of Brass, 341st<\/sup> Night, 300-1, \u201cthe dry and fiery day<\/em>\u201d being the Day of Judgement.<\/p>\n

    [65]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Shah 1973, 30.<\/p>\n

    [66]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 514.<\/p>\n

    [67]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Ninja assassins were employed from the XIIIth<\/sup> c. onwards by a variety of feudal states in the isolated Japan of the Shogunate from the Kamakura Shogunate (1192\u20131333) until 1868.<\/p>\n

    [68]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Reynolds 1995, 81.<\/p>\n

    [69]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Including the air strike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad on the 19th<\/sup> of March, 2003.<\/p>\n

    [70]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Reynolds 1995, 29.<\/p>\n

    [71]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Broder 1990.<\/p>\n

    [72]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Cited by Schmitt 1990. See also the reasons cited in, Davis 2002, 100-101:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. General Dugan\u2019s bad judgment,<\/li>\n
    2. The discussion of operational plans and a priority listing of targets,<\/li>\n
    3. Acting as the self-appointed spokesman for the JCS and the CINC,<\/li>\n
    4. The setting of a bad example, especially for USAF personnel,<\/li>\n
    5. The cavalier treatment of casualties,<\/li>\n
    6. The citing of an intent to break the executive order banning participation in assassinations, (\u201cNo person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination<\/em>\u201d. The text of President Jimmy Carter\u2019s executive order banning assassinations, Scahill 2013, 5).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      \u201c7. The potential revelation of classified information about size and disposition<\/em> of American forces,<\/em><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Denigration of the role of the other services, and<\/em><\/li>\n
      2. Raising sensitive matters of diplomacy, including obtaining targeting information from Israel<\/em>\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        [73]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Although the targeting of Saddam Hussein continued, a change in targeting in respect to these shrines was recorded by January 1991, see Davis 2002, 131, \u201cSeveral important Shia Muslim shrines, including Husayn\u2019s <\/em>(sic) Tomb in Karbala and Ali\u2019s tomb in An Najaf, also required protection. The final, pre-conflict JNFTL, issued January 16, 1991, listed a wide range of such targets exempt from attack<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

        [74]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 The bombing killed scores and wounded hundreds, Muammar Gaddafi\u2019s youngest daughter was killed and other family members hospitalised.<\/p>\n

        [75]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 The Church Committee hearings included the investigation of attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, Gen. Ren\u00e9 Schneider of Chile and Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles’s plan (approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower) to use the Sicilian Mafia to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba, for these reports see:\u00a0 Source: http:\/\/history-matters.com\/archive\/contents\/church\/contents_<\/a> church_reports_ir.htm. For further relating to the state policy of assassinations see the Hart-Schweiker Com\u00admittee hearings.<\/p>\n

        [76]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 President Gerald Ford\u2019s Executive Order 11905, replaced in 1981 by President Reagan’s Executive Order 12333, banning the assassinations of heads of state, the same President who then gave assent to Operation El Dorado Canyon which, given the nature of an exploding bomb – an imprecise weapon, could be understood to be in legal terminology an unintentional killing, a by-product of bombing, rather than an assassination, wonderful these legal interpretations; Scahill 2013, 5-7.<\/p>\n

        [77]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 350-1, respectively the CIA and JSOC.<\/p>\n

        [78]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 There were 1,000 drone attacks in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2012, and many civilians of all age groups were killed in drone attacks between 2009 and 2014, at; Source: http:\/\/www.thebureauinvestigates.com\/<\/a> 2014\/01\/23\/more-than-2400-dead-as-obamas-drone-campaign-marks-five-years\/.<\/p>\n

        [79]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Byman 2006, 95-112.<\/p>\n

