Analysis: Winning or Losing?
Council on Foreign Relations
September 7, 2006
Prepared by: Michael Moran
Anniversaries tell us little about progress when it comes to something as abstract as a "war on terror." Still, five years since the atrocities of September 11, 2001, many minds are set to wondering: Is America winning or losing this fight?
No simple answer exists. Americans, polled just ahead of the anniversary, indicate they regard their nation to be at least as vulnerable to terrorism (PDF) as on September 11, 2001. Polls also suggest a majority see the war raging in Iraq as part of the problem, not part of the solution. Further, though pundits fight the notion (National Journal), pollsters consistently see isolationism, the old bogeyman of U.S. foreign policymakers, on the rise.
President Bush and supporters of the preemptive National Security Strategy equate isolationism with defeatism. "We're on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront—and we'll accept nothing less than complete victory," Bush declares. The White House views the Iraq War, the Afghan War, and the many smaller counterterrorist actions around the globe as part of a single, overarching battle (VOA) against "Islamofascism" which has raged for decades but which America only woke up to on September 11, 2001. For a more complete look at the Bush Administration's terror war, CFR.org offers a 9/11 anniversary issue guide.
Max Boot, CFR’s senior national security fellow, argues it is too early (TIME) to spy either victory or defeat in such a war. As with communism in the 1990s, he writes, "the malignant status quo in the Middle East could crumble more quickly than anyone expects."
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.
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