Mapping Terror

One of the worst-appreciated points in the debate over national security policy is that the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies shouldn't be understood as counterterrorism measures that have, in some sense or another, "gone too far." Rather, we need to grasp that they've been wholly ineffective and, as best one can tell, merely made things worse. The fact that George Bush's invasion of Iraq has killed more Americans than Osama bin Laden's airplane hijacking is one illustration of the point. Another would be this map I've borrowed from the Center for American Progress team. The blue marks are pre-9/11 terrorist attacks, the yellow ones are between 9/11 and Iraq, and the red ones are post-Iraq attacks. Iraq and Afghanistan are just marked in red rather than trying to make pins for each attack in those unfortunately countries.

Some CAP text helps explain what you're seeing:

A study conducted by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, found that there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) since the Iraq invasion. When Iraq and Afghanistan, which together account for 80 percent of attacks and 67 percent of fatalities, were excluded, there was still a 35 percent per year increase in the number of jihadist terrorist attacks.

At this point, obviously, we can't fix the problem with a time machine, but it sure would be nice.

Comments

If the threat of "terror" is the only thing sustaining a huge armaments and military establishment, then the continuation of this threat will be welcomed by that establishment.

America's technicians of irrationality have learned that a very small incidence of terror can be used to justify enormous military expenditures of any kind. This principle of infinite threat leverage is one of the strangest phenomena of the modern world. It's not that we have all lost our reason, it's that the susceptibilities to irrationality that have allways existed in our minds have been targeted by scientific engineering.

Since terrorism is fundamentally ineradicable, and since propaganda technology can now make this threat support endless war and authoritarian government, it would seem that the Orwellian national security state is here to stay.

Posted by HH | September 9, 2007 12:57 PM

Post Hoc Ergo Prompter Hoc!

Always look the the Left for logical fallacies.

Posted by Al | September 9, 2007 1:13 PM

and, as best one can tell, merely made things worse

Also, I notice the there are no red markers in the entire United States.

That obviously means that George Bush has made things worse.

Posted by Al | September 9, 2007 1:16 PM

Gee Matt, post Pearl Harbor, after we declared war, lots more Americans died, and many, many more battles were fought in the Pacific Theater.

After the shelling of Fort Sumter, when the government decided to forcibly return the southern states to the Union, lots more lives were lost, military and civilian.

The body counts would have been a lot lower had we simply negotiated then, too.

I understand what point you are trying to make, but your attempted argument is just stupid. Anytime war is selected as policy, death tolls rise, as both sides fight. Demonstrating that death tolls and attacks have risen since the war was joined in 2001 is like showing that day follows night - it's true, but meaningless.

Posted by James Robertson | September 9, 2007 1:28 PM

Well keep in mind, 8 years separated the last two successful foreign terrorist attacks inside the United States.

Posted by mad6798j | September 9, 2007 1:28 PM

Post Hoc Ergo Prompter Hoc!

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc -- always look to the Right for dog-Latin.

And like the Bush v. Gore decision, this critique cannot be used on any other Bush policy, like, say, tax cuts....

Posted by Davis X. Machina | September 9, 2007 1:29 PM

Bush has called this the "Global War on Terror," not the "War on Terror in the US." Remember, Madrid and London, among others, were in part a response to the Iraq War. The attacks in Iraq are Bush's fault in part because he started the war that these attacks have been a part of. He has failed to work with our allies to bring security to Afghanistan by focusing instead on Iraq. As such Al, the causal relationship has been established. Bush set the terms of the debate and by his own terms he has failed. The reason the map doesn't have any red spots in the US is 1) for some reason they aren't counting the anthrax killings and 2) American Muslims aren't interested in being terrorists and don't find radical Islam appealing, especially on the level found in Europe. Keeping point 2 constant is the key to preventing domestic al-Qaida-style terrorism. The Iraq War and our new embrace of torture have probably hurt our ability to do 2.

Posted by Reality Man | September 9, 2007 1:30 PM

I wonder if Al would tell us if it is the nuclear submarines or the antimissile interceptors that have prevented a single Al Qaeda assassin with a rifle and a box of bullets from entering the United States.

Al could perhaps also tell us why the super-dangerous terrorist menace, the greatest threat to civilization of all time, does not justify instituting a draft or taking emergency measures to pay for the "war on terror."

Finally, Al might wish to guess as to whether there might be any imaginable circumstance in the future in which the United States should spend less on "defense."

