Balkinization: A Report Card on the War on Terror

Comments:

You have GOT to be KIDDING me.

This is a "report card" in the same way that presdential elections held under Saddam Huseein's rule were "elections." Your report card starts from the biased premise that the student is a flunkee.

For example, you fail to include the two most important metrics of U.S. government success: attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11 (0) and number of U.S. plots foiled (at LEAST 3, probably several more).

Laughably, you suggest that the fact we haven't found any terrorist cells on U.S. soil is necessarily a BAD thing.

And you naively assume that criminal prosecutions alone(as opposed to disrupting terrorist plans or collecting intelligence) are the only markers of progress.

Your methodology brings to mind the obviously flawed statement often attributed to the New York Times that "incarceration rates have gone up EVEN AS crime has gone down."

One possible reason we haven't charged many people for committing terrorist acts on U.S. soil is because its hard for terrorists to commit such acts when they're either sitting in a military brig or dead.

Thanks for analysis, learned professors, but maybe you should establish a valid grading system before you start assigning bad grades.

# posted by

Common Sense : 6:01 PM

Unlike Common Sense (who apparently has none), I salute you David Cole for the very effective report card.

Common Sense "naively assumes" that the fact of the lack of criminal prosecutions is somehow a good sign given all those detained, and that it also is not somehow a marker of our lack of judicial progress.

And Common Sense rejects your methodology because the facts don't comport with his desired outcome.

And as final comical evidence of illogic, Common Sense would have us believe it is a good thing that: "(a) reason we haven't charged many people for committing terrorist acts on U.S. soil is because its hard for terrorists to commit such acts when they're...sitting in a military brig..."

Heck, as long as we keep 'em all out of court, we have rendered "justice".

As a Dictator mulling how best to do his dictating, Pervez Musharraf would like you, Common Sense, to drop him a line at: wedon'tneednosteenkingjustice@pakistan.gov

# posted by

Mad Dogs : 6:29 PM

After 9/11 Bush gave a speech that was promising.
He promised:

"Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom"

"America will never forget the sounds of our National Anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris, and at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate."

"Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."

"Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network."

"The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them"

And then he went on to do all the wrong things. Too bad he didn't listen to himself. Instead he got us bogged down in an ill planned conventional war.

# posted by

Beam me up Scotty : 7:33 PM

We're all indebted to the authors for their research showing yet another instance where "Emperor Dubya has no clothes." I do wish that they would relabel the items that state "Number of those convicted of terrorist crimes to date," or locate more recent sources to cite for the zeros in those items.

Notes 6 and 8 both cite reports that were published in June, 2006, but neither note cites any more recent sources. It's irritating to find two law professors stating that data reported in June 2006 describes the facts "to date" on November 18, 2007, almost 18 months later. I have seen this same material elsewhere (I think in NY Review of Books), and I was irritated by the same defect in labeling then, too.

I have little doubt that the statistics are still the same, but the authors are being imprecise here in ways that the Bush administration has used to mislead the public.

My quibble is the only accurate criticism I have seen though. Does anyone know if "Common sense" went to an accredited law school? No undergraduate or professional program should award a degree to someone who doesn't use her/his reasoning skills when putting thoughts on paper.

The "Report Card" was not intended to evaluate every possible measure of the effectiveness of the "War on Terror," just several measures that any evaluator would expect to show positive changes if the Bush strategies and tactics were making progress in the right direction:

1) Number of terror attacks world-wide increased almost four-fold, with almost 5,000 more terrorist attacks in 2006 than in 2001. If the crime rate in NYC had increased like that when Giuliani was mayor, he would NOT be a feasible candidate for president today.

1a) "Common sense" demonstrates a common lack of moral judgment in asserting that 0 additional attacks on U.S. soil is a "more important metric of ... success" than the explosion [poor word choice] of terrorist attacks worldwide. S/he does not care how many "others" die as long as no U.S. citizens die "on U.S. soil." This is the same immoral attitude as that of folks who argue that we must "fight terrorists over there," thereby condemning tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis to violent deaths, so that we will not have to "fight them over here."

2) Of 775 persons reported detained at Gitmo, 470 have been released, none of them having been tried. Published reports indicate that the U.S. has determined that many, if not most of the remaining detainees, present no threat to the U.S., but the U.S. State Department cannot find a willing host country to receive these detainees who were traveling far from home when detained or who have otherwise been uprooted. "Common sense" does not recognize that these statistics are fairly strong evidence that there are not many "terrorists" who have been prevented from "committing terrorist acts on U.S. soil" because "they're sitting in a military brig..."

3) The data Cole & Lobel present for activities "at home" show in several ways that there has never been any true threat since 9/11 from active Al-Quaeda cells in the U.S., even though the Bush-Ashcroft heavy-handed procedures were sold to the public on that assumption: (a) only 1 of 261 convictions that the government claimed were related to international terrorism through June 2006 were actually for a terrorist act by an Islamic terrorist (that was the "shoe bomber," Richard Reid)(subsequently we should probably add Moussaoui [sp?], to make a total of 2)-almost all the convictions were for immigration violations or use of false documents to enter the U.S. or to remain here, but the Bush administration had to do something to pump up its anemic numbers; (b) zero of 5191 persons detained in the post 9/11 dragnet were convicted of terrorist charges; (c) zero of more than 80,000 foreign residents of U.S. subject to special registration of persons immigrating to U.S. from Arab and Muslim countries were convicted of terrorist charges; (d) zero of more than 500 persons claimed to have been deported as a result of 9/11 investigations were deported for any type of terrorist-related activity or connection.

