{"id":75800,"date":"2015-09-29T21:27:25","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T05:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=75800"},"modified":"2019-06-19T08:20:32","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T16:20:32","slug":"wp-west-point-law-professor-resigns-after-advocating-attacks-on-colleagues-sympathetic-to-islamist-aims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=75800","title":{"rendered":"WP: West Point law professor resigns after advocating attacks on colleagues \u2018sympathetic to Islamist aims\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington Post<\/a>: A West Point law professor has resigned after arguing that fellow legal scholars who criticize the war on terrorism are \u201ctreasonous\u201d and should be arrested, interrogated and even attacked as \u201cunlawful enemy combatants.\u201d<\/p>\n

William C. Bradford resigned from his post on Sunday following an uproar over a paper titled \u201cTrahison des Professeurs\u201d (Treason of the Professors), published in the National Security Law Journal in July.<\/p>\n

…The Guardian first drew attention to Bradford on Saturday, pointing out that his paper went as far as to advocate attacking \u201cIslamic holy sites\u201d as part of a \u201ctotal war\u201d on Islamist radicalism.<\/p>\n

But it was Bradford\u2019s call for legal scholars \u201csympathetic to Islamist aims\u201d to be imprisoned, \u201cattacked\u201d and, it is implied, even killed that has drawn the most criticism.<\/p>\n

In his paper, Bradford argued that a \u201cclique of about forty\u201d legal scholars critical of the war on terrorism \u2014 from his footnotes, their ranks appear to include professors at top schools like Harvard, Princeton and NYU \u2014 comprise a \u201csuper-weapon that supports Islamist military operations\u201d aimed at \u201cAmerican political will\u201d to fight.<\/p>\n

Using the acronym CLOACA, which ostensibly stands for \u201ccritical law of armed conflict academy\u201d but is also the name for an animal\u2019s anus, Bradford\u2019s article painted these supposedly \u201ctreasonous\u201d scholars as \u201ca Western Fifth Column\u201d of Islamist terrorism that should be treated as such. He even went as far as to suggest that the law schools where they work or the journalists they speak to could also be targeted.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs unlawful combatants for failure to wear the distinctive insignia of a party, CLOACA propagandists are subject to coercive interrogation, trial, and imprisonment,\u201d he wrote. \u201cFurther, the infrastructure used to create and disseminate CLOACA propaganda \u2014 law school facilities, scholars\u2019 home offices, and media outlets where they give interviews \u2014are also lawful targets given the causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited. Shocking and extreme as this option might seem, CLOACA scholars, and the law schools that employ them, are \u2014 at least in theory \u2014 targetable so long as attacks are proportional, distinguish noncombatants from combatants, employ nonprohibited weapons, and contribute to the defeat of Islamism.\u201d<\/p>\n

…In an article picking apart Bradford\u2019s argument piece by piece, Matt Ford, an associate editor at the Atlantic, pointed out that \u201cTreason of the Professors\u201d may not even be Bradford\u2019s most controversial work.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince 2014, according to what is apparently his LinkedIn page, he has been circulating an article for publication entitled, \u2018Alea Iacta Est: The U.S. Coup of 2017,’\u201d Ford wrote on Monday. \u201cThe abstract is strewn with thinly-veiled references to President Obama, asking, for example, \u2018What conditions precedent would be required before the American military would be justified in using or threatening force to oust a U.S. president attempting to \u201cfundamentally transform the United States of America\u201d?\u2019 Although describing it simply as a \u2018heuristic test of a proferred theory,\u2019 it also wonders aloud, \u2018Is such a duty incumbent upon the U.S. armed forces at present?\u2019 That\u2019s a disquieting question for a faculty member to pose, when he\u2019s charged with instructing the nation\u2019s officer corps.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his e-mail to The Post, Bradford wrote that \u201cAlea Iacta Est\u201d (ominous Latin translation: \u201cthe die is cast\u201d) was \u201can unpublished work, the purpose of which is to examine whether a coup might be possible in the U.S. and how best to ensure that it never occurs. Comments about this article are clearly made by those who haven\u2019t read it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, Bradford told The Post that \u201cTreason of the Professors\u201d outlines \u201ca spectrum of modalities preferable to more coercive measures,\u201d such as arrest, interrogation or outright attacks. \u201cMy article indicates that only true propagandists inciting attacks could be subjected to the sanctions I mention, and this parallels existing case law I reference as well as emerging customary international law.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington Post: A West Point law professor has resigned after arguing that fellow legal scholars who criticize the war on terrorism are \u201ctreasonous\u201d and should be arrested, interrogated and even attacked as \u201cunlawful enemy combatants.\u201d William C. Bradford resigned from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-islam"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75800"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127715,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75800\/revisions\/127715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}