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writing for godot

Ten Years On: From Flight Attendant to a Doctoral Defense

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Written by Steven J. Barela   
Saturday, 10 September 2011 01:00
I was a flight attendant for United Airlines on September 11th, 2001 and the night before I had just returned home to Denver (via SFO) after working an international flight from London. My wife, who was also a flight attendant, dragged me out of bed me that Tuesday morning speaking animatedly about airplanes and tall buildings. Since the events were beyond explanation, she insisted that I shake off the jet-lag and see what was happening for myself. Since that moment, it has been quite difficult for me to divert my attention from those attacks and what they spawned.

The events of that morning had an enormous impact on my country and my life. I reacted to them by pivoting to study terrorism and counterterrorism all the way up to the doctoral level, and the intention here is to trace the path I have followed so as to present my understanding of the anatomy of global terrorism today.

The smashing of two civilian aircraft into the World Trade Center buildings in downtown New York was caught on film and televised while citizens across the country watched in awe as a national symbol collapsed before their eyes. It is in this way that the shocking terrorist attacks became a dramatic and vivid image etched into the psyche of a nation. Terrorism expert Brian Jenkins explained in 1975 that “terrorism is theatre”, and the horrible violence of 9/11 was a veritable spectacle from which people could not turn away.

Democracies tend to be particularly susceptible to provocation via terrorist acts since the spectacular nature of brutal attacks makes good television coverage for a free press, a fact with which terrorist groups are very familiar. Imagery and coverage of such violence intensifies panic and fear, and the short democratic election cycle helps to provoke a rapid and forceful response since politicians wish to be seen as attentive to security concerns.

Yet, while swift and overwhelming force is critical in a conventional military campaign, it is far from certain that the same is also true for effective counterterrorism. Nonetheless, the United States immediately reacted with the most powerful response available; two countries were invaded and the ‘war on terror’ became the signature policy of the presiding administration.

When I was a new flight attendant I had been based out of Newark, New Jersey and had thus worked with some of the crew that were the victims of the box-cutters even before the planes had been become deadly projectile weapons. But I count myself as enormously fortunate not to have lost any loved ones that day having both family and friends in the industry. Since two out of four of the hijacked planes were from United Airlines, my company took a particularly big hit in the depressed economy that followed and the job of flight attendant changed considerably as cuts in the work force and pay ensued.

As a result, I decided to return to university while still working. Studying the phenomenon of terrorism and my country’s reaction to it understandably drew my interest in the international studies program where I enrolled. It was through this M.A. work in Denver that I came to regard the disciplines of international law and political philosophy as most suited for illuminating the central issues of terrorism and counterterrorism in the case of 9/11. Thus to further pursue the marriage of these two branches of learning I regrettably left my job as a flight attendant to accept a position as a doctoral assistant in a prominent home for international law: Geneva, Switzerland where “Philosophy is more studied than the Sword”.

Thus for the last six years I have been researching and studying the attacks of 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ as my doctoral work. To accomplish what I felt was necessary to properly address this subject I simultaneously completed an LL.M. degree in the international laws of war and human rights. This provided me important background and training for analyzing the applicable norms and codified laws governing cross-border and cross-national violence, detention, force and ill-treatment. Integrating this with political philosophy led me to conceptualizing the idea of the legitimacy of a government as a target of terrorism.

It is well known that individuals choosing the dastardly tactic of targeting non-combatants are much weaker than their government adversary, and so they clearly wish to upend the conventional battlefield. To do so they pursue a ‘strategy of provocation’. That is, they wish to goad a government into overreacting and thus doing injury to itself that could never be achieved by non-state actors: to inflict damage to its own legitimacy.

Ten years on, it is not difficult to see the overreaction that was provoked. By engaging in counterterrorism policies that ran into stark problems of legality, morality and efficacy, the government fell into the legitimacy trap laid by al Qaeda.

A usually deferential U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the government three times over a four-year span in landmark cases. Each time it used different bodies of law to gradually constrain the government, notably using the Geneva Conventions in the Hamdan case of 2006. The Court consistently held in each of these cases that the non-citizens held abroad in Guantánamo were indeed protected by law, and that the courts in fact had a role to play.

The U.S. public watched its government go before the UN Security Council and be refused legal authorization for an invasion of Iraq because the allegations of WMD possession were found to be insufficient (a claim later shown to be palpably false). While this did not stop an invasion, it did force the government to lay out a case that fell apart in the face of facts and before citizens’ eyes as the campaign floundered.

When the infamous ‘Torture Memos’ began to come to light in the context of photographic evidence of ill-treatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, discussion over abusive interrogation techniques bounded into the public sphere. The feeble legal analysis of the international law that had become domestic law was savaged from numerous fronts. The morality of torture had no justification in the absence of any factual attack averted. And the effectiveness of ill-treatment was indefensible since the innocent and ill-informed who were pulled into the program and tortured had nothing to offer.

Each of these policies raised very basic questions in citizens’ minds about the state itself, aptly described by Max Weber as “the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force”. Political philosophy helps to expose this insight as central to any functioning society, thus the logical next step is to find ways to determine how force might be exercised in ways that are considered legitimate across international borders and against foreign nationals.

The 2006 U.S. Army Field Manual on Counterinsurgency overseen by General Petraeus highlights the centrality of legitimacy over and over again in discussing modern warfare. General Petraeus’ manual instructively explains,

“Illegitimate actions are those involving the use of power without authority. Such actions include unjustified or excessive use of force, unlawful detention, torture, and punishment without trial. Any human rights abuses or legal violations committed by U.S. forces quickly become known throughout the local populace and eventually around the world. Illegitimate actions undermine both long- and short-term COIN [counterinsurgency] efforts.”

The policies listed here as “illegitimate” actually became part and parcel of this war and were eventually exposed to the public by civil servants and soldiers who found them to be just that: illegitimate. Once we understand that the actions of government in response to terrorist acts are often directly related to the legitimate exercise of authority, and consequently central to the conflict, the need for more thoughtful counterterrorism policies becomes imperative.

Much of the last decade of my life has been spent contemplating, investigating and conceptualizing those attacks and our response to them in hopes that we can better develop a counterterrorism policy that reduces the damage we do to ourselves. Today, I am on the cusp of defending my thesis to receive a doctoral degree in law, and this work as a response to those attacks is meant to help us understand and defend the concept of legitimacy as a target.

Steven J. Barela
Geneva, Switzerland

Steven J. BARELA has just finished writing his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Geneva entitled, Legitimacy as a Target: International Law and the ‘War on Terror’. He has taught at the Korbel School of International Studies at Denver University, and has lectured at l'Université Laval in Québec for their summer school on terrorism.
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