War On Terror. Success or Failure?

Nor in how many years before 9/11. Also Boston, underwear bomber (let on plane), shoe bomber (let on plane), New York (ddidn't go off). If it wasnt amature hour things would be worse. Damned if we don't (*)(*)(*)(*) with normal people though.

 

It is failing because we have chosen to fight it with one hand tied behind our backs and our heads seated in our backsides.

 

I'd say its an overall major failure with a few successes thrown in along the way.

considering the thousand of American lives lost, hundreds of thousands of civilian lives lost, a couple trillion bucks pissed away, providing terrorist recruitment ads, the creation of terrorist " global brands", a substantive restriction of liberties and rights, etc., I don't see how anyone can call it a success.


War on Terror - bust - way more of them doing way more killing, raping and pillaging in way more places.

Just like:

War on Drugs - bust - more users, failed narco states, narco terrorists, huge untaxed revenue and more jailed junkies and potheads by order of magnitude than anywhere else on the planet

Even the damn war on Christmas has been a massive fa..... oh right.

 

Way to troll a thread.

 

Gratefully accept accolades from an expert.

 

You should look up he data on the number of hard core Al Qaeda at the beginning of the Bush area and at the end of the Bush presidency. Will give you some idea of the actual results of his two wars.

What you can actually blame on Obama, and the rest of the Democratic world is that the trend did not change.

 

Yes,it was a failure the minute we went into Iraq,based on lies such as WMD's, the oil will pay for the war,( Paul Wolfowitz testifying to Congress,) getting rid of all the Iraqi Military,( creating ISIS,) proclaiming the war over two months later,etc.

Have I missed anything?

 

I already have, of the top ten leaders of Al Qaeda on 9-11-01, eight were either captured or killed during the Bush administration including the mastermind of 9/11,
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. You remember the mastermind of 9/11 the guy who organized, oversaw and saw that the attacks were carried out on 9/11 ?

When he was captured in 2003 he was waterboraded and the bleeding hearts types went
But it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who gave up information that led to OBL carrier that led to finding OBL.

The top ten leaders of Al Qaeda on 9-11-01, #1, OBL and #9 were killed during the Obama administration.

What disturbed me was that there were so many who thought that the war against Al Qaeda was all about Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden was so hot that he was forced into early retirement and was no longer with in the Al Qaeda loop by 2003.

 

The number of leaders captured or killed has nothing to do with the growth of terrorism as you well know. Nice try though.

 

Yes, you missed the assumption that a Democracy could easily be established after the war and that this Democracy would prove to be the model that would provide the impetus for the entire middle east becoming Democratic.

 

Tell that to Obama and those who thought the war against terrorism was all about Osama bin Laden.

 

Good so you agree that your post had nothing to do with the growth of terrorism worldwide. Trying to divert every discussion to you problem with Obama is not really going to work.

 

What difference does it make? A terrorist attack is a terrorist attack. And even if you want to split hairs between domestic and foreign, the Tsarnaevs learned terrorist tactics when they traveled to Chechnya.

 

The Obama administrations failed policies are directly responsible for the increase size of terrorism and expansion of jihadist in the Arab world.

When Obama took office Al Qaeda was checked and confined in Yemen and the Horn of Africa. Today they are openly operating in almost every country in the Middle East and North Africa. Al Qaeda and it's splinter groups like ISIS are larger and more dangerous today than in January of 2009.

How could that be ?

Well Obama policies have been what favors radical Islam not what favors America. 70% of American troops who were killed in Afghanistan were killed during the Obama administration Why ? because Obama forced politically correct rules of engagement on our troops that favor the enemy and caused American troops to bleed and die.

In early 2012 the CIA warned the Obama administration that intelligence on Al Qaeda and other radical jihadist organizations was drying up. That all of the intelligence that the Obama administration was relying on was gathered during the G.W. Bush administration not during the Obama administration.

How could that be ?

Well Obama along with Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice and of course Hillary Clinton have been micromanaging the war against the Islamist and have refused to listen to the intelligence and military community. The Obama policy was not to capture high ranking members of Al Qaeda to gather intelligence but to kill them with hellfire missiles.

Why do such a stupid thing ? Because Obama didn't have a place to hold these captured terrorist, he didn't want to add any more terrorist to the Club Gitmo population. Name just one Al Qaeda member who has been sent to Gitmo during the past six years ? ZERO ( 0 ) Not one. Because no high ranking member of Al Qaeda has been captured in the past six years.

Even Leon Panetta has said that the intelligence that led to killing Osama bin Laden was gathered during the Bush administration not the Obama administration. When OBL location was found, three times Navy SEAL's were ordered to stand down. Only one person had the authority to order these SEAL's to stand down. The mission was finally dropped in Leon Panetta's lap and he dropped it on Admiral McRaven's lap who gave the SEAL's the order to go in and kill OBL. Obama was out of the loop, he was on the golf course when he got word that the Navy SEAL's had just entered Pakistan air space.

This is where Muammar Gaddafie enters the picture, in 2003 Libya became an ally of the USA and the UK. Gaddafi took over the enhanced interrogation of captured islamist extremest for the CIA. But since Obama refused to capture Al Qaeda to gather intelligence he had no purpose for Gaddafi and threw Gaddafi under the bus.

As most of us already know, Obama just isn't the # 1 gun salesman seven years in a row in America but also the # 1 gun dealer in the world. Be it arming the drug cartels in Mexico (Fast and Furious) or opening a Guns R Us in Benghazi, Libya (American consulate) taking former Gaddafi's guns and weapons and arming Al Qaeda in Syria.

