Pentagon ‘Not Actively Participating’ in Extremism Summit

Summit Under Fire by Hawks for Not Being More Hostile to Islam

As the White House summit on violent extremism opens today, a handful of Pentagon officials are in attendance, though the Pentagon is carefully noting that they are “not actively participating.”

The Pentagon insists that their role in fighting extremism is “on the front lines where extremism becomes terrorism,” and that the summit is meant to be more of a pre-terror planning stage.

The summit itself is coming under considerable fire from hawks for focusing on “violent extremism” in general without singling out Islam by name in the summit. Officials insist they’re trying to avoid being too controversial.

At the same time, the summit’s implicit focus is almost entirely on the world’s Muslims, and that’s not sitting with with Muslim legal advocates, who say the summit is adding to the anti-Muslim hysteria across the West.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.