Bush administration, weak on terror

Middle East Policy

Volumn 13, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 28-38

  Van Evera, Stephen ^a,b,c  

^a MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

^b MIT Security Studies Program   (United States)

^c Tobin Project National Security Working Group

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33845630318     PISSN: 10611924     EISSN: 14754967     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4967.2006.00268.x     Document Type: Review

References (67)

1. This article is adapted from: Stephen Van Evera, "Assessing U.S. Strategy in the War on Terror," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 607, No. 1 (September 2006): pp.10-26. DOI: 10.1177/0002716206291492.
2. Five of the six The New York Times/CBS News national polls taken since June 2006 showed pluralities approving of President Bush's handling of the campaign against terror. The New York Times CBS News Poll, October 5-8, 2006, retrieved from http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/ 20061010_poll_results.pdf on 10/17/06.
3. A portrait of the jihadis' violent worldview is Mary Habeck, Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (Yale University Press, 2006).
4. Mark Mazzetti, "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat," The New York Times, September 24, 2006: p. A1;
5. and David Sanger, "Waging the War on Terror: Report Belies Optimistic View," The New York Times, September 27, 2006: p. A6.
6. Valuable assessments of Bush administration counterterror policies include Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (Free Press, 2004): pp. 227-287;
7. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War against America (Random House, 2003): pp. 447-488;
8. and Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right (Times Books, 2005).
9. Valuable assessments of the Bush administration's broader performance in foreign policy and national security include Carl Conetta, "Pyrrhus on the Potomac: How America's post-9/11 Wars Have Undermined US National Security" (Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Report #18, September 5, 2006, retrieved from www.comw.org/pda/);
10. Sharon Burke and Harlan Geer, "The Neo Con: The Bush Defense Record by the Numbers" (Third Way National Security Project, September 2006, retrieved from www.third-way.com);
11. Flynt Leverett, "Illusion and Reality," American Prospect Online (September 12, 2006, retrieved from http://www.prospect.org/web/ printfriendly-view.ww?id=11859);
12. and Lawrence Korb and Caroline Wadhams, "A Critique of the Bush Administration National Security Strategy" (The Stanley Foundation, Policy Analysis Brief: June 2006; retrieved from http://reports.stanleyfoundation.org).
13. An account is Peter Krause, "Tora Bora: Assessing the Conventional Wisdom" (manuscript, May 2006).
14. An account of Operation Anaconda is Sean Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda (Berkley Books, 2005).
15. Arguing that the Iraq War diverted important resources from the war on al-Qaeda and from other important priorities is James Fallows, "Bush's Lost Year," The Atlantic Monthly, October 2004.
16. Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die: pp. 85-86;
17. and Gary C. Schroen, First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan (Presidio Press, 2005): pp. 359-60.
18. See The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, authorized ed. (W.W. Norton, 2004):p. 66, reporting that the 9/11 Commission found "no evidence" of a "collaborative operational relationship" between Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda.
19. Debunking more recent false allegations of Saddam-al-Qaeda ties is Peter Bergen, "Enemy of our Enemy," The New York Times, March 28, 2006.
20. The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies reports that al-Qaeda's recruiting was accelerated by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, swelling al-Qaeda's ranks to some 18,000 in the aftermath of the war. International Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey: 2003/4 (IISS, 2004): p. 6.
21. An April 2006 U.S. intelligence estimate concurs that the Iraq War has fueled the spread of the jihadi ideology. Mazzetti, "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat."
22. Seymour Hersh, "The Syrian Bet," The New Yorker, July 28, 2003;
23. and William James Martin, "Clean Break with the Road Map," Counterpunch, February 14/15, 2004: pp. 12-14.
