Don't reinforce me ;)

I can't believe that some of you don’t think TWAT is worth it!

I love TWAT and would fight for it any day!

(The War Against Terrorism)! LOL!

the saying "violence begets violence" springs to mind.

It is appalling that people get so desperate, unhinged, brainwashed, driven to duty, matryed or whatever description that you can put on it from whatever viewpoint you have, that kills children and creates intolerable suffering.

No matter what cause it is too high a price to pay.

When you look at how historically unsuccessful terrorism is in achieving the objective of the perpetrators, you wonder why it keeps happening.


violence begets violence

GingerV,

The RAND-MIPT Terrorism Incident Database inclusion criteria were easier to get to. Should have started there. Each incident is separate. Aggregation is performed by the queries.

http://www.rand.org/psj/rand-mipt.html

The "Understanding the Terrorism Database" PDF http://www.mipt.org/pdf/miptbulletinq1-2002.pdf includes some graphs on page 5 which, to my eye, restate the political and economic patterns I suggested in an earlier post.

As to what the data may or may not support: In general, theories may be disproved by facts, not proved. To assert that the WOT has failed, or that its central concepts are in error, is to assert that there exists corroborating data to that effect. This is not at all the same as claiming that the data fails to support the WOT. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

GingerV,

In re Post #82, point #2: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3664838.stm

Hi! My DSL at home has had itself a little neurotic breakdown, and my live-in computer expert is off in the states and won't be back till later this week. And I don't log in from work (well, now, obviously...but not regularly ;) ). I'm not ignoring you (or the links, or any of it)....but I'm not gonna get to it immediately. Many appologies, I do appreciate you doing the footwork.

And Bel, Hon, I know Chomsky's a linguist...that's the only thing that made it funny. Guess I failed ;).

Lil, I can't imagine a room or discussion you wouldn't be welcomed in on any terms you cared to participate. If such a place exists, I'm not sure I'd want to be there ;). Hijack at your will, I for one am happy to play around you as well as through.

G

Oh the excitement of generative linguistics - I don't suppose anyone remembers the cunning liguist song?

I think that treating an issue in terms of the pros and cons does display an understanding of the greyness and the acceptance of the consequences seen and unseen.

From an outsider's perspective I see Mr. Kerry getting himself in a pickle because he is trying to deal with the difficult issues whilst good ole George Dubya is keeping it straight black and white.

Upon reflection I would like to know whether there was clear and imminent danger either from WMD (pretty much 100% proven not) and/or support for terrorism. I don't think that there was and so I am coming to the conclusion that we were a little impetuous to get in there and settle old scores, grab the oil etc etc.

Tactically and with 20/20 hindsight it may have been better to sort out other terrorist issues first. So now we have the lunatic fringe coming into Iraq from outside and beheading old civil engineers who are there solely to rebuild the place.

I am afraid that we will be looking at a Northern Ireland situation in that it may take a generation to resolve the issues. I think Jseal made a good point about the correlation between economics and terrorism and so I would be rebuilding the economic infrastructure and providing excellent schools and further education facilities - you want their young people to have something more to hope for in life than the martyrdom of a suicide bomb.

With this line of reasoning terrousism must be all right then to becasue it has been used for many many year sffectively too.

Read that I'm not sure if I've ever seen anyone back peddle so fast in my life "well he did't have any BUT HE WAS PLANNING ON GETTING SOME ya ya thats our story and we are sticking to it"

OK, I'm back. And while this thread has been quiet and I hate to restart a discussion folks have lost interest in, I did promise a reply. I'll give it...and not mourn if the thread stays dead. ;)

Jseal, if it's ok by you I'll keep things organized the way we had it before. Makes it simple.

1) Is Terror showing any signs of decreasing...thanks for digging up the info, but I'm starting to think they render the graphs we were talking about damned near useless. They're collapsing across all sorts of terrorist groups and incidents, and while the administration is horribly myopic about Terror (they usually mean terrorist acts of Muslim extremists) I'm not sure it's a good idea to look at overgeneralized data. Specifically, I think it's hurtful to your cause more than mine. You might lose a real decrease in the noise of all the different clashes, if you follow me. So I think we may well be back at square one. The graphs on page 5 of the Understanding Terrorism Database _are_ interesting, but they're just a snapshot from 6 months in 2001 (before the current WOT could be considered to have much of an impact). I think they may well bear on a discussion of why people become terrorists, but don't have much to do with this question. Still, it's finally resolved in my mind how such international/domestic distinctions are made in Israel.

