Logic Times
Editor’s Note: Reaction to the Terrorists in Oz essay has revealed that, in dealing with the narrower issue of the creation of terrorists, I have inadvertently put forth commentary that makes light of the overall terrorist threat. Nothing is further from the truth. I believe terrorism born of fascist Islamic views represents the greatest threat that civilization faces today. How, then, does this position coexist with the Terrorists in Oz essay, wherein I make the claim that the terrorist threat is in decline? The answer is simple, but unfortunately not clearly stated in the essay.
The War on Terror is being slowly won, but the risk is still grave. The idea that our bold action in Iraq is making the "balance of terror" worse is what this essay rejects; terrorists must be hunted – they cannot be pacified, coddled or negotiated with. Yet, the terrorist undercurrent in Europe and the Islamofascist dangers we see worldwide demonstrates that, while the military has killed terrorists by the boatload in Iraq and begun the process of letting freedom strangle fascist Islam, this war continues to be the challenge of a generation.
I apologize for the lack of clarity. I have modified the closing paragraph, which was worded poorly.
Terrorists in Oz
Commentary by Aslan, 2/12/06, 9:22pm. Comments (6)
A frequent indictment of the Iraq War is that our presence in Iraq is creating more terrorists than we are eliminating. This strikes at the heart of the current Iraq policy that seeks to reduce the threat of terrorism by introducing representative self-government to the Middle East and, as an added bonus, eliminating any terrorists loitering in the neighborhood. If the Iraq policy is increasing the terrorist threat, the policy is failing.
To make an assessment, one must define "terrorist threat." A viable definition might be: "the potential for attacks on U.S. soil resulting in loss of civilian life and disruption of economic and social activity." Immediately, the definition itself argues against any claim that our action in Iraq is creating terrorists. Terrorists are called terrorists because they engage in terrorist activities, of which the most notable is slaughtering civilians of their political enemies. If our Iraq policy is to prevent and deter terrorism in the United States by eliminating these criminals overseas and transforming the culture that breeds them, then the simplest measure of failure would be a rise in attacks against their main political enemy. In simpler terms, if there are more terrorists and a greater terrorist threat because we are in Iraq, then there would be more terrorism in the United States. (Ed.: I can visualize the Leftist paroxysms at reading this statement, so violent that they do not realize they are walking into a trap.)
Since there have been no further attacks on U.S. soil after 9/11, anyone arguing that the terror threat is rising must abandon Occam’s Razor and begin to weave a convoluted explanation why less terrorism is coexisting with a greater terrorist threat. This would be akin to a greater threat of rainfall yielding less precipitation. The first part of that tale is that the terrorists are indeed slaughtering civilians, but they are Iraqi civilians. And in this they would be correct. The terrorist slaughter of 9/11 has been replaced, in part, by the terrorist slaughter of Iraqi civilians. This is a profound commentary on the success of the Iraq policy, and it is a commentary about capability. The Iraq policy has clearly degraded the ability of the terrorists to attack their primary target, the civilian population of the United States, and, if you are a civilian of the United States, this is excellent news.
Consider the profile of the 9/11 terrorists:
"By the beginning of that year, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, two Arabs who had been leaders of a terrorist cell in Hamburg, Germany, were already living in Florida, honing their skills in flight schools. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar had been doing the same in Southern California. The hijackers maintained tight security, generally avoided cell phones, rented apartments under false names and used cash—not wire transfers—wherever possible. If every plan to attack al-Qaeda had been executed, and every lead explored, Atta's team might still never have been caught." (Time Magazine, August 4, 2002)
Contrast that level of sophistication with today’s terrorist:
"One day soon, this somber young man plans to offer up a final prayer and then blow himself up along with as many U.S. or Iraqi soldiers as he can reach. Marwan Abu Ubeida says he has been training for months to carry out a suicide mission. He doesn't know when or where he will be ordered to climb into a bomb-laden vehicle or strap on an explosives-filled vest but says he is eager for the moment to come. While he waits, he spends much of his time rehearsing that last prayer. 'First I will ask Allah to bless my mission with a high rate of casualties among the Americans,' he says, speaking softly in a matter-of-fact monotone, as if dictating a shopping list." (Time Magazine, July 4, 2005)
The exchange of one Mohammed Atta for a hundred Marwan Abu Ubeidas is brilliant exchange and a valuable part of any successful anti-terrorism policy.
Part Two of the convoluted tale addresses the implicit immorality in Part One, namely that it is reprehensible for us to have transferred the threat from American civilians to the Iraqi people. Note that this argument already abandons the idea that the terrorist threat in America is rising and instead makes the case that the declining terrorist threat comes at too great a price. Yet, despite the increase in terrorism in Iraq, the mortal danger faced by the Iraqi people has diminished since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and the nature of the threat has changed for the better as well. What was once the slaughter of between 2105 and 3509 civilians per month under the hopeless tyranny of Saddam Hussein has been replaced by a hope-filled struggle for freedom costing, at most, 970 lives per month*. To claim that Iraqi civilians are worse off today is to ignore statistics on one hand and the value of liberty on the other.
