tecoyah

Are We Winning The War On Terror


This is the topic of debate for round one of our little experiment.
I have been asked to Moderate the debate, and choose sides for the teams....so , using advanced techniques learned from years of statistical correlation, and based on the theories of random Quanta....I flipped a coin.

The results....drum roll please

PoliticoPhiles team goes first and argues for success.

Zen Tom and team are second and argue against.

Above is a poll for the participants in this debate....as to where they stand before this debate begins....please do not post in the poll until the thread has been declared open to all, unless you are a team member.


Team one....please begin

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

Daniel_

oops. erm - looks like i messed up.....

that'll teach me to vote before scrolling.

Can you fix it tec?

Sorrreeeeeee!

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Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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politicophile

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.

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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Warf Rat

I don't think it can be better said that the way Politicophile just put it.
Well done, measured, and not overstated.


But, I want to chime in a little.
We will fight this war for a long time, if we don't want to live like Isreal. By that, I mean Isrealies have been forced to accept attacks, regardless of reponse, they know it will go on indefinetly. The Isreali people are subject to attacts so often we rarely notice them any more. They have used assasination, and every brutal response they could think of, and nothing has worked.
By contrast, we never let it get that far, and maybe thats the reason we have remained relativly safe since 9/11.
If you agree, or disagree that the fight should have moved to Iraq, reasonable poeple can disagree.
However, the fact remains that we have stopped attacts on our nation, and made significant inroads in understand how they operate and how to limit there funing. If we stay resolved (maybe for the duration of our generation), and stay focussed. I think we will send these animals back to places where they can only hurt there own poeple.
Then those poeple will be capable of fighting back.
Things have gotten out of control, by not addressing the obvious. If we take our eye of the ball, all the effort and lives will only serve as a temporary fix, at best.
Never forget. Continue to go where they hide and let the next generation learn about terrorism in history books.
This is our time to sacrifice, so our children will not have to.

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A day late, and a dollar short.

zen_tom

Are we winning the War on Terror?

Politicophile has kindly provided some background on who We are, and what Winning might entail. It seems reasonable then for me to begin with a definition of my own. In that respect, I would like to briefly explore what the phrase "War on Terror" itself means.

If we take the phrase literally, then we might expect it to describe a coordinated military campaign against those who adopt terrorist tactics. If that is the case, then we might be able to measure our effectiveness by counting the numbers of people across the world who have been injured or killed by terrorist tactics, and compare those numbers to the number of people killed or injured in similar incidents before the War on Terror started.

But before we look at the figures, let us first define what exactly are these tactics of terror. Examples might include; Hijacking, hostage taking, suicide bombing, rpg attacks, mortars, car/van/truck bombs and most spectacularly, the acts of 911.

Utilising any one of these tactics itself is not always enough to be deemed terrorism, we must also remember that a true terrorist attack must be perpetrated by non military personnel, and is normally indiscriminate or largely directed towards civilians. Finally, it must also have a political element. Killing lots of civilians for own personal reasons is not generally considered terrorism.

So with this rather literal definition in mind, "The War on Terrorism" and the question of its success should be based around the military steps we are taking around the world in order to lower the instances of terrorist activity.

However, there are of course elements to this war that are not based in the literal translation of a phrase, and require some cultural background. I think it is reasonable to acknowledge that the "War on Terror" was begun in response to the audacious attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on 11th September 2001. We believe that the attacks took place under the orders of the now infamous (but at the time, almost completely unknown) Osama Bin Laden, leader of Al Qaeda, an Islamist group who fought the Soviets and found refuge in the mountains of Afghanistan and sheltered there under the protection of the Taliban - an ultra-conservative Islamist theocracy that stepped into the power vacuum after the Soviets had given up trying to occupy that country using overwhelming military forces. (sound familiar?)

So what do these things tell us when looked at in regards to the War on Terror (WOT)? They tell us that it is more than just a fight against unconventional tactics. They tell us that the WOT is directed against the types of Islamist extremists who choose to denounce and attack the west. And they tell us that the word 'Terrorist' really means 'Islamic Fundamentalist Extremist' or more expressly 'Caliphatists' if we wish to focus on those who follow Bin Laden and Al Quaeda, and leave out the Palestinians or the Chechens - which must be the case considering Politicophile's definition of who 'We' are.

It is worth noting at this point that the US administration has stopped using the term "War on Terror" in its press conferences, preferring now the far less emotive phrase, the "global struggle against extremism". Why did they make the name change if the "War on Terror" was going so well?


