Foundation for Defense of Democracies
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The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and education on the War on Terrorism. It was founded shortly after the September 11th attacks in 2001. It is one of several neoconservative[citation needed] think tanks in the United States.
FDD claims to be a nonpartisan policy institute that seeks to promote pluralism, defend democratic values, and fight the ideologies that drive terrorism.
FDD combines policy research, democracy and anti-terrorism training, Strategic Communications, and investigative journalism. FDD focuses its efforts where opinions are formed: in the media, on college campuses, and in the policy community, at home and abroad.
Founding members and advisors include prominent conservatives such as Steve Forbes, Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Newt Gingrich, and former CIA director James Woolsey. The group also includes prominent liberals such as Frank Lautenberg, Charles Schumer, Joseph Lieberman and Donna Brazile.
FDD is a tax-exempt, non-profit institution, and does not seek to advance any political party. It is funded by a diverse group of individual philanthropists. The group generally has a hawkish stance on security issues.
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[edit] Pro-Democracy Programs
- The FDD's Democracy Programs consist of two synergistic initiatives to give voice to pro-democracy, anti-terrorism activists from the Islamic world, and support them in their battle against radical Islam. -- from their website
The FDD works with numerous pro-democracy groups throughout the Middle East, and has been active within Iraq helping Iraqis participate in democracy. The FDD has particularly focused on helping Iraqi women participate in the fledging Iraqi democracy.
- Using grant money from the United States Department of State, the FDD held an Iraqi Women's Leadership Conference, bringing together Iraqi women in order to study the principles of democracy, learn how they can participate in their nation's new government and electoral process, and help Iraqi women to take an active role in their country's civic life.[1]
- In coordination with the American Islamic Congress and the Independent Women's Forum, the FDD created the The Iraqi Women's Education Institute, which has similar goals to the Iraqi Women's Leadership Conference. [2]
The FDD also has worked with the Iraqi Kurdish regional government, often organizing speaking events in the United States for prominent Kurds. Qubad Talabani, the son of Jalal Talabani, often worked with the FDD before Operation Iraqi Freedom. The FDD also has worked with Lebanese, Syrian and Iranian pro-democracy activists, among others.
The FDD also helped create Women for a Free Iraq [3], a group of Iraqi exiles who had been persecuted under Saddam Hussein, which advocated for US military intervention to remove the Hussein regime. Additionally, the FDD also helped create the Iraq-America Freedom Alliance.[4]
[edit] Educational Programs
The FDD awards fellowships to well-qualified university students and professors. Both the Undergraduate Fellowship and the Academic Fellowship (for professors) entail the participants travelling to Israel to study terrorism. There they meet with Israeli, American, Turkish, Jordanian, and Indian officials to learn about each country's experience fighting terrorism. The fellows often form FDD-affiliated student groups on their respective campuses. Such groups have a pro-democracy, anti-terrorism mission, much like the FDD itself. FDD-affiliated student groups can now be found at nearly all major American undergraduate institutions. Many FDD Undergraduate Fellows have gone on to work in the intelligence and defense communities. [5]
FDD is the principal sponsor of the Summer Workshop on Teaching about Terrorism (SWOTT). This unique, U.S.-based effort to provide college professors with the tools they need to teach about the threat of terrorism and the methods used to combat it was inaugurated in 2005 and includes classes that encompass all facets of terrorism studies and field trips to military and other national security-related installations.
[edit] Other Programs
FDD organized the Coalition Against Terrorist Media, a coalition of Muslim, Christian, Jewish and secular organizations, to focus on terrorist media including the Iranian-sponsored, Hezbollah-operated al-Manar television station. FDD claims the station incites violence, recruits suicide bombers, and supports terrorism. The Coalition has briefed over 800 government officials and private sector CEO's in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East leading to the removal of al-Manar from eight out of ten satellite providers worldwide.
Every Sunday night at 9pm, FDD's Ambassador Richard Carlson hosts the WMAL radio show the Danger Zone. Danger Zone features discussions involving leading figures from the worlds of intelligence, security, military and academia.
FDD's photo essay Terror in Israel: The Human Cost of Terrorism, released in February 2004 begins with a message from former ambassador Richard Carlson (director of Voice of America) on Palestinian suicide bombers and the Israeli West Bank barrier. The 16-page essay contains photographs of ordinary people burned, bloodied, maimed; a city bus burst-open by an explosion and immigrants from Ethiopia maimed and killed by terrorist attacks. The FDD opposed the hearings in the International Court of Justice on the barrier and filed an amicus brief to express its opposition.
[edit] Oil for Food Scandal
The FDD's journalist-in-residence, Claudia Rosett, was the first reporter to break the U.N.'s Oil for Food scandal. [6]
As U.S. News and World Report senior writer Michael Barone explained: "The U.N. Oil for Food program, we learn from the reporting of Claudia Rosett in The Wall Street Journal, was a rip-off on the order of $21 billion -- with money intended for hungry Iraqis going instead to Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, to bribed French and Russian businesses and, evidently, to the U.N.'s own man in charge, Benon Savan."
For this reporting, Ms. Rosett received the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism.
As a result of her work, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed an internal commission to investigate. The U.S. Senate and House also began their own reviews and invited her to testify at their hearings. Her statement to the Senate is here [7] it covers the corruption at the heart of the UN in her opinion, including Kofi Annan and the Ethics Office set up to fight graft in the UN.
[edit] Criticism
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The group has been labeled pro-war for its hawkish stances in the Middle East.
James Woolsey has been quoted as claiming that the western world is engaged in World War III against terrorism, a highly controversial assertion.
[edit] External links
[edit] Official Sites
- Foundation for Defense of Democracies
- FDD Official Blog
- The Iraq-America Freedom Alliance
- The Human Cost of Terrorism
- The Coalition Against Terrorist Media
