Analysis: Who is Winning the "War on Terror"?
Council on Foreign Relations
August 28, 2006
Prepared by: Eben Kaplan
When British officials arrested two dozen people accused of plotting to down several airliners over the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month, it was seen in some circles as a victory for counterterrorism efforts. Steven Simon, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, says the foiled attack could have been "the next big one." Yet many experts were more troubled than reassured by the arrests, in part because it showed the threat of terrorism on a catastrophic scale is persistent. Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA's bin Laden Unit, writes, "Several strategic inferences can be drawn from the disrupted London operation, none of which are encouraging for the ultimate success of the West's counterterrorism campaign" ( Jamestown).
CFR President Richard N. Haass says that when it comes to fighting terror, "We are still behind the curve." Numerous predictions of coming attacks—though perhaps none as provocative as former terrorism czar Richard Clarke's 2005 article in The Atlantic—seem to bolster this point of view. Yet not everyone agrees. Writing in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, Ohio State University's John Mueller ponders a question that is on many people's minds: "If it is so easy to pull off an attack and the terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it?" Perhaps one reason for this is the Bush administration's emphasis on defending the homeland after the 9/11 attacks. Budget analyst Steven M. Kosiak says in this podcast the $58 billion planned for homeland security in the coming fiscal year is actually spread across about twenty agencies and the largest portion will be focused on border and transportation security.
Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.
Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
