According to this 2014 report by the Nation, US Special Operations forces are currently deployed in more than 100 countries, roughly 60 percent of the nations on the planet. The clandestine war has spread well beyond the Middle East; it’s now fully globalized.
We’re fighting what Mark Danner, author of Spiral, calls a “forever war.” Fifteen years into the “war on terror,” we appear no closer to ending it than when we started. Worse, it’s not even clear what “ending it” would look like. We’re battling a constellation of ideas, not a conventional army, and there are no final victories in metaphysical conflicts. [...]
Even more fundamentally, we have to ask if we’ve compromised our values along the way. We’ve tortured prisoners, assassinated American citizens, circumscribed basic rights and freedoms — all in the name security. Has it worked? Were there more prudent alternatives? Is there an end in sight? These are but a few of the many difficult questions posed by Danner. [...]
I think if you could get people in the Bush administration to talk honestly, they might well argue that if things had turned out the way they thought it would, it would have been a political, not a military, response to terrorism. Condoleezza Rice actually said that what they hoped to do was create a model that would deter young men from driving airplanes into buildings. She was thinking of a new Iraq as a kind of political model that would be a response to jihadist terrorism. [...]
Well, John Kerry's experience in the 2004 election suggests the answer to that question is yes. Recall that he argued terrorism would never be eliminated and simply had to be reduced to the level of a nuisance. He was right, of course, but he was lambasted for saying that, and it cost him dearly. Indeed, one could argue that it was a leaked recording of [Osama] bin Laden that circulated a week or so before the election that ultimately cost him the presidency. In any case, it certainly hurt. [...]
Most importantly, we've increased the threat. I think it's incontestable that the number of jihadists and the number of attacks have only increased. As I said at the beginning, you could argue that we've protected the country, but that's a very shortsighted view. [...]
I think there's very little evidence that we're winning. As I said, the only evidence that you can give is defensive in nature: The number of successful attacks on the homeland has been small since 9/11, and the ones that did succeed were relatively minor. But that's not a very compelling case when you consider how few attacks we endured before 9/11.
Now, have our efforts been worth the cost? That's hard to quantify. How do you quantify the costs of Guantanamo? How do you quantify the reputational costs of Abu Ghraib? The US has lost an enormous amount of prestige when it comes to arguments about human rights and the liberal world order.
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