The Bush Administration Is Weak on Terror

By Stephen Van Evera, AlterNet. Posted November 3, 2006.

[Editor's Note: This essay is part of a series of Audits of the Conventional Wisdom, a project of the Center for International Studies at MIT.]

The U.S. public widely credits President Bush with toughness on terror. An August 2006 poll found 55 percent of Americans approving his handling of the campaign on terror and only 38 percent disapproving. Republican candidates are running successfully on the terror issue in this fall's election campaign. In fact, the Bush administration is weak on terror.

The administration wages a one-front war against al-Qaeda, the main terror threat, when effort on every relevant front is needed. Specifically, it has focused on an offensive military and intelligence campaign abroad while neglecting five other critical fronts: bolstering homeland security, securing weapons and materials of mass destruction from possible theft or purchase by terrorists, winning the war of ideas across the world, ending conflicts that fuel support for al-Qaeda, and saving the failed states where al-Qaeda and like groups can find haven. The administration has also bungled parts of the military offensive by diverting itself into a counterproductive sideshow in Iraq and by alienating potential allies. As a result, al-Qaeda and related jihadi groups remain a potent threat more than five years after the 9/11 attacks. Assessments by U.S. intelligence and other analysts actually indicate that the terror threat has increased since 9/11.

The Bush administration's toughness on terror is an illusion. Its counterterror campaign has been inept and ineffective. President Bush talks the talk of strong action but doesn't walk the walk. And his weakness on terror is a putting the United States in great danger.

Front No.1: The Military/Intelligence Offensive The Bush administration has focused its counterterror campaign on using force to destroy or coerce regimes that shelter al-Qaeda and on rolling up al-Qaeda's global organization through intelligence and police work. The centerpiece of this offensive was the 2001 smashing of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which had sheltered al-Qaeda. This important success denied al-Qaeda secure access to training bases and isolated al-Qaeda leaders from their global network.

Other elements of the Bush offensive were less successful. The Bush team bungled the battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001, allowing Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders to escape. Then it bungled Operation Anaconda in March 2002, again allowing important al-Qaeda elements to escape. Then it offered little security and economic assistance to the new Afghan government of Hamid Karzai. As a result, al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies have re-established a strong presence in southern and eastern Afghanistan and in nearby Pakistan. This endangers all the gains won by ousting the Taliban in 2001-2002. Al-Qaeda is again gaining access to the sanctuaries it needs to train its killers.

The weakness of the Bush administration's offensive against al-Qaeda stems partly from the administration's decision to attack Iraq in 2003. The Iraq war consumed resources needed to battle al-Qaeda. These diverted resources include management talent, intelligence assets, military forces, lots of money, and political capital at home and abroad. For example, Operation Anaconda failed partly because the Bush team withheld needed forces for the coming war in Iraq. In warfare, one should concentrate first on the most dangerous threat. Al-Qaeda posed a far greater threat than Saddam's Iraq and should have taken top priority. Although the Bush administration has implied otherwise, Saddam and al-Qaeda had no operational ties and did not work in concert against the U.S. Hence ousting Saddam was a diversion from the war against al-Qaeda.

Even worse, the Iraq war strengthened al-Qaeda by inflaming the Muslim world against the U.S. Al-Qaeda has made effective propaganda from TV images of American troops fighting Muslim Iraqis, alleging that they show the U.S. is trying to destroy Islam. The counterinsurgent character of the U.S. intervention has made this propaganda especially effective. Counter-insurgency is inherently cruel and presents a grim spectacle to onlookers. By falling into the role of counter-insurgent in Iraq, the Bush administration has damaged America's position far beyond Iraq and given al-Qaeda a big boost.

The Bush administration also wrecked valuable Syrian cooperation against al-Qaeda by its confrontational stance toward Syria. After 9/11, the Syrian government shared intelligence with the U.S. that allowed the U.S. to thwart al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and on the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, Canada. The Bush administration's hostility toward Syria has ended this cooperation.

Thus even on the offensive, its favored mission, the Bush team has botched key operations and failed to stay focused on key objectives.

Front No. 2: The Defensive

The Bush administration's homeland defense effort has large holes. It has increased funding for homeland security functions since 9/11 but should do much more. The FBI remains focused on crime solving, not terror prevention. Local law enforcement, a front line in the war, has not been fully engaged in the struggle against terror. The U.S. government still has no single, coordinated national watch list of terror suspects -- a basic and essential tool of counter-terrorism. Yet the United States instead maintains several different watch lists, feeding confusion among security personnel on the front lines.

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Stephen Van Evera is a professor of political science at MIT, associate director of the MIT Center for International Studies, and a member of the MIT Security Studies Program.