Losing The War On Terrorism?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Foreign Policy, The War On Terrorism, WarI really don’t like using the word “war” to describe our fight against global Islamic extremists, but that’s what we were given by our government, so I’m sticking to it for now.
But if a recent global survey suggests that terror attacks have gone up 29% from last year is to be trusted, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be, are we losing this “war”?
WASHINGTON – A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.The annual report’s release comes amid a bitter feud between the White House and Congress over funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and a deadline favored by Democrats to begin a U.S. troop withdrawal.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing or downplaying the release of this year’s edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said.
And to put this in context…
Forty-five percent of the attacks were in Iraq.
We pulled out of Vietnam and we still won the Cold War.
We can pull out of Iraq and win this new “war” as well.
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 28th, 2007 and is filed under Foreign Policy, The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 28th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I’m not particularly sure why there’s a question mark on the title of this post. Of course we’re losing the war on terrorism! If the present tactic of allowing collateral damage to be a matter of paperwork continues, the war can only continually breed more terror. And if that is the metric by which we determine winning or losing, well, we’re gonna keep losing.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
This may turn out to be true, but remember that we won the cold war by escalating an arms race that did not result in global catastrophe due to the principle of “mutually assured destruction.” The soviet union was eventually bankrupted into a revolt by its citizens who abandoned their political ideology.
Can we afford to engage in a cold war style standoff with suicidal religious fanatics in an age of nuclear weapons? Can the Islamic world be isolated to the point where its citizens abandon their religion?
April 28th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I don’t think you “win” or “lose” the “war” on “terror.” Winning is not getting attacked or if you do get attacked, minimizing the fatalities. I personally consider the conversion of all Muslims into Universal Unitarians, a “win.” When the imans come out for gay marriage…we win.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:38 am
[...] Two posts that caught my eye from Justin Gardner: one on losing the WOT, and one on Karl Rove’s (non-)religion. [...]
August 8th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Have heard where Arab types are changing their names when they sneak in over the southern border to Latin sounding names so they can blend in.
Where is our government and why haven’t they closed off the border?