Posted by HH | September 9, 2007 1:31 PM

"Gee Matt, post Pearl Harbor, after we declared war, lots more Americans died, and many, many more battles were fought in the Pacific Theater.

After the shelling of Fort Sumter, when the government decided to forcibly return the southern states to the Union, lots more lives were lost, military and civilian.

The body counts would have been a lot lower had we simply negotiated then, too.

I understand what point you are trying to make, but your attempted argument is just stupid. Anytime war is selected as policy, death tolls rise, as both sides fight. Demonstrating that death tolls and attacks have risen since the war was joined in 2001 is like showing that day follows night - it's true, but meaningless.

Posted by James Robertson | September 9, 2007 1:28 PM "

The difference is that the Civil War and WWII were fights between functioning state apparatuses. Fighting terrorism isn't. The whole point of fighting against terrorist groups is that you prevent them from killing innocent people. When terrorist attacks go up worldwide when you have committed yourself to a global fight against a terrorist group, if terrorist attacks worldwide go up, you have failed to reach your own goals.

Posted by Reality Man | September 9, 2007 1:34 PM

The map is missing the 2 Bali bombings - one between 9/11 and Iraq, and the other post-Iraq.

Posted by McKingford | September 9, 2007 2:05 PM

The body counts would have been a lot lower had we simply negotiated then, too.

And the GOP, or its ideological predecessors, would have their own state, with four republics -- a pair of sane, prosperous social democracies, and two Mexicos, one Anglophone, one Spanish-speaking -- left to share the continent.

In retrospect, secession might best have been allowed to advance unhindered.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | September 9, 2007 3:24 PM

Exactly why would Al Qa'ida have followed f***ing September 11th with anything that wasn't bigger?

I mean, what nincompoop terrorist hack would put vast resources into following up the most dramatic, cinematic, shocking terror attack in history with, what, a bank bombing? Shooting at mayors?

All of those things are easy, easy to do, even to this day in the USA, and no amount of warlord chaos hell in Iraq would prevent those little snippy attacks one bit.

I've felt that as far as Al Qa'ida (the real one, not the Ruth's Chris' Al Qa'ida in Iraq franchise) was concerned, the main reason there have been no major attacks since September 11th is that you'd probably need a nuclear weapon to exceed the original.

Posted by El Cid | September 9, 2007 3:29 PM

Post Hoc Ergo Prompter Hoc!

Always look the the Left for logical fallacies.

Well, we might take you seriously if you could, well, spell.... Al must have been homeschooled.

Post hoc ergo prompter hoc?

It's "propter," genius.

Though I guess the mistake comes naturally to someone who is so good at taking the prompting of his masters.

Posted by sunsin | September 9, 2007 3:45 PM

I mean, what nincompoop terrorist hack would put vast resources into following up the most dramatic, cinematic, shocking terror attack in history with, what, a bank bombing?

Why pour gas onto a fire that's already burning well? Osama knew that if George Bush was empowered, he's damage the US in ways that Osama himself could never dream of. Bush has ruined the American army. Can't see anything Osama could have cooked up being able to do that. Mission accomplished!

Posted by sunsin | September 9, 2007 3:49 PM

Where are the markers for foiled terrorist plots?

- Mark

Posted by Mark Adams | September 9, 2007 4:39 PM

Matt - we need to grasp that they've been wholly ineffective

What a load of Partisan defeatist tripe.

The fact that George Bush's invasion of Iraq has killed more Americans than Osama bin Laden's airplane hijacking is one illustration of the point.

Actually, the point is that we have waged a tremendously expensive form of warfare designed to "save enemy civilian lives" and win "Islamist" hearts and minds with ROE that almost cripple the mission. But in spite of that, before 9/11 the death tally was about 25 Muslim illegal combatants and about 3,000 dead Americans. Since 9/11 the "tally" is between 48,000 and 55,000 dead Taliban, Al Qaeda, Shiite and Sunni extremists and about 4,000 Coalition deaths. Plus over 6,000 prisoners with some 300 high value terrorist operatives whose brains are being picked over compared to, for Islamoid reasons, zero American prisoners.

A significant improvement with very light casualties given the Islamoids whacked, and the hideous expense could be reduced to a 1/10th of that annually if we waged less restrictive conventional war.
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I notice that the map is dishonest, only adding blue pins to where Americans were killed pre-9/11, then red and yellow pins to where ANYONE was killed by Islamoids post 9/11.
A dishonesty that in the 90s alone omits the severa thousand Hindi Kashmiris killed, the 1.8 million Christians and Animist Africans killed in the Sudan, the 300,000 moderate Muslim Algerians killed by Islamists in the 90s civil war, the 12,000 Christians killed by Indonesian Jihad in the Molluccas, Sulawesi, the 200,000 Christians killed by Muslims in East Timor. It also omits the Luxor and Memphis attacks on tourists to Egypt, the 50,000 Christians killed in Northern Nigeria by Muslims.

