"Because which funeral do you go to? If I go to one I should go to all. How do you honor one person but not another?" -- Dubya, explaining why he blows off funerals for soldiers he got killed, hominidviews.com
Butt Monkey, to answer your question, how about not lying them into their graves for profit?
Also, you've never missed a fundraiser, not ever, but there's no time for dead soldiers?
Fury as Karzai plans return of Taliban's religious police
By Tom Coghlan in Kabul Published: 17 July 2006
The Afghan government has alarmed human rights groups by approving a plan to reintroduce a Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the body which the Taliban used to enforce its extreme religious doctrine.
The proposal, which came from the country's Ulema council of clerics, has been passed by the cabinet of President Hamid Karzai and will now go before the Afghan parliament.
"Our concern is that the Vice and Virtue Department doesn't turn into an instrument for politically oppressing critical voices and vulnerable groups under the guise of protecting poorly defined virtues," Sam Zia Zarifi of Human Rights Watch said. "This is specially in the case of women, because infringements on their rights tend to be justified by claims of morality."
Under the Taliban the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice became notorious for its brutal imposition of the Taliban's codes of behaviour.
Religious police patrolled the streets, beating those without long enough beards and those failing to attend prayers five times a day. Widows suffered particular hardship because of the diktat that women be accompanied by a male relative when out of their homes, an impossibility for thousands of women widowed during decades of war.
The Ministry was also charged with the imposition of the Taliban's interpretation of sharia punishment. Executions at Kabul football stadium, which included female prisoners shot in the centre circle, did much to fuel the Taliban's international isolation.
However, the Minister for Haj and Religious Affairs, Nematullah Shahrani, defended the new body. "The job of the department will be to tell people what is allowable and what is forbidden in Islam," he said. "In practical terms it will be quite different from Taliban times. We will preach ... through radio, television and special gatherings."
He denied that the department would have police powers but said it would oppose the proliferation of alcohol and drugs and speak out against terrorism, crime and corruption. It would, he added, also encourage people to behave in more Islamic ways.
Nader Nadery, a spokesman for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said: "It will remind people of the Taliban. We are worried that there are no clear terms of reference for this body."
Western diplomats have reacted with unease to the proposal. However, several told The Independent that they believed the move was partly designed to defuse Taliban propaganda which accuses the Karzai government of being un-Islamic.
"This is an Islamic republic and sharia is a part of the constitution," one diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "If it is constitutional and within the framework of the International Convention on Human Rights [to which Afghanistan is a signatory] then it could represent a public information victory for the government."
With the Taliban making considerable gains in the south the Karzai government has been keen to establish a more conservative Islamic profile and to appear more critical of Western military operations.
Over the weekend violence continued across southern Afghanistan with British, American and Canadian troops mounting their biggest combined operation since the Korean War. British paratroopers mounted a cordon and search operation in Sangeen on Saturday night. A British base in the town has been under daily attack for more than two weeks.
Afghan officials said 27 Taliban fighters were killed in the Helmand province during the offensive, with 18 wounded and 10 captured. Two British soldiers were injured but not seriously.
Forty militants were also said to have been killed in separate fighting in north Helmand and Uruzgan provinces on Saturday.
Another 35 insurgents were reported killed during operations in Helmand yesterday. In other parts of the country, six Afghan soldiers died in a roadside bombing in the west, while a suicide bomber killed four civilians and injured 23 others in Gardez in the south-east.
THE MIDEAST CONFLICT: Grim calculus of victories begins
ANALYSIS: Democracy at risk in shattered country as Iran and Syria stand to benefit
PAUL KORING POSTED ON 17/07/06
WASHINGTON -- Iran and Syria, both fingered as rogue, terrorist-backing regimes by most Western governments, may emerge from the current spiral of violence with their reputations enhanced in the Muslim world.
As Israeli bombs and Hezbollah missiles rain death in the Middle East, a grim calculus of winners and losers is being calculated from Tehran to Washington, and casualties are mounting.
Hezbollah's brazen cross-border military strike to snatch a pair of Israeli soldiers has set off such bitter and far-reaching echoes because it signalled a sudden end to a whole series of grinding, interlocking confrontations. Lebanon's fragile democracy has been grievously, perhaps mortally wounded. Western efforts to cobble together a united front to confront Iran over its nuclear program have suffered a setback. Fading hopes for a Palestinian-Israeli peace have all but been eclipsed by the smoke of battle and recriminations.
