Since it's a subscription article I couldn't read exactly how Ackerman distilled the WoT into an either/or. I don't see one tactic excluding the other. Quite the contrary I see focusing on nations that house, voluntarily or not, terrorists as the vice used to put pressure on the groups themselves. Just look at the Philippines and Abu Sayaf or MILF(visionary terrorists?). It does have a Machiavellian/Thucydidian ring to it but what of it? Would anyone argue that we'd be helping the Philippine government with hundreds(thousands?) of U.S. soldiers on their territory if not for "axis of evil" fear?

It is a bit unnerving to think that we're still relying on thousand year old politics but as Thucydides says:

"The strong do what they wish and the weak suffer what they must."

Bit myopic and harsh but just as true today as 2,500 years ago.

Uh oh , first commentor, I had better be good , (Deep breath)

I think this author hits it rather on the mark. A few friends and I had a discussion in the days after 9/11 where I ended getting quite emotional. I was trying to get them to understand that we are dealing with religious zealotry, not a geographic nation that is declaring war on us. MAny of them had the response of if we kill enough of them they will stop messing with us. These terrorist do not just hate the US, we are their main enemy yes but they hate everyone who is not of their religious beliefs. Blowing up the houses, brothers, sisters, children and families of the terrorists or of innocents who have yet to believe the terrorists only gives them more cause to hate us. It is immensely difficult to destroy an ideal or a belief. I think we could have made great strides in Iraq if we had had a definite workable plan in place when we went in.

If we had not fired all the 1000s of people who held infrastructure jobs because they were Baathists ( who wasn't under Saddam), if we had starting working sooner with businessmen in Iraq to help restart their nation, instead of auctioning off the reconstruction to foreigners some of the contracts have no requirements that they be turned over to Iraqis, if after we had gotten rid of Saddam we had brought in UN peacekeepers and negotioators so the IRaqis did not feel that it was only the US that was in their country, we may have had a much better reputation and success in Iraq. As it is we have lost a lot of the faith that the IRaqis had put in us. We've closed down papers, I realize they were misrepresenting US actions, but then you fine them, warn them or publish a counterpoint, but shutting it down you are acting as the former regime did. No one from the US who is in Iraq seems to understand Iraqi pride, culture or the true desire of the people to want to be free but dealing with something like an 80% unemployment rate does not help them advance. IT makes them impatient and frustrated. From the situation the country is in you would think we have only been there a few months, we have been there a WHOLE YEAR and the power is still not realiable. Would you stand for that? We have lost a lot in Iraq and I think you will see that we have lost a lot in the war against terror. Libya may be giving up their nukes but can anyone really see what any of these government are doing everyday?

I think a lot of these governments will put up a front of cooperating with the US but will be doing a lot more in the shadows, nothing has changed. Just where it takes place. Iraq has angered more Arabs and will recruit more terrorists and if nothing else they are a lot more focused and persistant than any government that we have. They only have one agenda, we have many.
The only way I think we can lower terrorism is to back all the way out of the Middle East, including Israel/Palestine. The other option is to try to be equal in our treatment of Israel, they have committed as many atrocities as the Palestinians and it is high time they were held accoutnable for them. However, both sides in that conflict have elements that are stubborn, fueding people that seem to want the conflict to drag on. PErhaps if we evened the score as far as weaponry the peace would come faster who knows.

I know there must be a better solution out there.

I think the logical conclusion that one must reach is that we should invade Canada, because we will win, and they are culturally similar to the United States. Pacification will be fairly straightforward, and we can begin to privatize the Canadian "nanny state" forthwith.

All of this points to the real political damage the 9/11 Commission could inflict on President Bush. Ever since Clarke issued his account of a Bush administration asleep at the switch in 2001, the president's allies have urged him to reframe the debate toward his post-9/11 posture. But yesterday's hearings indicate that the 9/11 Commission might issue recommendations that imply the Bush administration still doesn't know how to combat Islamist terrorism three years after the attacks--thereby robbing Bush of what is perhaps his cardinal political asset. And if that's what the Commission does, neither Rice nor any of her colleagues will be able to claim they only had 233 days to understand the problem.

