The phrase "war on terror" was first used by then United States President George W. Bush in response to the terrorist attacks launched against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

With the purpose of waging a war against Al Qaeda and those who were deemed responsible for the attacks, a military campaign was launched against organizations believed to be terrorist regimes or connected to terrorist ideology. The United States and Great Britain invaded Afghanistan in 2001 with the purpose of ending the Taliban regime (the rulers of Afghanistan who provided support to Al Qaeda). In 2003, shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, the United States invaded Iraq with the stated aim of removing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power and establishing democracy in the country.

Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network emerged in the late 1980s. In 1996, bin Laden declared war on the United States, pledging to drive the country out of Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.

Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network emerged in the late 1980s after a coup d'état toppled the Afghan monarchy. A Soviet government gained power, and Afghans responded with a national resistance movement that defeated Soviet forces. The United States, along with several of its allies, encouraged and monetarily supported what was being called jihad (which means "holy war") against the Soviets. This support fueled the rise of the Taliban regime and radical Islamic groups such as Al Qaeda. The ultimate goal of Al Qaeda (an Arabic word meaning "the base") was to extend Islamic rule throughout the world.

In 1996, bin Laden declared war on the United States, pledging to drive the country out of Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries. Over the next six years, the group carried out a number of attacks across the world, including several against U.S. targets, such as the 1998 twin bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed a total of 200 people and the suicide bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in a Yemeni harbor in 2000 that killed 17 sailors.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States launched a war against Afghanistan, intending to destroy its Al Qaeda bases and bring down the Taliban. Several Al Qaeda leaders were captured and killed, weakening the group, but those who remained (including Osama bin Laden) have since relocated, at least some of them in tribal areas of Pakistan.

In June 2010, Michael E. Leiter, a top U.S. counterterrorism official, said that there were "more than 300" Al Qaeda leaders and fighters hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas. Estimates of the full size of this network, which has cells in some 100 countries across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe and even in the United States, range from several hundred to several thousand.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, while Al Qaeda originated as a well-budgeted hierarchical organization that provided in-person training and employed operatives to carry out its planned attacks, it is now just as likely to inspire individuals or groups to launch their own attacks through the Internet and other media.

Meanwhile, the war in Afghanistan rages on, as President Barack Obama continues to pursue President George W. Bush's stated mission of wiping out Al Qaeda's safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan and limiting the group's ability to strike U.S. targets.

Jihad is an Arabic word meaning "struggle." The term is interpreted by some as an internal, non-violent struggle to maintain faith and morality, while others interpret it as a violent struggle in a "holy war."

Jihad is a widely debated term that has multiple interpretations throughout the world. In its purest form, it is an Arabic word meaning "struggle." This "struggle" is interpreted by some as an internal, non-violent struggle to maintain faith and morality, while others interpret it as a violent struggle in a "holy war." According to a past president of the Harvard Islamic Society, jihad is "the determination to do right, to do justice even against your own interests. It is an individual struggle for personal moral behavior." In this "determination to do right," Muslims are often called on to defend their faith and community by extending the territories ruled by Muslims.

In January 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Yemen "an urgent national security priority." The country is the ancestral home of the bin Laden family and has a long history of producing militants who go on to fight abroad.

Yemen has a variety of political parties ranging from Islamist to Socialist, but for more than three decades power in the country officially has been held by one man — Ali Abdullah Saleh. According to The New York Times Magazine, Saleh pays large sums of money to "sheiks, military leaders, political figures and anyone who might pose a threat to his power," which means that a large portion of Yemen's budget goes to funding bribery and other corruptive practices.

The first major evidence of Al Qaeda involvement in Yemen came when the U.S.S. Cole was attacked in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Saleh, fearing the United States would attack Yemen, met with officials in Washington, D.C. to pledge his support against Al Qaeda. Hundreds of jihadis were rounded up and jailed without charges being brought against them.

According to The Washington Post, a new branch of Al Qaeda known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has since "escalated efforts to exploit Yemen's instability and carve out a leadership role among terrorist groups" training in the country. However, the areas where Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has settled are so remote and unknown, even to officials, that it's unclear how best to target them.

In the weeks following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the George W. Bush administration began to develop a legal framework that would give Bush the authority to order suspected "enemy combatants" to be interrogated aggressively and detained for indeterminate periods of time.

A 2003 legal memo issued by the U.S. Department of Defense essentially asserted that international treaties did not apply to U.S. interrogators in foreign countries. The memo also legalized harsh interrogation methods that many consider to be torture.

This legal framework served as a basis for some of the most controversial tactics used by U.S. interrogators, including those employed at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Under the legal justifications set up by the Bush administration, interrogators used contested techniques, such as sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, nudity, forced stress positions, harsh lights, extreme hot and cold temperatures and — perhaps the most widely debated technique — waterboarding, a form of partial suffocation.