2)

Respectfully, I think I can trace its birthday back to well before the WMDs weren't found...I can trace it back to before we invaded (unless you count Blix's work as failure to find WMD...the administration doesn't, I kind of do). And I really don't feel the presentation of this as a transparant fallback in any way dismisses Iraq from the discussion of the WOT. That very attitude (theirs I mean, not yours) IS part of the problem.

Because the Iraqi invasion was justified by the WOT, Bush's WOT is now contaminated in the eyes of the world. The sins we commit in Iraq not only make the WOT harder for us to win, or even progress in...they make it impossible for this president to be taken seriously when he stands in front of the UN and suggests we all work together. They can't be seperated, just not for the reasons that the administration would have had us believe.



Yeah, I saw that. You know....if I hadn't been listening to experts jump up and down screaming that the administration was wrong before we invaded, I'd be a lot more impressed with their aw shucks routine now. I'm not surprised they found nothing, and after all their assertions and "we know stuff you don't know, so trust us to make the right decisions" nonsense...their attitude now just seems disingenuous. IF we went to war over WMDs, and were wrong, we owe a serious appology. IF we went to war over terrorist connections in Iraq, and we're wrong (and you and I agree we are, at least), then we owe a serious appology. IF those weren't the reasons we went to war...what the hell are we doing over there?

2.5

Iraq screwed up. They hid the nonexistent so they didn't look like the weakest country in the region. It was a painfully stupid thing to do. But I don't think you answered the question. There WAS evidence that they were hiding a whole lot of nothing. Blix said that the inspections were progressing at the time the UN was forced to withdraw its inspectors to get them out of the way of American bombs. Were we justified in ignoring that evidence?

3. Afghanistan.

OK, I'm puzzled. I know you're not suggesting that General Franks had nothing to do with organizing the attacks of the Northern Alliance. And I know you're not suggesting that our bombing campaign (which, by the way, dropped a hell of a lot of bad news on places other than the Tora Bora caves) was in no way responsible for the ousting of the Taliban. And I'm sure you're not suggesting that 1000 US ground troops were necessary for the final taking of Khandahar, or that we don't still have troops on the ground in Afghanistan. But what I'm not sure of is what this had to do with my inital question. Were our actions in Afghanistan an effective way to promulgate the War on Terror? I don't think you're suggesting that the invasion of Afghanistan, like that of Iraq, had nothing to do with the War on Terror...but if by some chance I'm wrong here...what on earth does count as part of the WOT?

Like I said above...I'm not trying to drag this back into the light of day if folks have had enough of it. But Jseal went to a hell of a lot of work on my behalf, and I wanted to make sure he knew I appreciated the effort and wasn't abandoning it. Feel free to ignore this entirely, or pm me if you want to keep it going away from prying eyes ;).

G

Gentlefolk,

I am very busy at the moment.

Booger, I apologize for the misleading post #95. The reason I posted it was so that no one wasted effort about “may be, or perhaps”. The presumed WMDs were not found.

GingerV, I will respond to your points.

GingerV,

Thank you for you patience.

In re the data sets. You have identified points where you remain unpersuaded by what I have presented as corroborating evidence. Fair enough. I will grant you that the incident count’s negative trend line in the “good times” (1989 – 1997) is qualified by the casualties’ (fatality & injury) positive one. I do consider the incident count to be a more useful measure of the institution that casualty count, but not everyone agrees with me. I will repeat that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That the data may fail to provide a compelling vindication of the WOT does in no way identify failure. Vigil hints at that by pointing out the brief interval involved. To substantiate your assertion that the WOT is a failure you would need to provide data of similar quality.

My point that terrorism as an institution was growing during the period 1969-1989 has gone unchallenged. Silence implies assent. If one agrees that terrorism as an institution was growing, then I suggest that acts of terrorism have a nature which calls for a “when will there be a response” rather than “if”. About the only people who would disagree with me would be terrorists and their supporters.

I have suggested before that political and economic liberalization are the preferred long term tools to use. They are not the only tools. As Vullkan has observed, when dealing with committed, dedicated terrorists, there may be no way of resolving the conflict other than by force of arms. While it is possible for reasonable people to disagree, it is dangerous to disagree with someone who can characterised as unreasonable. People who kill women and children as political statements are, in my estimation, unreasonable.

Conflicts which play out over extended periods have both near and long term goals. As the al-Qaeda organization is a committed foe of the US, and one which has a history of violence, then one near term goal would be to reduce its operational effectiveness. A long term goal would be to change the economic and political context from which it currently draws support. Destroying the facilities al-Qaeda uses to train its operatives seems like a reasonable near term thing to do. Replacing the intolerant, fanatical, inhumane, and misogynist government of the Taliban with a democratic one seems to be a reasonable medium term goal.

