State Department Disowns Its April Terror Report

The State Department has had to back track on a report it issued in April that claimed the US was winning the war on terrorism. The report maintained that there were fewer attacks recently than in the past. Secretary of State Colin Powell now says that isn't so. Does that mean the US is losing the war on terror? No, it means the administration doesn't know how to measure what it's doing, something far worse.

The report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism," said that there were 190 terror attacks in 2003, the lowest number since 1969. However, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) protested rather loudly a couple of months ago that this was plain wrong. And so it is. Richard Boucher, a spokesman for Secretary Powell, told the press that a revised version of the report, relying on better, more reliable data, will show "a sharp increase" in both the number of attacks and fatalities in 2003.

What is most troubling here is the quantitative approach to the matter. For a generation, social scientists have fallen into the trap of counting things the way natural scientists do. Only in economics does this remotely resemble a reasonable approach. Qualitative differences are vital in the war against terrorism, if indeed, that is what the US is waging.

The Easter Rebellion in Ireland and the violence that led up to it was, by most measures, terrorist in content. The Bader-Meinhof and Brigade Rossi nihilism was also murderously violent. Yet in no meaningful way were these comparable from a military or political standpoint. Michael Collins and Eamonn de Valera were prepared to negotiate, and even lay down their arms once their objectives were achieved. The 1970s rich-kid terrorists had no interest in true political change. They just wanted to rant.

The White House approach can't tell the difference between the two. The resulting policy will remain, to put it charitably, less than optimal until that changes. Still, it is wise to recall that the next time the Bush White House claims to be making progress against terrorism, its methods as well as its facts are under suspicion.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


Home