Or anything of the 80s.
Or the 70s, when 2 million infidels were butchered in Jihad in Bangladesh, alone.
Or the 60s, when a record of sorts was achieved when Indonesians exterminated 500,000 Chinese in under a month.

I guess that would clutter up the Copperhead map and point out that wiping out infidels is a regular thing Muslims do independent of what America does.

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Reality Man - The whole point of fighting against terrorist groups is that you prevent them from killing innocent people. When terrorist attacks go up worldwide when you have committed yourself to a global fight against a terrorist group, if terrorist attacks worldwide go up, you have failed to reach your own goals.

No, Reality Man, our goal is not to be the world's personal bodyguard against all Muslim terrorists.

Who Muslims blow up and how much that is tolerated by Muslims on the sidelines is pretty much up to the Muslims. The jury is still out on the main body of Muslims accepting global Islamic terror.

If Muslims wish to terror-bomb Indians, Indians can work to protect Indians, same with Israelis, same with Brits, same with Thais, same with Americans - protect your own first - then discuss how to save Muslims in Darfur, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan from other Muslims.

Generally, I'd say the trend of the world's non-muslims all 5.7 billion is to say the Muslims are the ones that have to clean up their own bloody mess or the rest of the world will isolate from them and erect more "firewalls" to keep all Muslims away given the difficulty of sorting out which Muslims are the dangerous ones..

Posted by Chris Ford | September 9, 2007 4:54 PM

Anywhere you see Christians killed by Muslims, the odds are there were reasons besides religious intolerance for it. Despite Islam being a "militant religion", Christianity is equally militant. I do not know the details of those events - and I don't care.

What I do know is that civil wars and other such events that Ford alludes to do not fall under the rubric of "Muslim terrorism". They may fall under "state terrorism" or "civil war" or even "religious war" in some cases. But they do not fall under the definition of "terrorism" which entails small numbers of non-state actors acting against either other non-state demographics for political, ethnic or religious purposes or against states (and who may, however, be supported by one state or another.)

Thus, it is ridiculous to suggest that the Iranian IRGC is a "terrorist organization", although one could claim that since it supports Hizballah and other organizations, that it is a "terrorist supporting" organization.

On the other hand, the specific form "state terrorism", while technically inaccurate - since "terrorism" really is normally applied against states (or populations) and not BY states - does apply perfectly well to those states whose policies toward minorities or their own civilians relies on the application of "terror methods". In other words, Israel qualifies but Iran doesn't, despite Iran's authoritarian political structure.

"The jury is still out on the main body of Muslims accepting global Islamic terror."

No, it isn't. There is virtually ZERO chance of any such large body of humans accepting such a concept in toto. Even if Muslims tend to be more observant of their religion than, say, Christians in the developed countries, the odds of Muslims accepting a bin Laden narrative and going back to some anti-technological, 15th-Century "caliphate" is exactly zero.

As in almost all countries, the vast majority of people may acquiesce in whatever their government or some other group is doing, but their primary concerns are their personal lives. Indeed, their acquiesce is derived from their personal concerns. They don't have the time, knowledge or motivation to involve themselves in directly controlling their governments. Governments rely on this inertia, this bowing down, this cowardice, and this preoccupation with personal issues, this fear ot the consequences of taking personal responsibility.

Therefore, there is ZERO chance that the bulk of the Muslim population worldwide will particularly care about bin Laden or Islamic supremacy or any of that stuff. Even if polls show the bulk of Muslims disliking the US, or "western civilization" or whatever, that is irrelevant.

The only people the US has to deal with are a tiny handful of those who are directly motivated and enabled to conduct terrorist operations against the US. We don't need to control "terrorism worldwide" - that is true. We only need to treat it as a "public health problem" and put only as much resources into it as is needed to reduce its incidence to a controllable level within the sphere of the United States.

And the best way to do that is NOT to treat it as a "clash of civilizations" or as a military matter or as a matter of "regime change" of other states.

