Thesis (M.S. in Defense Analysis)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2007. / Thesis Advisor(s): Simons, Anna. "December 2007." Title from title page of PDF document (viewed on: Mar 28, 2008). Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-72).

Thesis (M.S. in Defense Analysis)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2007. / Thesis Advisor(s): Simons, Anna. "December 2007." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 18, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-72). Also available in print.

The purpose of this thesis is to inquire into the hard decisions that democracies are making in the 21st century in the context of working to spreading democracy and maintaining peace through foreign policy. Ever since the American-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 terror attacks, democratic peace theorists have been pushed further to the sidelines as their theory has been put to the test and struggled to stand up to the challenges of political realities in contemporary world politics. The idea that the diffusion of democracy would help build a Kantian world peace would seem to have taken a severe blow with the rise of populist candidates and policies in the West in recent years. The democratic peace theory (DPT) is in crucial respects about the mechanisms to indirectly control other countries' economies and politics through forcibly installing democratic regimes. Though done in the name of safety and security for western nations, this foreign policy looks an awful lot like an attempt at biopolitical engineering. Has DPT morphed into a form of biopolitics? The goal of this thesis is to delve into this question and to learn what the implications are if this is the case, and what it means for the West, democracies, terrorism, and societies. For if democracies are less and less able to justify their role in driving the proper conditions for peace, we must scrutinize the role they play in international affairs in a much broader political perspective. / Master of Arts

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No / This book provides a contemporary month-by-month analysis of events in Iraq since May 2005 and assesses how they impact on other countries including Afghanistan, Iran and the wider Middle East. The book charts a tumultuous period in the conflict, including a wider international perspective on the terrorist attacks in London and Sharm al Sheik, and an assessment of how US public opinion has changed as the war drags on. It brings together Paul Rogers' international security monthly briefings as published on the Oxford Research Group website between May 2005 - April 2006, and concludes with a commentary on the significance of the year's events, and an analysis of the current situation. This is the third ORG International Security Report. We have also published reports in 2004 and 2005.

No / This book is about Muslims in Europe and the "War on Terror"--its causes and consequences for European citizenship and exclusion particularly for young people. The rising tide of hostility towards people of Muslim origin is challenged in this collection from a varied and multi national perspective. The book illustrates that Muslims are as diverse a group as those of any other religion; therefore to place all Muslims into one category is wholly unscientific and discriminatory. It shows that there are historical and ideological reasons for viewing Islam as a static, unchanging and regressive force. The chapters illustrate the diversity of societies with Muslim majority populations and challenge the dominant paradigm of what has become to be known since the War on Terror as "Islamophobia."

American Popular film on the War on Terror plays a powerful role establishing cultural and political discourses surrounding the War on Terror. Furthermore, the attempts of liberal films as a source of critique of American Hollywood conservative War on Terror films are insufficient. I argue that Third Cinema from the Middle East provides a necessary counter-discourse in providing platforms for alternative discussions regarding definitions of terrorism and the production of the Orientalist other.

This study is focused on the spreading wave of militancy in the Muslim youth after 9/11 era.  The role Al Qaeda is researched in understanding this problem in the case study of Pakistan. Al Qaeda is considered as the nursery for the rising of militancy in the Muslims while Pakistan is the birthplace of Al Qaeda. The problem of militancy rose to the alarming level in Pakistan after 9/11 when the Pakistani state started to support the US in the war against terror which Al Qaeda and other Islamists consider as the war against Islam. The recruitment strategies of Al Qaeda and other Pakistani militant groups like Tihreak Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Pakistani Taliban movement) are studied through the discourse analysis. The primary data from the militant sources like the speeches, books and interviews of their leadership and ideologues, their official magazines and press releases are selected for this research. All this data is available in Urdu language which is translated to the English for this research. The theoretical framework of this research is based on the “Soft theory” of Josef Nye (2006) and the “three dimensions of Power” theory of Steven Lukes (2005). The results of this research show that the militants mostly use different types of arguments in their messages to the youth in their efforts for recruiting them to the path of militancy which include mostly the religious arguments. Along with it, they also attract youth to their path on targeting their grievances and hopes. They present to them the path of militancy as an end and the only way of revenge for their all grievances. These results also show that the militants also present militancy to the youth as the only mean for achievement of their various hopes which they believe these Muslims youth cannot get without militancy.

Pat Tillman—an Arizona Cardinals player who sacrificed everything to serve his country but died in Afghanistan—was initially touted as a true American hero who was killed by enemy fire. In reality, however, the Tillman narrative was based on nothing but military propaganda. This research focused on how mainstream U.S. newspapers used news frames, overall story tone, and news sources before and after the official acknowledgement of the true cause of Tillman's death as fratricide. As hypothesized from C. Wright Mills' "lesser institutions," Antonio Gramsci's hegemony, and Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's propaganda model, the newspapers generally decreased both direct and indirect references to news frames involving "lesser institutions" (e.g., NFL, Arizona State University) and ideological values (e.g., heroism, patriotism) after the revelation, but they were not critical of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars or the Bush administration at all. In addition, they increased their dependence on official sources and decreased family and friend sources after his cause of death was changed. The results as a whole indicate that in the Tillman saga, the revelation of his true cause of death introduced a significant disruption to the propaganda information system, causing news frames to decrease, but the third filter of the propaganda model—reliance on official sources—was strong enough to overcome that disruptive event and continue to protect the power elite.

This paper discusses non-military options for confronting international terrorism. It investigates the non-military discourse contained in United Nations and United States policy documents. It then compares the principles in the discourse to the reality of the counter-terrorism policies of the last five years. Finally it looks at what alternative options are being presented in the academic and think-tank literature, to current counterterrorism practices.