Certainly, this is the fervent, burning desire of the Democrats, having little else to run on in their bid to retake the WH they so badly mishandled last time out.. This would seem to be reinforced by the tactics used by the "attack poodle" Democrats at the hearing yesterday.

As to your point, Dan...(Welcome back, BTW)

is it better to pursue an anti-terror strategy with productive strategies that only indirectly affect the terrorists themselves, or to pursue an anti-terror strategy with less productive strategies that directly affect the terrorists themselves?

(Nod)
And there, it seems to me, is the crux of the entire matter.

The first of your two listed possibilities seems to me the stance that most of Mr. Bush's critics would prefer, at least to listen to them. This seems to me the victory of style over substance, of numbers over actual accomplishment... the last great gasp of bureaucracy. We see this far too often in my opinion in many of the larger businesses today; they do work just to satisfy an arbitrary number, rather than to actually resolve the major problems faced. Pursuit of this seems to me the biggest reason we have the sitrep we have at the moment in the Middle East as a whole. It's the kind of nonsense the Clinton misadministration thrived on for 8 years.

To paint a picture... being able to report progress is of such import that the bar gets lowered to crazy degrees..."We're making progress' when examined, ends up to mean in reality "We have chosen the colors of the chairs to have at the next peace talks... now we need to work on the shape of the table. We expect to meet on this sometime next year" (Be honest... has the peace process in the middle east ever bought us more progress than the picture I've painted, here? Ever? Really?)

Mr. Bush has decided... perhaps somewhat belatedly, perhaps not... to pursue the latter course... and it's a bolder, somewhat harder, and certainly more risky one in the short term. And yes, it will tee off a lot of statists. But the bottom line here is, as I have said repeatedly before, this is a cultural issue, which runs across many Arabic states.

But before laying blame on the timeliness of response, please consider; Would pursuing this more recent line even ahve been possible prior to 9/11? EVen those oposed to the war on terror suggest Mr. Bush was using the 9/11 attacks to get his way on this. What do you suppose would have been the chances of Mr. Bush successfully following this course, on 9/10? I mean, while the majority of people today support the President on this, such concurrence is hardly universal, even today... and certainly, a preponderance of support for such an action would have been outright impossible in the 9/10 climate.

Further, consider the reaction of the left and the libertarians among us when Iraq was labeled a pre-emptive action'. Now, think in terms of 9/10... Would those opposing Mr. Bush today have considered preventative military or even police/CIA actions against individuals or groups in foriegn states any more palatable on 9/10? I think we both know the answer to THAT one.

Again, the question seems to me to focus on; Is Mr. Bush's crime to be that he didn't pull away from Mr. Clinton's policies fast enough? You can understand why those opposing the President might be split on that point. To this day, they can't seem to line themselves up on this one. They're pissed at Bush but can't agree why, or what he might have done differently, given the nature of their own opposition to his moves on or before 9/10.

Ackerman does miss one important detail in his argument, which is that in world politics, powerful states do much better at influencing the actions of other states than influencing the activities of non-state actors.

Indeed true. And, given the corrupt state of the UN, one can only come to one conclusion as to the question of whose job it was to respond to the world-wide threat. Was there ever any choice?

Time for a reality check: many, if not almost all of these terrorist organizations receive money from strategically placed political leaders. Bin Ladin obtained funds indirectly, or even directly, from some members of the Saud family. The same holds true for the Palestinian militants. There is also some speculation that Syria is assisting the insurgents in Iraq. Thus, any viable antiterrorist program must unhesitatingly tell these suspect governments too take a chill pill---or there will be serious repercussions. Terrorist need money! They also have to pay bills like the rest of us.

"Bin Ladin obtained funds indirectly, or even directly, from some members of the Saud family." -- David Thomson

Do you feel Bush has dealt with the Saudi connection appropriately?

Dan,
you pose the last question without giving your own answer. An opinion and a blog, kept apart like that ? It's unhealthy.
Curious and waiting. :)

Do you feel Bush has dealt with the Saudi connection appropriately?

Well now that's part of the point, now isn't it? Simultaneous with this criticism, we see almost the opposite criticism-- that Bush is willing to work with countries like Pakistan and Saudia Arabia to go directly after the terrorists but not the states which offer them aid.