 

Suggest you research the number of terrorist incidents by year to see if your theory that terrorism was checked worldwide at the end of the Bush administration is supported by the facts. Hint, it is not.

 

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Not necessarily true. A base of operation is critical for any organization. Take the PLO for example. They were forced out of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Eventually, they settled in Gaza but even there, they fractionated into Al Fatah and Hamas and battled amongst themselves.
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But terrorism is not an organization. Terrorist groups may be called organizations but clearly there is more than one and the number and scope seems to be rising.

 

Just to throw a few facts into the discussion here is a link to the number of deaths due to terrorist activities by year

http://www.statista.com/statistics/202871/number-of-fatalities-by-terrorist-attacks-worldwide/

 

From an American perspective? A success ...

The purpose of a war is to reduce to zero the damages to your territory, population, geopolitical interests ...

In the last decade the United States have done quite well in this with a significant reduce of the capability of the enemy to hit in the United States. To win a war you don't need to erase the enemy, but to defeat it [US didn't erase Germany, Italy or Japan ...]. The war is still in progress, but making a balance I would say it's quite successful.

 

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Obama is a war monger but no less of one than Reagan, Clinton or Bush. Each one added layer after layer war-like policies and actions that exponentially helped terrorists organizations grow. Assigning singular blame to one president, however contemptuous his foreign policy is, ludicrous. According to this article by foreignpolicy.com; " The GOP would like to blame the current mess on U.S. President Barack Obama, but U.S. Middle East policy is a bipartisan (*)(*)(*)(*)-up going back more than 20 years."

The war on terror has been an complete, total and abject failure....except for the military industrial complex, who are gleefully raking in billions of dollars in profits.
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Absolute failure, just like the War on Drugs.

 

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I agree, "terrorism" is a concept. So how does one fight a "concept?" The US apparently thinks that war and the killing of 1.3 million people is the way to do it.
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Twas Obama's failure to properly negotiate or to really even try to negotiate a residual force agreement with Iraq. Twas also Obama that aided in Destabilization North Africa. Mostly it appears because he has trouble separating friend from foe and fact from fiction.

 

Some people judge success by only absolute success. Nothing is absolute.

If the war on drugs saved many lives and kept tons upon tons of drugs off the street, why isnt that a success.
Same with the war on terror or anything else. The war on terror has stopped terrorist acts and it does give us early warnings on many other incidetns. Success needs to be measured on what good it does, not whether its perfect or not

 

Ethereal wrote: “In your opinion, has the U.S. so-called "war on terrorism" been a success or a failure? Based on the results, I am inclined to believe it has been a failure.”

You’re right of course. In of itself and in the broader context of foreign policy. That said, while this war has failed you & I, has it failed Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics? They’d toast global peace? If not perpetual conflict, what exactly does their business model thrive on? U.S. foreign policy isn’t about peace & democracy, nor its failure the fault of one party or the other. You may find this to be of interest, which pertains to U.S. foreign policy. This cites an internal document that was kept classified for years, written in 1948 by George Kennan, Head of the Planning Bureau of the US Department of State:

A country of interest, Egypt, was discussed to some length earlier in thread. This is from a Condi Rice speech, in Cairo, back in 2005:

So, a dove in the Truman administration, at the dawn of the modern empire, and a conservative some 60 years later. Utter failure & yet, the superpower has continued its same policy for, well, what is now 70 years! If instability and oppression are not the objective then why has the U.S. continued a policy that renders precisely this outcome? The question isn’t whether the war on terror or foreign policy has failed, but whether equitable outcomes were ever the intention to begin with. With respect to Egypt, you may recall that several years ago when Mubarak was supposedly toppled by an uprising, it was revealed where much of that military aid ended up. Warehouses filled with unused battle tanks and even fighter jets. Just a number of days ago it was reported that Obama lifted the freeze on weapon transfers and military aid to Egypt even though mass arrests & torture still goes on there, just as it did under Mubarak.

We’re talking about a country where some 40% of the population lives on just $2.00 a day. You tell me, when does a superpower that’s all about human rights shift from sending a bunch of sophisticated weaponry to social uplift? Below are two articles, one pertains to the financing & Mubarak’s hidden wealth. The two stories don’t have anything to do with each other, but you’ll see how the west is connected to both:

Clearly, this isn’t an alliance you’d see. And this is hardly the only source linking the empire to the support of radical fundamentalists. So the counter-argument has to either discredit the sources or explain why such an arrangement would exist. When those arguments fail, and they always do, you’re left with following the money. You’re left questioning plausible deniability, “unintended consequences” or incompetence. Once, maybe twice, but over & over & over for 70 years? No… This last one is a good read, about how such oppressive regimes hide their stolen wealth.

Often disregarded are these vague but profound euphemisms like “private banking”, every bit the same as black or offshore accounts. The actual names, the transactions to & from, the timing & implications of such, all black & virtually beyond authoritative reach. Indeed, it’s naively assumed that the extreme wealth these two-bit thugs steal is solely theirs. It makes sense that some of it is meant to be recovered. Note the link to the perceived legitimate international banking system. Its integrity isn’t usurped somehow by petty dictators & druglords, unable to prevent these villains from doing so. Such practices emanate from the top of the system, not from the fringe of it. We’re often left having to deduce that the international banking system is complicit. To my mind, it makes greater sense that the lowly despot is the tool of immense hidden wealth & thus power.