The Justification for the War on Terror
It is true that guns kill far more people than terrorists do in the United States. Even if you remove the number of suicides, there are still more people who die from either intentional or accidental shootings than die from terrorist attacks.
I don’t know anyone who is debating that. Nor do I know anyone who thinks that gun deaths are “acceptable” versus terrorism deaths which are “unacceptable.”
So yes, guns in the United States kill more people than terrorists. Of course, so does falling in your bathtub. Drowning. Heart disease. And damn near everything else.
But by far, the greatest threat of all is diabetes! Why doesn’t the United States begin a War on Diabetes immediately? We should be tapping the phones and intercepting the e-mails of all people who produce, sell, or drink sodas or any other products with high fructose corn syrup. This scourge must end.
Of course, most of these risks are based on two things: 1) personal choice which is therefore an individually accepted risk and 2) random chance.
Terrorism is neither of these things.
If you get diabetes, it has little to no impact on my ability to get diabetes. You either got it because of your genetics or you got it because of your personal lifestyle choices. Neither of which increases nor decreases my chances of getting diabetes.
When you look at gun violence, not associated with suicides, you see similar statistics. Accidental gun deaths are just that. Accidental. These are either random or a result of a personal lifestyle choice that minimized safety. Homicides are, for the vast majority of cases, related to criminal activity. If you are a criminal or associate with criminals, you have a far, far greater chance of being killed by gun violence than the average person. In these cases, the possession and/or use of a firearm is already a crime and the US government (mostly at the local level) are already working to prevent those crimes.
Suggesting that the US government is taking action against terrorism but not gun violence is either willfully ignorant or blatantly disingenuous. They are not mutually exclusive and a considerable amount of effort is dedicated to curbing gun violence at all levels.
But here is the difference between terrorism and every other major factor of deaths in the US…it is not “random” and it is not based on a life style choice. Rather is a campaign.
Terrorism is a planned *campaign* of violence which means it will continue until stopped and each attack increases the likelihood of my getting injured or killed (even if only marginally).
During the 1980s, 90s, and into 2000, the assumption was that terrorism was the same as other major causes of death. If you got caught in a terrorist situation, it was because you *chose* to go to a foreign country. You *chose* to fly into areas around the Middle East or Africa or wherever it was that the bad people lived. And so to some extent, terrorism was a result of a lifestyle choice.
On 9/11, that changed. Terrorism came to you and you didn’t make any choice that made you more of a risk. And it wasn’t random because they were intentionally setting out to kill Americans.
Now, after 9/11, how likely are you to be a victim of a terrorist attack?
That’s going to depend a lot on who you are and what you do for a living.
The simple fact of the matter that the “general” American population is at very little risk of being victims of terrorist attacks. But the level of risk is not equal across the board.
If you are a member of highly visible religious minority group (such as being Jewish or of the Sikh faith) then there is a greater likelihood that you will be the victim of a terrorist attack.
If you are a law enforcement officer, there is a greater chance you will be targeted by a domestic terrorist group such as the Sovereign Citizens movement.
If you are a contractor for an oil company in Africa, you have a higher risk than the average American.
If you happen to work in a high visibility target such as the World Trade Center, the US Capitol, or other major land marks in the US, then you have a higher risk than the average American.
People like to throw out statics and pretend they represent a universal number for everyone. My favorite is the statistic that more Americans are killed by falling soda machines than by sharks. Well, yeah, that follows given that Americans are far, far, far more likely to be in close proximity to soda machines than sharks. People in Kansas are going to be 1000% more likely to encounter a soda machine than a shark. That statistic is good for making fun of people’s fears but as a practical matter it is functionally useless.
Does the average American need to worry about terrorism? No. But that doesn’t mean we should assume every American’s risk from terrorism is equally negligible.
So you will need to take a look at your own circumstances and calculate the likelihood you will be targeted because of who you are (religious minority?), where you work (high profile target), and what you do (foreign travel to high risk environments) among many, many other factors to determine if you have an increased risk of being involved in a terrorist attack.
Terrorism is a campaign of violence.
Now some forms of terrorism, such as Sovereign Citizen Movement types, are focused predominantly on killing law enforcement personnel and/or government officials. This is why most Americans are not afraid of what is arguably one of the largest domestic terrorism threats in the US.
Similarly, the KKK and various white supremacist movements are feared far more by minority groups in the US than the general US population because it is targeted against those groups specifically. It is not random. It is not a lifestyle choice. It is a *campaign* of violence.
If the attack is successful and the perpetrators escape, they will likely do it again. If there is any indication that the violence is not taken seriously, then this *increases* the likelihood of follow-on attacks which *increases* your chances (if you happen to be part of the targeted group) of being killed. Is it a significant increase? No. But it is an increase specifically because the government either a) failed to stop the violence or b) downplayed its significance.
