The United States published its latest National Counter Terrorism (CT) Strategy in June of this year.  On page five of the strategic document, a direct link between American national values and fighting terrorism is made.  To Americans this comes as no surprise.  Americans expect any national strategy to be about protecting the very values that are at the heart of their country...

Since its formation in 1990, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has evolved from a local threat focused against India to a global jihadist threat.  While many experts have addressed the operational facets of LeT, its finances have not received commensurate attention.  This article aims to redress that gap...

Al Qaeda’s senior leadership is indisputably being pressed to an extent not seen since the opening phases of the war on terrorism ten years ago.  Members of the CTFP community should recognize that the systematic killing of well over thirteen key senior al Qaeda commanders in unmanned drone attacks since July 2008 has appreciably thinned al Qaeda’s once deep bench of battle-hardened operatives, to say nothing of their loss of Osama bin Laden himself...

The form of ethics I am interested in and teach at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California focuses on individual ethical decision-making. Essentially, I am interested in trying to figure out the right thing for an individual to do, squaring that decision with the other choices, ramifications, and possible consequences, and then trying to come to some peace with that decision...

The role of Muslim converts in the context of Islamist homegrown terrorism remains largely below the radar screen for both researchers and policymakers. Despite evidence suggesting that increasing numbers of converts are playing significant roles within terrorist organizations, most conventional wisdom still treats them as a marginal phenomenon rather than a sustained trend...

During the last decade, the global footprint of terrorism and ideological extremism has grown significantly.  Since al Qaeda attacked America’s most iconic landmarks on September 11, 2001, the US-led western response to terrorism has been overwhelmingly ki netic and lethal.  A review of terrorist attacks in the last decade indicates that the terrorist threat has only grown and not diminished...

There is a saying among soldiers, that combat is long hours of boredom, occasionally interrupted by moments of terror.  As true as this may be, it doesn’t mean that a wartime documentary should pattern its storyline in the same way.  Yet “Restrepo,” the true-life story of a U.S. Army infantry platoon fighting in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, manages to take what should be an intensely interesting subject – men at war in a distant, forbidding land, fighting a tough, elusive enemy – and make it somehow mundane...