Of course, the obvious problem is what if we can't really trust these countries, from Saddam's Iraq to Iran to Libya to Pakistan to Saudi Arabia. So long as countries are willing to turn a blind eye to or covertly aid terrorists, it's hard to see how any policy can avoid confronting nation states at the same time. Yet, we can hardly invade or confront every such country at once.

In reality, Bush's policy has continued to be a mix of terrorist focus and state focus, which a shift towards more focus on states which aid and comfort terrorists, but not just that. There's plenty of cooperation in policework-type actions, both with reasonable democracies like in the EU, and with unsavory countries all over like Saudi Arabia. What's the right combination? Hard to say.

I do have to hope for a little bit of consistency from commentators, and hope that people don't simultaneously make contradictory criticisms.

Unfortunately, with Kat I strongly disagree on the facts claimed in the post. Unemployment is already much lower than the 80% that it was. Power is restored to at least what it was under Saddam. I also don't particularly agree that Iraqis would be thrilled to have troops and workers from countries that strove so hard to keep Saddam in power. I have a hard time imagining that Iraqis are as stupid as you seem to think Kat. For one thing, remember that the Iraqi terrorists bombed the UN mission in Baghdad first. The idea that the UN would be more loved is a fallacy, I think.

Kat, you correctly point out that it's hard to trust the states in the Middle East. But, if we can't trust those states to actually clamp down on terrorism, then Ackerman's point is useless. We can't just go after terrorists if the terrorists can just work out of countries that we can't trust to help us stop them. We have to either go after those states, or massively increase security (and attendent civil liberties violations) in other ways, such as at the borders and with intelligence.

ch2:

Probably because there's no one answer to the question, plus I think the host gets a perverse pleasure at watching us mix it up here down in the comments.

What do I mean by "no one answer?" Well, I think it's agreed that Al Q now is essentially stateless. But Hezbollah is a creature of Syria and Iran. hamas gets a lot of its cash from Saudi Arabia. So I would guess different answers would apply to the appropriate means for dealing with each group.

"Bin Ladin obtained funds indirectly, or even directly, from some members of the Saud family." -- David Thomson

Do you feel Bush has dealt with the Saudi connection appropriately?”

President Bush is now pushing the House of Saud to the wall. Unfortunately, it took awhile before this occurred. I’m afraid that both the Democrats and Republicans waited too long before pressuring the Saudis. Oh well, better late than never. Americans desired cheap oil---and were not exactly anxious to upset a major source of fuel.

AM:
Probably because there's no one answer to the question, plus I think the host gets a perverse pleasure at watching us mix it up here down in the comments.

And mix it up we do. Dan shows up, gens two posts in around a half an hour, and we generate 10 replies in the next hour and a half. Oddly fast response time for a 'blog, don't you think?

Well, I think it's agreed that Al Q now is essentially stateless. But Hezbollah is a creature of Syria and Iran. hamas gets a lot of its cash from Saudi Arabia. So I would guess different answers would apply to the appropriate means for dealing with each group.

I think you may be injecting complexity where it isn't required, at least on these sub-points. Can we reliably make things simpler by comparing the GOALS of each group?

Apalled Moderate,

I agree with you that the answer is likely to be complex, depending on the group, location and support. But Dan holds a blog, the prime medium to convey one's opinion, and yet, he sometimes curiously withholds it. In my good-humored ribbing, there is the seed of a real question. Did Dan come up with an answer to his own question ? Saying the answer is complex does not tell me whether he did.

Which raises a question -- is it better to pursue an anti-terror strategy with productive strategies that only indirectly affect the terrorists themselves, or to pursue an anti-terror strategy with less productive strategies that directly affect the terrorists themselves? --- DD

In state-to-state relations, who, exactly, is “the state”? I submit that it is the political elites of the nation that the state represents. These elites are generally rational people who understand power and its uses. The reason that a powerful state has more effective strategies against another state is the implicit threat to those elites of the removal of their power and position by the destruction of the apparatus that supports their status – the state that they control.