From Khalid Sheik Mohamed, the architect of 9/11:
“Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.” (A horrifying look into the mind of 9/11’s mastermind, in his own words)
His plan for the follow-up to 9/11 was to replicate the attack on the west coast with 10 airliners. He already had pilots in training in Pakistan. But because the campaign was stopped by US government action, those follow-on attacks did not occur. Not because the government encouraged you to change your life style choices. Not because the attacks had been random until then. But because the *pre-planned campaign* of violence was halted.
Now, if you want to argue over the threat posed by refugees to the US. Or even legal immigrants from the Middle East to the US. Or even illegal immigrants to the US as compared to “home grown extremists,” then you have an argument to make. If you die at the hands of a terrorist in the United States, the chances are pretty high that the individual who killed you was a) a US citizen of some type and b) probably not even a Muslim (or claimed Muslim).
Should the US media increase its reporting of the threat posed by the Sovereign Citizen Movement? Or of racist groups? Or should the media decrease its sensationalism of Islamic terrorism? I don’t know that the public really needs more reasons be afraid but some balance of what the threat does look like is probably a good starting point.
But to suggest there isn’t a campaign going on or that these groups (Islamic, SCM, etc.) don’t actually publicize calls to arm, plans for coordinated campaigns, and recipes for pressure cooker bombs is to undersell the nature of terrorism.
The comparison to random/choice based forms of death contributes nothing to the discussion. The comparisons are incompatible (not just apples to oranges but apples to tractors) and do not actually illuminate any key tenets of the concerns.
But does this justify the cost of countering terrorism?
How much money is each American life worth? How much is your personal life worth? And how do you calculate the return on investment for security?
Let’s see if we can crunch some numbers on this one.
The US calculates a single Soldier is worth $400,000. (This is just a filler number based on the insurance paid out for their loss. It does not calculate the training that went into that Soldier.)
We’ll be fair and say the same about the enemy.
Multiply that by 19 and you get $7.6 Million dollars.
On September 11th, 19 hijackers (who may or may not have been worth $400,000 themselves) killed nearly 3,000 Americans and caused somewhere between $60 BILLION and $3.3 TRILLION based on how it is calculated. Even at the low end, that’s a 400% return on investment.
How much someone is willing to pay for your death is not necessarily indicative of what it’s worth to keep you from doing your job.
Some additional things to consider in answering this question.
At first appears to be a matter of asking a counter-factual. Much like questions of “how would WWII have ended if Hitler didn’t invade Russia?” or “What if Africa had produced the world’s great explorers?”
But in fact, this is not a counter-factual. Because we do know what happens when the US did not treat terrorism as an act of war and resource that fight appropriately. You see, 9/11 was not the first attack by Al Qaeda on the United States. Most notably, two US embassies in Africa had been bombed in 1998 and then in 2000, the USS Cole was bombed in port in Yemen. In the first case, the US launched a few cruise missiles at AQ camps in Afghanistan (and a factory in the Sudan) but chose not to follow up. In the second case, it was treated straight forwardly as a criminal investigation. (There is some argument that AQ also attacked us in 1994 when the WTC was first bombed and in 1996 when the US military barracks in Dahran, Saudi Arabia was bombed but I don’t believe either of those were conclusively shown to be AQ.)
So what was the result of not overreacting or spending excessively on the war on terror? AQ struck again. This time, they killed 3,000 people when they attacked the WTC on 9/11. As discussed above, we know there were plans to replicate that attack on the West Coast but with far more aircraft. AQ was demonstrating an *increasing* capability. At Tarnak Farms they were experimenting with Ricin and Sarin. (They were not getting very far but they were working on it…how much time should we have allowed them?)
Aside from 3,000 lives, 9/11 resulted in $40 BILLION in insurance losses . The stock market plummeted. The airline industry was crippled and required a bailout to the tune of $15 BILLION. The tourism industry suffered a 40% loss as well.
That was from one attack. Had the attacks continued as planned, the economic devastation would have been horrific.
Because they had a safe haven in Afghanistan, they were able to continue to train their recruits. They were able to develop their techniques and technologies because there was nobody there to stop them. They didn’t have to hide from drones and they weren’t being rolled up in the middle of the night.
There is absolutely NO reason to suspect that 9/11 was going to be the last attack. And there is considerable evidence to believe that if AQ had been allowed to continue to operate freely in Afghanistan, they would have launched more and more impressive attacks.
