Infinite justice

The name of "Operation Infinite Justice", in use a week after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, was allegedly based on "Operation Infinite Reach", carried out during the Bill Clinton administration. It consisted of military strikes against terrorist camps in the Sudan and Afghanistan. This article covers only the name as an issue.

This term, literally translated into Arabic, would imply the adl (justice) of Allah (God), and would thus likely be understood by as a Muslim as reflecting a religious judgement or fatwa - one issuing from a kaffir U.S. President, George W. Bush. In that same week, he had also used the term "Crusade", which for Muslims usually implies genocide such as those carried out by Europeans in the First Crusade. To many, this usage implied a War on Islam by the United States.

The military operation was soon renamed to "Operation Enduring Freedom", which term has remained the present and preferred form for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

Ari Fleischer directed a reporter to the Department of Justice on the matter of the appropriateness of the name. The Department of Justice Web site's Search facility provides exactly zero matches to the term "Infinite Justice" as of August 2003. There is no official excuse for its use, nor apology.

However, the Bush Administration was sensitive to accusations of being engaged in a War on Islam, or any racist or religiously motivated focus on Muslim nations or people. Another alleged response to this was the inclusion of North Korea, a state with no Muslim population, in Bush's so-called Axis of Evil, to offset the military focus on Iraq and Iran.

SourceWatch resources

 * The Long War