OK, so now we know what it is - are we winning it?

I don't think it is necessary at this stage to list off all the terrorist attacks around the world to show that no, we are not winning.

But why, with all the effort we've put in - why are we not winning?

I think that is because of the nature of terrorism, and the ease with which an act of terrorism can be committed. If one was so inclined, performing an act of terrorism would not be a very difficult thing to do. Anyone can do it. It doesn't cost a lot of money. It doesn't need extensive training to become a human bomb. It doesn't require fancy technology. It doesn't require anything at all to succeed except conviction, faith and determination. And how exactly has the war on terror been addressing these most dangerous of weapons?

Not at all.

In fact, I would argue that previously parochial nobodies like Osama Bin Laden and his organisation have actually been made stronger by having the WOT rallied against them. They were able to deliver the most blatant slap in the face to the most powerful nation in the world, who, rather than quietly hunt them down with a team of discrete intelligence and special forces operatives, decided to orchestrate an overwhelming global display of force. It was a PR dream for the beleaguered fundamentalists.

Between the bunker busters and the regime changes, and despite the best efforts of the largest, most powerful and highest funded millitarises in the world, these amateurs still evade, and some even say, in the case of Spain, have even deterred the "coalition of the willing". They have been elevated to the status of heroes now by their continued defiance. Their words are broadcast around the world and keenly listened to by a generation of young disenfranchised Muslims who wouldn't have paid the religious fanatic any notice at all prior to the war. They would have dismissed his ravings as lunatic fringe, but now they see the suffering of powerless people like themselves in Baghdad, or the detainees of Guantanamo, or the treatment of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib at the hands of the west and they see that here is someone who stood up to all that and, against all odds, succeeded, and continues to succeed in wounding the American goliath.

Islamic fundamentalism, expressed as suicide terrorism, requires ideology, it requires young idealistic boys to believe that they are fighting a just and honourable war. All it needs is conviction, faith and determination. The war on terrorism, as it has been played out so far as a massive military campaign has helped validate those beliefs, helped strengthen those convictions, and it has shown that when the weak have faith, they can win against the mighty. It has provided them with the determination to continue. And it has made Osama Bin Laden, the man who declared war on a super power, and won, into a hero in the eyes of his target audience.

So I say no, we are not winning the war on terror.

tecoyah

An excellent beginning to this....on both sides.

Now come the rebutals, please continue.

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

the_ref

I believe part of our problem is one of definitions.

We are currently engaged in a War on Terror(ism), or possibly a Conflict Against Religious Extremism. In either case, we are treating the matter as if it were a territorial conflict, rather than an idealogical one.

If were were, for example, in a war against Iraq, we would be in an easy position - invade Iraq, dismantle their army, and all is more or less well, aside from the usual problems of any conflict such as casualties.

The enemy we have roughly identified, however, holds no specific territory, has at best a vague model of leadership, and is funded indirectly through multiple channels. Equally it is an enemy brought together and kept together by perception more than anything else. By invading a nation, a nation that may or may not be directly backing such an enemy, we actually lend credence to the notion that we are at war against a religious group.

Our armed forces are well equipped to deal with territorial conflicts and specific targetted struggles; they are not well equipped to try and extinguish a meme, which is pretty much what they are facing.

Any attack by US/Coalition forces will be seen as an overreaction to the strength of the group we are nominally fighting against. We will be hurting many people who are not members of the terrorist groups, and through this we lend the enemy further propoganda points. The terrorist "organization", a semi-coordinated but ultimately very loose coalition, banks on our overreaction. Each time we kills civilians, bomb a school, or otherwise strike more than what would be considered a justifiable target they are able to turn this around and point to our overzealousness. The terrorists do not need to win on a military level, only on an ideological and propoganda level.

We, as a nation, are not prepared for the type of war we would need to face. Instead of dealing with numbers of people killed, territory gained or lost, or other common measurements of a purely military conflict, we would need to reschool ourselves in terms of long-term commitment to low-level conflict. Few of the successes in this instance would be worthy of lead news on CNN, but they would be what is needed - a more stealthy campaign against a stealthy opponent. Equally, we would need to fight fire with fire - we would need an active propoganda machine in place that counters terrorist claims, not in an angry tone of rebuttal, but rather getting ahead of the game, showing how our workings to rebuild their infrastructure are in the local people's interest, as opposed to the workings of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

We are, unfortunately, not acting in this manner. Instead we still concentrate in terms of people killed, territory gained and lost, etc. This looks good on the news and would work in the short-term, but ultimately means that we will be bled by small attacks, the sort of thing that frustrates and disheartens the American public.

