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May 27, 2008
Yes We Are Safer
To the left it is an article of faith that we are no safer today than we were on Sept 12 2001. Nothing the Bush Administration has done matters one bit. Their primary argument seems to be that Iraq is a distraction from the "real" war.
John Hinderaker of Power Line has done us all a service by actually researching terrorist attacks against the United States at home and abroad. Here's what he found:
On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, "and it hasn't made us safer." It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us.Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing.
Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful. What follows is a partial history:
1988 February: Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Higgens, Chief of the U.N. Truce Force, was kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah.December: Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York was blown up over Scotland, killing 270 people, including 35 from Syracuse University and a number of American military personnel.
1991
November: American University in Beirut bombed.1993
January: A Pakistani terrorist opened fire outside CIA headquarters, killing two agents and wounding three.February: World Trade Center bombed, killing six and injuring more than 1,000.
1995
January: Operation Bojinka, Osama bin Laden's plan to blow up 12 airliners over the Pacific Ocean, discovered.November: Five Americans killed in attack on a U.S. Army office in Saudi Arabia.
1996
June: Truck bomb at Khobar Towers kills 19 American servicemen and injures 240.June: Terrorist opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one.
1997
February: Palestinian opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one and wounding more than a dozen.November: Terrorists murder four American oil company employees in Pakistan.
1998
January: U.S. Embassy in Peru bombed.August: Simultaneous bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people and injured over 5,000.
1999
October: Egypt Air flight 990 crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing 100 Americans among the more than 200 on board; the pilot yelled "Allahu Akbar!" as he steered the airplane into the ocean.2000
October: A suicide boat exploded next to the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39.2001
September: Terrorists with four hijacked airplanes kill around 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.December: Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," tries to blow up a transatlantic flight, but is stopped by passengers.
The September 11 attack was a propaganda triumph for al Qaeda, celebrated by a dismaying number of Muslims around the world. Everyone expected that it would draw more Muslims to bin Laden's cause and that more such attacks would follow. In fact, though, what happened was quite different: the pace of successful jihadist attacks against the United States slowed, decelerated further after the onset of the Iraq war, and has now dwindled to essentially zero. Here is the record:
2002
October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam's government.2003
May: Suicide bombers killed 10 Americans, and killed and wounded many others, at housing compounds for westerners in Saudi Arabia.October: More bombings of United States housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killed 26 and injured 160.
2004
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.2005
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.2006
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.2007
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.2008
So far, there have been no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.I have omitted from the above accounting a few "lone wolf" Islamic terrorist incidents, like the Washington, D.C. snipers, the Egyptian who attacked the El Al counter in Los Angeles, and an incident or two when a Muslim driver steered his vehicle into a crowd. These are, in a sense, exceptions that prove the rule, since the "lone wolves" were not, as far as we know, in contact with international Islamic terrorist groups and therefore could not have been detected by surveillance of terrorist conversations or interrogations of al Qaeda leaders.
It should also be noted that the decline in attacks on the U.S. was not the result of jihadists abandoning the field. Our government stopped a number of incipient attacks and broke up several terrorist cells, while Islamic terrorists continued to carry out successful attacks around the world, in England, Spain, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, Indonesia and elsewhere.
So if we're not safer, where are the terrorist attacks? i
As for Iraq, I can do no better than quote the words of General Petraeus himself as he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 8 and explained why winning in Iraq helps us defeat al Qaeda everywhere, and helps us defeat terrorism in general:
As we combat AQI we must remember that doing so not only reduces a major source of instability in Iraq, it also weakens an organization that Al Qaeda's senior leaders view as a tool to spread its influence and foment regional instability. Osama bin laden and Ayman al- Zawahiri have consistently advocated exploiting the situation in Iraq, and we have also seen Al Qaeda-Iraq involved in destabilizing activities in the wider Mideast region.......withdrawing too many forces too quickly could jeopardize the progress of the past year; and performing the necessary tasks in Iraq will require sizable conventional forces, as well as special operation forces and adviser teams.
The strategic considerations include recognition that: the strain on the U.S. military, especially on its ground forces, has been considerable; a number of the security challenges inside Iraq are also related to significant regional and global threats; a failed state in Iraq would pose serious consequences for the greater fight against Al Qaeda, for regional stability, for the already existing humanitarian crisis in Iraq, and for the efforts to counter malign Iranian influence.
After weighing these factors, I recommended to my chain of command that we continue the drawdown in the surge to the combat forces and that upon the withdrawal of the last surge brigade combat team in July, we undertake a 45-day period of consolidation and evaluation. At the end of that period, we will commence a process of assessment to examine the conditions on the ground and over time determine when we can make recommendations for further reductions. This process will be continuous, with recommendations for further reductions made as conditions permit.
This approach does not allow establishment of a set withdrawal timetable, however it does provide the flexibility those of us on the ground need to preserve the still-fragile security gains our troopers have fought so far and sacrifice so much to achieve.
With this approach, the security achievements of 2007 and early 2008 can form a foundation for the gradual establishment of sustainable security in Iraq. This is not only important to the 27 million citizens of Iraq, it is also vitally important to those in the Gulf region, to the citizens of the United States, and to the global community.
It clearly is in our national interests to help Iraq prevent the resurgence of Al Qaeda in the heart of the Arab world, to help Iraq resist Iranian encroachment on its sovereignty, to avoid renewed ethno-sectarian violence that could spill over Iraq's borders and make the existing refugee crisis even worse, and to enable Iraq to expand its role in the regional and global economies."
Posted by Tom at May 27, 2008 9:58 PM
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Comments
Tom,
I think thee are two issues. The first is, if you count the # of terrorists attacks against U.S, troops or others (Remember Sergio Viera de Mello?) then the entire thesis falls apart.
Secondly, is there cause and effect, at least w/ respect to the war in Iraq itself? In other words, has the war made us safer or has the efforts of the administration in other ways made us safer.
Given the fact that we are in Iraq, I will defer to General Petraeus regarding what we should do now. I think, however, that the bald assertion that the invasion of Iraq has made us safer is a piece of magical thinking.
TLGK
Posted by: tlgk at May 28, 2008 9:01 AM
Hi Loop, and thanks for stopping by.
To be sure, cause and effect is a tricky thing to establish. On that you are surely correct.
But for the Bush Administration it's a damned if they do and damned if they don't. If there had been terrorist attacks in the U.S. they'd be blamed, and if there aren't they're still blamed.
It's kind of like what you hear from global warming extremists. If it's hot they say it's global warming, but if we get a blizzard we hear that "it's a side effect of global warming". No matter what happens it's taken to be evidence of global warming.
You got me on Sergio Viera de Mello; I had to look him up. But it did jog my memory and I do remember that bombing. Terrible thing.
The bottom line though is that if you take Iraq and Afghanistan out of the equation (they are, after all, war zones) since 2003 there have been no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad. That's got to count for something.
If you want you can have the last word, though, because I don't really like long run on arguments.
Posted by: Tom the Redhunter at May 28, 2008 8:33 PM
It's undeniable is it not that we have been killing Al Queda scum in Iraq by the thousands.
If we had not killed them in Iraq, they would surely have come after us here or somewhere else.
Bush's strategy to lance the boil of Saddam Hussein also had the benefit of drawing the A.Q. poison out of the entire region and defeating it in Iraq.
And when bin Laden declared Iraq as his line in the sand and now is being seen by Muslims around the world to be defeated en masse, the A.Q. mystique is forever damaged.
Posted by: Mike's America 
at May 28, 2008 11:42 PM