One of the attacks al Qaeda was developing was to detonate either a large oil tanker or a dirty bomb of some type in port. Not only would this ruin that particular port for shipping, it would force an immediate ramp up in security for all ports around the country. This would have left ships stuck at sea awaiting their turn for screening and then eventual entrance into the port. Most ports have very poor security and the ease with which we are able to move goods in and out of this country flow largely because of that lax security. Increasing it to the level we currently see with air travel would cripple the US economy and in turn the global economy.
Airlines are ideal targets. They make for spectacular explosions and crash sites. They impact multiple nations rather than just the nation in which the bombing occurred. And they build upon the fears many people already have about flying. No matter how much security has been added to airline travel, terrorist groups continue to target airlinesbecause of the overall psychological impact.
Most airlines (at least in the US) are constantly in a state of near bankruptcy. Fuel is expensive, regulations are expensive, and despite the costs of tickets, there just isn’t enough money to keep everything flying within the black. So any attack on airlines imposes a huge financial burden. In turn, it impacts the tourism industry which also impacts restaurants, hotels, etc., etc. Attacking an airline is one of the most efficient terrorist tactics in existence and it has ripple effects throughout global economy.
An attack in one city (such as Paris) will impact that city’s tourism. Paris will see a drop in tourist revenue. But people will still travel. They will assure themselves that it was France’s problem and so travel to South America or across the US is probably okay. But you blow up an airliner and everyone starts to think twice about how important their next flight is. Do they really need to go on that trip? What about just a “staycation”? Or maybe they could just drive, wouldn’t a road trip be fun (the answer is no, its always no)?
After 9/11 traffic fatalities went up because more people decided to drive.
So airline security is important because airlines are important targets for terrorist groups and always will be.
Whether the security is effective is something different. And much harder to judge as you can’t prove a negative. “Well, if we didn’t have all these security measures in place, how do we know the terrorists would have been successful?”
We can point to the relatively few efforts that have followed such as the Gatorade plot , the underwear bomber , the printer cartridges and we can say, “look none of these were stopped by the TSA, so really, what’s the point?”
Again, hard to prove a negative.
On their own, these procedures are not particularly effective. But they are not done on their own. They are a part of a layered defense to which these processes provide time.
The key isn’t to stop attacks. It’s to make future attacks more complicated. Making attacks more complicated has two impacts:
- It increases the likelihood of failure. The underwear bomber highlights this problem. The attacker either needs more training or the device has to be simple enough to be used by someone without training. But you can only make it so simple because anything too easy would likely be identified by cursory searches. So even if the attacker gets through security, their chances of success have dropped significantly. You don’t want them to get through security but when they do, you still want to make it as hard as possible for them to be successful.
- The more complicated the attack, the more entry points for intelligence collection. Devices that require specialized components or ingredients highlight the attacker when they try to purchase them. Devices based on new concepts have to be tested which draws intelligence community attention. Employing complicated devices requires training which again highlights individuals to the intelligence community. The more opportunities intel has to find the bad guys, the better their chances of actually finding them. So you want to encourage attackers to get creative. To come up with great ideas on how to get past security. Because every new technique requires research, resources, training, and practice. All of which makes it more likely they will be detected at some point.
Prior to 9/11, the 19 hijackers conducted at least one complete run through of their plan. Dry runs are an important part of any operation and so it increases the number of times an attacker has to put themselves in front of security personnel. They might get through once. But can they keep getting through? What they are doing is highly dangerous and they are nervous. They are paranoid and they get scared. They don’t want to fail any more than anyone else. And every time they talk to a TSA agent or get observed by security, they are risking failure. So they will want to minimize that as much as possible. If they minimize it so much that their dry run is ineffective, then even if they get through, they may not be successful. Again, the key isn’t necessarily stopping the attack, it’s to give them as many opportunities to be discovered or to make their plans so complicated they fail.
So given the amount of money the global economy loses because of an attack on an airline, the amount of money lost in tourism, the loss of revenue for small businesses in destinations, and for the overall confidence in flying commercially, I’m not sure this is a “waste of money.” It might not be the most efficient costs…there are probably ways to trim that budget but to get rid of it all together is not a money saving opportunity. You will simply find costs in other areas when such attacks do occur.
This money serves a purpose and while it would be impossible to prove that attacks would have occurred without it, historical trends suggest we should have had another major airline attack by now (and the Russian airline being downed in Egypt suggests why this is the case).
Point two is, the expenditure and the War on Terror appears to have worked. After 9/11, AQ was disorganized. They lost their training camps. They lost their ability to gather in a single place and plan and plot and fund future attacks. They were never able to train their recruits to the same level as they had been trained prior to 9/11. Instead, they focused on huddling in small rooms and *talking* about how to fire a weapon or how to build a bomb without actually getting to test these skills out because that would mean attracting the attention of a drone or special operations raid.
