Are we winning the War on Terror? Let’s begin by defining the terms of the question. By “we”, we mean the United States primarily, and the “coalition of the willing” more generally. This does not include France, Russia, China, Germany, Spain, etc, but does include the United States, England, Australia, and Cameroon. Next, we must define what “winning” means.
1. To start, winning the War on Terror means that we are able to prevent the terrorists from striking again. As we saw recently in London, we have not yet reached the point where terrorists are completely unable to strike. However, if one looks at the sequence of terror attacks from the World Trade Center to Madrid to London, one sees decreasing destruction and complexity in the attacks: fewer people are killed, fewer terrorists are involved, and the attacks become more and more dependent upon domestic terrorists, rather than imported foreign ones. The terrorist cells are becoming less organized and less dangerous: the very infrastructures that allow terrorists to carry out their missions are already heavily damaged. If this is not evidence of progress in the War on Terror, I don’t know what is.
2. Winning the War on Terror means that we do not allow the fear of terrorists to deprive innocent citizens of their civil liberties. Had we shut down our borders, created national ID cards, or suspended provisions of the Bill of Rights (habeas corpus, for example), the war would have been lost before it began. Though there has been serious discussion of destroying our basic freedoms, it has not yet happened. The tremendous public outrage about the government’s new-found ability to look at library records is just one example of how the USA PATRIOT Act is a minor annoyance to civil liberties, at worst. The United States and our allies have successfully resisted the temptation to clamp down on civil liberties, instead passing a bill that streamlines the process of intelligence-gathering without infringing on the people’s rights.
3. The War on Terror has not proceeded without a hitch. Serious mistakes have been made. At the top of this list is the President’s decision to invade Iraq, a decision that wasted our resources on a nation where there were few terrorists before the invasion. That money would have been far better spent financing a regime change in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or another terrorist haven. Nonetheless, the wasted time, money, lives and effort in Iraq have merely slowed our progress. The sidetrack was unfortunate, but not fatal to the War on Terror.
4. While on the subject of invasion, I will point out Afghanistan as a successful example. The coalition invaded Afghanistan and toppled a regime that was tolerating/funding Al-Qaeda, killing many of Osama bin Laden’s underlings in the process. While it is unfortunate that bin Laden himself managed to escape, he has been forced into hiding, which has reduced his mythic status among potential terrorist recruits, as well as reduced (dare I say eliminated?) his effectiveness as a terrorist leader.
Much work remains to be done. There have been some significant mistakes and setbacks. Even so, however, the tide has turned against the terrorists and we are winning the War on Terror.