A non-state actor (such as a terrorist group) is not subject to this kind of influence because the members of a typical terrorist group do not have anything to lose – except their lives. They are essentially non-rational actors. The do use reason to accomplish their goals, but the goals themselves are determined by faith, not reason. Realistically, what threat will be effective against people who are willing to walk into a restaurant wearing 50 lbs of explosives and blow themselves up or hijack an airliner and fly it into a building? What else can they lose?

IMO, the frustration in dealing with an entity like the PLO results in large part from expecting it to act like a state when it is NOT a state. The greater threat to Arafat’s position is not from other states, but is instead from other actors in the Palestinian society who would marginalize and disempower him if he moved too far or too fast. Arafat is actually acting rationally to preserve his status and position – like every other rational elite. Killing Arafat would therefore serve no useful purpose, as no other actor who rose to the top of the PLO would have any greater incentive to act differently. I posit that actually giving the Palestinians a state would naturally force them to act more like a state and would go a long way toward normalizing their relations with Israel. After all, what was the main Zionist goal? – A state.

If these premises are correct, (that threats to states are threats to the political elites and that there is no analogous threat available in dealing with non-state actors), what was the thinking in systematically destroying Iraqi elites? By doing so, it seems to me that what we have done with our policies in Iraq is create more of the non-state actors against whom we only have “less productive” strategies.

I think the answer to Drezner’s question is - BOTH. We need to pursue both types of anti-terrorism strategy at the same time, but with an emphasis on direct action against the terrorists themselves. This is what we seemed to be doing prior to the invasion of Iraq. In light of this, can we reframe the question?

--- Why are we destroying states/elites that give us the leverage (productive strategies) to indirectly affect the terrorists themselves and create more non-state actors against whom we have less productive strategies?

I have been searching through the Internet to find some things to either back me up on my facts or disprove them. The mjajority of articles are saying unemployment is down in Iraq so I will admit to not checking the facts as closely as I should. These first two links I found are interesting though because both articles are from today, one says 70 percent one says 30. I do not think the IRaqis are dumb or ignoratn but I think life looks very different right now for them than we could imagine. No matter how optimistic you can be on the US, when bombs and such keep destroying your neighborhood after a year it must be very wearing.

http://english.epochtimes.com/news/4-4-9/20884.html

http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1535162-6078-0,00.html

These other two links just discuss more about on the ground opinions in Iraq.
http://www.cw.ua.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/04/09/407658e39cec9

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_6335.shtml

This subject well illustrates comments made by Kelli and I elsewhere concerning the difference between academics and policy-makers.

I don't think either Arafat or Iraq fit into your "rational political elites" paradigm. Wars are against populations whether represented by the military or not whether directly or not. Unless governmental leaders are answerable to their populace there is little leverage to use against the leaders especially if both are hostile towards you.

Arafat holds no elected office and is a titular leader for doing things exactly contrary to what Israel wants him to do. There is no conflict of interests for Israel to use against Arafat. If the Palestinians had a state and Arafat was its elected leader Israel could threaten military force to play off the natural desires of the Palestinians(peace, prosperity, national stability) and that of Arafat's to stay in power.

Same with Iraq/Saddam. After GW1 and the unsupported Shi'a uprising what possible motive would there be for him to acquiesce? There was none. His citizenry was not a threat to his position. If anything they were a tool to buffer himself from any outside threats. They'd shown in the past their nationalism during the Iran-Iraq war. We had no screw to put to him other than isolation which only serverd to strengthen him.

Throw in any other example you want be it North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. If a government is not representative you either threaten it with utter destruction(massive invasion/occupation) or nothing. There is not middle road. It's exactly why we can't do anything with respect to Saudi Arabia. And what's worse is they know it.

Polyphemus is right to suggest that we have no real leverage over the actions of "friendly" states like Saudi Arabia. But why stop there? Really, we have little influence over anyone, save perhaps the UK (and that more because of parallel interests than actual power).

Case in point: Spanish authorities now believe they can link 3/11 to AQ sleeper cells, including one guy with known links to 9/11 terrorists. NPR spun this as a story calling into question the Bush admin's handling of the WOT (how "effective" has it really been? yadayadayada). What rot! What it does get to the heart of is how much cooperation even our closest allies have given us, so long as they believed the gun was not pointed directly at their own head.