Extraordinary rendition is the practice of capturing suspected terrorists and transporting them to undisclosed foreign locations where they are often interrogated and tortured without formal legal protection or proceedings.

Prior to September 11, 2001, rendition had been employed in 70 instances, most of them during the Clinton administration. Then as now, the stated aim was to disrupt terrorist plots abroad. It was during the Bush administration that the practice of extraordinary rendition became commonly used for interrogation. The three administrations have, however, consistently stated that it is the policy and practice of the United States neither to use torture nor to hand over detainees to countries that use torture.

Historically, presidents needed Congressional authority for these transfers, and the purpose of the resulting transfers was to bring detainees to trial, not simply to interrogate and torture them. Under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, many suspects were deemed illegal "enemy combatants" without any evidence of terrorist activity. In the landmark 2006 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, the Supreme Court ruled that all non-citizen prisoners are protected by the Geneva Conventions, thus essentially rendering extraordinary rendition illegal. While many expected President Barack Obama to institute changes to counterterrorism policy, the current administration has continued the C.I.A.'s program of prison transfers. On September 2, 2010, a federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a Boeing subsidiary accused of arranging flights for the C.I.A. to transfer prisoners to other countries for imprisonment and interrogation. According to The New York Times, "Judge Raymond C. Fisher described the case . . . as presenting ‘a painful conflict between human rights and national security.'"

The Guantánamo Bay naval base was established as a detention center for holding suspected "enemy combatants" following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

The Guantánamo Bay site, located in Cuba, was selected with the intention of creating a detention facility that was outside the law. Detainees were not granted the rights of U.S. citizens accused of crimes, nor were they granted the rights of prisoners of war. This meant that no formal charges were filed and no public trials held. The Bush administration argued that the detention center was outside the jurisdiction of the law because it was not on American soil. The Obama administration vowed to close the facility by January 2010, but failed to fulfill that promise, and the detention center remains open as of this writing. Though detainees have been offered increased legal protection since the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Supreme Court ruling, they have not been granted access to the U.S. civilian court system.

Two-thirds of the 800 prisoners who have passed through Guantánamo since 2002 have been freed, most of them without being charged, after several years in captivity.

Habeas corpus is a legal action that prevents the government from holding prisoners for political or personal reasons.

The concept of habeas corpus (which means "you have the body" in Latin) dates back to the Magna Carta of 1215 and it was one of the earliest legal actions English courts could take. According to an article in the journal Social Education, "The writ, or written order of the court, gave judges the power to command the presence of a person before the court. This power worked two ways: (1) the writ was an order for the government and the accused to appear before the court; and (2) it required the government to explain why a person was being detained. If the court was not satisfied by the government's explanations for holding a person, the judges had the power to free the prisoner."

Suspending Habeas Corpus
Habeas corpus has been suspended at different times throughout American history. According to an article in the journal Social Education, at the start of the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus without permission from Congress. Congress later passed legislation to support his actions. For its part, the George W. Bush administration argued that during what it termed America's "war on terror," enemy combatants had no right to writs of habeas corpus, and that these foreign nationals could be held at Guantánamo Bay indefinitely. Enemy combatants, in response, applied for habeas corpus in federal court. Some notable cases have resulted, most significant perhaps being the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling, which stated that the military commissions convened to try Hamdan were illegal and lacked the protections required under the Geneva Conventions and the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice. Since the Hamdan trial, many detainees in Afghanistan have attempted to bring habeas corpus lawsuits against the U.S. government, challenging the basis for their imprisonment without trial. However, according to a September 8, 2010 article in The New York Times, the Obama administration has effectively blocked these detainees from filing such lawsuits.

The George W. Bush administration determined that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to "enemy combatants" detained at the Guantánamo Bay facility in Cuba.

A cornerstone of international humanitarian law, the Geneva Convention of 1949, ratified after World War II, traces its roots to the late 19th century. What initially was conceived of as a treaty created out of concern for wounded soldiers eventually came to encompass protection for prisoners of war, civilians and civilian non-combatants. The convention outlaws the taking of hostages and, according to the Congressional Research Service, prohibits "'cruel treatment and torture' and '[o]utrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.'"

The George W. Bush administration determined that the Geneva Conventions (which include the original 1949 Geneva Convention, plus other treaties and protocols) did not apply to "enemy combatants" detained at the Guantánamo Bay facility in Cuba, which sparked much controversy surrounding the treatment of Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners of war.

Miranda rights are police warnings given to criminal suspects in the United States to inform them of their Constitutional rights to remain silent and to have counsel present during interrogation.