3a) Against the authors' impressive statistics proving that the Bush-Ashcroft policies that have denied thousands of persons basic civil liberties were a waste of a huge amount of government money and U.S. good will, "Common sense" asserts that "at least 3, probably several more" plots have been foiled in the U.S. Only one plot that I know of has been generally accepted as a true plot (the plot to assemble explosives on commercial air flights en route to the U.S. from liquids and gels-the technical details of that plot have not been clearly reported, but until more countries than the U.S. and the U.K. consider limiting on board liquids and gels to be a big deal, I have to be skeptical). Other supposed examples of such plots were the truck driver who was going to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge single-handed with his blow torch, the folks who were going to blow up LaGuardia, and a small group of big talkers who had so little on the ball that they could only start to do anything bad after the government agent provocateur promised he could provide funds to buy the weaponry/bombs, etc.

# posted by

Hardheaded Liberal : 11:55 PM

Shoody work Mr. Cole.

Terrorism hasn't increased at all.

It is only that the database you use counts attacks in Iraq against an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq as terrorism.

If one looks into the numbers, which I did here in detail, they are only increased in Iraq because people locally resist their occupiers.

Terrorism is for the far, far most part a local phenomenon and a reaction to military state action.

Your stats also do not count bombs from F-16s that kill civilians. To the civilians there is no difference between those and some "Al-qaida" IED.

Your report card proves nothing.

International terrorism hasn't changed because enforced state institutions like TSA?

International terrorism hasn't changed despite enforced state action TSA?

What are you saying?

Sorry, but your Op-Ed report card was very lazy done.

# posted by

Bernhard : 12:07 AM

Do not quit your day job in academia to work as a general fighting our wars.

1. Zero attacks against the United States since 9/11 vs a three fold increase of attacks against other countries from 2001 to 2006.

On its face, this is an enormous victory for the US. We are arguably the No. 1 target of the Islamic fascist movement and yet they cannot hit us since we brought the war to them.

The number of terrorist attacks has also been misused to imply that the terrorists are "winning" world wide, if not in the US. However, this is like arguing that the Axis were winning WWII in 1944 because the volume of fighting was far higher in 1944 than it was in 1939. The correct metric here compares the enemy loss of over 50,000 fighters, almost all of its command structure, and almost all of their sanctuaries vs our loss of around 3500 KIA.

The metric of terrorist attack itself is outdated and does not include the 2007 defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq in what bin Laden called the central front of his war against the US and the current collapse of terror attacks.

2. The small percentage of the several thousand enemy captured at Gitmo vs no criminal prosecutions.

Cole seems to have missed the fact that we have gone to war and the rules of war apply. During a war, you kill rather than arrest and try the enemy. Those enemy we capture are generally held for the duration of the war. As this war winds down, as in past wars, we are starting to ramp up for war crimes trials.

3. Two enemy captured in the act of a terrorist attack and later tried vs 261 enemy captured and tried for providing support for terrorism or simply before they could execute an attack.

When combined with the fact that the enemy has been stopped from launching ANY attacks against the US, this appears to be a very impressive metric. The key is not to catch the terrorist in the act of setting off a bomb ala Reed, but to stop them as early as possible as we did the NJ and FL terror cells.

In sum, the metrics show the war against Islamic racism has been a substantial success so far. We can strike the enemy (or what is left of them) at will while they cannot strike at the US.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 9:11 AM

On this Thanksgiving, we have much to be thankful for, foremost among which is the ability to assemble peacefully with our family and friends today without the threat of terrorist mass murder which bedevils other parts of the world. While you are feasting today, give a moment to thank the men and women serving overseas away from their families so that you can peacefully be with yours.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 10:48 AM

Since Cole suffers from the worst case of lawyer's disease I've ever seen, I'd think he'd add one more metric: None of the 9/11 terrorists were ever convicted of anything! Put one more zero on the board, in one more irrelevant category.

# posted by

Thomas : 11:31 AM

bernhard said...

Terrorism hasn't increased at all.

It is only that the database you use counts attacks in Iraq against an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq as terrorism.

If one looks into the numbers, which I did here in detail, they are only increased in Iraq because people locally resist their occupiers.

Terrorism is the mass murder of civilians and is easy to distinguish from "resistance" attacks on our military.

The vast majority of attacks in Iraq were against Iraqi civilians and the overwhelming number of casualties in Iraq were civilian. This is terrorism, not a resistance to our military.

Moreover, the current plunge in terror attacks and the resulting civilian deaths has followed the destruction of foreign led al Qaeda in Iraq over the past few months. This indicates the terrorism in Iraq was largely perpetrated by foreign led al Qaeda.

In sum, terror attacks did increase since 9/11 because the enemy al Qaeda and its allies threw nearly everything they had into turning Iraq into a blood bath so we would retreat in defeat and they could reestablish the Islamic fascist state they lost in Afghanistan. However, we did not retreat in defeat and instead destroyed al Qaeda in Iraq.

These are the kind of metrics which matter in war.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 9:47 AM

Coles anti-terrorism metrics are also too narrow in that they only concentrate on the Middle East. In today's LA Times, Robert Kaplan describes how U.S. Special Forces transformed the Columbian and Philippine militaries into effective counterinsurgency forces. The resulting peace and prosperity in the countrysides of these nations sounds much like reports from Iraq over the past months.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 11:31 AM

You neglected to mention the prisoners in Guantanamo who went back to fight in Afghanistan.

# posted by

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# posted by

Unknown : 12:12 PM