And how did that work out for them? Well, it turns out that when you can’t train. When you can’t smuggle in the best recruits to meet and develop plans, you end up with a lot of half-assed attacks that are more of an embarrassment than a true threat. The guys who attacked the London metro on 7/7 and the ones who perpetrated the Madrid train bombings had all be recruited and trained prior to 9/11.
Since AQ could no longer bring their recruits to Afghanistan to train? Not one significant terrorist attack from AQ.
ISIL still has room to train. They have freedom of maneuver in parts of Iraq and Syria. But that room is shrinking. And while they have it they are still a significant threat as our friends in Paris and Brussels have unfortunately learned. So we have to continue to shrink that maneuver room so that ISIL can’t develop the same level of planning and training that AQ was able to benefit from in the 1990s.
So no, 30 Americans killed per year is not the justification for the War on Terror. The 2,970 Americans not killed per year is the justification. The $3.3 Trillion dollars which is not lost due to terrorist attacks is the justification.
There are costs. And then there investments.
According to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, it sounds like the US reaction to al Qaeda was exactly what was necessary:
“Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.” (A horrifying look into the mind of 9/11’s mastermind, in his own words)
KSM and bin Ladin had expected that the best case scenario would have been the US withdrawal from the region. (The reference for this was the US departure from Somalia after the events of “Blackhawk Down” and the US departure from Lebanon after the Marne barracks bombing.) Their worst case scenario was that the US would respond to the attacks as a law enforcement matter.
Had the US responded in this fashion, al Qaeda had very little to fear. They would simply continue to strike at the US as KSM indicates in the quote above. Eventually, in their understanding of the world, they would be able to force the US from the Middle East. It had not occurred to them that under this new administration that the response would be as overwhelming as it turned out.
AQ was successful because it had an “ungoverned space” in which they could train and plan openly. The terrorists who successfully carried off 9/11, Madrid, and the London Underground attacks did so because they had extensive training at Taliban-sanctioned training camps. They were able to test out explosive devices. They were able to practice their tactics on full-scale mock-ups.
Once those training camps were denied to them by the US invasion, AQ’s operations deteriorated significantly. In hiding in Pakistan, but still cowering from US “drone” strikes, they were no longer able to train openly. They could not test their explosive devices. And they could not gather in large enough groups to rehearse. The effects of this were born out again and again as device after device failed. (Underwear bomber, shoe bomber, Times Square bomber, etc.)
Ideally, the US would have relied less upon proxy forces in the Tora Bora fight. Though the US had experienced significant success using Northern Alliance fighters in the opening stages of the war. However, Tora Bora was much further south than where the Northern Alliance was able to draw on popular support. This meant negotiating mostly with former Taliban warlords who were, understandably, less than reliable. From an Afghan perspective, letting the Arabs flee into Pakistan was just as good as capturing since it would mean the Arabs were no longer there to interfere in their lives.
On the opposite side of the border, the Pakistani forces were unable or unwilling to cut-off the border to prevent the escape of al Qaeda. In their defense, bin Ladin did not actually flee east across the border from Tora Bora. Instead, he moved north first and then east into the North West Frontier. So even if the Pakistani military had successfully cut-off the border, they would have captured mostly low level AQ fighters but none of the leadership.
After that, things get considerably more politically complicated. Pakistan could not allow the US to operate openly on the ground but did allow them to conduct air strikes into the tribal regions. Intelligence was insufficient to permit a raid on bin Ladin earlier than 2011 and that was a shortage of HUMINT assets not airborne ISR (as critics of the Iraq war often suggest).
Bin Ladin understood the threat from electronic surveillance and had long given up the use of cell phones himself and e-mail. HUMINT networks needed to be built and that takes time and opportunity. After the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, the US (allegedly) flooded the region with HUMINT efforts in order to get the necessary intelligence.
There may have been a few additional efforts that could have sped up the ending of bin Ladin but it is unlikely they would have changed the timeline substantially. Finding someone is incredibly difficult. It takes time and development. And the US did all of that. Not sure what more could or should have been done after 9/11.
“But, the War on Terror has only made more terrorists. For every innocent we kill, we make more terrorists.”
Those in favor of the War on Terror are usually met with a graph like this:
“Here we can see that the 15 years prior to the war on terror the number of suicide attacks is relatively low compared to the 15 years after the declaration of the war on terror. This suggests that intervention in the Middle East and the way it was handled has had an effect on global terrorism.”
Also allegedly Deaths from Terrorism has increased 4500% Since the War on Terror began
According to this, the War on Terror has been a huge failure right?Not so fast Non-Interventionists
What is the University of Chicago counting as “Attacks”?
Does this include bombings in war areas?