24. Valuable surveys on homeland security include Stephen Flynn, America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism (HarperCollins, 2004);
25. and Clarke, Against All Enemies: pp. 247-262.
26. The 9/11 Public Discourse Project, the nonprofit successor organization to the 9/11 Commission, reported in October 2005 that the FBI had failed to reform itself to address the terror threat. Philip Shenon, "9/11 Panel Criticizes Reform Effort at the F.B.I.," The New York Times, October 21, 2005: p. A19.
27. In March 2005, the WMD Commission likewise complained that the FBI has made "insufficient progress" in areas crucial to recasting itself as a counterterror agency. Eric Lichtblau, "For F.B.I., Not Enough Progress in Combating Terrorism," The New York Times, April 1, 2005: p. A11.
28. For example, remarkably the FBI remains unable to develop software to link its case files (ibid). It has also been unable to provide stable leadership to head its counterterror mission. In early 2006, the FBI counterterror division was on its sixth director since 2001. See Scott Shane, "Year into Revamped Spying, Troubles and Some Progress," The New York Times, February 28, 2006: p. A12.
29. Instead the common practice at the FBI has been to punish employees who point out shortcomings with the FBI's performance. One report notes that "a string of whistle-blowers at the [F.B.I.] ... said they had been punished and effectively silenced for voicing concerns about the handling of terror investigations and other matters since Sept. 11, 2001." Eric Lichtblau, "Justice Department Investigators Find a Cover-Up in an F.B.I. Terror Case in Florida," The New York Times, December 4, 2005: Section 1, p. 37.
30. Stephen E. Flynn, "Q&A: Homeland Security: Disturbing Lack of Attention Paid to America's Security Vulnerabilities," nytimes.com, December 24, 2005, retrieved from www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/ slot2_122405.html?pagewanted=print, p. 2.
31. Thomas Friedman, "Saying No to Bush's Yes Men," The New York Times, May 17, 2006: p. A23.
32. See also Thomas Powers, "Spy vs. Spy," The New York Times, May 10, 2006: p. A23;
33. and Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, "Top C.I.A. Pick Has Credentials and Skeptics," The New York Times, May 6, 2006: p. A1. According to Shane, "Year Into Revamped Spying," former and current U.S. officials warn that U.S. intelligence agencies "remain troubled by high-level turnover, overlapping responsibilities, and bureaucratic rivalry."
34. The United States spent only $1.312 billion on the CTR in fiscal year 2006. Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier, Securing the Bomb 2005: The New Global Imperatives (Project on Managing the Atom, 2005): p. 86, Table 4-8.
35. Bunn and Wier, Securing the Bomb 2005: p. vi.
36. On U.S. policy toward nuclear materials security, see Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (Times Books, 2004): pp. 143-50, 177;
37. Bunn and Wier, Securing the Bomb 2005;
38. Graham Allison, "Making America Safer from Nuclear Terrorism," in Stephen Van Evera, ed., How To Make America Safe: New Policies for National Security (Tobin Project, 2006; available online at www.makeamericasafe.org): pp. 3-11;
39. Matthew Bunn, "Preventing a Nuclear 9/11," in How To Make America Safe: New Policies for National Security ibid.: pp. 13-22;
40. and resources at the Nuclear Threat Initiative web site (www.nti.org) and the Managing the Atom web site (www.managingtheatom.org).
41. Iran's signals of its willingness to agree to curb its nuclear program are summarized in Flynt Leverett, "Iran: The Gulf between Us," The New York Times, January 24, 2006;
42. and in Leverett: "Bush Administration 'Not Serious' about Dealing With Iran," interview by Bernard Gwertzman with Flynt Leverett, March 31, 2006, Council on Foreign Relations, retrieved from www.cfr.org/publication/ 10326/ on 9/6/06.
43. North Korea's signals are discussed in Jim Walsh, "Trip Report: DPRK, PRC, ROK, June 25-July 4, 2005" (Managing the Atom Project, BCSIA, Harvard University, n.d.): 4-5, 7-9, 11-13 and passim.
44. A 1994 study of genocide estimated that 1.4 million Armenians were murdered between 1914-1918 by the Ottoman Turkish government. See Rudolph J. Rummel, "Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 31, No. 1 (February 1994): pp. 1-10.
45. A good introduction to this genocide is Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century (Cornell University Press, 2004): pp. 157-166.