Going after the state sponsors of terrorism may not be the single most effective strategy in THEORY, but in practice it beats the hell out of relying on "soft power" we may or may not possess to "lean on" allies and those inclined NOT to be allies (e.g. Syria or Iran).

Finally, let me ask this question, because it occurred to me as our friends the Germans released a known conspirator of the Hamburg AQ cell because of US "non-cooperation": why shouldn't we just "disappear" the guy? Because really, if we in the WOT are going to bypass states in favor of going after non-state actors operating freely across borders, are we not talking about roaming hitsquads? If not, what?

I was just pointing out that there should be a distinction between governments since despotic ones play by different rules. Spain's is representative so leverage wouldn't be a problem.

Tried to type out scenarios as examples but just too creepy to talk about stuff like that casually. I think there are enough real world cases to look at and don't really want to debate the morality of destroying another society to save our own.

Zakaria wrote about this recently: "Open societies will have to get used to some invasions of privacy. We need pre-emption but against individuals more than states... That's why the only way to combat this new global terror is to fight the ideology that fires it everywhere. So the war on terror is really a war of ideas. And I'm not sure we are winning it."

What's more the administration is still pushing for multi-billion dollar missile defense systems, despite expert testimony that it'll never work, and also even after backing off claims that Iraq would 'pay for itself'. This is what the Economist describes as a disturbing pattern of "never apologise, never explain."

While this may work domestically, playing up to his popular image of "a man uncompromising in his determination to fight the war on terror as he conceives it," his credibility gap internationally has all but buried Bush's doctrine of preemptive war. The 'intelligence' question has finally come to haunt him afterall, and can be boiled down to the mantra: 'You can't find WMD, and now you want NMD?'

Finally, in his prosecution of the war/insurgency (mission accomplished?), even Andrew Sullivan has criticised the president: "You have to have unquestioned security before any sort of democracy can begin to function. But, under the Rumsfeld plan, we never had the numbers or resources to do precisely that. So the extraodinary gains that have been made since the invasion are constantly at risk of being overwhelmed by violence."

And now it looks like Sunni and Shiite militias are allying, while a second front may be opening up in Afghanistan.

All of this, it must be said, are problems that did not go unforseen. The ever-prescient Zakaria forsaw what needed to be done, as did the State Dept. Heck, even Richard Perle is getting in on the act: "Mr Perle's book takes aim at almost everyone else in the senior reaches of the Bush foreign policy team and accuses many of them of significant failures in the run-up to, and the aftermath of, the war in Iraq."

Zakaria wrote a lot while saying little. "Fight the ideology that fires terrorism" would look good on a bumper sticker but work that into a strategy. He have any idea on how to get Musharraf to reform the Deobandi and Wahhabi madrassas in Pakistan? They have been in open defiance of him over Kashmir and curriculum reform for years. How does Zakaria envision the ulema and Wahhabi tribes reacting to the House of Saud cracking down on their schools or funding?

Saying it's a war of ideas is all well and good but what exactly does that mean? If in the end it means moderate versus fundamentalist Islam it might be a good idea to study up on the Thirty Years War.

is it better to pursue an anti-terror strategy with productive strategies that only indirectly affect the terrorists themselves, or to pursue an anti-terror strategy with less productive strategies that directly affect the terrorists themselves?

Its ridiculous to even try to evaluate this question until we can confidently answer a different one: What exactly is the "indirect effect" that a state-focussed policy has on the terrorists?.

Let's take a look - what do we know?

The invasion of Afghanistan led to the liquidation of many al-Qaeda facilities and upper-echelon leaders. Point scored against terrorism. The invasion of Iraq does not a priori effect al-Qaeda at all, since they had at most a pitiful fraction of their personnel or operations there. However, Saddam Hussein reportedly supported Hamas financially, so point scored. But now mobs and uprisings in occupied Iraq are killing Americans daily, so maybe a point lost.

Are there any other effects? The Left said moderate or not-quite-terrorist Muslims would be dismayed at the sight of Christian boots marching into Baghdad and will flock to the terrorist cause in droves. The Right said the creation of a democracy in Iraq will inspire economic growth, peace, and freedom throughout the region.