Are we winning the War on Terror? No. And the reason we are losing is because we are trying to define the conflict in terms of a 19th century territorial conflict when it is actually a 21st century ideological conflict. We are trying to win battles; they are trying to control the mental and emotional debate. In the end, our opponents are better placed for their message to come across, thus they are in a better position to win, both by our measurements and their own.

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joshbaumgartner

To win the war on terror, the US and others in the West must achieve a set of objectives. The terrorists’ ability to strike at will globally must be neutralized. Political institutions must be free of the influence of terrorist violence—in particular democracy must be allowed to flourish without violence determining the peoples’ will. Additionally, a world-wide sense of repugnance must be fostered towards terrorist tactics, to deter organizations from resorting to them. These are each difficult challenges, but within the capacity of the West to achieve.

Terrorist organizations are not able to strike at will globally right now, but instead are quite limited in what they can do. Yes, their attacks come as a shock and surprise to everyone when they are successful, but were they able to conduct more attacks, there is no reason why they shouldn’t. Thus, we have to conclude that terrorists are extremely limited in their ability to strike globally. While the argument can be made that their capability has grown recently, even this is not an indication that they have freedom of operations. Surges in terrorist activity may not indicate ‘desperate final throes’ as some leaders may intone, but they also don’t represent a swing in momentum, just as the Battle of the Bulge didn’t mean the war was suddenly going Hitler’s way. Thus, on this operational side of the war on terror, we are actually doing quite well. Terror will never be eliminated, even of the international variety, but it can be contained. Given the rather limited use of international terror, one must consider that we are indeed winning on this front. However, it is not wise to limit assessment to the military and law enforcement side of the equation, as terrorism has a clear political element to it.

Terrorist victories such as 9/11 and Iraq have given the terrorists too much hand in determining the policies of government, or at least influencing them greatly. However, the loss of Afghanistan was a great blow to our opponents, with them losing much of what they had fought to instill there. The terrorists were unable or unwilling to launch a widely feared attack on the US during its elections. Was this because terrorists had been suppressed in their capabilities, or because they couldn’t be sure to get the right result, they way that 9/11 had paid off for them? We may never know, but we can be certain that in the US especially, as time has passed since 9/11, Americans are more aware of how a terrorist attack can create a domino effect in government policy, and are better prepared to resist such effects with future attacks. While not as clear-cut as the operational side of the war, it is still clear that we are at the least gaining the upper hand on controlling the political side of the war, and more clear that terrorism is not able to make the kind of long-term political changes that it needs to achieve its goals.

We should also consider the terrorists goals, to compare to our own and determine who is more reasonably in a position to win. As noted, our goals are limiting the ability of terrorists to threaten both safety of citizens and the sanctity of our political systems. Their objectives are not merely opposites of ours. They desire a withdrawal of America from being a global player, or as they would put it: oppressor. In its place they want the rise of fundamentalist regimes which will have complete autonomy from world influence on their behavior. Local symbols of Western influence such as Israel, our presence in Iraq, and many of the current Arab leaders, become tactical targets. It is far from likely that any of these objectives can be met. America will not withdraw from its international position, and even if it were to in the future should its strength wane, it will be replaced by another foreign power, equally unpalatable to the fundamentalists. Even the establishment of fundamentalist states has not been greatly successful, with such entities short-lived—having to face reform from within (Iran) or destruction from the outside (Taliban). The concept of uniting a wide swath of territory under fundamentalist government is simply not feasible.

It is pointless to consider only the momentum of the moment when asking who is winning. What matters is not who appears to be on the offensive, or who appears to be making mistakes, but instead who is going to be able to accomplish their objectives—ultimately, who will be winning at the end. Thus while headlines may make it appear that we are losing because of the attacks by terrorists, and while it is true that severe mistakes have been made by our leadership, there is simply no denying that we remain in the dominant position versus the terrorist organizations when it comes to achieving what we have set out to do.

Terrorists have little hope of ever fulfilling their goals, no matter what victories they may obtain. Meanwhile, the US is not terribly far from achieving its own objectives. There will always be local terror, sometimes by ‘freedom fighters’, and sometimes by ‘governments’, and sometimes this will be effective in making or preventing a political movement. But international terror is much more limited, and we are in a much better position to tackle it. With better leadership, America will be able to suppress international terrorism to the point where it is little more than an anomaly, and wholly incapable of achieving real success.

