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Would you like to change to the United States site? Well over , civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, many tens of thousands have been detained without trial, and torture, prisoner abuse and rendition have sullied the reputation of the United States and its coalition partners.
More significantly, it argues that the disaster of the war may have a huge if unexpected bonus. Its very failure will make it possible to completely re-think western attitudes to global security, moving towards a sustainable policy that will be much more effective in addressing the real threats to global security — the widening socio-economic divide and climate change.
Rogers is particularly good at analysis of military affairs, but ably locates it within the wider political context and provides some revealing insights.
Like all ambitious and mature scholars, he takes as his field the entire terrain of conflict, from the technological and economic factors, to the political, social and ideational factors that have shaped public policy. Rogers' view is refreshing because he is not bound by the traditional strictures of critical political economy that tend to place undue emphasis on single factors.
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- Why We're Losing the War on Terror by Paul Rogers;
While he quite rightly places the economics of national interest squarely in his sights, he also takes a great deal of effort to show how both technological and ideational factors come into play. He sees the war in Iraq as a delusion; one that condemns us to a long war against 'Islamo-fascism'. This book is not prescriptive, but challenges us all to a debate. Terrorism is spreading worldwide.
Our enemies have sustained our blows, adapted, and grown. Two questions loom large as a consequence: Where did we go wrong and what do we do now? Recent headlines and new studies support the conclusion that global terror trends are heading in an ever more dangerous direction. In early June, the Rand Corporation released a study that detailed the growing threat.
It reports that in , there were 28 Salafi-jihadist groups like al Qaeda. As of last year, there were In , these groups conducted attacks. Last year, they conducted The study estimates that there were between 18, and 42, such terrorists active seven years ago. The low-end estimate for last year, at 44,, is higher than the top estimate for , and the new high-end estimate is , The administration rightly argues that "core al Qaeda" has sustained "huge" damage.
The “War on Terror”: Not Going Well, But Does That Mean It Is Lost?
But "core al Qaeda" no longer poses the principle threat to the U. That comes, according to the Rand report, from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
As Rand summarizes the report: The most significant threat to the United States, the report concludes, comes from terrorist groups operating in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. As legitimate as the questions that have emerged in the Bowe Bergdahl case may be, they are secondary to the deteriorating situation associated with the war the recently released prisoner went to Afghanistan to fight.
The war in Iraq was not over or won when we said it was. The reality is that we are still fighting the last war on terror even as a new set of risks loom and are made worse by our minimizing their implications for political purposes. In its recent assessment, "Country Reports on Terrorism ," the State Department acknowledged the trend. It observes that last year attacks worldwide increased almost by half, from 6, to 9, Nearly 18, people died and nearly 33, were injured. The report takes particular note of the threat posed by foreign extremists in Syria, which has become a kind of petri dish in which a growing global terror threat is being cultivated.
Estimates on the number of such fighters range from 7, to over 20, The news that one recent suicide bomber in Syria was an American and that one of the attackers behind the recent shooting at the Jewish Museum of Belgium spent time in Syria suggests how this threat may evolve over time.
That same day, 52 people were killed in bombings in Baghdad. Elsewhere that day a female suicide bomber attacked a barracks in Nigeria. Scores more died in the fighting in Syria — many at the hands of the government, to be sure, but many also as victims of extremists. Such attacks pass with little more than perfunctory comment from our leaders or the media.
War on Terror - Wikipedia
Yet we are numbed to such attacks at our peril. We compound the risk associated with such numbing by rationalizing them away. The Rand report notes that the number of "near abroad" attacks is up while the number of "far abroad" attacks has gone down. This is a way of saying that the threat to the U. The report also suggests that such groups are more easily defeated or turned against one another. The State Department presented its report with comments from its spokesperson that "the numbers [of attacks] against Americans have been very low for a long time and have continued to go down.
That fewer Americans are being killed and fewer terrorists are seeking to hit targets on U. Much credit for producing such an outcome is due to the U. By overly focusing on narrowly addressing the threats identified with the attacks 13 years ago, we risk creating precisely the same conditions that led to those attacks… and ignoring other, perhaps more serious, emerging threats. For example, serious threats exist to U. The disintegration of Syria is such a threat.