The Bush camp maintains they’d rather take the fight to the enemy. The Dems tend towards the belief that such aggression risks further alienation and disenfranchisement of the Arab street. The fact that no major terrorist attack has taken place with the US since 9-11 (or the anthrax mailings if you prefer) isn’t compelling evidence of a reduction in risk, IMHO. Whatever the strategy employed to combat terrorism, there ought to be some measure of its effectiveness. Does such a meter exist?
Ideally, we’d know sooner rather than later which strategies improve our station. That way, our approach could be adapted as the GWAT grinds on.
My fear is, given the complexity of the task, opposing sides fall back on ideology rather than reason; each touts a strategy fitting with its internal model of conflict resolution.
A very interesting and thought-provoking OP! I don’t know if I have an easy answer. Obviously, measuring by large scale terrorist attacks on the U.S. isn’t that useful since these are rare events and it is hard to know what would have happened had we pursued a different course.
Also, it is hard to separate out different factors. For example, I think there are several things that the government has done that has made us safer but I don’t give Bush much credit for these because they were things that were done by Congress or at least for which there was full bipartisan support. I mean, it is sort of a no-brainer to tighten up airline security, security at our ports, and the like, along with aggressively pursuing terrorists.
On the other hand, I think that the Iraq debacle has made terrorist attacks more likely (and apparently drained resources from the fight against Al Qaeda, and probably the stabilization and “nation-building” in Afghanistan as well). Actually, Bush et al. seemed to admit as much over the short run because they raised terror alert levels. They seem to argue that, while increasing the chances of a strike in the short run, it will make us safer over the long run although this view seems unreasonable to me at the moment…unless things change dramatically for the better in Iraq over the next few years…since it is clear it has been a disaster for our appeal to the hearts and minds of the “Arab street”. Hell, it has made many of us here in the U.S. concerned and embarrassed about our nation’s ability to live up to it’s ideals and its promise…It is hard to imagine that it hasn’t had a much worse effect in countries whose media is, to say the least, less pro-American and, more importantly, to people who don’t have a strong personally and ideological investment in our nation and its ideals.
But, admittedly, while you can have a reasoned debate and try to convince others to your point-of-view, I am not sure it is the sort of thing that is very amenable to objective metrics. You can certainly employ some metrics, like polls of the Iraqi people and of the citizens in other Arab countries. But, ultimately there is going to be a lot of interpretation about what these poll results are telling us.
I think I original saw “GW” and interpretated as having to do with Bush or the Bush Administration and their policy on terrorism. However, now that you’ve made me actually think about it, I am beginning to believe it might actually stand for “government war against terrorism”. Maybe the OP will enlighten us on what exactly he meant by the acronym.
What about non-military Americans targeted outside the US ? Should that count as relevant ? What about US allies getting hit way more than before ? Does that count ? Metrics that don’t consider overall security but only specifically “homeland” safety are bound to be irrelevant.
Only time will tell and then it might not be too relevant anyway. Especially when your allies are busy protecting themselves instead of helping out fight wars. Bin Laden pulled an amazing feat… once and never again. Unless he gets nukes of course…
Well, to really assess the success or lack thereof of a WAT, we have to take a look at the recent successful terrorist attacks on our soil (WTC 2001, Anthrax attacks, Oklahoma City, and perhaps the Unabomber) and the near successful (WTC 1993, LA Airport Bomber caught crossing Canada border, airplane shoe bomber), fully examine the opportunities available to the attackers, and shut those doors along with any similar holes in our defenses. In addition, we need to look at preventative measures to insure as much as possible that people do not become disenfranchised to the point where terror seems like a valid option.
Then, to whatever extent current measures address these issues, we have successfully made ourselves safer.