If the media had covered the 24 years of carnage under Saddam with the same intensity as is on display today, if they had shown the mass graves being dug and filled, had videotaped writhing Kurds in the poisoned streets of Halabja (one of forty poison gas attacks), had documented the stream of women passing through the rape rooms and countless dissenters being fed feet-first into industrial shredders, had visited the children’s prisons and had shown the military suppression of dissenters in the South after Gulf War I, then no one would bother to debate this point; there would a consensus among all rational people that the plight of Iraqis has dramatically improved.
Part Three of the tale, displaying expected ignorance about the military, shouts out that terrorism has taken a toll on our soldiers, not just the Iraqi people. That is warfare, not terrorism. When the United States Congress authorized the War on Terror, all understood that there was going to be a devastating, yet necessary, exchange: the lives of some military personnel for the increased safety and security of the people of the United States. The specter of 9/11 compelled that this difficult choice be made, and this has been achieved by the imposition of our will, through force, on the politics of the Middle East. The very convoluted argument underway, which concedes that the terrorist threat in the United States has declined, demonstrates that this exchange has (and is) taking place.
The tale grows even more torturous when, despite terrorist failure in the United States and a massive decline in the capability of the terrorists we are battling today in Iraq, we are to believe that our future is all the more bleak because of the potential for this new stable of scruffy 19-year-old walking bombs to one day morph into Al Qaeda operatives able to carry out elaborate covert operations within the United States. This really is the backbone of the "We are creating terrorists!" claim: that the heavy-handed U.S. intervention in Iraq is feeding the recruitment lines for Al Qaeda. This may or may not be true, but is it relevant? Such a trend is analogous to a major league baseball team in desperate need for major league talent having to field a team of sandlot players. And the coaching staff – the only hope for those sandlot players to amount to anything – is slowly dying off:
A little rational thought once again demonstrates that the terrorist threat is not growing because of our action in Iraq. So what is the point of this unsubstantiated claim – that we are creating terrorists – being made over and over again? Like Dorothy wishing her desperate desire into reality ("There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home!"), the Left continues to wish disaster on Bush with no more ammunition than their own fantastic mantras – supported, unfortunately, by a media willing to pretend we all live in Oz.
"We are creating terrorists, we are creating terrorists, we are creating terrorists!"
"Iraq is a failure, Iraq is a failure, Iraq is a failure!"
"The economy is bad, the economy is bad, the economy is bad!"
"Bush lied, people died, Bush lied, people died, Bush lied, people died!"
* The 970 figure comes from the maximum casualty figure on iraqbodycount.net divided by the number of months since the fall of Baghdad (33).
Copyright © 2006 Dan Hallagan. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
1: Gomez 6041
February 14, 2006 10:18am EST
Yes, I'm sure the folks in Iraq, London, Madrid, Saudi Arabia, etc. are relieved that the numbers conclusively show that the "more terrorist" meme is a myth. And it only cost 2500 of my favorite patients.
Air Force Doc.
{Aslan: This e-mail devastated me. Receiving this e-mail in particular prompted my Editor’s Note.}
2: Steve Williams
February 14, 2006 10:19am EST
Are you insane? Where did this essay come from? I normally get good stuff from this site. Terrorism is the number one threat, man. This article makes it seem like we have slapped down all the "A" team terrorists and now are just mopping up exploding, uneducated Muslins. Everyone with know-how in terrorism believes it is a matter of WHEN not IF we will get hit like 9/11 again! What are you saying.
{Aslan: Whatever I did say, I must not have said it very well. There are two questions that have gotten crossed up in this essay: 1) Are we creating terrorists by our aggressive action in Iraq? and 2) Is the overall terrorist threat going away?
This essay attempted to say that, while there might be more angry teenage Muslims running around Iraq, the overall effort in the Middle East has devastated Al Qaeda’s ability to operate. So the mantra "We are creating terrorists!" misses the point. We are attacking the terrorist problem and we are drastically degrading their ability to train, communicate, finance and execute operations against United States interests and certainly in the United States itself. So our presence is NOT making terrorism worse, which is the implied claim of the Left.
However, terrorism is still an ENORMOUS threat and I agree it is a question of WHEN and not IF. In fact, the basis of my Eventual Destruction essay is that it is certain that terrorism will one day end civilization. But we can impact when by what we do today.
Ask yourself this, Steve: Would you be safer today (at a lower risk for terrorist attacks here in America) if Saddam was still around, Libya was still working on its WMD program, and the Middle East was a haven for terrorists displaced by the Afghanistan War?}
3: Peter van der Linden
February 14, 2006 10:42am EST
A more accurate definition is "the potential for attacks against US interests anywhere, resulting in loss of civilian life and disruption of economic and social activity"
With that definition your whole house-of-cards argument collapses.