With the renewed violence, so-called moderate Arab and Muslim governments, especially those who have backed the Mideast peace process, now appear impotent -- they were too weak to wage war against Israel themselves, yet incapable of nurturing a embryonic Palestinian state. But embattled Syrian President Hafez Assad can suddenly cover last year's humiliating retreat from Lebanon with a façade of tough talk and offers of refuge for those fleeing the conflict, while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is basking in the reflected Arab admiration for Hezbollah's boldness, and threatening to wage war if Syria is attacked by Israel.
Hezbollah -- which is both a political party, the champion of Lebanon's Shia underclass, and a powerful militant group holding sway over southern Lebanon -- was presented with a stark choice when Syria left Lebanon last year. If it opted for a solely domestic political role, laying down arms and ending its core struggle against Israel, it would have alienated its vital sponsors in Tehran and Damascus. With one ally, Hamas, embroiled in open conflict with Israel and another, Iran, facing pressure over its nuclear program, the militants opted to strike.
Whether the cross-border strike had an explicit green light from Tehran may never be known.
But Iran builds and supplies the longer-range, modified Soviet-era missiles that Hezbollah has fired deep into Israel, and few believe the escalation could have taken place without a nod from Iran's ruling mullahs.
"The true motives of the Iranian regime are very hard to ascertain, but it is clear that the international community was united coming into this G8 summit [in St. Petersburg, Russia], and sending a very clear signal to the Iranian regime to give up its nuclear ambitions," a senior U.S. official said yesterday, stopping just short of accusing Tehran of staging the crisis as a diversionary manoeuvre.
The losers in this fight are clear. Lebanon, still scarred by civil war, is once again a battleground for the region's powers to fight their proxy wars. The nascent democracy in Beirut, a bold experiment in multi-faith government, may not survive Hezbollah's return to the sword.
Israel's ruthless response will reinforce the widespread Arab view that only Hamas, Hezbollah and their backers are the true champions of the Palestinian cause -- especially when compared with the Washington-friendly regimes in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, which is struggling to impose peace and extricate itself from Iraq, has reminded the region that its overarching priority is its unalloyed backing of Israel.
In Iraq, Gaza and now southern Lebanon, the superior killing and destructive power of the U.S. and Israeli militaries is strikingly evident. And the willingness to wield that mailed fist rankles hundreds of millions of Muslims, whether or not they back Hezbollah's militant orthodoxy.
What makes an al-Qaida suicide bomber? After a year spent talking to the terrorists and their families, Peter Taylor is convinced that it's all down to Iraq - whatever Tony Blair might claim
Peter Taylor Friday September 1, 2006 The Guardian
One of the most bewildering sights since last month's dramatic Heathrow alert has been the succession of government ministers insisting that the terrorist threat has nothing to do with Iraq and British support for American foreign policy. Such political certainties fly in the face of all the empirical evidence I have found in a year of investigating how young Muslims are radicalised and recruited to fight in Iraq, not just in Britain but across Europe and the Middle East. Whenever and wherever I asked the families and friends of suicide bombers why their loved ones had been prepared to blow themselves up, top of their list was Iraq. Some were radicalised by the alleged illegality of the US invasion, others by torture at Abu Ghraib and abuses by the American military, and all by the continuing occupation of a Muslim land by foreign forces - including the British army.
Mike Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, put it bluntly: "Iraq is an almost unimaginable force multiplier for Bin Laden, al-Qaida and their allies," he told me.
In the Middle East, I met a young Arab who was hoping to go to Iraq and become a shaheed, a martyr. He told me he had already tried to get into Iraq via Syria to join the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, al-Qaida in Iraq, but had returned home to try again later after some of those he travelled with were arrested near the border. Some, he said, managed to get through. At some stage he hoped to follow.
He was clearly nervous. He was young, barely 20, with a red keffiyeh covering his face to conceal his identity. He said he planned to go to Iraq "to support our oppressed brothers and send the enemy out of Muslim lands, to fight in the name of God and ask for entry into paradise". I had no doubt he meant it. He said he was prepared to become a suicide bomber. "The important thing is to be killed as a martyr," he said.