It seems that you and I will be unable to agree about the causus belli for the invasion of Iraq. The action in Afghanistan was justified by the WOT. That was, and remains a distinct conflict from the one in Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was based upon the purported existence of Iraq’s existing WMDs and their development programs. This was certainly the case here in the States, and, as my home page has been http://news.bbc.co.uk/ for quite some time, I recall quite clearly that HM Government’s support for the action was also based upon the WMD theory, not the WOT.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3864301.stm

The Right Honorable Straw’s “45 minute” comments were about WMDs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3479801.stm

Lord Hutton’s review into the suicide of Dr. Kelly was, in part, due to the allegations that the Iraq dossier was “sexed up” to make the case of invasion more strongly. It turn’s out that the Beeb was wrong.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3437315.stm

That there were, ultimately, no WMDs, does not change the record. The position that the invasion of Iraq was based on the WOT does not jibe with the record.

Given that the subjects under debate, WMDs, I find that Mr. Blix’s position, where the Iraqi government did, over a period of many years, repeatedly thwart the goals of agents sent to execute the terms of documents to which the Iraqi government was a signatory, indefensible. The Hussein regime had a documented history of using chemical munitions on both its own and foreign nationals. It subsequently thwarted the inspectors’ efforts to verify that it had indeed disposed itself of them. The earlier Israeli bombing of the Osiris nuclear reactor prevented that same regime from realizing its stated goal of developing nuclear weapons. The responsibility for the prompt resolution of the inspections always lay in the hands of the Iraqi government.

Circumstances change cases. Had the US and HM governments received reliable reports that WMD programs had been discovered in, say, Denmark, the myriad contradictory data points would justify a leisurely approach to addressing what would be difficult to believe. Shift your focus to Baghdad. With a murderous background documented repeatedly over many years, would you recommend according Saddam Hussein the same accommodations as you would Danish Prime Minister Anders Rasmussen?

If you check, I believe that you will find that the majority of the bombs dropped by US & British aircraft in Afghanistan were dropped on the Taliban government armed forces. This was done to facilitate the success of the Afghans of the Northern Alliance. There was no “flat out invasion of Afghanistan”. The ground war was fought and won by Afghans.

Yes. Buy replacing a government which overtly supported al-Qaeda with one which does not, the War on Terrorism was advanced.

Obviously I speak from a Marine point of view however for thise who question our invasion of Iraq, what happened to all those folks who said we will never let genocide happen again after world war II . He was a weapon of mass destruction he killed thousands of his own people and yes we should be in Sudan however since the almighty great United Nations chooses not to help guess those poor folks will have to wat a while. Freedom is precious fight for it

The death of Amjad Farooqi in a gun battle with police yesterday is another defeat for terrorism. He is reported as having been not only Pakistan’s most wanted terror suspect, but also a significant al-Qaeda authority in that country.

Similarly, Israel’s killing of Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil, by a car bomb in Damascus, compromises the effectiveness of Hamas, another terrorist organization.

The deaths of these senior terrorist coordinators will not, of course, in and of themselves stop terrorism. Their deaths will, however, reduce the effectiveness of the respective terrorist organizations.

[QUOTE=jseal I will grant you that the incident count’s negative trend line in the “good times” (1989 – 1997) is qualified by the casualties’ (fatality & injury) positive one.[/quote]

Actually, that wasn't my point at all. My point was that the numbers between 1989 and 1997 aren't relevant. We didn't start this doctrine of pre-emptive defense until 2001. All previous numbers (ALL of them) serve only as a baseline. And they're only useful insofar as the situation surrounding them is stable. As I said initially, these raw numbers are just not terribly useful in complex analyses.



I think they're each differently informative, eww....don't lke my new phrase...but I'm gonna leave it.



Not technically. The null hypothesis (you're a stats man, right? I'm not trying to blind you with jargon) is that there is an effect. You can't prove a negative...I can never prove an absense of effect, you've given me an unreasonable standard. A statistician would demand that the test be to prove the null hypothesis, something you agree that the stats as we have them have failed to do. The conclusion then is that the WOT has not YET had a positive effect on terror. That it may have a long range effect is possible, but there are arguments both for and against it...you're failling to weigh both. Or if you are, you've made a conclusion behind the scenes. Cool, but I weigh the evidence differently. My interpretation is that it will get worse.