Both arguments seem to have a priori plausibility. but I've seen little to no analysis or serious debate in the entire last year about which hypothesis is correct, or (if both) which effect will dominate. Can anyone point to any evidence that either or both circumstances are becoming reality?

Without a really good and convincing analysis as to what that effect of state-focussed strategy is, Dan's question is 100% academic. The hypothetical direct strategy could conceivably be more productive in a global sense.

Can anyone out there make a good, reasoned argument about how (say) the Iraq invasion will reduce global Islamist terrorism? Or vice versa? Anyone?

Its really not complicated at all. As Dr. Rice clearly understands:

So long as any Middle Eastern state serves as a sanctuary and support for Islamist terrorism, then Islamist terrorism cannot be defeated.

If no Middle Eastern state serves as a sanctuary and support for Islamist terrorism, then Islamist terrorism will cease to be a meaningful threat.

Why do people struggle so mightily against these simple and obvious truths? I suspect it is because they were previously invested in the law enforcement approach to dealing with terrorists, which ignored the role of sanctuary states and therefor failed miserably.

I'll second RC's thoughts here. What good did the Iraq War do? Taking out Saddam stopped an international crime syndicate that had, to one year ago, dispersed at least $10B to: a) Saddam's family and cronies, to no good end, b) crooked European, Asian and ME "businessmen" and c) cronies of the UN. None of that money was going to citizens of Iraq, all of it was corrupting people, governments and institutions (yes, my precious).

I'm appalled at how quickly and easily elite opinion here can be turned by Iranian and Arab-led "insurgents" in Iraq whose legitimacy as spokesmen of ordinary Iraqis is questionable. The timing here is critical--you destabilize the Iraqi authority on the eve of its taking power, drive a wedge between the occupation authorities and the people to whom they are about to give power (who are, in turn, further delegitimized because they are caught in the middle).

And while it is perfectly legitimate for people to assess the impact of US policies one year on (in the war in Iraq) and two years on (in the war on terror) one must always be intellectually honest enough to imagine a counterfactual scenario as well. As in, "what would we be facing in Iraq today if Saddam were still there, the French and Russians were still cozying up to him, AQ headquarters had relocated to the suburbs of Baghdad, and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about any of it?"

"You're either with us, or with the terrorists".

I think that the administration gets it. Does the US have to go in to every state in the world where non-state terrorists operate and fight them ourselves, or are we going to ask other states to take an aggressive posture?

It's one thing to realize that terrorists can be non-state actors (though it's debatable how effective they can be without active support from state entities). It's entirely another thing to remove responsibility from states for policing their own territory.

I see Thompson's question as being several steps behind Rice et.al. He's still grappling with the question "what is (non-state) terrorism", the administration has long since moved on to "how do we deal with it". Their answer is the only one that I can see as viable: sovereign inaction has to be interpreted as implicit support of terrorists.

BTW, this answer is as obvious as it is radical and new. Nobody even thought to put this common sense approach on the table before.

1) Hey, maybe al Sadr is a member of the National Rifle Association --someone who has merely picked up on Charleton Heston's meme.

2) If we are trying to establish a republic in Iraq -- as opposed to a puppet government which will give sweetheart contracts to Dick Cheney oil buddies -- why did we impose a Constitution on Iraq which disarms the population? Even Hussein did not do that. See
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37501 .

Isn't the current battle occurring because Bush is trying to disarm the Iraqis -- and some are resisting? See http://www.sierratimes.com/cgi-bin/warroom/topic.cgi?forum=11&topic=195

Maybe the Iraqi militias don't want to be lead into the kind of captivity that the US government has imposed and/or supported in the rest of the Islamic world-- in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Indonesia, Phillipines, Iran, and Israel.