Shezhad Tanweer, one of the 7/7 bombers from Leeds, expressed much the same sentiments in the video he recorded before he killed himself and seven passengers on the Circle line near Aldgate. He made it clear "to the non-Muslims of Britain" why he had done it. "Your government has openly supported the genocide of 150,000 innocent Muslims in Falluja," he said. "You are directly responsible for the problems in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq to this day."
It is not known precisely how many Muslims have left the UK for Iraq. I asked Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, if it was possible to put a figure on the number. "We don't know exactly how many. We simply don't have a very clear picture of the total scale of the problem," he admitted. Muslims about to go to Iraq do not tell even those closest to them what they are intending to do. There is at least one case in Britain where an individual appears to have been stopped, but it is currently sub judice and cannot be discussed.
Wail al-Dhaleai, 22, from Sheffield was the last person his friends ever dreamed would go to Iraq and die. He is thought to have been shot dead by US troops in 2003 while trying to blow them up. He had never figured on the radar of South Yorkshire special branch or MI5. The first they appear to have heard was when a newspaper in his native Yemen reported that a family friend had called with the news that Dhaleai had become a shaheed.
Dhaleai came to the UK in 2000 as an asylum seeker, settled down and married a young Yorkshire woman at Sheffield registry office in January 2002. His wife converted to Islam. Dhaleai soon became a father. He appears to have been universally popular, not least because of the martial arts skills he developed and passed on to others at the young people's class he set up. His tae kwon do mentor and friend was Andy Hill. He knew that Dhaleai was a Muslim who took his faith seriously - he would sometimes stop in class to pray - but never realised how deep that faith ran until Dhaleai took the examination for his black belt. After displaying his skills before the visiting grand master, Dhaleai had to bow before him. To Hill's horror, he refused. "I bow to no man but Allah," he said. "Bollocks!" was Hill's reaction. Dhaleai stood his ground - and was still awarded his black belt.
In September 2003, Dhaleai made a pilgrimage to Mecca and brought back an Arab tea set for Hill. He was very touched. Dhaleai said he had met someone who had offered him a job as a security guard in Dubai. The next month, he left. On the eve of his departure, a friend asked him why he was leaving when he had such a great family and prospects. Dhaleai replied that where he was going he would meet an even more beautiful woman. Presumably he meant paradise.
A fortnight later, special branch came to Hill's door, questioned him and then told him what was said to have happened to his friend. Hill was shattered. "I still can't believe that somebody so nice could do that," he says.
Last year, French intelligence neutralised five networks that were channelling young Muslims to Iraq. Unlike Clarke, France's anti-terrorist coordinator Christophe Chabout will put a figure on the numbers who have gone to Iraq. He estimates around 20 and says that most of them went to join "al-Qaida in Iraq", which is subordinate to al-Qaida's central command. Chabout is also concerned about new networks emerging to replace those that have been broken. "It's quite amazing to see how fast these young men can be convinced and brainwashed to go to a country they have no idea of," he says. "But that's the reality."
The most startling example of rapid radicalisation involved a number of North Africans from the Parisian suburb of Butte Chaumont who are said to have fallen under the influence of a 22-year-old self-proclaimed imam called Farid Benyettou. Three died of them died on suicide missions in 2004. They were aged 18, 19 and 20. Benyettou is now in prison awaiting trial. So too are others he allegedly recruited. One has just been sentenced to 15 years in an Iraq prison after being arrested by the Americans in Falluja. Another, Thamer Bouchnak, was intercepted at Orly airport before he could fly to Iraq. His lawyer knows what things made his client angry. Abu Ghraib was one. "When he saw his Muslim brothers being tortured and humiliated by the American forces and being killed by American soldiers for oil and petrol and not to set people free, he was revolted and wanted to fight."
There is now another growing worry: that jihadis trained in Iraq are returning to carry out operations back home, as happened with the Afghan jihadi diaspora. It is known as "blowback". It is a concern that Britain shares. Although Clarke says there is not much evidence of people returning to Britain from Iraq, he adds the rider "as yet". "It's something that we're looking at very closely," he says.
