The defeats thus far outweigh the victories (sticking a flag in Afghanistan and calling it a victory does not make it so).
I agree, the military isn’t 100% incompetent. Our soldiers are pretty solid, as rjung points out. But anyone above the rank of Captain I have serious doubts about.
As far as our intelligence community… I don’t know how the bloody hell we got through the Cold War with that much ineptitude. They haven’t caught anything since… um… in my lifetime. Well, to be fair, again, it isn’t the entire intelligence community. There are constant reports from field officers that get ignored by their bosses, like the several that predated 9/11.
The problem is that it really isn’t a war. It’s more like a police task force trying to clean up gangs or something. Wars have defined enmies and clear objectives. TWAT is just a catchphrase.
I think it’s also a mistake to think that we can kill our way out of this problem. Terrorism is a hydra. The more heads you lop off the more you create.
Now you just hold on there! He don’t have any damned foreign relations! The Bush people are one hunnerd percent American, and don’t you never suggest otherwise.
Well, Hersh wrote an article with anonymous “high level” sources, so at least we don’t have to start sweating too much yet. Hopefully, Bush will have to declare bankruptcy before we can get to Iran.
misleading - not really, we know exactly who the targets are, dark foreigners who either blow up things that are important to us (or look like they might given enough time).
embarassingly stupid - it helped win the election so can’t be that stupid. Oh what you mean is that you disagree with it…
title for a political treatise, which is a bit more dangerous… - dangerous to who? terrorists?
“War on Terror” is an utter nonsense. One cannot declare war on a criminal terrorist organisation any more than on a cartel of dodgy bookmakers.
In any case, is there any international organisation called “Al Qaeda” which might nerve gas us in our very beds? I would say not. Binladen was, if anything, merely the Quartermaster for a handful (possibly less than fifty) of foreign terrorists who had independently conceived of different plans (eg. African embassy bombs), who would go to him only for funding. The name “Al Qaeda” was never used by anyone before January 2001, when a supposed informer was prompted by the FBI to testify that Binladen headed an enormous, global organisation. The 9/11 attacks, despite early hysteria citing millions of dollars and hundreds or thousands of support staff, involved literally only a handful of people in addition to the twenty or so in the planes themselves and cost a few tens of thousands of dollars. It was, simply and sadly, a horrific “atrocity jackpot” hit by a despicable Saudi psychopath who wanted a place in history.
Al Qaeda barely even existed then, and it certainly doesn’t any more. Jemaah Islamiah, the group responsible for the Bali Bomb, had no link with Al Qaeda. The Madrid bomb was planted by a group called Islamic Combatants of Morocco (GICM), who exchanged drugs for mining explosives. Again, these are hardly the actions of a global terrorist organisation. The gunmen in Egypt or the Chechen Separatist movement have no AQ link either. These groups are isolated handfuls of psychopaths. Only one of them, somewhere in the world, needs to put some cheap explosives in a public place once a year and the Al Qaeda illusion is complete. This “war” is, if anything, being fought against an idea - that of radical Islamic militancy. One “joins Al Qaeda” by the simple initiation rite of being so disgusted with Western liberalism that one considers the tactics of terror justified.
So what of this “war”? Of course they want to fight it, since that wins elections. The question is whether they are interested in decreasing global instances of terrorism given that the number of attacks, which had gradually tailed off in the 1990’s and should surely have peaked in 2001, has vastly increased since 2001 such that 2003 was a 20 year peak. The as yet unavailable 2004 figures will be even worse. And what of 2005?
Based on these figures, this war is categorically, undeniably and absolutely being lost.
As to whether there actually is an “al-Qaeda group” issuing membership cards and holding alumni reunions… most likely not. The term was most likely a metonym arising from an actual physical “base” used in the Afghan wars of the 1980’s. However, it is false to say that the term was never used before January 2001, as it was used immediately after the US embassy bombings in 1998.
However, calling the group by the wrong name does not negate the existence of the group.
Are you sure? My recollection is that the term was grafted onto those bombings a few months or years afterwards, when it had gained some currency.
But OK, I’m happy to retract that particular assertion. That does not alter my position that the organisational aspect of those men living in caves and tents is, and was, massively overblown.
SM: * That does not alter my position that the organisational aspect of those men living in caves and tents is, and was, massively overblown.*
A recent article by Robert Scheer, discussing a new BBC documentary about terrorism and its exploitation for political purposes, suggests that you may be right:
In other words, terrorism is indeed a genuine threat, particularly fundamentalist Islamist terrorism, but it seems unlikely that there is any James-Bond-like international organization headed by an evil genius that’s significantly coordinating it. IMO this, if true, just makes the description of antiterrorism activities as “war” rather than “policing” or “security” even more misleading and counterproductive.
I think it should have been called The War Against Terror to give it a better acronym. We give the terrorists way too much credit. The initial reaction to 9/11 was that there MUST be a super duper organization that pulled off something like that. And a super duper organization must have a super villian at the head. The public is as reluctant to believe that 9/11 was pulled off by a loose knit group of independent criminals as it was to believe that JFK could have been killed by a nobody like Oswald.
Not everything done to date in this “war” has been stupid. Tracing and cutting off the flow of money probably had more impact than any military adventure. Cooperation by international law enforcement has put some of these thugs in the cooler. Taking some common sense precautions to prevent the repeated use of airliners as weapons is one practical step with a high benefit/cost ratio. But I think calling it a “war” fools people into thinking there will be an end to it. It isn’t going to end, all anyone can do is combat it like any other criminal activity.
Thoughts from a distinguished prof @ the US Army War College Bounding the War on Terror Synopsis:
“The author examines three features of the war on terrorism as currently defined and conducted: INDENT the administration’s postulation of the terrorist threat,
(2) the scope and feasibility of U.S. war aims, and
(3) the war’s political, fiscal, and military sustainability. He believes that the war on terrorism–as opposed to the campaign against al-Qaeda–lacks strategic clarity, embraces unrealistic objectives, and may not be sustainable over the long haul. He calls for downsizing the scope of the war on terrorism to reflect concrete U.S. security interests and the limits of American military power.”[/indent]
The phrase “War on Terror” is not nearly as stupid as the policy of dealing with the very real terrorist threat as if it were a military threat. Trying to fight terrorists with an army is like firing a machine gun at a cloud of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes that happen to be hovering between the gun and a crowd of innocent people.
I’ve never understood why it is inappropriate to approach the issue of terrorist actions as a criminal matter. Yeah, I know that calling it a war is sexier but, as someone above pointed out, I think it legitimizes the offenders to too large a degree. Let’s call them what they are - criminals. Apprehending persons who played a part in the Sept. 11, 2001 events would then lead to trials, and loooooonnnnggggg incarcerations (how many years would you serve for 2,000+ counts of murder?).
I know there are issues of extradition, but I think if we had made better use of the goodwill directed our way in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, we could probably have reached some satisfactory arrangements in this regard.