On top of which, while Saddam did promise the money to families of ‘martyrs,’ I’m not sure it’s known that he ever actually gave anybody any cash. It’s not like these people are blowing themselves up for money anyway.
It might very well be the case, but neither the US war on terror nor Iraq can conclusively be shown to be a factor in it. Iraq has demonstrably increased the number of militants -people flocking into their arms have been well documented. Whether Iraq will actually not sponsor terrorism in future remains to be seen. The US is currently driving them rather towards such support than away from it, The fact that there have been less terrorist attacks, if accurate, is largely independent of US actions. Numerous attacks did not happen because people were arrested just in time in Europe.
One should keep in mind that rather than just rounding up the usual suspects, as the US did, law enforcement in Europe actually did engage in solid investigation which already led to the conviction (pending appeal) of one Al Qaeda operative -which is far more than the US can claim. Several other operatives are on trial. Several attacks were demonstrably thwarted just in time.
Sure, december, the war on terror is definitely working.
By the way, I got some tiger repellant I’d like to sell you. I wear it every day, haven’t seen any tigers yet.
Thanks. That’s a little more helpful. If you look at their chart showing total terrorist attacks broken down by year from 1981 to 2002, you will see that terrorism actually peaked in 1987, with 665 attacks. Interestingly, that was smack dab in the middle of the Reagan/Bush Sr. era, ostensibly when our foreign policy was at its “toughest”. In general, it declined in subsequent years, with periodic spikes upward and downward.
We saw a 38% decline from '88 to '89 and a 35% decline from '91 to '92. There was a 32% decline from '95 to '96 even though we had one of those pussy Democrat Presidents. Hmmm…how can this be? Did those all mark years when the U.S. embarked on “wars on terrorism”, or were they random fluctuations of the type you find in any statistical analysis?
Most of the decline in 2002 was in Latin America and Africa. In the Middle East, where we have focused all our terror-fighting attention, terrorist attacks remained exactly the same: 29 attacks in 2001, and 29 attacks in 2002.
In my opinion, the Bush administration is trying to take credit for a statistical glitch. I’m not really faulting them for doing so; after all, it is propaganda. But I would definitely take it with a grain of salt. Of course I could be wrong, but we won’t know for at least a couple of years. And even then, there are a million other factors besides U.S. foreign policy that might influence the numbers. I sincerely hope that terrorism does decline, as any sane person would, but it’s much too early in the game for anyone to be patting themselves on the back.
As much as I would like to see a genuine systematic decline in terrorist attacks, I agree that december’s “optimism” about it is probably a delusion inspired by a statistical glitch.
Still, I almost have to admire the Administration’s adroitness in trying to claim credit for it, especially considering that they have in many ways actually been undermining the actions that they claim are decreasing terror!
…Colin Powell said increased vigilance, international cooperation and U.N. financial sanctions created after the September 11 attacks are definitely making life more difficult for terrorist factions.
“Increased vigilance”: of course, when the April 2001 Hart-Rudman report recommended precisely that in expectation of a predicted “direct attack on American citizens on American soil”, the Administration put aside its recommendations and shunted the issue off to FEMA.
“International cooperation”: of course, the Administration’s present policies of unilateralist contempt for world opinion and the opposition of our allies are not exactly encouraging increased cooperation.
“UN financial sanctions”: of course, had the Administration not rejected (at the strong urging of the tax-haven constituency) a May 2001 OECD proposal to enforce greater transparency and consistency on offshore tax havens, terrorist money laundering would already have been significantly hampered.
So on the one hand, the Administration has actively backed policies that discourage more effective anti-terror vigilance, international cooperation, and global financial oversight; and on the other hand, they say that vigilance, cooperation, and financial oversight have reduced terrorism, and claim the credit for it! In some ways, you gotta admire such deft propaganda. (In other ways, of course, you gotta despise such naked hypocrisy.)
So the Administration was wrong not to take anti-terrorism actions in 2001, but anti-terrorism actions are ineffective. 
IMHO the Administration does deserve blame for ignoring the Hart-Rudman report, as do all the rest of us, who also ignored it: media, Congress, Dopers, etc. The only ones I know of who took it serioiusly were its authors and a few right-wing pundits. I also blame Clinton for setting up a committee to write a report, which was a way for him to avoid dealing with the challenge of terrorism.
I take exception for your scorn for the Bush Administration’s efforts to secure International cooperation In fact, there has been a great deal of international cooperation. The media frequently reports on terrorists being arrested by Pakistan, the UK, Spain, Germany and others. Recently we even saw Syria not permit some terrorist to come in from Iraq. You may not like Bush’s negotiation approach, but it’s working.