In France, there is already evidence of blowback. Hamid Bach, a French Moroccan living in Montpellier, is now awaiting trial on charges of making a bomb and planning an attack in France. As part of his radicalisation, he was taken to listen to Abu Hamza at Finsbury Park mosque. Iraq appears to have triggered his decision to take drastic action. His wife told me about the conversations they used to have at home. "We discussed Iraq, like all families. We can't ignore it. It's dreadful to see people being bombarded day and night. These people suffer and we suffer with them." Hamid decided to do something about it and was recruited by a network to go to Iraq. His wife says that when he crept out of the house one morning, she had no idea where he was going. When he got to Syria and found out that he had been selected to become a suicide bomber, he had second thoughts. He had wanted to fight like a soldier and not blow himself up. In order to return to Montpellier, he told his lawyer, he had agreed to assist with logistics for an operation in France. Back home, he bought 19 bottles of hydrogen peroxide from the local supermarket and accessed details of explosives and detonators on the internet. According to his lawyer, he was only going through the motions to make it appear to those who might be watching that he was keeping to his part of the bargain.
In Jordan, I saw the sorrow of parents who had lost a son. Raed Elbana was a young lawyer who went to California and enjoyed a rock'n'roll lifestyle. He returned to Jordan during the Iraq war where, according to one of his college friends, Abdullah Abu Rahman, he was radicalised by Salafi jihadis. "They told him about holy war and fighting the Americans," he said. When his father noticed that he was growing a beard, Elbana explained it away by saying he had been travelling for three days and had not had a chance to shave. He then told his parents he was leaving for Dubai, where he had got a legal job. Later, his father got a phone call from Iraq saying, "Father of Raed, I congratulate you. Raed was martyred." Then the line went dead.
According to al-Qaida in Iraq's website, Elbana was a shaheed who attacked a Shia clinic in the Iraqi town of Hi'lla; 118 died. It was said he was handcuffed to the steering wheel of the car bomb.
In the wake of last year's bombings in London, Tony Blair said, "Let us expose the obscenity of these people saying it is concern for Iraq that drives them to terrorism." Such attacks in London and elsewhere are undoubtedly obscene, but the reason for them is scarcely beyond doubt. As Scheuer says, "Iraq is a self-recruiting machinery for al-Qaida. Al-Qaida doesn't have to do anything except let Iraq speak for itself".
· Al Qaeda: Time to Talk?, the first programme in Peter Taylor's new series, will be shown this Sunday at 9pm on BBC2.
Third Semi-annual, Nonpartisan Survey of Foreign Policy Experts from the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy
August 20, 2007
In the third Terrorism Index, more than 100 of America’s most respected foreign-policy experts see a world that is growing more dangerous, a national security strategy in disrepair, and a war in Iraq that is alarmingly off course.
Americans are thinking more about the war on terror than ever before. But that doesn’t mean they’ve come to see this issue in the black-and-white terms preferred by many elected leaders. The combination of bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, continued terrorist attacks from Britain to Somalia, and a presidential election in which candidates are defining themselves based on how they would stare down the threats has many seeing shades of gray. Six years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, just 29 percent of Americans believe the United States is winning the war on terror—the lowest percentage at any point since 9/11. But Americans also consider themselves safe. Six in 10 say that they do not believe another terrorist attack is imminent. Likewise, more than 60 percent of Americans now say that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake. Yet around half report that they would support similar military action to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Such seemingly incompatible points of view may stem in part from the fact that we are increasingly asked to reconcile a bewildering array of threats—and a nebulous enemy that defies convention. In Iraq, for instance, the same surge in U.S. forces that is meant to help pacify Baghdad only escalates violence elsewhere in the country. In the broader Middle East and South Asia, some of the same countries that are now the United States’ most crucial allies have also been guilty of cultivating the very terrorists we look to bring to justice. Deciphering priorities from such difficult paradoxes can be hard. So, how can one determine whether the war on terror is making America safer or more dangerous?
To find out, Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress once again turned to the very people who have run the United States’ national security apparatus during the past half century. Surveying more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy experts—Republicans and Democrats alike—the Foreign Policy/Center for American Progress Terrorism Index is the only comprehensive, nonpartisan effort to mine the highest echelons of the nation’s foreign-policy establishment for its assessment of how the United States is fighting the war on terror. First released in July 2006, and again last February, the index attempts to draw definitive conclusions about the war’s priorities, policies, and progress. Its participants include people who have served as secretary of state, national security advisor, senior White House aides, top commanders in the U.S. military, seasoned intelligence professionals, and distinguished academics. Eighty percent of the experts have served in the U.S. government—including more than half in the Executive Branch, 32 percent in the military, and 21 percent in the intelligence community.
