On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the great policy question is
whether the Bush administration’s approach to the War on Terror has
made us safer. Prepping for his 2008 presidential run, Sen. John
Kerry on Saturday asserted that Bush had made us less safe.
Although the Bush administration has many notable failures, Kerry’s
case as he presents it is unconvincing.
By going to war in Iraq instead of concentrating on defeating
al-Qaeda, Bush has “widened the terrorist threat instead of
defeating it,” Kerry said.
“There is simply no way to overstate how Iraq has subverted our
efforts to free the world from global terror. It has overstretched
our military. It has served as an essential recruitment tool for
terrorists. It has divided and pushed away our traditional allies.
It has diverted critical billions of dollars from the real front
lines against terrorism and from homeland security.”
In an op-ed for the New Hampshire Union Leader this
past weekend, Kerry said:
Iraq has made America less safe. The terrorists are not
on the run. Terrorist acts tripled between 2004 and 2005. Al-Qaida
has spawned a decentralized network operating in 65 countries, most
of them joining since 9/11. Only Dick Cheney could call this a
success.
It’s time to refocus our military efforts from the failed
occupation of Iraq to what we should have been doing all along:
destroying al-Qaida. We need to redeploy troops from Iraq — keep
up the training and counter-terror operations, establish an over
the horizon military capacity — and free up resources to fight the
War on Terror.
(Incidentally, Kerry launched this attack while slamming Bush for
politicizing 9/11.)
But has the Bush administration really lost sight of destroying
al-Qaeda? Has terrorism become more of a threat?
Since 9/11, the United States and its allies have destroyed more
than 75 percent of al-Qaeda. That statistic does not come from the
White House press office. Washington Post reporter Dana
Priest noted it in a talk at the Cato Institute last week. Priest,
whom no one would call an apologist for or ally of the
administration, also noted how the Bush administration skillfully
used diplomatic relationships — particularly with France — to
pursue, capture, detain and interrogate al Qaeda terrorists.
Through a combination of military force and diplomacy, the United
States has crippled al Qaeda.
Not only has the United States done exactly what Kerry and his
fellow Democrats claim has not been done — use diplomatic
relationships to decimate the group that attacked us on 9/11 — but
the war in Iraq has marginalized al-Qaeda in the Muslim world. That
is one of the conclusions of a new report released last week by the
UK’s Royal Institute for International Affairs, also known as
Chatham House
It certainly is true that the war in Iraq has to some degree
hardened Muslim opinion against the United States and even
radicalized a portion of the moderate population. But it also has
turned Muslims off to al-Qaeda and even to the use of violence to
pursue Islamic goals, Maha Azzam, a researcher at Chatham House,
concluded. After noting that the War on Terror has significantly
weakened al-Qaeda, Azzam’s report finds three primary reasons for
al-Qaeda’s loss of support in the Muslim world, the first being
that “for the vast majority [of Muslims] al-Qaeda is also seen as
tainted by its perpetuation of sectarian violence in Iraq.”
Secondly, there has been a heightened radicalization of
the middle ground in the Muslim world. A growing number have
embraced Islamist politics but will not sanction al-Qaeda’s tactics
and will pursue democratic avenues when they are made available.
This radicalization may itself be a worrying development for the
West, but it is also weakening al-Qaeda, whose legitimacy and
ambition rest on approval from the Muslim masses….
Thirdly, there has been a growing discomfort and opposition
religiously and morally to terrorism among Muslims. Al-Qaeda has
driven a wedge between Muslim communities not about the importance
of regional and international politics and the role of the US, but
about the justification of violence in the name of Islam. This is
perhaps one of the most significant ongoing developments and one
which will determine the nature of the Islamists’ struggle against
their governments and the West in the future.
Azzam found that al-Qaida enjoyed a surge in popularity in the
Muslim world immediately after 9/11, but that the war in Iraq
turned the tide, significantly weakening Muslim affection for the
terror group and terrorist tactics in general. Though the war has
spawned a lot of al Qaeda imitators, none is as organized or
capable of massive destruction as bin Laden’s organization once
was.
The Chatham House report concludes that
“Of the three main grievances held by the majority of
Muslims against Western policy in the region, US involvement in
Afghanistan (even within a NATO context) and in Iraq is likely to
prove temporary, despite the present inability of the Iraqi
government to gain control.
The two other issues may prove intractable. First, Muslim
populations feel that their undemocratic regimes are supported by
the West…. Secondly, the Arab-Israeli conflict continues to be a
festering wound.
In other words, if the West succeeds in establishing a democratic
government in Iraq that puts pressure on neighboring regimes to
give their people more say, that will play in our favor among the
majority of Muslims. If we pull out and let Iraq fall to the
totalitarian thugs, as we did after the first Gulf War, it will
confirm in Muslim minds that the West does not mean what it says
about promoting democracy.
This is why Bush wants to keep the fight going in Iraq until its
democracy can stand. Kerry wants out next year, no matter what.
Based on Azzam’s assessment, Bush’s strategy is more likely to
endear us to Muslims in the long run.
If the measure of success in the War on Terror is, as Kerry
suggested, wiping out al Qaeda, then the Bush administration can
hardly be called a failure, as Kerry did. Al Qaeda is, in fact, not
only on the run but reduced to a fraction of its former self, which
is almost certainly one of the major reasons there has been no al
Qaeda attack on U.S. soil in five years.
AS FOR AFGHANISTAN, KERRY claims that it represents the real fight
in the War on Terror and that Iraq is a sideshow that has diverted
necessary resources. As evidence he cites NATO commander Gen. James
Jones’ call last week for more troops. But Jones asked only for
2,500 troops, and U.S. News & World Report reported
that the real trouble was not a lack of U.S. troops, but reluctance
to engage the enemy on the part of our allies: “An unspoken gripe:
Some countries haven’t made good on promised support, and a number
— among them Germany and Spain — have held their troops away from
the combat zone in southern Afghanistan where troops from Britain,
Canada, and the United States are heavily engaged.”
Kerry claimed that we were losing the fight in Afghanistan
because Bush was too focused on the diversion of Iraq. But that’s
not what NATO is saying. Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, head of NATO’s
southern Afghanistan operation, said last week, “We’ve got the
Taliban surrounded,” the Calgary Herald reported. He
called the recent rise in violence by Taliban forces their “last
stand.”
NATO Secretary General Jaap De hoop Schaffer told ABC News, “The
resistance by the Taliban is more stiff than we expected when we
went in. But that’s the reason that General Jones, supported by me,
is now asking for more.
“I can tell you that the nations, NATO allies, have already
promised more forces than are on the ground actually in
Afghanistan, so first of all they should fulfill their
promises.”
In short, it’s not that the United States has troops in Iraq,
it’s that NATO countries have not sent the troops they promised in
the first place.
There are lots of different ways one could measure success in
the War on Terror. By Kerry’s own measure — defeating al-Qaeda —
the United States is hardly failing.
After five years it is too early to assert with confidence
whether, on the whole, the War on Terror is headed for long-term
success. But based on the available data, it does not seem
farfetched to conclude that so far it has, despite the misjudgments
and missteps, made us safer.
Perhaps another president, a Democratic president, would have
handled everything better and made us even safer. But to assert
that Bush’s policies have endangered us because Osama bin Laden is
still at large and al-Qaeda fighters are still running around is
not a serious critique. The Bush administration has a long way to
go to make us SAFE. That it has not done. But has the War on Terror
made America less vulnerable to a massive terrorist attack than it
was on September 10, 2001. It sure looks like it.
