A key message of the current administration is that America is winning the war on terror. Since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, United States forces have conducted offensive operations in Afghanistan and Iraq while intelligence agents and Special Forces units are active in over a dozen countries fighting a shadow war. In recent debates, the President has claimed that over 75 percent of al Qaeda's strength has been depleted. This, along with Saddam Hussein's removal, is a strong sign that America is winning the war on terror and that 'freedom is on the march.' These claims, which form such a fundamental plank of the administration's claim on a second term, could bear a closer look.
In the first instance, it is spurious to make the claim that "75 percent" of al Qaeda has been eliminated. Such a proposition requires the conditions of a static universe and the application of that notorious economic principle - ceteris paribus - or all other things being equal. However, the world is manifestly neither static nor are all other things ever equal. While the operations against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere certainly have disrupted its organization circa 2001, the rising number of terror attacks since are surely indications that it has reorganized and raised new recruits.
One should also consider that prior to the attacks on Sept. 11, al Qaeda was not a very well-known organization in the West or even among the militant Islamists, being merely one of many groups geographically dispersed. However, the American response to those attacks and the demonizing of its leader Osama bin Laden, while understandable, have lifted al Qaeda into a prima inter pares relationship with other, even the more established, militant organizations. After all, the world's greatest superpower has declared war on it on bilateral terms.
Arguably, the American response to Sept. 11 has raised al Qaeda in the guise of a vanguard organization, which despite its small size and non-State identity, now rests on an equal plane with a superpower in the guise of an antagonist. Nevertheless, it would be defensible to say that this is an unavoidable side effect of the necessary response to the attacks on Sept. 11. It is quite another thing to blithely claim progress in that war. The unintended consequences are more than just an inconvenience, they are a cost-benefit inflection where in the main the costs are being born by America and the benefits are being accrued by al Qaeda and its fellow travelers.
The sanction of the international community in the form of support for the operations in Afghanistan and international counter-terror initiatives clearly rested on the case that this was, and continues to be, a just war. Treating the war in Afghanistan as synonymous with the war in Iraq is, however, insupportable. It has become clear from findings of the 9/11 Commission that there was never any link between Saddam Hussein and the perpetrators of the attacks on Sept. 11. Therefore, while the removal of the Taliban, who harbored and supported al Qaeda, has a direct causal relationship with the attacks of Sept. 11, the subsequent operations in Iraq do not.
It is worth pointing out that Saddam Hussein ran what was essentially a secular regime which used the trappings of religion where it was convenient. Saddam's power base was tribal and sub-religious and not fundamentalist. Such a leader was practically an apostate in the minds of the religious zealots. Thus the removal of Saddam Hussein has done nothing to advance the war on terror.
What it has done is cost the United States lives, treasure and international goodwill. It has become a commitment at a time when flexibility is the required weapon in the war against non-State actors. It has also made the coming Presidential election a referendum on the war on terror, as it has been hitherto conducted. American society has become politically polarized and conflicted about what its next leader means in terms of its way of life and the country's posture of engagement in the international community.
While regime change in Iraq and organizational disruption of al Qaeda may be debated as legitimate measures of success in the War on Terror, what cannot be dissembled is the centrality of the direction and conduct of that war to contemporary American presidential politics. That fact is indicative of how much the war on terror is not only something manifested in the combat zones of Central Asia, but also in the suburbs and cities of America.
Perhaps, as a proxy, progress in the war should be measured by how much influence each side has on the other. Using this metric, some credence must be given to the administration's claims of success, but the sad truth is that three years after declaring war on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, both are still extant. This fact and its implications have become fundamental to the choice of national leadership and all that it means. Ironically, that this gives al Qaeda a place of influence in deciding America's future. Is it not then legitimate to ask, "Who is winning the war on terror?"