Blowero, points to you for actually looking at the chart. I see no reason to believe that the statistical people did it wrong or that Bush forced some falsification of the numbers. There does seem to be a long-term downward trend since the peak in 1987. There were big drops in 1989, 1991, and 1996, as well as 2002. The number went up during 1989 - 1991 and 1998 - 2000. The drop in 1992 would tend to show that the first Iraq war didn’t increase terrorism. If anything, it may have decreased it. I don’t have a theory to account for other changes.
Actually, on looking at the chart below the totals, one sees that virtually the entire drop in number of attacks in 2002 was due to a reduction in Latin America – the area which had produced over 50% of the attacks in 2001. I don’t know why Latin America had so many attacks, nor is it clear why the War on Terror would have particularly impacted Latin America. So, maybe this statistic is deceptive.
OTOH one wouldn’t expect the War on Terror to work immediately. If the number of attacks continues to decine in 2003, I will have more confidence that it’s actually working.
Mr2001, it’s true that no world trade center towers were successfully blown up by terrorists during either of Clinton’s terms, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
december: So the Administration was wrong not to take anti-terrorism actions in 2001, but anti-terrorism actions are ineffective.
Where did you get the idea that I’m claiming that “anti-terrorism actions are ineffective”? On the contrary, I heartily agree that strategies like increased vigilance, international cooperation, and global financial oversight are part of what we need to help reduce terrorism. I just don’t happen to believe that the statistics you’re pointing to constitute solid evidence of a genuine systematic reduction in terrorism. Nor do I think that the current Administration deserves as much credit for supporting such strategies as they’re trying to claim.
I take exception [to] your scorn for the Bush Administration’s efforts to secure International cooperation.
I got no scorn at all for their efforts to secure international cooperation, as far as they go. What I have scorn for is their simultaneous arrogant and shortsighted undermining of those efforts with their imperialist agenda, chest-thumping unilateralism, and overt contempt for diplomacy.
I don’t buy your inference that this “negotiation approach” must be “working” just because other countries sometimes catch terrorists. By that logic, the world’s failure to capture Osama bin Laden must mean that the Bush “negotiation approach” is not working.
That’s why I said “successfully”.
The point still stands, though. In eight years of Clinton presidency, the WTC was never succesfully blown up, not even once. In less than a year of Bush, however, the twin towers were destroyed and a plane crashed into the Pentagon.
Was it because Bush did something wrong? Did his tax and foreign reproductive aid cuts cause the attacks?
Or, perhaps, would it have happened anyway, no matter what he did?
The notion that the anti-terror actions have effect immediately is silly. We will need years to know if terrorism is going up or down. But I have to question whether it is right for the State tio use any means, no matter how wrong, to justify an end which may be good. The ends do not justify the means. So, even if it could be shown that there is a direct causative link between the policies of the US government, and that is a very big and doubtful “if”, that does not justify the employment of certain methods which are morally wrong. We do not know if the methods are having the desired effect or not but to me it does not matter when they are morally worn and I believe in some cases they are. The holding of people indefinitely without reason or trial is wrong and cannot be justified by any ends, no matter how desireable. Maybe it will have the desired effect, maybe not, but the state should not be competing with the terrorists in the abuse of human rights.
It’s not about statistics or ‘war on terrorism’, statistics and slogans are meaningless to those who are (in one form or another) oppressed. Rather it’s about addressing the perceived grievances of the societies from which ‘terrorism’ evolves – you don’t get rid of ‘terrorism’ by bashing a few heads together, the underlying rationale, support, justification continues and the next generation simply picks up the baton; It never, ever goes away without a political solution because you cannot deny the strength of the human spirit when faced with injustice - it has never worked anywhere at anytime.
Recent good news: US leaving Saudi, Bush keeping his promise to Blair and pursuing the Middle East Road Map with some gusto, New Palestinian PM / Arafat’s power declining.
Recent bad news: Acquisition of Iraq can’t be sold as liberation to the Muslim masses, Sharon still in power. Perceptions of the US hardening.
I agree. As I said, the number of terrorist attacks went down from 355 in 2001 to 199 in 2002 – a reduction of 156. However, the number of terrorist attacks in Latin America went down from 201 to 50 – a reduction of 151. So. the improvement was virtually all in Latiin America, which AFAIK has little to do with Bush’s war on terror.
That’s what I meant. You don’t think Bush’s efforts go far enough.
You don’t like this style, and I don’t blame you. But, has it actually led to reduced cooperation?
I didin’t say sometimes – I said often. If you don’t measure the level of cooperation by number of terrorists caught, how else would you measure it?
ISTM your point is that I’m looking at the wrong statistics. Presumably you would consider a reduction in the Number of Oppressed People to be a more meaningful statistic.
Sometimes it has worked. I am embarassed at the lack of resistance by most of the Jews going to Hitler’s concentration camps. There hasn’t been centuries of British terrorism against Italy, even though the Romans conquered England. Nor is there Native American terrorism in the United States. In all these cases brutal means were effective, although we might wish that weren’t the case.