A more useful metric for the War on Terror would be how many bombings were directed at US targets? That’s the point of the War, to protect the homeland. Since the war started there have been fewer complex attacks against the US or its overseas properties. The same goes for the U.K.
If bombings have gone up in Iraq or Pakistan or Nigeria, that doesn’t really support the implied argument. The drive of the War on Terror has been focused on driving terrorism back to local levels to be dealt with by local security forces. If that’s what the increase in attacks represents then it is trending in the right direction.
Without the metrics behind the graph, it’s hard to establish a trend one way or another.
Correlation does not equal causation…
Correlation vs. Causation: The Analysis of Data
As for the Argument “Deaths from Terrorism has increased since the War on Terror”
So when ISIS was moving into Syria and northern Iraq and were killing people and enslaving girls, throwing homosexuals off buildings, with no US intervention, this was the preferred state of the world? That the US should have just sat that out and told the Yazidi, sorry but we don’t want to make things worse.
AQ grew when the US was not invoked in Afghanistan. ISIS grew when we weren’t involved in Iraq and Syria. The same for Boko Haram and al Shabab. But the COA non interventionists are proposing is that the US should not be trying to prevent their attacks. That we should sit back until they have the skills and resources to attack the US as AQ eventually did in 2001. Staying out of Afghanistan did not appear to help.
With regards to the graph, my point stands. If they are citing predominantly attacks that occurred inside a war zone that doesn’t support a non interventionist approach. Rather it indicates a tactic that is simple to employ and has become the preferred attack for the belligerents in the theater of operations. That would be as opposed to the popularity of machetes in Rwanda or rocket attacks in Israel. This is simply simply highlighted a change in modes not a causation.
So what point are they driving at? That the status quote in Afghanistan 2000 was better than the current government and the lack of international attacks? That the status quo in Iraq in 2014 was better than pushing ISIS out of Iraq in 2017? In both cases, the US was not present in the countries but people were still being killed and terrorists were training to attack the US or other Wedtern countries.
It appears Non Interventionists want to stay out of the fight until it comes to us because they believe that will lessen the number of people who suffer or somehow prevent them from attacking the US homeland.
The lack of a military presence in Afghanistan created ungoverned spaces which allowed AQ and other groups to organize, train, plan, and launch multiple high profile spectacular attacks. Once the US military and its coalition partners moved in, those attacks halted and the effectiveness of terrorist attacks dropped off sharply.
So in that case, the presence of the US military in the Middle East did not make the terrorists more dangerous. It effectively made them impotent beyond their own locales.
With regards to the former question, you are dealing with a causal relationship versus a correlation. AQ did the bulk of its recruiting in Afghanistan at the tail end of the Soviet occupation and the early 1990s. These would be the days when the US had a very limited presence in the Middle East.
Similarly, AQ in Iraq, the predecessor to ISIS began in Jordan before the US invasion of either Afghanistan or Iraq. It moved to Iraq prior to the US invasion but was able to recruit heavily after the US disbanded the Iraqi security forces. However, by 2008–2009, AQI had all but been crushed.
After the US left Iraq, the new Iraqi government dismantled all of the inroads the US had made with the Sunni population, thus alienating them and making them susceptible to ISIS recruiting. However, their growth really surged in Syria during that country’s civil war. ISIS grew rapidly in size and in occupied territory before the US and coalition partners were invited back in. At that point, their expansion was checked and over the ensuing years their recruitment dropped considerably.
So what you see are patterns of growth and reduction tied most directly to ungoverned spaces and then attacks by the US, respectively. Terrorists gain in numbers the more successful they are. The attacks on the US embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, and 9/11 were critical to their growth. All of which occurred in an environment of far less US presence in the region.
As long as the US is present in the Middle East, it will serve as a recruiting tool for terrorists. However, as we saw with the birth of AQ in Afghanistan and ISIS in Syria, the absence of US forces in those areas actually allows them to be more effective and lethal.
There is some merit to the argument that it doesnt take much to inspire the holy warriors of Islam to suicide bombings and other acts of violence in the name of Jihad. The very fact that many of these misguided Muslims can be manipulated into leaving a country such as Syria, where the dictator has willfully slaughtered tens of thousands of suspected Islamic fundamentalists to retain power over the years, only to travel to Iraq and engage in the slaughter of innocent Muslims (most of whom havent completed the Hajj) speaks to just how gullible Islamic radicals are to the misinformation tactics of secular puppet masters.
Still, al-Qaeda had no problem attracting thousands to its training camps well before America started fighting back in the war on terror, and it is a fact that such sociopaths have to live somewhere. If no country feels that it can safely harbor terrorists without facing severe consequences, then their numbers will naturally shrink.