        [80]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Clavell 1986, 1342-3, re Hussain Kowissi\u2019s final remarks concerning the matter of casualties: \u201cThey believe the life of an individual is priceless, any individual. We know all life comes from God, belongs to God, returns to God and any life only has value doing God\u2019s work. Do you understand my son? Using what the pilot taught, one Believer can put his foot on the neck of ten millions. We will spread this word you and I\u2026We are neither Eastern, nor Western, only Islam. Do you understand, my son?<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

        [81]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 177, 248-251; 501-2; 516.<\/p>\n

        [82]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Source: http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/TRANSCRIPTS\/1412\/11\/cnr.05.html<\/a>; TRANSCRIPT: CIA Director John Brennan Addresses Senate’s Report on CIA Interrogation Program at; Source: http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/International\/ transcript-cia-director-john-brennan-senates-report<\/a> cia\/story?id=27539690&page=2<\/p>\n

        [83]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Source: http:\/\/counterjihadreport.com\/2014\/12\/11\/brennan-claim-that-detainees-didnt-provide-valuable-in teL-after-eits-lacks-any-foundation-at-all\/<\/a><\/p>\n

        [84]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 As in the quote from George Orwell\u2019s 1984, see Orwell 1983: \u201cDo you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain<\/strong><\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

        [85]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 As in: pre-emptive wars, pre-emptive strikes, pre-emptive actions, anticipatory self-defence, preventive (sic) self-defence, as likewise, the \u201cpre-crime justice\u201d<\/em> of assassination based upon the \u201clife patterns of suspects\u201d<\/em>; \u201cTheir potential to commit future acts could be a justification for killing them\u201d<\/em>, Scahill 2013, 352; \u201cPreventive force to\u2026counter threats before they are imminent, even if the use of force would appear to be illegal<\/em>\u201d. Sofaer 2013.<\/p>\n

        [86]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Orwell 1983, 25.<\/p>\n

        [87]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Maalouf 1994, 13, or if you prefer, \u201cIf you have nothing to say, you can say it as loud as you want<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

        [88]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 352.<\/p>\n

        [89]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 352.<\/p>\n

        [90]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 444-445.<\/p>\n

        [91]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 514.<\/p>\n

        [92]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Scahill 2013, 353.<\/p>\n

        [93]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 It minted its own coinage, one of the indicators of a state, at times in Iran under Muhammad I, Hasan II and Muhammad III, although not in Syria.<\/p>\n

        [94]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Cesarani 2009, passim. As likewise the \u201cshoot to kill policy<\/em>\u201d said to have been practiced by the Military Reaction Force (MRF) in Northern Ireland prior to the conclusion of the Peace Process.<\/p>\n

        [95]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Op. cit. <\/em>fn. 73. Point 9; for support for the assassination policy, see for example Luft 2003, 3-13, on The Middle East Forum promoting American Interests; source: http:\/\/www.meforum.org\/515\/the-logic-of-israels-targeted-killing.<\/p>\n

        [96]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Lewis 1967. As to if the Niz\u0101ri assassins were in fact within the Islamic community in the XIth<\/sup> and XIIth<\/sup> centuries as Bernard Lewis suggests through the choice of the subtitle for his book, in terms of their recorded beliefs and because they adopted the term New Muslims under Hassan III, is perhaps open to some considerable doubt, although this association of the religion of Islam and assassins in the context of 1967 in the Middle East and since, was obviously entirely fortuitous, however the title of the earlier work on this subject, see Hodgson 1955, perhaps reflects more precisely the focus of the early Nizari Isma\u2019ilis\u2019 attention.<\/p>\n

        [97]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Lewis 2002; 2003.<\/p>\n

        Akdeniz University, Mediterranean Civilisations Research Institute (MCRI), Antalya.<\/strong><\/p>\n

        <\/div>\n

        T.M.P. DUGGAN\u00a0(\u00d6\u011fr. G\u00f6r.) <\/strong>
        \ntmpduggan@yahoo.com<\/strong><\/p>\n

        <\/div>

        <\/div>\n

        <\/div>\n

        <\/a>