dougs digs

once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right

7.08.2005

It's Time For A New Plan . . . And Quickly

Just as the people of London stood with America after 9/11, the people of America – and the entire world – stand with London today. By most recent estimates, the attacks yesterday on three trains and a double-decker bus "left at least 50 dead and 700 people wounded." The atrocity reaffirmed the world's resolve to defeat international terrorism. America's commitment to defeating terrorists has led many to ask a legitimate question: are our policies making us safer?

By objective measures, the problem of international terrorism is worse now than it was in 2001. According to State Department data, the number of international terrorist attacks tripled to 650 in 2004. (The number of international terrorist attacks in 2003, 175, was a 20-year high.) This week, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) – which is a government agency – revealed that those numbers dramatically understate the scope of the problem. Broadening the definition to include attacks that "deliberately hit civilians or non-combatants" the NCTC found that 3,192 incidents of international terrorism occurred last year, resulting in the "deaths, injury or kidnapping of almost 28,500 people." For more information, check out the NCTC's new website, the Terrorism Knowledge Base.

In the face of an al Qaeda threat that is global, diverse and diffuse, President Bush defends sinking over $200 billion and 150,000 troops into Iraq because it is the "central front in the war on terror." That may be true, but only because the administration's mismanagement of the war made it so. After all, prior to the invasion, President Bush justified the war by claiming it was necessary to prevent Iraq from becoming a training ground for terrorists. In November 2004, Bush said, "imagine a terrorist network with Iraq as an arsenal and as a training ground." The failure to have a serious post-invasion strategy means we don't have to imagine anymore. The CIA now says, "Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days." In other words, what's happening on the ground is not evidence that Bush's counterterrorism strategy is correct. Rather, it suggests we need a new course.

links :

|| doug, 12:45

0 Comments:

Post a Comment