The world these experts see today is one that continues to grow more threatening. Fully 91 percent say the world is becoming more dangerous for Americans and the United States, up 10 percentage points since February. Eighty-four percent do not believe the United States is winning the war on terror, an increase of 9 percentage points from six months ago. More than 80 percent expect a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade, a result that is more or less unchanged from one year ago.
On the positive side, many of the key agencies charged with ensuring the United States’ national security appear to be getting better at their job. Six of nine agencies, including the Departments of State and Defense, scored above average on the experts’ scale of 0 to 10. One year ago, only one agency scored above average. The National Security Agency fared the best, with an average ranking of 6.6. Many of the policies that these agencies pursue, however, did not fare as well. Nearly every foreign policy of the U.S. government—from domestic surveillance activities and the detention of terrorist suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to U.S. energy policies and efforts in the Middle East peace process—was sharply criticized by the experts. More than 6 in 10 experts, for instance, believe U.S. energy policies are negatively affecting the country’s national security. The experts were similarly critical of the cia’s rendition of terrorist suspects to countries known to torture prisoners and the Pentagon’s policy of trying detainees before military tribunals.
No effort of the U.S. government was more harshly criticized, however, than the war in Iraq. In fact, that conflict appears to be the root cause of the experts’ pessimism about the state of national security. Nearly all—92 percent—of the index’s experts said the war in Iraq negatively affects U.S. national security, an increase of 5 percentage points from a year ago. Negative perceptions of the war in Iraq are shared across the political spectrum, with 84 percent of those who describe themselves as conservative taking a dim view of the war’s impact. More than half of the experts now oppose the White House’s decision to “surge” additional troops into Baghdad, a remarkable 22 percentage-point increase from just six months ago. Almost 7 in 10 now support a drawdown and redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq.
Chastened by the fighting in Iraq, the U.S national security community also appears eager not to make the same mistakes elsewhere. For instance, though a majority—83 percent—do not believe Tehran when it says its nuclear program is intended for peaceful, civilian purposes, just 8 percent favor military strikes in response. Eight in 10, on the other hand, say the United States should use either sanctions or diplomatic talks to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Similarly, a majority of the experts favor some kind of engagement with groups that may be labeled terrorist organizations but have gained popular support at the ballot box, such as Hamas in the Palestinian Territories or Hezbollah in Lebanon. It’s one indication that, after six years, we may be entering a new chapter in the war on terror.
The Failing Surge
The outcome of the war in Iraq may now rest in large part on the success or failure of the so-called surge. Beginning in February, the White House sent an additional 28,000 U.S. troops to Baghdad in an effort to quell the violence there. Securing the capital with overwhelming force is a key component of the anti-insurgency plan developed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq and the military’s foremost expert on counterinsurgency tactics. It took until June for all the U.S. forces to be put in place, and the number of American troops in Iraq is now at its highest level since 2005. But is Petraeus’s plan working?
The index’s experts don’t think so. More than half say the surge is having a negative impact on U.S. national security, up 22 percentage points from just six months ago. This sentiment was shared across party lines, with 64 percent of conservative experts saying the surge is having either a negative impact or no impact at all. When the experts were asked to grade the government’s handling of the Iraq war, the news was even worse. They gave the overall effort in Iraq an average point score of just 2.9 on a 10-point scale. The government’s public diplomacy record was the only policy that scored lower.
These negative opinions may result in part from the experts’ apparent belief that, a decade from now, the world will still be reeling from the consequences of the war. Fifty-eight percent of the index’s experts say that in 10 years’ time, Sunni-Shiite tensions in the Middle East will have dramatically increased. Thirty-five percent believe that Arab dictators will have been discouraged from reforming. Just 5 percent, on the other hand, believe that al Qaeda will be weaker, whereas only 3 percent believe Iraq will be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. If true, the surge, or any other tactical shift for that matter, was probably already too little, too late.
