Judging the GWOT
■"The Real 'October Surprise,'" op-ed by David Ignatius, Washington Post, 2 November 2004, p. A21.■"French Push Limits in Fight On Terrorism: Wide Prosecutorial Powers Draw Scant Public Dissent," by Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, 2 November 2004, p. A1.
■"Ethnic Fighting Flares in China: Authorities Declare Martial Law in Rural Henan Province," by Philip P. Pan, Washington Post, 2 November 2004, p. A18.
■"Bin Laden Lauds Costs Of War to U.S.: Recent Videotape Boasts of Inflicting Economic Damage," by John Mintz, Washington Post, 2 November 2004, p. A3.
On this election day, it's worth some time to think about terrorism and how successful we've been in this Global War on Terorrism and what costs we've paid, both in terms of people and lost civil liberties.
Ignatius makes a point that I've made in other posts many times before: the success of the GWOT can be seen in the lack of attacks on America's homeland since 9/11 (to include this election). The pattern of terror strikes we've seen since 9/11 is back to being very similar to the pattern we endured in the 1970s and early 1980s: they can blow things up in their own neighborhood (Middle East), and on occasion, they can reach into the areas surrounding their own—but no farther.
That pattern tell you that the GWOT is successful in keeping Al Qaeda on its heels, despite the recent boasting by Osama in the video. His most damning boasts actually aren't indicative of what he made us do, but what we ourselves decided to do: namely create the behemoth of DHS, throwing tons of money at homeland security in general (a vast overkill) and deciding to not just invade Afghanistan and Iraq in the classic Powell Doctrine manner of kill-the-bad-guys-and-then-simply-leave-the-scene but in the "transformation" of the Middle East mode that requires a huge SysAdmin follow-on effort from us (for which we were woefully unprepared).
Yes, OBL and Al Qaeda put the System Perturbation of 9/11 on us, but we decided how to run down the horizontal waves of disruption that ensued, and that's a basic rule set of System Perturbations: super-empowered individuals can trigger vertical scenarios, but only governments have the massive resources necessary to engineer long-term horizontal scenarios in response—like creating DHS or seeking to transform the Middle East. We don't get to choose the vertical scenarios, they choose us. But we do get to choose the horizontal ones we pursue in response to the vertical ones, and so long as those choices are wise, then we're really in control. My verdict is then: DHS, bad choice, transforming Middle East, good choice but so far bad execution. DHS only perverts America and wastes money, whereas transforming the Middle East is a solid, realistic, strategic choice that requires our defense establish to dramatically alter itself for the challenge.
On the up side, we remain a country of great civil liberties, unlike a far scarier France, where I think Richard Clarke would feel quite at home. Moreover, we can handle real disaster without martial law, whereas a far more fragile country like China suffers an incident very similar to one that turned NYC upside down a few years back, and they have to put a province in the penalty box to get a grip on things.
Overall then, the GWOT goes fairly well. Yes, we have lost far too many souls. But keep some perspective. What we've lost in combat deaths since 1975 doesn't equal what we lost on the beaches of Normandy on one morning in 1944, nor what we lost in NYC on 9/11. It's important to have professionals fight and die in this war, and it's important to keep it an away game, not a home game.
But yes, we can and will do better in terms of organizing ourselves for the tasks that lie ahead, and that's why I continue to push the Leviathan-SysAdmin arguments.