Since America made terrorism a national defense issue, rather than a legal matter, and began building allies in the battle, totalitarian regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq have been overthrown and replaced by democracies. The world is no longer threatened by Saddam Hussein, or forced into guessing games regarding his WMD programs. Syria has been pressured into ending a very brutal occupation of Lebanon, and elections have been held there, as well as in Egypt. Libya has given up its WMD program and surrendered its stockpiles. Islamic terrorists are under pressure across the globe now from Pakistan to the Philippines.
There is no perfect solution to terrorism, but the passive approach taken in the 1990s obviously has far harsher consequences for citizens in the West. The American policy of non-confrontation and appeasement was rewarded with successively bolder attacks against military, diplomatic, and civilian targets, culminating in the loss of 3,000 innocents on 9/11.
For 1400 years, Islamic terrorists have always found reasons for hating and killing non-submissive infidels, in keeping with the teachings of their religion. No amount of appeasement will ever change this.
Is Terrorism motivated by Foreign Occupation?
According to Karen Armstrong, ascribing Islamist terror mainly to religious motivations is wrong; “Terrorism experts agree that the denial of a people’s right to national self-determination and the occupation of its homeland by foreign forces has historically been the most powerful recruiting agent of terrorist organizations.” As Seth correctly noted, that claim ignores some pretty glaring historical evidence. But it also ignores the latest hard data, published just this month by the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
According to INSS, only 3 percent of all suicide bombings in 2014 were carried out against foreign armies. The vast majority targeted home-grown governments, militaries, and security services or rival ethnic and religious groups. And needless to say, almost all were carried out by Muslim extremists.
Nor can Armstrong and her unnamed experts be excused on the grounds that the world has changed since her book was published. A decade ago, before the explosive rise of Sunni-versus-Shi’ite violence in places like Iraq and Syria, the collapse of several Arab states and resulting internecine violence in places like Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and the upsurge of violence by groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria or the Pakistani Taliban in Pakistan, perhaps their thesis might have been more tenable. But Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence was published in 2014–the same year in which “foreign occupation” accounted for a mere 3 percent of all suicide bombings.
One can understand why experts might prefer to view Islamist terror as a response to “foreign occupation,” because if that were true, the whole problem would be within the West’s power to solve: Withdraw all Western forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, Mali, and other countries; force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, India from Kashmir, China from Xinjiang, and so forth; and presto, no more Islamist terror.
Nevertheless, this view has two big problems even aside from the fact that it belies the data. First, it denies Muslim extremists any agency, refusing to acknowledge that they could possibly have dreams and aspirations of their own. All the goals the extremists claim to desire–restoring the caliphate, imposing Sharia law, defeating the West, eradicating Israel, reconquering Andalusia–are dismissed as mere window-dressing.
Indeed, this view reduces Muslims to mere human versions of Pavlov’s dog, responding automatically to the stimulus of “foreign occupation” with no possibility of doing otherwise. And it ought to go without saying that any theory that reduces some human beings to puppets dancing on a string pulled by others–i.e., that ascribes agency to Westerners alone while denying it to Muslims–is liable to be a poor explanation of reality.
Second, because it is a poor explanation of reality, this theory not only precludes any possibility of dealing with the real problem posed by Islamic extremism, but is liable to lead to counterproductive solutions. For instance, if “foreign occupation” were really the problem, then withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan might be productive. But if the problem is that Muslim extremists want to restore the global caliphate, Western withdrawals are actually counterproductive. Withdrawing leaves behind weak governments that the extremists can easily topple, giving them control of more territory and resources; it also makes the extremists look like they’re winning, which attracts more supporters to their banner.
The best way to defeat an extremist ideology is to show its potential adherents that it’s a dead end incapable of producing any real-world gains. But to do that, the West must first recognize that the problem is the ideology, not the straw man of “foreign occupation.”
What if 9/11 never happend?
The WTC was attacked twice. Once in 1993 with a truck bomb, and then again, of course, on 9/11.
The reason I point this out is to dispel the notion that 9/11 was some sort of one off event. Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his cousin seemed to have a particular interest in seeing those towers fall. So if he didn’t succeed on 9/11, he probably would have tried again in some other fashion. From KSM himself:
“Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks. He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.” (A horrifying look into the mind of 9/11′s mastermind, in his own words)
But let’s say there was no attack on the WTC. Not in 2001. Not in 1993.
Rest assured, the world would still be largely the same. Because the attack on the WTC was not al Qaeda’s opening volley.
Remember, al Qaeda declared war on the US in 1996. The US ignored that open and public declaration and went about its merry way. In 1998, AQ bombed two US embassies in Africa. Though the loss in American lives was very small, the loss in African lives was quite high. The US fired some cruise missiles at locations associated with AQ but did nothing more.