A Perfect Nightmare
A perfect terrorist storm may be brewing in Pakistan. When asked to choose the nation that is most likely to become the next al Qaeda stronghold, more experts chose Pakistan than any other country, including Iraq. Osama bin Laden reportedly remains at large along Pakistan’s mountainous border with Afghanistan, where al Qaeda is also regrouping; the country’s intelligence service is said to be still cooperating with radical Islamist elements; and President Pervez Musharraf’s political future seems increasingly imperiled. These developments would not be as worrisome had the experts not also said that Pakistan is the country most likely to transfer nuclear technology to terrorists in the next three to five years. Together, it’s a terrifying combination.
But if there is a wide consensus about the dangers that Pakistan poses, there is very little agreement about what to do about it. A modest number of the index’s experts, fewer than 1 in 3, favors threatening Pakistan with sanctions. Yet about the same number support increasing U.S. aid to the country. Such a muddled response underscores the puzzle that Pakistan presents to American policymakers. What is clear is that the experts do not favor more of the same: More than half of those surveyed believe the current U.S. policy toward Pakistan is having a negative impact on U.S. national security. Getting the strategy right could be critical if the world is to keep those dark clouds from forming.
Will the Enemy Follow Us Home?
It may be the most common—and, for many, the most convincing—argument against a quick exit from Iraq: Pulling American forces out would only move the war’s front line from the streets of Baghdad to the streets of Anytown, U.S.A. Or, as President George W. Bush often says, “The enemy would follow us home.”
Or would it? It’s a scenario that the index’s experts say is unlikely. Only 12 percent believe that terrorist attacks would occur in the United States as a direct result of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Eighty-eight percent of the experts said that either such a scenario was unlikely or that they see no connection between a troop withdrawal from Iraq and terrorist attacks inside the United States. This line of thinking was consistent across party lines, with 58 percent of conservatives saying they did not believe terrorist attacks would occur at home as a result of a military drawdown in Iraq.
That could explain why a bipartisan majority, 68 percent, of the experts favor redeploying U.S. forces from Iraq during the next 18 months. Although most oppose an immediate pullout, the situation in Iraq has deteriorated to the point that 1 in 5 experts, including 25 percent of conservatives, now favor an immediate withdrawal. If opinion continues to move in this direction, it will become much harder to explain why the troops aren’t homeward bound.
The Next Front
Raging violence in Iraq has raised the specter that similar savagery could bleed over into neighboring countries. Many have feared that there could be a spillover of violence in Turkey, which has reportedly amassed troops on its border with Iraq, or in Saudi Arabia, home to a series of recent al Qaeda attacks, including the 2003 bombing of a residential compound in Riyadh. But the index’s experts fear for someone else in Iraq’s backyard. Nearly half said that Jordan is the neighbor most likely to experience a spillover of violence from Iraq—more than twice as many who pinpointed any other country. The Hashemite Kingdom was already a target for terrorists working from Iraq with the 2005 Amman hotel bombings, and it now hosts the second-largest Iraqi refugee population. With porous borders and its own home-grown Islamist movement, it’s a volatile mix that may be primed to explode.
Deciphering the Chatter
The U.S. presidential race is being dominated by foreign-policy issues. So how does the rhetoric of the candidates match up to the opinions of the country’s most respected international affairs experts? Here’s a look.
Sen. Hillary Clinton: “I believe we are safer than we were.”––June 3, 2007 Terrorism Index Experts: A huge majority, 91 percent, believe the world is growing more dangerous for Americans and the United States.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani: “I support the president’s increase in troops. Even more importantly, I support the change in strategy. . . .”––Jan. 10, 2007 Terrorism Index Experts: The majority, 83 percent, believe the surge has had either a negative impact or no impact at all on the war in Iraq.
Sen. John McCain: “We lose this war and come home, they’ll follow us home.”––Mar. 10, 2007 Terrorism Index Experts: Nearly 9 in 10 say that they do not believe terrorist attacks would occur inside the United States as the result of a withdrawal from Iraq.
Sen. Barack Obama: “We must maintain the isolation of Hamas.”––Mar. 2, 2007 Terrorism Index Experts: More than 70 percent believe the United States should engage, not isolate, Hamas.
Gov. Mitt Romney: “This is a time . . . to increase our diplomatic isolation of Iran.”––Feb. 18, 2007 Terrorism Index Experts: Eight in 10 support engaging in bilateral dialogue with Tehran over its nuclear program.