None of that can work.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 9, 2007 5:20 PM

The only people the US has to deal with are a tiny handful of those who are directly motivated and enabled to conduct terrorist operations against the US. We don't need to control "terrorism worldwide" - that is true. We only need to treat it as a "public health problem" and put only as much resources into it as is needed to reduce its incidence to a controllable level within the sphere of the United States.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack

Shhhhhhh!!!! The Mooooozlim caliph-terrorists have kilt like a billion peepul!! You don't think they'll kill you too even when you're bein' all defeatocratty?

Posted by El Cid | September 9, 2007 5:25 PM

Chris Ford:
can you cite any half-reputable source for the statement that in the 1970s "2 million infidels were butchered in Jihad in Bangladesh"? I remember a war of independence fought between two groups of secular Muslim politicians.
You omit of course the 650,000 Iraqi civilian excess deaths. Is your position that Iraqi civilians are evil enemies, or that the Lancet survey is a leftist fabrication?

BTW, the term "Islamoid" is hate speech of the dehumanising type that belongs to a genocidal mindset, and should in my view be treated as prima facie criminal.

Posted by James Wimberley | September 9, 2007 8:10 PM

"No, Reality Man, our goal is not to be the world's personal bodyguard against all Muslim terrorists.

Who Muslims blow up and how much that is tolerated by Muslims on the sidelines is pretty much up to the Muslims. The jury is still out on the main body of Muslims accepting global Islamic terror.

If Muslims wish to terror-bomb Indians, Indians can work to protect Indians, same with Israelis, same with Brits, same with Thais, same with Americans - protect your own first - then discuss how to save Muslims in Darfur, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan from other Muslims."

Except that, for instance, London and Madrid were connected to our decision to go into Iraq. The Bali bombings were AQ-related. There is only one pin in India and Kashmir-related and sectarian organized crime-related violence is only loosely related to AQ, if at all. We declared a Global War on Terror - which was supposed to be a war against AQ and its leadership - and instead of crippling the organization, we let their leadership get away in Afghanistan. Now, you can argue that we shouldn't be waging a global war against AQ, but this administration stated that its policy was to do so. By the terms of the debate they set, they have failed.

"Generally, I'd say the trend of the world's non-muslims all 5.7 billion is to say the Muslims are the ones that have to clean up their own bloody mess or the rest of the world will isolate from them and erect more "firewalls" to keep all Muslims away given the difficulty of sorting out which Muslims are the dangerous ones.."

Wow, you're rather creepy. Should we wall of Christians because of the existence of people like you?

Posted by Reality Man | September 10, 2007 2:25 AM

"Should we wall off Christians because of the existence of people like you?"

Don't give me ideas, Reality Man!

I'm all for taking all the Christians, the Muslims and the Zionists and dumping them all in the middle of the Gobi Desert or the Sahara or someplace where nobody else lives and let them all have at it with swords.

Or just nuke 'em while they think that's what they're there for...

It's like a friend of mine once said up in Eugene, Oregon - that if we nuked the University of Oregon stadium on football night, we'd get rid of most of the morons in town.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 10, 2007 3:10 AM

BTW, the term "Islamoid" is hate speech of the dehumanising type that belongs to a genocidal mindset, and should in my view be treated as prima facie criminal. Posted by James Wimberley

BTW James, I find your aid and comfort of the enemy criminal, prima facie evidence to treason or sedition..

Islamoid is actually a translation of the Arabic "Takfiri" - Inferior to Islam, sub-acceptable. It is what Sunnis in Iraq and KSA call AQ and Shiite extremists. But you know about those people and their "criminal hate speech" doncha? Still in mourning that speech codes were struck down in the USA?

Posted by Chris Ford | September 10, 2007 7:05 AM

What do people like Chris Ford do between shooting wars in America? Do they watch "Sands of Iwo Jima" and John Ford westerns endlessly? We can imagine Chris Ford seated with the Orwellian mob in 1984 screaming hatred at the screen image of Emmanuel Goldstein (Bin Laden), the face of the supreme enemy.

When Milosevic unleashed the demons in Yugoslavia, few knew that America's own demons would soon come snarling out of their cages, screaming for blood. The 28% of our people who demand more aggression, torture, and murder to defend our "liberty" find every evil necessary.

Exterminationism is very close to becoming an acceptable political view in America, and with people like Mr. Ford in the vanguard, there will be no shortage of advocates for killing on a massive scale. America's honor will just be part of the collateral damage.

Posted by HH | September 10, 2007 9:13 AM

Really? Only 4 terrorist attacks in the history of the world pre- 9/11/2001. Amazing

Posted by The Darkness | September 11, 2007 12:39 PM