In Saudi Arabia and UAE, recall that we've supported petty dictatorships for decades, selling them massive amounts of advanced military weapons like the F16 fighter jet. We had large number of troops posted in Saudi Arabia years after the Gulf War had ended-- something which Bin Ladin cited in 1998 as one of the three reasons for Islamic Jihad against the US. The US corporate-owned news media reported the bombing of the Vinnell Inc housing compound in Riyadh
last May ( see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3022473.stm ) but did not report that Vinnell has long supplied mercenary services to the Royal household by training the "Saudi National Guard"--the gestapo which keeps the populace of Saudi Arabia under heel while the royal family steals the people's oil wealth. See http://www.vinnell.com/ArabiaRecruiting/recruiting.htm and http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates/051303.html .

The people of Iraq are well aware of how little of Kuwaits oil wealth trickles down to the common man in Kuwait -- 12 years after Kuwait was "liberated" by Bush1 and Dick Cheney.
Even today, the kleptocratic rulers of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait are among the few countries which refuse to provide national income statistics to the United Nations.

The Islamic natives of Palestine have lived in misery and poverty for decades because the US has given $91 billion in past aid, $3 billion/year current aid, and massive military transfers to the Israeli occupation. The same US government which rants about Hussein's non-existent WMDs has done nothing while Israel developed at least 80 nuclear weapons with which to threaten her neighbors.

The US government not only installed Suharto in Indonesia, it gave him a list of 100,000 people to kill. The US government not only supported Marcos in the Phillipines, it stood by while he stole everything not nailed down --thereby ensuring that the people of the Phillipines would live in poverty for decades. As I already noted, the people of Iran lived with the torture and murders of the Shah's Savak after the CIA put the Shah on the Peacock Throne.

None of the above helped the American people. Sept 11 is just a small part of the bill we are paying for having leaders who are shameless whores for the oil companies.

RC Dean,

That is not quite true. Consider the home-grown European Islamicistsd, such as those the British recently picked up.

OTOH, they're in Europe because their cultural homes are failures. And in Europe they are police problems.

A quick response to a couple points:

RC says

If no Middle Eastern state serves as a sanctuary and support for Islamist terrorism, then Islamist terrorism will cease to be a meaningful threat.

Yes, obviously. What you haven't argued is how our policy will achieve this. Your argument is semantically parallel to saying "If nobody owned guns, there would be no gun deaths. Therefore I'm in favor of gun control." There's no cause and effect, no analysis. It's empty rhetoric.

If someone proved that a specific policy would actually eliminate all sanctuaries for AQ (without doing something awful in the process), I'd be behind it 100%.

Kelli goes on to at least argue some real effects of the Iraq war:

Taking out Saddam stopped an international crime syndicate that ... dispersed at least $10B to: a) Saddam's family and cronies ... b) crooked European, Asian and ME "businessmen" and c) cronies of the UN.

Um... okay, but how does this affect terrorism again? Did the crooked "businessmen" sell weapons to Osama Bin Laden or something? It's not at all clear what your argument is.

I'll grant you there may be other positive effects of the Iraq war. I'm asking about the effect on terrorism.

one must always be intellectually honest enough to imagine a counterfactual scenario as well.

Absolutely! But there are thousands of possible scenarios. One must also be intellectually rigorous enough to analyze their likelihood. I could claim that France was preparing a nuclear strike against Texas but that we could stop it by invading Tokyo. But without connecting the dots, I'd just be a loony.

All I'm asking is for someone to connect some dots. Specifically, these two dots: (1) a state-focussed policy of invasion/nation building and (2) effect on global terrorism. Is it good, bad, neutral, and why?

As for your scenario, do you believe is it likely, and why? Do you have any reason to argue that AQ was likely to "relocate to the suburbs of Baghdad"? And if so, would that increase or decrease their numbers?

Don,

Great post and thanks for mentioning all these things. People seem to want to assume the uprising in Iraq is simply motivated by people who do not want democracy. That is assuming that the people involved, whether actively or inactively supporting it, are one faceted. What we are dealing with in the media and in the government is a horrible lack of undertstanding regarding the IRaqi people, their fears etc. Everyone assumes that they want the exact same things we want, and it may be true but do they want 14 US military bases in their country, do they want all their businesses to be owned by foreign nationals. Does it occur to the media or to Bush that this may be some of the reasons they are fighting us?