We will need to change our strategy some, and make adjustments as we go, but we are in position to achieve our goal of marginalizing global terrorism and neutralizing its effect on the world’s politics. Terrorists on the other hand have little hope of ever achieving their goals.

It is quite clear that we are winning the war on terror.

tecoyah

Well....we gave it a try folks......and it almost worked.....

This thread is now open for rebuttals....and I will reopen all comments considered misposts.

Maybe next time....thanx for trying teams.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

Elphaba

Excellent rebuttal, Josh. Team 2 was going to have to do some major scrambling to try to negate your logic.

joshbaumgartner

I hope it wasn't my slowness in getting my post up there that nixed it....

Elphaba

We were slow in our first response, too, so I don't think that was it. We did have two non-participant posts that were against the rules, but they were well thought out posts.

tecoyah

This is not Nixed...just turned into an open debate.

And the speed of reply did come into play in the descision to open it, but that is not a reflection on anyone......just reality.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

samcol

We actually did create a national ID card. It was called the REAL ID ACT and was passed in the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief

aberkok

Since this has been opened up, I'll just put what I've written so far as a rebuttal to joshbaumgartner. For what it's worth at this stage, here is my rebuttal to the rebuttal to the rebuttal...

The problem with this debate is that any side can win under a certain interpretation of the words in the topic. One must then choose their interpretation correctly. JB accepts certain premises at face value that ought not to be. That there was an attack planned the U.S. elections was merely a commonly held fear, and does not reflect any intentions on the parts of the "terrorists." There's no proof to back-up such a statement. If there was, we might be able to display the diminished capacity of "terrorist" cells to attack.

It also does not follow that if "terrorists" do have the strength to launch offensives that there is no reason why they shouldn't. That is a leap of logic. We could say all sorts of things to refute that, like: "they are waiting for a more opportune time," or "they are saving their resources for a larger scale attack." But to make such statements, I'd have to know beyond a shadow of a doubt first of all "who" they are and exactly what their plans are. There is no reliable source of information which gives those details.

The War on Terror is a phrase invented by the White House. Therefore, the question of whether the WOT is being won must be answered in terms of whether the White House is acheiving its goals.

If the goal of the WOT was to stop international terrorism, then I'd be in a much more difficult position in trying to refute JB, but luckily for me, the White House decided to go into Iraq. The threat of international terrorism coming from Iraq never existed, and we discovered this as soon as it was clear there were no WMDs (of course we know that the U.S.A. also has WMDs, but maybe we oughtn't go there right now). So now the stated goal in Iraq is to oversee the democratic process. If this is truly a war, then with the Iraqi
enemy removed, the U.S. army should be moving on to more immediate threats such as Iran and
North Korea, where, to put it lightly, there is much more reliable evidence of the existence of WMDs. With a leader who is more concerned with creating a democracy in a country whose threat has been neutralized, than going after the clear and present danger, we cannot possibly be winning the war on terror.

Of course I don't believe all this. I don't consider Iran or Iraq or North Korea a threat (especially after Team America took care of Kim Jong Il II last year). I believe that the invasion of Iraq was a guise for the expansionist/imperialist interests of the U.S.A. but I think we all know what would happen if I debated under those premises.

This is only about 60% of a winning argument. I know it would have been better complete, but I didn't want the thread to die and besides, given enough responses, I'll be throwing in the other 40% soon enough.

Cheers!

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Elphaba

Martinguerre and I are swamped at work and have chosen to end our participation in the formal debate. Our apologies to Team 1 and 2.

irateplatypus

i enjoyed reading your comments, but i think you hamstrung the discussion from the very beginning with this definition.

the "coalition of the willing" is a moniker used by politicians to describe the countries involved in our iraq operations, not the GWOT in total of which the french, germans, indians, japanese, polish and spanish etc. all play an active role in.

so "we" should really encompass nearly all civilization in the context of GWOT. of course, i firmly believe our iraq operations are a vital component to the overall goal winning the GWOT... but that's just a single front in the whole undertaking.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

Elphaba

I agree with Irate, Politico. By too narrow of a definition, you lost the chance to demonstrate some very positive turns in WOT, such as Lebanon and the IRA. Team 2 didn't have to concede those improvements and others because they fell outside of your definition.