OPinionated-EDitorial

After all the sound and fury of the
past few years, how is the U.S. doing in
its fight against terrorism?
Not too well, according to a recent
survey of more than 100 highly re-
spected foreign policy and national se-
curity experts. The survey, dubbed
the "Terrorism Index," was conduct-
ed by the Center for American
Progress and Foriegn Policy maga-
zine. The respondents included Re-
publicans and Democrats, moderates,
liberals and conservatives.
The survey's findings were striking.
A strong, bipartisan consensus
emerged on two crucial points: 84 per-
cent of the respondents said the Unit-
ed States was not winning the war on
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terror and 86 percent said the world
was becoming more – not less – dan-
gerous for Americans.
The sound and fury since Sept. 11,
2001 -- the chest-thumping and mus-
cle-flexing, the freedom fries, the Pa-
triot Act, the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, the breathtaking expansion of
presidential power, Guantanamo, ren-
dition, the expenditure of hundreds of
billions of dollars – seems to have
signifies very little.
An article on the survey, in the
July/August edition of Foreign Policy,
said of the respondents, "They see a
national security apparatus in disre-
pair and a government that is failing
to protect the public from the next at-
tack." More than 8 in 10 of the re-
spondents said they believed an at-
tack in the U.S. on the scale of Sept.11
was likely within the next five years.
Many of the respondents played im-
portant national security roles in the
government over the past few dec-
ades. They included Lawrence Eagle-
burger, who served as secretary of
state under George H. W. Bush; An-
thony Lake, a national security advis-
er to Bill Clinton; James Woolsey, a

former director of the Central Intelli-
gence Agency; Richard Clarke, who
served as counterterrorism czar in
the Clinton and George W. Bush ad-
ministrations and was in that post on
Sept.11th; and Lawrence Korb, an as-
sistant secretary of defense under
Ronald Reagan.
————
Experts' view of the
antiterror effort.
————
Noted academics and writers who
specialized in foreign policy and na-
tional security matters also partici-
pated in the survey.
"Respondents," according to a re-
ports that accompanied the survey,
"sharply criticized U.S. efforts in a
number of key areas of national secu-
rity, including public diplomacy, intel-
ligence and homeland security. Near-
ly all of the departmants and agencies
responsible for fighting the war on
terror received poor marks.

"The experts also said that recent
reforms of the national security appa-
ratus have done little to make Ameri-
cans safer. Asked about recent efforts
to reform America's intelligence com-
munity, for instance, more than creating
the office of the director of national in-
telligence has had no positive impact
in the war against terror."
The respondents seemed, essential-
ly, to be saying that the U.S. needs to
be smarter (less like a bull in a china
shop) in its efforts to combat terror-
ism. "Foreign policy experts have
never been in so much agreement
about an administration's perform-
ance abroad," said Leslie Geib, presi-
dent emeritus of the Council on For-
eign Relations and a participant in the
survey. "The reason is that it's clear
to nearly all that Bush and his team
have had a totally unrealistic view of
what they can accomplish with mil-
itary force and threats of force."
The respondents stressed the im-
portance of ending America's depend-
ence on foreign oil, saying that could
prove to be "the single most pressing
priority in winning the war on terror."

Eighty-two percent of the respondents
said that ending the dependence on
foriegn oil should have a higher priori-
ty, and nearly two-thirds said the
country's current energy policies
were making matters worse, not bet-
ter.
"We borrow a billion dollars every
working day to import oil, an increas-
ing share of it coming from the Middle
East," said Mr. Woolsey, the former
C.I.A. director.
The respondents also said it was
crucially important for the U.S. to en-
gage in a battle of ideas as part of a
sustained effort to bring about a re-
jection of radical ideologies in the Is-
lamic world. That kind of battle re-
quires more of a reliance on diplo-
macy and other nonmilitary tools.
If the respondents to this survey are
correct, the U.S. needs to be moving in
an entirely different direction. The
war against terror cannot be won by
bombing the enemy into submission.
The bull in the china shop may be
frightening at first, but after a while
it's just enraging. We need a better,
smarter way.

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