IN THE NEWS
Anyone who has read this blog regularly knows that I'm a numbers guy. (See here for a recent example.) Sure, you have to be humble about statistics when the sample number is small, the data hard to acquire, or the measures somewhat subjective. However, you still do your best to collect information about terrorist incidents and look for whatever patterns they might suggest.
The most basic statistic, of course, is how many terrorist incident occur each year. In an embarassing reversal, the US Department of State has re-issued its report on terrorism in 2003, adjusting the number of incidents upwards--"perhaps to its highest level in 20 years." The stated reason for the error, an early printing deadline that prevented a full accounting, sounds pretty unconvincing. Still, lacking evidence, I won't contclude that the Bush Administration was cooking the numbers. Unfortunately, by its own behavior, it has left itself open to these suspicions.
The numbers matter. I've heard people try to deflect criticism of the Bush Administration by arguing that, in an election year, during a war, it's inappropriate to question how well we're doing in that war. (Again, we're talking about the war on terrorists, which isn't the same as the war on terror, or the war on terrorism. Definitions matter as much as numbers, since they determine exactly what you're going to measure.)
Of course, an election year is exactly the time to be asking for an accounting of the Bush Administration's progress--particularly since it has received extraordinary legal and Constitutional license in the name of national security. How many terrorist incidents happened? How many did we prevent? How exactly did we prevent them? How do our efforts compare with those of other countries, fighting their own battles with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups? Has, in the end, the Bush Administration done a good job?
These are democratically necessary questions. We need these measures of success now, not at some unspecified time when the Bush Administration's counterterrorism campaign is relegated to the history books. If the approach isn't working, the electorate can then demand corrections.
There's some good news in the report, by the way. The number of minor terrorist incidents has dropped. I'd speculate that's the result of (1) more aggressive intelligence gathering, plus (2) joint US-local campaigns to contain small or geographically isolated groups like the FARC in Colombia, Aby Sayyaf in the Philippines, or the motley groups in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia. Working with the governments of these countries, the United States has helped reduce the risk of, say, American tourists being snatched by a small terrorist group looking for global publicity.
What hasn't stopped, obviously, are the major incidents. Several years ago, RAND counterterrorism expert Bruce Hoffman pointed out that the average number of casualties in terrorist attacks was on the rise. Terrorists learn, and they have to adjust to what their enemies are doing. Over time, groups like al Qaeda have discovered that innocent bystanders are easier to kill than government leaders. They've also learned that the level of horror increases with the number of casualties, making the 9/11 attacks and the Madrid bombings the very definition of what they hope to achieve.
How well is the Bush Administration doing to prevent these major incidents? Take a look at the numbers.
Comments