Sen. John Edwards: “[Congress] should correct its mistake and use its constitutional funding power to force an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.”––July 10, 2007 Terrorism Index Experts: Almost 80 percent of the experts oppose an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.
No Love from Russia
With so many foreign-policy headaches these days, Washington could use some friends to lean on. According to the index’s experts, don’t look to Moscow. When asked to choose the U.S. ally that least serves U.S. interests, 34 percent chose Russia, far ahead of complicated friends such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. What makes Russia an ally hardly worth the effort? The Kremlin frequently speaks out against the war in Iraq, denounces U.S. leadership in the world, and has refused to back the toughest international sanctions against Iran. Nor does it help that Russian President Vladimir Putin has increasingly played the strongman, cracking down on the press or any other group with the courage to question his leadership. It may be enough to make a superpower think carefully about the company it keeps.
The National Counterterrorism Center tracks cases of terrorist activity around the world in its annual Report on Incidents of Terrorism [ http://wits.nctc.gov/Reports.do ], available on its Web site. Lee Hamilton, Bruce Hoffman, Paul Pillar, and other terrorism experts assess the progress of the war on terror in State of the Struggle: Report on the Battle Against Global Terrorism [ http://www.amazon.com/State-Struggle-Report-Against-Terrorism/dp/0815734115 ] (Washington: Council on Global Terrorism, 2006).
The Terrorism Index is based on the results of a survey designed by the Center for American Progress and FOREIGN POLICY. Participants in the survey were selected by FOREIGN POLICY and the Center for American Progress for their expertise in terrorism and U.S. national security. No one currently working in an official U.S. government capacity was invited to participate.
The nonscientific survey was administered online from May 23 to July 4, 2007. In the survey, respondents were asked to self-identify their ideological bias from choices across a spectrum: very conservative, conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, somewhat liberal, liberal, and very liberal. Twenty-five people identified themselves as some level of conservative, 39 identified as moderate, and 44 identified as some level of liberal. In order to ensure balance, the survey was weighted according to ideology to make the number of weighted liberal respondents equal to the number of conservative respondents. Moderate and conservative respondents remained unweighted.
Survey Participants
Madeleine Albright, Jon Alterman, John Arquilla, Ron Asmus, Scott Atran, Andrew Bacevich, Rand Beers, Dan Benjamin, Peter Bergen, Ilan Berman, Mia Bloom, Philip Bobbitt, Joseph Bouchard, Jarret Brachman, Paul Bremer, Matthew Bunn, Daniel Byman, Kurt Campbell, Ted Carpenter, Ashton Carter, Joseph Cirincione, Richard Clarke, Steve Coll, Roger Cressey, Sheba Crocker, PJ Crowley, Matthew Devost, Larry Diamond, Dana Dillon, Jim Dobbins, Daniel Drezner, Lawrence Eagleburger, R.P. Eddy, Robert Einhorn, Michael Eisenstadt, Ivan Eland, Clark Ervin, John Esposito, Douglas Farah, Michelle Flournoy, Steve Flynn, James Forest, William Frenzel, Aaron Friedberg, Jay Garner, Gregory Gause, Leslie Gelb, Fawaz Gerges, William Gertz, Larry Goodson, Slade Gorton, Mort Halperin, Gary Hart, Bruce Hoffman, John Hulsman, Jo Husbands, Robert Hutchings, Michael Jacobson, Larry Johnson, Robert Kagan, Kenneth Katzman, Geoffrey Kemp, Bob Kerrey, Daryl Kimball, Christopher Kojm, Lawrence Korb, Charles Kupchan, Anthony Lake, Anatol Lieven, Thomas Lippman, Jane Holl Lute, Robert Malley, Thomas Marks, John McCarthy, Mary McCarthy, Michael McFaul, Doris Meissner, Steve Metz, Bill Nash, Vali Nasr, William Odom, Charles Pena, Paul Pillar, Daniel Pipes, Christopher Preble, Charles Pritchard, David Rapoport, Susan Rice, Bruce Riedel, Barnett Rubin, Marc Sageman, Michael Scheuer, Steve Simon, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Gayle Smith, James Steinberg, Jessica Stern, Ray Takeyh, Raymond Tanter, Shibley Telhami, Jack Vessey, Edward Walker, Stephen Walt, William Wechsler, Lawrence Wilkerson, Jim Woolsey, Dov Zakheim, Jim Zogby
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