I take your point, but I do think it’s important to look separately at the civil liberties violations and their value, if any.
In some sense, the label “War” on terror is a poor fit, because it brings with it associations from our traditional understanding of what “war” is that simply don’t apply here. If it’s a “war,” it can be won – or lost. What are the conditions under which we’d be able to claim victory in the war on terror? Perhaps more to the point – what would the prospect of “losing” it mean?
A war has some finite endpoint at which the conditions for going to war have been met-- some flag that has been “captured”, some country whose forces have surrendered and retreated to their pre-war border. I’m encouraged by our successes in Afghanistan, at kicking the legs out from under the Taliban, and scattering Al-Queda to the winds, but I’d hardly call the Al-Queda threat “eliminated” yet.
If nothing else, openly calling it a war perhaps signals that we’re not fooling around any more-- and that the days when a state can safely sponsor terrorism, secure in the knowledge that sabres will only be rattled at them but not used, are over.
From Mr2001
"The point still stands, though. In eight years of Clinton presidency, the WTC was never succesfully blown up, not even once. In less than a year of Bush, however, the twin towers were destroyed and a plane crashed into the Pentagon.
Was it because Bush did something wrong? Did his tax and foreign reproductive aid cuts cause the attacks?
Or, perhaps, would it have happened anyway, no matter what he did?"
My understanding is that ObL and AK were planning this raid for years before it happened. That would mean he began planning before Bush was even elected, wouldn’t it? 
Which would mean…but no, I’m sure you figured out that part already.
As to the OP, I think that its a statistical glitch personally. You can see the fluxuations in terrorism, and the fact that its Latin America thats down atm is pretty strong against. It IS brilliant use of statics by the administration though.
However, I’d also have to say that this war with Iraq, right or wrong, has got a lot of countries over there (and around the world) thinking. I see that Iran and Syria are both in a much more concilliatory mood atm than they were. North Korea wants dialog now, and has backed down on the retoric also. You can hate the administration all you want (I’m not all that fond of it myself), but even a blind squirel finds an acorn every once in a while…
In the short term, I think this will have an effect on ‘state sponsored’ type of terrorism, as the purse strings will be closed down. For effective terrorism, you need more than just some mope willing to throw his life away…you need money if you want to make a bit, 9/11 type statement. As to the mad boomer in the street type, I don’t see anything helping that out in the short term.
But thats just my opinion…I could be wrong.
-XT
Yes I think the war on terrorism is working. However, I believe the Bush administration is wrong in taking credit. Clearly during the years cited we had a Democratic Senate, and all credit should go to them.
If I’ve learned anything from the Clinton economy threads, US presidents are impotent and all credit for good things that happen when they are in office, rightfully belongs to Congress, specifically the Senate.
If the war on terrorism is working, then why is the Bush Administration determined to supress the 800-page Congressional report on intelligence failures leading to the 9/11 atttacks? Shouldn’t this information be made widely available, so we (as a nation of citizens) can see where we went wrong and actively work to plug up those holes?
Or are George and Dick afraid we’ll see where they fell down in defending this nation from terrorism? (I harbor no delusions that they wouldn’t gleefully trumpet any revelations that Bill Clinton had screwed up, after all)
I thought that the administrations claim that terrorist organizations were weakened by the war were a little silly.
This was based on their (administration’s) claim that if the terrorists were not weakened by the war, they would have attacked by now.
AFAIK, terrorist organizations work according to their own schedule, not that of the administration, and it is doubtful that they share that schedule with the administration.
It’s just the Bushies trying to credit for something else they didn’t have anything to do with.
Bob
Exactly. It would be foolish to attempt another attack when everyone is on the lookout for it. Al Qaeda is not stupid. They know that the best tactic is to “lay low” for a while until our guard is down and we’ve been relaxed by assuances that the “war” on terrorism has made us all safe again.
For the current administration to claim that we’re winning the war on terrorism is laughable. Duhbya needs to stop the photo-ops and start paying attention STAT. All the metal detectors, long lines, search dogs with their noses in your crotch, wire taps, and the general sacrifice of civil liberties don’t mean shit when your best hound is sniffing up the wrong tree. 9/11 will pale in comparison to a cyber attack, and it is totally doable. And it’s coming to a power grid near you soon. Imagine the global impact of NYC without power for a couple of months. Check it out:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cyberwar/view/
Terrorism will come to an end just as Airline Hijackings came to an end in the 70’s after Nixon gave orders No more negotiation, Shoot the tires out and let them set on the runway.
Bitch slap a bully, he stops being a bully, Bitch slap a terrorist and he disappears.
I’m glad my grandkids won’t have to deal with terrorists.
Did I really just read this?