In 1999, the US foiled one “millennium plot”, an attack on LAX, and survived another on the USS Sullivans (because their bomb-boat was overloaded and sank to the bottom).
In 2000, AQ blew up the USS Cole in Yemen (with some of the explosives they recovered after the USS Sullivans plot). The loss of US lives was higher but again, the US chose not to go to war. Instead, it sent the FBI forward to investigate it as a crime.
Then, of course, in 2001, September 11th happened. Even if the WTC didn’t get attacked, there were two more planes. One crashed into the Pentagon. The second crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. The reason it crashed was because the passengers had learned about the WTC attack and attempted to take back the plane. Had there been no attack on the WTC, they would not have known their own fate and would have treated it like the WTC planes’ passengers. As if it was another hijacking to end in negotiation. So instead of the WTC collapsing, this plane would have crashed into the US Capitol Building *while Congress was in session.*
Then in December, you had the shoe bomber plot. The fact that he was stopped could be attributed to the fact that we had been attacked on 9/11. Without the success of that attack, he may not have been prevented from detonating his bomb.
Jose Padilla was not a genuine threat, so I’m not going to suggest the “dirty bomb plot” was actually possible. But it does indicate that more attackers were being sent into the country.
My point being, the attacks weren’t going to stop. WTC or no WTC, the US was going to get hit again at some point. KSM had another plot in the works to repeat the attack on the US West Coast with 10 airliners. It didn’t happen because he got captured, because of 9/11. No 9/11 and he might not have been captured and this attack could have happened instead.
The timeline might have shifted to the right a bit but sooner or later, some massive, spectacular attack was going to happen because until 9/11, the US did not take the threat seriously.
What if the US responded differently to 9/11?
A few months after the attacks on September 11th, a terrorist would have successfully detonated a bomb in his shoe. It would have blown a hole in the airline’s fuselage, killing several people but the airliner would have landed safely. And investigation would have revealed he was tied into the same organization which had attacked the twin towers on 9/11.
A year (a year and half later), ten airliners on the West Coast are hijacked and crashed into major landmarks in California, Washington, and Nevada. The death toll far exceeds that of 9/11. An investigation reveals the plan was developed by the same individual who masterminded the 9/11 attacks and was resourced by the same financier who supported the 9/11 attacks.
Three years later, the New York Stock Exchange, the World Bank, and the IMF would all be bombed. An investigation would reveal the attacks were sponsored by the same group which had attacked the twin towers on 9/11.
A month later, the New York subway system would be bombed. An investigation would reveal the attacks were sponsored by the same group which had attacked the twin towers on 9/11.
These are just a handful of the plots that were interdicted following the 9/11 attacks.
Remember, al Qaeda declared war on the US in 1996. The US ignored that open and public declaration and went about its merry way.
In 1998, AQ bombed two US embassies in Africa. Though the loss in American lives was very small, the loss in African lives was quite high. The US fired some cruise missiles at locations associated with AQ but did nothing more.
In 2000, AQ blew up the USS Cole in Yemen. The loss of US lives was higher but again, the US chose not to go to war. Instead, it sent the FBI forward to investigate it as a crime.
Arguably, you could include the first attack on the WTC, a truck bomb in the parking garage that was also handled as law enforcement investigation. (AQ hadn’t declared war on the US yet, and technically, these guys weren’t AQ, though they were associated with some of the same folks, including KSM who would plan 9/11.)
So the US resisted going to war over and over again. But the enemy didn’t seem to understand that the US just wanted to “give peace a chance.” And not cause more problems than we were already facing. Instead, the enemy chose to attack the US again on 9/11 and killed 3,000 more Americans.
Many of KSM’s plots were in the works years before they were executed. So it wasn’t until the US reacted to 9/11 and destroyed their training camps, broke up their logistical networks, and captured their leaders that AQ’s attacks began to be foiled. Even after KSM was captured, some of his plots were still on-going but without his guidance had to be re-focused. (The plot to attack the West Coast ended up transitioning to a more localized effort focused on targets in Pakistan. With KSM still free, he may have been able to see it to fruition in the US.)
What if the US never invaded Iraq?
The basic assumption most people are going to jump on is “well, if the US didn’t invade Iraq, there wouldn’t have been a war.” Possibly. Hell, even probably.
