Adam Serwer

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Adam Serwer is a reporter at Mother Jones. Formerly a staff writer at the American Prospect, he has written for the Washington Post, the Root, the Village Voice, and the New York Daily News.

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Al Qaeda Planting Its Flag In Libya?

—By Adam Serwer

| Wed Nov. 2, 2011 1:50 PM PDT

The Al Qaeda flag atop a Benghazi courthouse.

Last week photographs of an Al Qaeda flag flying on top of a Benghazi courthouse posted by Vice magazine's Sherif Elhelwa provoked fresh concerns, particularly on the right, that post-Qaddafi Libya was on the verge of falling to Islamic extremists. That concern seems a bit premature.

First, a little background on the flag itself. According to Christopher Anzalone of the McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies, the flag is one that has previously been used by Al Qaeda in Iraq. The Arabic writing on the flag is the Shahada, the Muslim creed that "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His Messenger." Because the Shahada is a basic tenet of the Islamic faith, the design isn't "inherently militant or Salafi," Anzalone says, but this particular design is "often done as a statement, from what I can tell, by those sympathetic to AQ or some of its ideology." A large number of the foreign fighters who went to Iraq to fight the US were from Libya. "My guess is that some of the Libyan rebels who fought in Iraq brought the flag, or the idea for it, from there," Anzalone says.

Although it's clear that there were a number of Islamist militants among Libya's rebel fighters—Abdel Hakim Belhadj, formerly of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, was one of the main military leaders of the rebellion—the kind of militant Islamic extremist ideology espoused by Al Qaeda doesn't have much of a support base in Libya, according to Libya expert Ronald Bruce St John.

"The concerns at this point about an Islamist government as we have understood it, that is an Islamist government defined as radical fundamentalists along the lines of Iran or the Taliban in Afghanistan, I don't see an immediate threat for that in Libya," St John says. "There were, particularly in the 1990s, attempts by Islamist movements to overthrow the Qaddafi regime...What was significant then in terms of today, there was never a sign of widespread interest in the kind of radical Islam the LIFG was promoting." Even former LIFG member Belhadj has promised that "we are not here to establish a Taliban-like regime through a coup d'état." (Although I suppose that leaves a popular mandate as an option.)

There are still major divisions in Libya, St John says, particularly regional conflicts, disagreements over the nature of the new government, and disputes between towns and cities who suffered during the revolution and feel they're entitled to more of a say in the new order. There's also the issue of bringing all those armed rebels under the authority of the Transitional National Council. And although St John says he sees little risk of a fundamentalist state emerging, any future Libyan government is likely be heavily influenced by Islam.

"The Libyan people are very traditional, conservative and religious," St. John says. "We'll see a government centered around Islam to some degree, and that is nothing different from what we've seen since Libya's independence in 1951."

What about that Al Qaeda in Iraq flag though?

"I think it's a one-off kind of thing, I don't think there's any organized group promoting anything like that in Libya," St John says. "If they started popping up everywhere it might be a different story."

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Gitmo Detainee Could Be Held Even If Found Innocent

—By Adam Serwer

| Wed Nov. 2, 2011 10:45 AM PDT

Alleged U.S.S Cole Bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Attorneys for accused U.S.S Cole Bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri want to know if he'll be released if acquitted of all charges. The government's response? We'll think about it.

Al-Nashiri is set to be tried by military commission at Gitmo for his role in masterminding the 1998 bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden in Yemen. The attack killed 17 US sailors and injured thirty-seven others. His defense attorneys filed an order two weeks ago demanding that the government state whether it intends to continue holding al-Nashiri in military detention should he be acquitted of war crimes. If convicted, al-Nashiri could face the death penalty. The defense expressed the concern that "if Mr. Al-Nashiri is acquitted by the Commission, he will not be released, and his detention by the United States will continue, perhaps for the rest of his life." Because Al-Nashiri is being held in military detention, he can legally be held for "the duration of hostilities." Since the "hostilities" against al-Qaeda might not ever end, even if found innocent of the charges he'd still be subject to imprisonment for the rest of his life.