I started reading a book about the history of foreing policy in America and was surprised to find out that in the 1800s to the early 1900s over 1/3 of businesses in the US, almost all the railroads etc. were foreign owned. Guess what? Americans did not like it too much. Many people were advocating out and out fighting Britain more often than we did. Many of the states such as Pennsylvania were largely in debt to foreign nations. The US media and foreign policy in the Middle East has always lacked understanding on our behalf. We cater to the governments that cater to us whether or not they are repressive, we always have in that area. I do not care how many people deny it, oil is a motivating factor in all of this.

We can not liberate a people that we really do not care about, Bush and Co does not are about Iraqis or human rights, they care about business. The Iraqis know this and they are realizing more and more that BUsh wants the country run to his designs. That is why members of the council are leaving, much like almost a dozen members of the Bush admin have left. anyone see a pattern here? The solution to this would have been to work with the Iraqi people. After Saddam was gone we should have started turning things over to the council. Start immediately putting their police on the streets for security instead of disbanding every bit of the infrastructure and then slowly building it up. Plenty of good citizens would have come forward to turn over the corrupt members. We have not allowed the IRaqis any ownership in their country, we should have built maybe two or three temporary bases after asking the Council if we could. It is the appearances of civility that make all the difference. Busdh runs roughshod over everyone and in doind so burns bridges as we are seeing.

Sorry ranting. After we broke away from England we did it all on our own. In the first few months following the fall of Saddam we should have encouraged them to take part in rebuilding their country. We provide the money and materials, they provide the people. Instead we kicked all the people out of their jobs and tried to figure out how to run power plants that are French or English. If we had allowed them ownership, things would be a lot different.

Here is an illuminating article on this issue (first few paragraphs excerpted):

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004939

"BELTWAY BATTLES

Revenge of the Nerds
Richard Clarke is a consummate bureaucrat, but he doesn't understand a politican's job.

BY ROBERT MARANTO
Monday, April 12, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Back when he was funny, David Letterman did a recurring skit called "Narrow Perspectives," in which a boring academic critiqued what in his small world seemed the most important part of a major motion picture. In one memorable episode, an energy expert fumed about all that gas-guzzling stop and go driving during the chase scenes in "Mad Max."

Letterman nailed the lifeblood of bureaucracy: specialization. Good bureaucrats--not an oxymoron--spend all their days thinking about the highly specialized mission of their agencies, whether protecting the homeland or protecting the snail darter. Bureaucrats want all resources going to their work, with only crumbs left for the rest of us.

Good politicians, on the other hand, must ration their time and money to many competing interests. They can never give their hearts to just one thing.

The two tribes also have different styles. Many bureaucrats are nervous nerds. But politicians have to win elections, so they have folksy charm like George W. Bush, a commanding presence like National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, or at least a dignified mien like John Kerry. The relationship between bureaucrats and politicians resembles that between high school nerds and jocks. The nerds ace the tests and resent when the jocks crib their notes. And of course we all know who gets to go to the prom, and to run student government.

In the world of Washington, the policy-wonk nerds expect the politician jocks to follow their advice, or at least to pretend to listen. The politicians, for their part, expect the nerds to be loyal.

I was reminded of the clashes between bureaucrats and their political masters as former National Security Council bureaucrat Richard Clarke lambasted the pre-9/11 unwillingness ..."

Actually, the metaphor is not "jocks" vs "nerds" but competence vs ignorance and real patriotism vs corrupt posing.

Clarke rose to his high position by being competent -- a competence which neither Bush nor
Condi Rice can claim.

After all, Bush had all the benefits of a rich boy's upbringing -- prep school, Yale,and acceptance into Harvard Business School with mediocre undergrad grades. Plus the money and friends to create his own company.
Yet when Bush reached middle age, he was a drunk and business failure. All he has -- his wealth, power , his very self respect --has been given to him by his rich friends and can be taken away at any time.

That brings up the second difference between Bush and Clarke. Clarke is devoted to defending the people of this nation and is haunted by the failures that led to Sept 11. Bush is merely focused on doing what his rich friends tell him to do -- whether their business agendas are in the national interest is a question far above his pay grade. Cheney is there to remind him of that if he forgets.

Professor Drezner has just opened a thread concerning the Wall Street Journal article cited two posts above this.

thanks.