If a law enforcement officer does not recite Miranda rights to an individual taken into custody, that individual's statements may not be used as evidence to incriminate him or her in a criminal trial. Much controversy exists over whether Miranda rights should be extended to prisoners of war and suspected terrorists — including those who are U.S. citizens.

In 2001, President George W. Bush issued a controversial executive order that attempted to establish tribunals to prosecute war crimes by Al Qaeda members and affiliates.

The Bush administration maintained that because detainees were foreign and not being held on American soil, they did not have the right to challenge their status in American court rooms; they were not entitled to the protections laid out by the international Geneva Convention; and they could be held indefinitely. The order gave the president absolute power to designate enemy combatants of the United States and to set his own definitions of torture and coercion. He effectively gave himself the power to create military commissions without consulting Congress.

While there are Americans who believe suspected terrorists in U.S. custody should be tried in the U.S. federal court system, there are also many who believe that these suspected criminals should not be offered legal protection under the Constitution of a nation they have condemned. The group 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America collected signatures for a 2009 letter to President Obama that states that none of the 9/11 conspirators were informed of their Miranda rights before detention, and that they, therefore, cannot be considered common criminals. The letter states, "The public has a right to know that prosecuting the 9/11 conspirators in federal courts will result in a plethora of legal and procedural problems that will severely limit or even jeopardize the successful prosecution of their cases. Ordinary criminal trials do not allow for the exigencies associated with combatants captured in war, in which evidence is not collected with CSI-type chain-of-custody standards."

This landmark 2006 Supreme Court case challenged the authority of the president to create military commissions without consulting Congress.

Salim Hamdan was captured by Afghan forces in 2001 and imprisoned at the detention center in Guantánamo Bay by the U.S. military for his employment as the driver of Osama bin Laden. According to the Oyez Project, Hamdan filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court to challenge his detention. However, before the district court had ruled on the petition, he received a hearing from a military tribunal and was designated an "enemy combatant."

The Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that the Geneva Convention could not be enforced in federal court and that the establishment of military tribunals had been authorized by Congress and was therefore not unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-to-3 decision authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, held that the president's creation of this sort of military commission was unconstitutional and failed to comply with the ordinary laws of the United States and the laws of war. According to the Oyez Project, the Geneva Convention, as a part of the ordinary laws of war, could therefore be enforced by the Supreme Court, along with the statutory Uniform Code of Military Justice. Hamdan's trial was, therefore, deemed illegal.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 was passed by Congress in response to the Supreme Court's ruling. The act authorized the use of military commissions established by executive order and also created new legal precepts, including the concept that material support for terrorism was itself a war crime.

Passed in direct response to the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 overturned the Supreme Court's decision and created a new law that allowed the government to file fresh charges against Salim Hamdan.

According to the Center For Constitutional Rights, Congress authorized the use of military commissions established by presidential order, while also suspending the right to habeas corpus, creating a broad definition of "unlawful enemy combatant," granting U.S. officials immunity for abuse and torture, permitting the use of secret evidence and allowing the use of statements obtained through coercion in prosecutions. Hamdan was the first person to stand trial under the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

After Hamdan's trial, President Barack Obama signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2009, which was an attempt to reform the military commissions system created under the Bush administration. While the new system offers detainees greater due process rights, it still contains provisions that fall short of providing detainees access to a trial in civilian courts. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) states that the new commissions under Obama remain "a second class system of justice." Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project, writes, "The commissions remain not only illegal but unnecessary — the federal courts have proven themselves capable of handling complex terrorism cases while protecting both the government's national security interests and the defendants' rights to a fair trial.

U.S. Policy in the Wake of 9/11: The Dialogue Committee: A Government Re-Education Program for Jihadis

The Dialogue Committee is a Yemeni government re-education program for imprisoned jihadis in Yemen that was initiated in 2002 and led by judge Hamoud al-Hitar.

Yemeni officials created the program with the idea that engaging in theological dialogue with prisoners would correct their beliefs and cause released inmates to reject violent jihad. Jihadis released from the program agreed not to battle the government, not to use Yemen as a base for foreign operations and not to kill foreigners. The released jihadis were also offered government assistance with job placement.

The effectiveness of the Dialogue Committee was debatable. While the program seems to have been effective in many cases, including that of Abu Jandal, some former prisoners have returned to violence. The program was shut down in 2005, but U.S. counterterrorism officials are pressuring Yemeni authorities to restart the program for detainees returning from Guantánamo Bay, as nearly half of the current detainees are from Yemen. A center for the program's purposes was under construction, and the United States government would like to see the facility finished, but Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of Yemen, refuses to continue construction work without U.S. funds.

Source
» Seifert, Katherine. "Can Jihadis Be Rehabilitated?" The Middle East Quarterly 17, No. 2 (Spring 2010).