So what makes this different than a conflict about who's gonna win the world series? I DO have evidence of extrodinary costs, and we agree there is as yet no evidence of benefit. I do biomedical research, and we're very careful to remember that sometimes a short range cost/benefit analysis can be misleading (chemo)...but we also have the option to test the treatments before administering them to large populations. Here, we have to be more careful...we can't just "try this conventional warfare approach" in order to be seen to be doing something in case it works. We have to have the evidence of effect to justify the cost and counterbalance the contrasting expectations.



Find me someplace I said we shouldn't be dealing with it? I said that conventional warfare was counterproductive. It's the wrong paradigm.



I don't think you MEANT to call me a terrorist supporter, so I won't quite tell you to go screw yourself. That was very nearly over the line.




And when the political statement is "don't mess with the USA?"



Hell, Hon...you and the president don't seem able to agree about the cause of that particular invasion. But as much as you want to disown it, I think you're stuck with it. One of the costs of fighting this war on a tactic is that the war fervor will be misused.

Something else I'm not sure we agree on. the Taliban were awful, we agree on that. But one of the dangers in your approach is that you confuse promulgating democracy with erradicating terrorism. Did we do a good thing? Not clear yet. Has it fixed the terror problem? Not clear yet.

I know you want to believe it's working...but reading me the list of why it should work isn't the same as demonstrating that it has. Especially when you refuse to admit that the WOT is the best damned recruiting tool the terrorist camps have ever had. The US intelligence community says so. I can give you a stack of reports hip high that tell me why all sorts of my experiments should have worked. Right up to the point where they didn't.



OK, short of drowning you in old news stories, I'm obviously not going to convince you that the whitehouse has had a connection between Iraq and the WOT since long before they invaded. Go reread the pre-war state of the union, Cheney's speaches...or just look at the way that FOX is reporting it. If the word Iraq comes out of the talking head's mouth...WOT is on the screen. And yes, because the whitehouse isn't jumping up and down saying "no no no, they're not the same thing" I do hold them responsible for FOX.

But it's more than that, you're just plain wrong. That same day Powell stood up in front of the UN with the pictures of trucks passing warehouses and claimed it was intelligence, he had a flowchart showing how Hussein had indirect ties with Al Queda. I was NOT the only person playing "seven degrees of Kevin Bacon/Sadam Hussein" that week, did you miss it?

We were worried he had them. That they could reach England. AND THAT HE WOULD SELL THEM TO TERRORISTS. Go reread the transcripts when you're done with the state of the union. I remember the whole thing being clearly reported by the BBC, don't know how you missed it.




I read your references. They aren't ANY of them relevant. No, there are no WMD in Iraq. We know that. We agree on that. But reiterating it doesn't change the fact that there are issues those articles weren't addressing. You're going round the houses, and missing the point.




With weapons inspectors on the ground, in the country, saying the job was getting done and that it would take them another 12 months? Yes. Yes I would have waited. For the record, rhetorical questions are only really effective in sermons.




Yes. We bombed them. But there WERE Americans on the ground for many of the final battles....there are still Americans there now. I don't know who you're quoting about "flat out" battles...it wasn't my phrase. We directed the war. We dropped bombs. We orchestrated a change in power. We're still there trying to stabalize the government. You want to tell the families of the troops who died there we weren't "really" involved?




Along THAT dimension. But possibly not in the grand scheme, if you look at the bigger picture. By giving them the propaganda they so very much wanted, our victory was pyrhic at best.

Look...I get that you don't agree with me. But please don't think I'm failing to understand your points. I do understand them, and I think you're right about some of them, as far as they go. But I don't think you're letting the whole picture be part of the discussion. In my world, we'd say you were cherry picking your data to get the conclusions you wanted. Unless you're willing to admit the possibility that your theory is wrong after all....you're not really being fair to the subject.

I'm willing to admit that down the road this might work. But I have NO evidence to believe that outcome is likely. There is evidence that it isn't working the way we expected. And whether you admit that the war in Iraq is linked with the WOT, you HAVE to admit that the terrorists are using it to justify their actions...if we didn't link it, they sure as hell did. The long term benefits are NOT guranteed, and the short term costs are too big to justify continuing the methods we've chosen. If there was evidence that ON THE WHOLE the approach was working, well....I think you're still morally on shakey ground. But at least you'ld have pragmatic support. Now you've got neither.

In any case, I think we've reached the tail chasing part of our program. I'll relinquish the last word to you. PM me if you want to continue on anything specific.

G