The governments response: "We don't have to tell you" and "maybe." In its response filing, the government dismisses the request saying that Congress didn't authorize the commissions to "resolve every aspect of the life of the accused," and that if al-Nashiri should be acquitted, the "appropriate components of the US government" will decide based on "circumstances which are relevant at the time, and which cannot be adequately foreseen at this point." The government has raised the possibility of post-acquittal military detention previously—both in the case of Osama bin Laden's former driver Salim Hamdan during the Bush administration and the cases of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators during the Obama administration—but it's never actually followed through. Following his conviction by military commission, Hamdan served a short sentence and was back home in Yemen five months later.

That said, the government seems pretty confident in its case. Though al-Nashiri was subject to torture, prosecutors decided to seek the death penalty—which in military commissions requires a uninamous verdict rather than the two-thirds threshold for non-capital cases. The detainees the Obama administration doesn't feel confident trying it has simply left in indefinite military detention without plans for trial in either the military or federal systems. The defense's motion though, draws attention to the catch-22s of a legal system in which even acquittal is no guarantee of freedom.

Four Senior Citizens Plotted Killing Spree At A Waffle House

—By Adam Serwer

| Wed Nov. 2, 2011 5:55 AM PDT

Four senior citizens walk into a Waffle House planning to go on a killing spree in order to "save the Constitution."

That's not the beginning of a joke, it's the scenario outlined by the FBI in a criminal complaint filed against four Georgia men yesterday who allegedly sought to use the online novel of a frequent Fox News guest named Mike Vanderboegh as a model for a terrorist plot against US government officials. The four men, Samuel Crump, Frederick Roberts, Ray Adams, and Dan Roberts, who named themselves "the covert group" (subtle!) allegedly fantasized about dispersing the toxic agent ricin over Washington DC and Atlanta, and hoped to ultimately obtain botulinium toxin, which Adams believed could kill millions of people in small doses.

"We need somebody to back us with some damn money so we can make that other shit," Crump said at a Waffle House in Toccoa, Georgia. according to the criminal complaint. Crump added that botulinium toxin was "worse than anthrax."

What was the ostensible purpose of all this killing? Saving the country of course. "There is no way for us, as militiamen, to save this country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly, highly illegal: murder,” Thomas reportedly said. “When it comes time to saving the Constitution, that means some people have got to die.” The FBI also alleges that "Thomas, Roberts and others discussed the need to obtain unregistered silencers and explosive devices for use in attacks against federal government buildings and employees, as well as against local police."

So how much more operational was this plot than your average FBI sting involving some hapless al-Qaeda fanboy? That's not really clear. While the group demonstrated an ability to independently manufacture ricin, which is made from widely available castor beans, the criminal complaint begins with a meeting surveilled by an FBI "confidential human source" in March. While the FBI recordings showing the four men expressing an eagerness to kill large numbers of people in pursuit of their political goals will likely preclude any entrapment defense, there's no way to know from the criminal complaint what level of involvement the FBI's confidential human source had in putting together the whole plan, or even the existence of the group itself, or whether the source came upon the plot by other means.

Bottom line: At first glance this appears to be the right-wing extremist version of the sort of al-Qaeda wannabe stings we've become so familiar with.

The Weekly Standard Doesn't Get That "Friend" And "Policy Adviser" Aren't The Same Thing

—By Adam Serwer

| Tue Nov. 1, 2011 3:17 PM PDT

Although the Weekly Standard has taken the militant background of Mitt Romney's Middle East Policy Adviser Walid Phares a little more seriously than National Review, it nonetheless feels the need to draw a false equivalence between Phares and President Barack Obama's former University of Chicago colleague Rashid Khalidi:

Barack Obama and Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi both taught at the University of Chicago in the ’90s, and at a farewell dinner for Khalidi in 2003, Obama warmly praised Khalidi’s advice, which took the form of “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.” Since the Los Angeles Times never released its videotape of the event, we may never know Obama’s blind spots or the enlightenment on offer from his friend and colleague Khalidi—a PLO spokesman in Beirut during the Lebanese civil wars.

The Standard attacks former CIA Official Paul Pillar, quoted in my piece, for not acknowledging Khalidi when he told me that he could not "think of any earlier instance of a [possible presidential] adviser having held a comparable formal position with a foreign organization." The unsigned Standard editorial then absurdly goes on to criticize Pillar for erasing Khalidi from his memory. The problem is that Phares not only has an official position as an adviser to the Romney campaign but also, according to one of Phares' longtime associates, was promised a high-level job making policy in the Middle East should Romney become president. Neither the Romney campaign nor Phares' defender Mario Loyola chose to dispute that account.