But looking around the Middle East right now, it appears there are many, many places the US didn’t invade that suddenly decided the ruling structure was no longer justified. In some places, like Tunisia, this worked out okay, relatively speaking.[1] In other places, like Libya[2] and Syria[3], it has not gone as well for the people. Egypt is still up in the air, but its not nearly as bad as the latter two.[4] And Saudi Arabia[5] and Bahrain[6] were both successful in crushing their potential Arab Spring.[7] [8] [9]
So it is possible that Iraq would have fallen under a similar revolutionary air. The Shi’ites in the south, the majority of the country, may have decided they too were tired of living under a Sunni dictatorship (following the lead of Shi’a protestors in Bahrain). The Kurds may have decided to take that opportunity to split from both Iraq and Turkey at the same time. And there is absolutely no guarantee the revolution in Iraq would have gone better than Libya, Syria, or Yemen.
At which point, would the US have to get involved then? Would we try to stop our NATO ally Turkey from crushing the Kurdish movement? Would we have used our no fly zones (Operations Northern and Southern Watch) as a means of striking Iraqi government forces in support of the rebels (as was the lead in for NATO participation in the Libyan conflict[10])? Or would we have sat back and simply watched the place burn?[11]
Keep in mind, Iraq was viewed as a problem to be dealt with by the incoming Bush administration. Even the outgoing Clinton administration had signaled its desire for regime change in Iraq.[12] So given the opportunity to support Shi’a or Kurdish revolutions in Iraq, I believe there are better than even odds, the US would have at least backed those forces this time around, even if it did not get fully involved.
ISIL probably would not have been as powerful but it likely still would have existed in some fashion. AQI, which became ISIL, had begun in 1999 under al Zarqawi[13] but without the US invasion, it probably would not have been nearly as strong or sizeable. But once the Shi’ite forces started gaining territory, the same Ba’athists that have joined ISIL now, would probably still have become part of its ranks in order to counter the Iranian influence of the Shi’ite militias as they tried to take power.
Since all counter-factuals are just flights of fancy and can only lead to bitter arguments of what would have happened if some fairly significant things didn’t actually happen, I can only imagine the vitriol that will follow. But I think in the end, you would see a very similar death toll among the Iraqis. You would see far, far fewer Americans dead. And you might see an actual Iranian military presence in the country versus just “advisors.”
The revolution was coming (as we have seen in other countries). And the Iraqis had every reason to suffer the same fate.
The real question becomes…if the US had not invaded Iraq, would Manning have felt it necessary to dump all those State Department cables onto Wikileaks. And if Wikileaks had not published all the behind the doors gossip about the various leaders and their corrupt regimes in the Middle East, would the Arab Spring have started?
My guess? Yes, probably. The revolution was coming. It was just a matter of time.
There are no Alternatives to the War on Terror
What is the alternative? Seriously. What are the other options for dealing with terrorism at this point in time?
Terrorism evolves over time. It stems from different problems. It focuses on different tactics.
The airline hijackings by nationalist groups of the 1960s were different from the assassination campaigns conducted by the anarchists in the 1900s which are different from the “apocalyptic” events conducted by religious extremists today.
So we have to be careful about assuming that a strategy that may have worked previously will be applicable today.
That said, we tried to ignore the current brand of terrorism before.
Usama bin Ladin declared war on the US in 1996. This wasn’t some local declaration made to puff up his chest in front of his buddies. This was a public, internationally reported event.
We ignored him at the time.
He (likely) blew up the Khobar Towers in Dharan in an attempt to force the US out of Saudi Arabia. We believed the Saudis when they said it was Iranians and investigated no further.
Then he blew up two US embassies in Africa.
We fired some cruise missiles at his training camps in Afghanistan, but continued to ignore him otherwise.
In 2000, he blew up the USS Cole in Yemen.
We sent in the FBI to investigate but did nothing further.
In 2001, he committed the 9/11 attacks.
Terrorists don’t go away because you ignore them. They aren’t bullies.
But more importantly, they get more powerful when they have places to train and organize from. They get weaker when those “ungoverned spaces” are denied to them.
Eventually, the need for US intervention will lessen as the groups become weak enough for the local authorities to deal with them. There will continue to be attacks, but they will be reserved to the local areas of the group, their body counts will be low, and they will be rolled-up by the local security forces.
The War on Terror will transition to day-to-day law enforcement operations but before that can happen, the most violent, most well organized groups will have to be targeted, denied territory, and scattered.
Much of the world dealt with terrorism at a higher rate in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But it wasn’t transnational and didn’t seek out high body counts so much as media attracting events.
That changed with bin Ladin and now we are attempting to put that mindset back in the box. Bin Ladin wanted to take the fight to the “far enemy” and he wanted mass casualty events. The goal of the War on Terror is not so much to prevent terrorist attacks at all but to return them to a more manageable state.
Ultimately, the war on terror must continue because its not up to us. The terrorists get a vote and they seem pretty happy with continuing their efforts in this manner.
with contributions from BK Price
