It's Official: The "War on Terrorism" is Stupid and Doesn't Work

John McCain continues to pound his chest about what a great commander-in-chief he would make. Like his war loving Siamese twin brothers Bush and Cheney his only tool is the hammer of the military and every problem looks like the nail of a war. Now one of the hawks favorite institutional friends the Rand Corporation (the folks who brought you the brilliant strategy of Vietnam) are saying that the "War on Terror" is a stupid concept because it doesn't
work.

In a study released July 29th entitled How Terrorism Ends: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida Seth Jones,Ph.D. and Martin C. Libicki make the case that the "War on Terror" has failed to curb the world wide terrorist activities of al Qa'ida. They examined 648 terrorist groups that existed between 1968 and 2006 looking for how they eventually ended their activities. What
their, dare I say it, scientific, study revealed is that the concept of
a military solution to the problem of terrorist activity has never worked. Instead,

"most terrorist groups end either because they join the political process, or because local police and intelligence efforts arrest or kill key members."

Not that most of the readers of this site didn't already know it but they also found that the terrorist activities of al Qa'ida have only increased since 9-11 and that they also have expanded into Europe, Asia, Africa and of course the Middle East. So what did stop terrorist groups activities?

They found that the most common way (43%) that terrorist groups ended their activities was through the political (diplomatic) process. That is to say through negotiations, another forbidden term in the Bush/Cheney lexicon. Policing was the second most effective approach because police are permanently present in the area of terrorist activities and therefore are privy to better intelligence than the military. You may recall that in the run up to the 2004 election Sen. John Kerry was ridiculed for saying that terrorism was "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world — the very thing this [Bush] administration is worst at."

Military action was only successful 7% of the time out of all of the groups they studied over 38 years but the terrorists won 10% of the time. Even within their own study the authors claim that military action should be used against large, well armed groups who form an insurgency. Sounds like they covered their asses on the Surge. But a closer look at the surge actually supports the authors major findings.

General Petraeus' work in Iraq has reduced violence but he did not use only military might to do it. What he actually did was to become the hard nosed diplomat in the country that Connie Rice refused to be. He negotiated with the Sunni terrorists that were killing so many of our troops and found that they too were angry at the foreign fighters that al Qa'ida had brought in to their country. With the help of generous donations of cash they agreed to help Petraeus and his troops root out and kill al Qa'ida fighters. Then he used the extra troops of the surge to police the streets and establish permanent placements within each neighborhood, which sounds like well fortified police stations to me. So let's get this straight. John McSame and King George would have us believe it was our military "winning" a "war" on the terrorists in Iraq that substantially slowed down attacks there. In fact, it was the diplomatic and policing efforts of a well educated General who focused on negotiations with local (terrorist) leaders that brought about the reduction in violence.

The difference between the way McCain and the neocons describe it and the reality of what Gen. Petraeus accomplished is not just semantic, but the semantics are important. In framing our efforts to end terrorism as a war we feed the war profiteers of the military-industrial complex, create new enemies, break our own laws and lose our standing in the world. By framing terrorism as a matter of diplomacy and using policing as a method of keeping the streets people live on safe, we engender friends, cooperation, progress and we enhance our standing in the world.

But don't expect any Democratic leaders to point out these obvious facts because they suck at framing issues. They haven't even tried on Iraq, they seem to have just surrendered that issue to the Repubs. George Lakoff could write a thousand books and they still wouldn't get it. In the meantime you can bet that McCain will be touting the winning "military" strategy of the surge as though he thought it up.

For more information:

The General's Dilemma by Steve Coll NewYorker Sept.7th 2008

How Terrorist Groups End Rand Corporation