The Weekly Standard, meanwhile, can't say that Khalidi and Obama were ever more than friends. Khalidi never held any sort of official position with the Obama campaign, and Obama's policy towards Israel has been as consistently one-sided as previous American presidents. It's as though the Standard couldn't bring itself to acknowledge Phares' problematic background without also taking a completely gratuitous shot at the Obama administration for the crime of being friends with someone with pro-Palestinian views and indulging in a little random score-settling with Pillar for past criticism of the Bush administration.

The editorial unintentionally reinforces the double-standard at play here. Phares' militant past and official role as a Romney adviser draws the most mild of rebukes, while Obama's friendly relationship with Khalidi provokes hysterical speculation about Obama's "true feelings" about Israel and Palestine, as though he doesn't have an actual record on the issue to evaluate. Observe the Standard's consternation over Obama's friendship with Khalidi, and try to imagine the teeth-gnashing rage towards Obama from conservatives had he actually appointed an adviser who played a role in PLO comparable to the one Phares played in the Lebanese Forces during Lebanon's civil war.

When Does A Lynching Matter? When It's "High-Tech."

—By Adam Serwer

| Tue Nov. 1, 2011 7:10 AM PDT

Herman Cain

Shortly after Politico broke the news of Herman Cain being accused of sexual harassment while head of the National Restaurant Association, the American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord declared the whole affair "High Tech Lynching: The Sequel Starring Herman Cain."

This is been the general line from Cain supporters since the allegations surfaced—despite the fact that the incidents occurred years ago and involved financial settlements, Politico is guilty of holding a "high-tech lynching" merely by revealing their existence. Lord in particular offers a wonderful example of the right's selective interest in anti-black racism: its tendency for shrieking hyperbole when a black conservative is involved and callous indifference when the "wrong kind" of black person is not. Or as Rush Limbaugh put it, this is "an unconscionable, racially stereotypical attack on an independent, self-reliant conservative black because for him that behavior is not allowed." Because the last thing Limbaugh wants is to portray black people in a stereotypical fashion.

Here, for example, is Lord calling former USDA Official Shirley Sherrod (who was fired after a selectively edited video from Andrew Breitbart cast her as an anti-white racist) a "liar" for saying that her relative Bobby Hall was lynched by Claude Screws, the sheriff of Baker County, Georgia. You see, Screws didn't kill Hall with a rope, he and his colleagues merely beat him to death with blunt objects and fists while he was handcuffed.

It's also possible that she knew the truth and chose to embellish it, changing a brutal and fatal beating to a lynching. Anyone who has lived in the American South (as my family once did) and is familiar with American history knows well the dread behind stories of lynch mobs and the Klan. What difference is there between a savage murder by fist and blackjack -- and by dangling rope? Obviously, in the practical sense, none. But in the heyday -- a very long time -- of the Klan, there were frequent (and failed) attempts to pass federal anti-lynching laws. None to pass federal "anti-black jack" or "anti-fisticuffs" laws.

In case I really need to explain this, actual anti-lynching legislation referred to "an assemblage composed of three or more persons acting in concert for the purpose of depriving any person of his life without authority of law as a punishment for or to prevent the commission of some actual or supposed public offense," because it wouldn't have made much sense to write a law prohibiting the extrajudicial killing of black people only if a rope is involved.

So just so we're clear, Lord thinks that the "liberal" Politico reporting on two settlements related to sexual harassment allegations in Cain's past is "a high-tech lynching." But the actual lynching of Bobby Hall isn't a real lynching, because it involved cops beating him to death instead of reporting unfavorable allegations from his past.

The term "high tech lynching" was first used by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas to dismiss allegations of sexual harassment against him as the work of a racist conspiracy. Its reintroduction into the American political conversation as a term associated not with something resembling the actual horrors of Jim Crow—from which it draws its moral weight—but with the cynicism of conservatives willing to acknowledge the existence of systemic racism only when one of their own could be a victim, seems fitting. As with "reverse racism," when a conservative says "high-tech lynching," it signals that something bad is happening to someone you're actually supposed to care about. It identifies the bad kind of racism, as opposed to the kind that liberals make up.