{Aslan: I agree wholeheartedly with your revised definition. My definition was a trap (as I indicated in the Editor’s Note) to extract an admission from the "We are creating terrorists!" crowd that these new terrorists lack the sophistication to operate on U.S. soil. The "We are creating terrorists!" argument implies a greater risk of terrorism because we entered Iraq, and that is untrue. We may be creating proto-terrorists, but with all the other efforts in the War on Terror, they are less capable than ever from turning a proto-terrorist into Mohammed Atta.
Also, while your definition is more complete, it still fails the results test: there is not an extensive portfolio of terrorist successes against U.S. international interests, either.
I do not believe that we have won, or that terrorism has devolved back into the primitive slime. I believe, however, that we have not lost, nor have we strengthened Al Qaeda; there is more to effective 21st century terrorism than an angry mob, and the blood and sacrifice of our military men and women has purchased the degradation in their capabilities.}
4: JHoskins2004
February 15, 2006 10:10pm EST
I am no scholar; in fact I have never even attended college so it's possible I’m out of my league here but... It seems to me that your argument that there is less terrorism hinges solely on your reliance of the term "terrorism" to apply to that which is directly affecting U.S. citizens at this moment. I believe that when most say terrorism is increasing (of which I am one) they are speaking of terrorist incidents in the whole world, not just those incidents that are directed solely at Americans. Acts in Chechnya, India, Malaysia, and Lebanon to name a few, are still acts of terrorism.
Right now I can see the easy rebuttal of this statement coming a mile away, to wit: But I am limiting this to America, and WE haven't been attacked, and isn't that the whole point of the U.S. global war on terrorism? While a good point, I don't believe it is correct, essentially because the people who attacked us on 9/11 initially were not our enemy's, that is they were our friends against Russia before they turned on us. It is because of this that makes your point so disturbing to me. Just because the terrorists are killing someone else today does not give proof that they will not turn to us at a later date. The fact is the fewer terrorists now the fewer later. With that I refer you to the proper State Department and Non-Governmental agency reports that state the incidents of terrorism are in fact increasing in number.
Thank you for your time.
{Aslan: That is very well said, and, by and large, we do not disagree. Other essays on this site demonstrate how seriously I take terrorism and how important defeating them – all of them, not just some fictional, anti-US terror group – is to the future of Western Civilization. The callousness of my "they’re not attacking the U.S." point was to start to drill down the question of capability and the success of the self-defense phase of our effort.
We do disagree with what I will call the "dirty hands" argument: the claim that the geopolitically slimy U.S. financed this group, coddled that group, and condoned those freedom fighters in the past and so, well, the chickens have come home to roost. We might as well all commit suicide. Of all world superpowers ever to grace (or curse) this planet, all have been savage imperialists – except the United States. We are the shining exception – with a few self-interested dirty deals, pogroms and other mistakes in our closet. But the gap between the moral credibility of the United States and every previous world power is as wide as the gap between the golf game of Tiger Woods and my game.
Finally, I would never suggest that terrorists that attack others are not a threat. It is Islamofascism vs. civilization, and we are on the latter team. But I tell you what: only the U.S. is going save (for a while) our team from destruction, and talking with the Islamofascists won’t save it.}
5: Evntprdcr
February 15, 2006 11:00pm EST
You sadly miss the mark by defining terrorists as conveniently not domestic terrorists, that is to say, terrorists in Iraq. You dismiss this oversight by noting that the terrorists that exist in Iraq are trifling, since they kill 1000-2000 less people per month, an odd way to regard political consequences. Finally, you wholly avoid the richer question and that is: can a fundamentalist theocracy even confront the modern world as we define it and are they even ready for our style of "revolutionary" democracy. I think not. Tragically, you seem egregiously shallow in your sloppy equations linking fewer Iraqi terrorist deaths [Iraqi domestic] with western style democracy. Your "statistics" would convince Occam to grow his beard back.
{Aslan: Ahh, one can always count on Evntprdcr to colorfully disagree. I do not miss the point that the terrorists in Iraq are trifling – I make the point that their capabilities have been significantly eroded and that is positive for the U.S.
Next, I am often amazed at the liberals who reveal a ingrained belief that Arabs are incapable of desiring or maintaining freedom. I cannot think that way. I believe that liberty (which = individual human dignity) is the natural state of mankind, no matter what the culture or the race.
Finally, it is perfectly sound logic to look at the condition of Iraqis before the intrusion of the West and after and to note that their condition has improved. More died before/no freedom. Less die after/freedom. Those statistics are sound.}
6: Barbara H.
February 17, 2006 1:20pm EST
You declare, on the basis that there have been no more 9/11s, that the terrorists cannot hurt us here anymore. That is foolishness. Terrorists take a long-term view of this struggle.
{Aslan: Sigh. This essay has been more trouble than it is worth. If the clarifications above do not explain that I believe the threat is still very real, even though it has been diminished, then perhaps this graph will. It is a nonsense graph, just intended to convey that the threat has declined since 2001, but that it remains a serious threat.
}