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White House Releases “New” Counter-terrorism Strategy

09.08.11

This week, the Drained House released a report outlining a new strategy to combat home-grown extremism by reaching out to town communities.  The document released is titled Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Harsh Extremism in the United States

Reuters reports that The strategy includes enhancing engagement with proper local communities, building law enforcement expertise in preventing violent extremism and countering messages that boost militancy.  ...  The strategy, which promises to protect civil liberties and escape stigmatizing any community, said the threat of militancy in the United States was not new and that the government was working to forbid all types of extremism, regardless of its source.  But the plan focused primarily on al Qaeda, labeling the far-reaching Islamic militant network as the “preeminent terrorist threat” to the country.

Scott Shane in The New York Times reports that The supervision also promised to identify accurate educational materials about Islam for law enforcement officers, providing an substitute to biased and ill-informed literature in use in recent years, including by the F.B.I.  Denis R. McDonough, President Obama’s surrogate national security adviser, told reporters that Al Qaeda and those it inspired remained the biggest anarchist threat inside the United States. But he said the bombing and shootings in Norway last month, carried out by a high-mindedness-wing, anti-Muslim extremist, were a reminder that the government could not focus exclusively on any single label of radicalism.

Source: American Muslim