I still maintain that NMD is a huge waste of money. Nobody argues for discontinuation of a missile defense system at an R&D level (with exceptions to those arguing the political ramifications of withdrawal from the ABM treaty). As I understand it, things like the Patriot and the Arrow missiles (in conjuction with Israel) are steps in those directions. By all means these should be pursued. But the rush to deploy a basically non-capable system, the enormous amounts of money set aside for defense against a fairly remote threat, and the stunning lack of success of the system all sniffs of political wrangling.
SimonX
Two things. The first is that when terrorist attacks are thwarted, we hear about them. These are huge bragging points – consider the millenium LAX bombing plot foiled at the Canadian border. This one intelligence success is held up as a trophy by people like Dick Clarke to show that Clinton’s antiterrorism pursuits were better than Bush’s. ISTM that we don’t hear about these things this often. Again, I think we will know better in ten years, but beyond the SSI’s “nonoccuring events”, we should have plenty of occuring events in the form of leaders caught, plots foiled, networks disrupted, bank accounts seized, etc. I was just thinking that a reasonable, consistent metric could be built both out of numbers of actual events and events disrupted, and was wondering if anyone else was looking at it in that way.
Second, I don’t understand what the difficulty with defining terrorism is. I would define it as attacks, to this point violent ones, without direct military implications. So I wouldn’t call the insurgency in Iraq terrorism; I wouldn’t call a suicide bombing on a military checkpoint in the West Bank terrorism. But I would call an attack on a school or a bombing of a bus or attacks on Western non-military personnel in Saudi Arabia terrorism.
As Mr. Record points out, the volume of these doesn’t necessarily translate into a less effective terrorist organisation. The nature of the beast is such that it remains functional and deadly despite such events.
The increase in the number of arrests and plot foilings has not been shown to’ve decreased aQ’s ability to continue (or as you mentioned even increase) it’s ability to conduct successful operations.
So, even though these sorts of things may be easily measurable, the relationship between these numbers and the effectiveness of the effort may be very small.
Just two of the possible reasons why the number of captures hasn’t been correlated to a decrease in aQ’s deadliness:
As Mr. Rumsfeld pointed out- even though we may have an known attrition rate, we don’t know their recruiting rate.
And, just as important as a recruiting rate (but even harder to measure), are the changes in levels support (and/or lack of interference) from third parties because of their personal sympathies. (IIRC, at one point aQ received $10mil a year in donations. ) An increase in sympathies for aQ could enable even a smaller cadre of killers to be just as effective as (or even more effective than) a group with more members.
Second,
The way a number of protections’re supposed to work, there wouldn’t be disruptions per se so much as just an inability to execute the plot. Rather than a 3am raid with guns ablazing, there’s just a rejected visa application in the mail.
How many potential murderers to be were foiled in their attempts to harm Americans because of these sorts of invisible things?
The drive-by answer as to the source of the difficulty is, “Because most of those involved in crafting the definitions are lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians.”
Practically, your clarity, while admirable, is meaningless. The point remains that for whatever reasons what does and does not constitute terrorism is a subject of some debate in crucial circles.
The debate about the terror terms is a much larger one that has had it’s own threads.
Your understanding here is incorrect…completely incorrect, in fact. I’ll try to find links to previous global warming threads later. But, a couple good general links on the subject are the IPCC or the EPA global warming site.
In a nutshell, you are incorrect in seeming to believe that anyone thinks there is a significant chance of there being serious global warming that is not caused by man. There is no belief that I know of that this will happen. The predictions of the amount of warming are based on explicitly modeling the effects of the increase in the various greenhouse gas concentrations and this increase is unambiguously understood to be human-caused (primarily through the burning of fossil fuels with considerably lesser contributions due to things like land use changes, emission of methane by ruminating animals like cows, …). They can even trace the CO2 due to such burning by its isotope signature.
The scientific uncertainty that remains is primarily over the amount of warming that this human-caused rise in greenhouse gases will cause. (Other uncertainties include uncertainties in future emissions of these gases…i.e. what sort of path society follows in the use of energy, some uncertainties in the amount of greenhouse gases that will be taken up by the land and oceans, the other climatic changes that will be caused by the general warming of the atmosphere due to this human-caused forcing, and the effects of these climatic changes on the ecosystems and economies.)
It is only in regards to looking toward the recent past for a clue of how much warming will occur that any of your statements have even a germ of truth. Namely, those few scientists who are arguing that the amount of warming that these gases cause will be quite small (i.e., that the sensitivity of the climate system to such rises in the concentrations of these gases are small) are necessarily trying to argue that the warming that we already saw occur in the 20th century was not primarily caused by humans but was primarily due to natural variation. However, the IPCC, representing the consensus view of the scientific community, has concluded that most of the warming seen in the latter part of the 20th century (which accounts for almost all of the net warming that occurred during the century) is very likely attributable to humans. And, the link that I gave seems to suggest that the Bush Administration is coming around on this point although it has been a rocky road with some ideologues in the administration having been clearly resisting this at least in the past.