Posted on 10/08/2006 12:05:43 PM PDT by SandRat
In any war, good intelligence is critical. It's difficult to defeat an enemy if you don't know what the enemy is planning to do.
Yet, more than five years into the long war against terrorism, we still don't even know exactly how many enemy fighters we're up against.
The recent leak of a portion of the National Intelligence Estimate led to newspaper headlines proclaiming that the war on terror is "creating more terrorists" than it's getting rid of. Then, when more of the estimate was declassified, many were left wondering, "How would we know that, and what does it mean?"
It sounds as if there are plenty of authoritative studies indicating that there are more terrorists now than there were five years ago. The reality is, we could never know. Did we have accurate databases of how many terrorists there were in the world on Sept. 11? Do we actually know how many terrorists there are across the planet now?
We know that the number of terrorist acts is up, but even here the data are unclear. The way the U.S. government counts attacks has changed, so it's difficult to compare recent data with past years. And the number is wildly skewed by counting every terrorist attack in Iraq as an incident of international terrorism, when many of them are about domestic sectarian conflict.
Nobody really seems to definitively know how many terrorists there are. In a now-famous February 2003 memo, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked, "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?" That was no mere rhetorical question. He didn't know the answer. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Pentagon has been able to give him an accurate answer since.
If there are more terrorists, is that because of the American effort to fight transnational terrorism? After all, we know that in the half dozen years leading up to Sept. 11 the United States made only very modest efforts to combat transnational terrorism, yet the threat grew.
During that time, Osama bin Laden built one of the most sophisticated and expansive networks in history, a network that has been severely disabled.
And, if there are more terrorists in the world, is that a sign of failure? During World War II, German war production increased during the course of the war, almost to the bitter end, but Germany lost anyway. In fact, the first American act of World War II, declaring war on Japan, doubled the number of enemies we faced because Germany almost immediately declared war on the U.S. Was declaring war on Japan a bad decision?
Counting numbers alone, out of context, may not tell you very much.
The number of terrorists may be less important than who they are and where they are.
For example, if the process of tracking down and getting one senior al-Qaida official spawned 30 al-Qaida wannabes who were far less capable than al-Qaida, is that really a bad trade-off?
And since terrorists are a tiny percentage of virtually any group (except other terrorists), they remain a minuscule part of the population. Even if the number of terrorists in the world were to double, the total number would remain pretty small.
Counting numbers makes even less sense when we consider how many (or how few) terrorists it takes to kill or traumatize a great many people.
Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), Eric Rudolph (the Atlanta Olympics bomber), and Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma City bomber), were all "an army of one." It took only 19 hijackers to terrorize New York and Washington. One terrorist can be a real problem.
On the other hand, by some estimates upwards of 40,000 people trained at the terrorist camps in Afghanistan before Sept. 11. Yet we have no evidence indicating that many of them went on to become serious killers. Declaring that the war on terror is "creating more terrorists" than it's getting rid of is more of a bumper-sticker slogan than a serious attempt to gauge our progress. Americans deserve better than empty rhetoric.
James Jay Carafano is senior research fellow for national security and homeland security at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org), a conservative public policy research institute. He is author of the new book "G.I. Ingenuity." Contact Carafano through the foundation's Web site: www.heritage.org.
Interesting
Killing those who want to kill us. What am I missing here?
Poverty and ignorance is creating new terrorists and we know who these people are because they tell us who they are every day by word and deed.
This is coming from the most liberal rag in Arizona, mind you.
Throughout history, the message of the liberals is consistent in the face of the dangers that our country faces: SURRENDER.
I think the above statement has a kernal of truth but would make more sense restated as something like this...
"...as islamists are killed and as this war goes on, the enemy is working to recruit, train, and enlarge its force."
We all know there are many islamists that are going to join the jihad before this war is won.
30,000+ Iraqis diasgree with this article.
I know that's why I just said "interesting."
ping for later
"Yet, more than five years into the long war against terrorism, we still don't even know exactly how many enemy fighters we're up against."
How about the Iranian Army
The mooslugs said early on that terrorists from all over the world would come to Iraq.
GW said, "Bring 'em on."
Said it right up front. Better Iraq than Iowa.
yitbos
To me, anytime you come down hard and increase the consequences, the loosely affiliated and wannabes will decide to stay home. So this assertion has never made any sense. The 40,000 number of trainees is interesting and indicative that we let them get a 20 year headstart. Demands that we snuff it out in 5 years are pretty silly, imho.
Ignorance, yes. But the poverty bit doesn't fly. How many criminals are wealthy? And most of the 9/11 terrorists - not to mention Bin Laden - were quite well off.
"Throughout history, the message of the liberals is consistent in the face of the dangers that our country faces: SURRENDER."
I'm 52 years old, and all my life liberals have told us to surrender, regardless of the size of the conflict.
My guess is 10 years to "discourage" the terrorists by killing a great many of them.
I think the "creating terrorist" argument is silly. It is just counter any reasonable analysis from a conscious person. It is like saying imprisoning criminals creates more of them. Not to mention it is entirely inaccurate. Creating terrorists would involve us establishing training camps and providing funding to terrorist organizations. I suppose we could look at buying Oil from the MiddleEast as creating terrorists but then one would have to make the leap that all the Oil money that goes to Arabs is funding terrorists and that the individuals who receive the benefit of such do not have any moral responsibility for their actions. It does fit with the bankrupt leftist bent in which no person can be held responsible for their actions unless of course they are evil Republicans.
Those are the rock-stars of terrorism. The run of the mill Jihadi that plants the bombs or dies in greatest numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan are from meaner backgrounds.
yitbos
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