46. On Somalia see Taylor Seybolt, "Knights in Shining Armor? When Humanitarian Military Intervention Works and When It Does Not," (Ph.D. dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999): pp. 15-17, 115-211.
47. Seybolt estimates that more than 44,000 Somali lives were saved by U.S. action at the cost of some 1,000-1,500 Somalis killed by western forces. "Knights in Shining Armor? When Humanitarian Military Intervention Works and When It Does Not," Ibid.: pp. 15-17.
48. "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other," Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 12, 2006, question 38; retrieved from http://pewglobal.org/ reports/display.php?ReportID=253.
49. Disbelievers that Arabs performed the 9/11 attack outnumbered believers by 59 to 32 percent in Egypt, 59 to 16 percent in Turkey, 65 to 16 percent in Indonesia, and 41 to 16 percent in Pakistan. The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other," Pew Global Attitudes Project, 2006, Ibid.
50. Steven R. Weisman, "U.S. Must Counteract Image in Muslim World, Panel Says," The New York Times, October 1, 2003. This figure includes $600 million spent by the State Department on its worldwide public diplomacy activities and $540 million spent by the Broadcasting Board of Governors on broadcasts.
51. U.S. Congressional Research Service, U.S. Public Diplomacy: Background and the 9/11 Commission Recommendations (RL32607; May 1, 2006), by Susan B. Epstein; 5, estimated from Figure 1. Accessed on 5/30/06 at http://fpc.state. gov/documents/organization/66505.pdf.
52. Weisman, "U.S. Must Counteract Image in Muslim World."
53. Further wisdom on persuading other societies to cooperate with U.S. policies is found in Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (Public Affairs, 2004).
54. God in The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary by Abdullah Yusuf Ali (Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an, 2001, first ed. 1934): 49:6. A similar verse is: "Do not confound the truth with falsehood, nor knowingly conceal the truth."
55. God in The Koran, trans. N.J. Dawood (Penguin, 1999): 2:42. Also relevant is God's prohibition of undue suspicion of others: "Believers, avoid immoderate suspicion, for in some cases suspicion is a crime."
56. God in The Koran, ibid.: 49:12.
57. I summarize poll data on the harmful impact of the Israel-Palestinian conflict on Arab opinion toward the United States in Stephen Van Evera, "Vital Interest: Winning the War on Terror Requires a Mideast Peace Settlement," The American Conservative, Vol. 4, No. 5 (March 14, 2005): pp. 7-10 at 7-8. A footnoted version is online at http://web.mit.edu/cis/pdf/ Audit_5_05_VanEvera.pdf.
58. My argument is from Stephanie Kaplan, who argues in a forthcoming MIT political science Ph.D. dissertation that war is a tonic for terrorist propaganda-making, recruiting, network-building, and training, and thus serves as a general breeding ground for terrorists. She concludes that war prevention and war termination should be a centerpiece of U.S. counterterror policy.
59. Miriam Pemberton and Lawrence Korb, A Unified Security Budget for the United States, 2007 (Foreign Policy in Focus, May 3, 2006, retrieved from www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3253): 6, Chart 4. Pemberton and Korb report that total U.S. spending on national defense (the 050 federal budget account) in 2006 was $463 billion. Of this, $8 billion went to non-military security assistance and about $1 billion went to counterproliferation activities, including CTR. The remaining $454 went to the military services and their support.
60. See also Cindy Williams, "Budgets to Make America Safer," in Van Evera, ed., How To Make America Safe: p. 61-67 at 64, Table 1 (also available online at www.makeamericasafe.org).
61. Cindy Williams, "Budgets to Make America Safer," How To Make America Safe: p. 61-67 Ibid. This figure omits spending on security for Defense Department installations in the United States.
62. Fred Kaplan, "Rumsfeld Surrenders: The QDR Dashes His Dreams of Military Transformation," Slate, February 3, 2006, retrieved from www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2135343.
63. Clarke, Against All Enemies: p. 230.
64. Clarke, Against All Enemies: pp. 231-32.
65. Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (Simon and Schuster, 2006): p. 2.
66. Clarke, Against All Enemies: pp. 205-214.
67. Clarke, Against All Enemies: p. 237.