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You may be playing "devil's advocate" here (and I thought of the same thing), but what about the complete lack of terrorist activity BEFORE 9/11 when we presuma

You may be playing "devil's advocate" here (and I thought of the same thing), but what about the complete lack of terrorist activity BEFORE 9/11 when we presumably weren't spending as much money?

hga 16y ago
What about the earlier bombing of the WTC? If you go beyond the CONUS, the string of al-Qaeda successes around the world prior to 9/11 convinced Osama bin Laden and company that the US was a "weak horse" ... and boy were they surprised by our ferocious response to 9/11. If we'd not made such a vigorous response at all levels, don't you think al-Qaeda's successes would have encouraged even more attempts?
- nfg 16y ago
  No. The vigorous response is the best recruiting tool they could possibly get.
- MichaelSalib 16y ago
  This weak horse argument is completely specious as International Relations professor Stephen Walt explains: http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/22/horse_feathers_and_horse_sense http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/22/horse_feather...
  - hga 16y ago
    It's not when I'm limiting my use of the phase to al-Qaeda, where they indeed used that argument ... and found out that they were fantastically wrong. Well, at least about the US being a weak horse. As for the general proposition, at the highest level, do you think weakness encourages or discourages attack?
    - MichaelSalib 16y ago
      It's not when I'm limiting my use of the phase to al-Qaeda, where they indeed used that argument ... and found out that they were fantastically wrong AQ seems to have calculated pretty well actually. What you're missing is that the US acted precisely as AQ wanted them to act. They wanted the US to go nuts and overreact which would cause them to overreach, and that's exactly what we did. We wasted trillions of dollars on a pointless war in Iraq. Our pointless war killed a million people and turned another 3-4 million into refugees. That screamed to the world that the US is an irrational self-absorbed state that kills lots of people without caring. That has repercussions for our ability to get intelligence in the future. In the process, we also convinced the entire world that we were much weaker than they ever thought. Think about it: the world's most powerful military was completely sandbagged by the remnants of a third rate army in an impoverished state for years. All our fancy technology? Most of it worthless. US soldiers getting killed one and two at a time every day for years. Our impotence made manifest. We gave AQ exactly what they wanted. Many people in the Islamic world used to think that AQ was a joke before 9/11; we made them into our nemesis and thus elevated them to our level. Rather than saying "these are a bunch of criminals and we'll bring them to justice, just like any other criminal gang that kills innocent people," we convinced the world that there was a global movement which AQ represented and that we were going to destroy it. And then we failed at just about everything. As for the general proposition, at the highest level, do you think weakness encourages or discourages attack? I think anyone asking the question needs to go read some IR theory and history. Look, organizations make decisions based on their capabilities and their own internal dynamics. Was the US strong or weak in 2000? It depends. There is no objective answer because the question is ill-posed. So anyone can justify any answer. People in AQ who wanted to act convinced themselves that the US was weak. If the facts had been otherwise, they would have twisted those facts into justifying attack as well. What you're talking about here is signaling theory and you really should read about it. Historically, governments have been convinced that by taking various actions, they were "signaling" or "sending messages to" their opponents. But years later when historians looked through the opponents' archives they discovered that those opponents never got the message. Or that they interpreted the message in ways that suited their own internal biases. Showing resolve and demonstrating strength sound good to people but are fundamentally misguided actions.
      - 16y ago
sophacles 16y ago
There was terrorist activity before 9/11. Think OK boming, the first WTC bombing, abortion clinic attacks.
- chadgeidel 16y ago
  You are correct. I should have been clearer. Has there been a marked reduction in (US) terrorist-type activity after 9/11? It doesn't seem that's the case.
  - hga 16y ago
    I'm not sure we can make a useful judgment here. After that stunning success (in the eyes of terrorists), you'd expect more people to try. Also, you should normalize against the general level of world wide terrorism of this nature, e.g. start with early post-9/11 examples like Bali and Madrid, each of which killed about 200 people.
  - billswift 16y ago
    Considering the extremely small numbers both before and after I doubt you could find any statistically significant trend either way.

You may be playing "devil's advocate" here (and I thought of the same thing), but what about the complete lack of terrorist activity BEFORE 9/11 when we presumably weren't spending as much money?

hga 16y ago

What about the earlier bombing of the WTC? If you go beyond the CONUS, the string of al-Qaeda successes around the world prior to 9/11 convinced Osama bin Laden and company that the US was a "weak horse" ... and boy were they surprised by our ferocious response to 9/11. If we'd not made such a vigorous response at all levels, don't you think al-Qaeda's successes would have encouraged even more attempts?

nfg 16y ago
No. The vigorous response is the best recruiting tool they could possibly get.
MichaelSalib 16y ago
This weak horse argument is completely specious as International Relations professor Stephen Walt explains: http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/22/horse_feathers_and_horse_sense http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/22/horse_feather...
- hga 16y ago
  It's not when I'm limiting my use of the phase to al-Qaeda, where they indeed used that argument ... and found out that they were fantastically wrong. Well, at least about the US being a weak horse. As for the general proposition, at the highest level, do you think weakness encourages or discourages attack?
  - MichaelSalib 16y ago
    It's not when I'm limiting my use of the phase to al-Qaeda, where they indeed used that argument ... and found out that they were fantastically wrong AQ seems to have calculated pretty well actually. What you're missing is that the US acted precisely as AQ wanted them to act. They wanted the US to go nuts and overreact which would cause them to overreach, and that's exactly what we did. We wasted trillions of dollars on a pointless war in Iraq. Our pointless war killed a million people and turned another 3-4 million into refugees. That screamed to the world that the US is an irrational self-absorbed state that kills lots of people without caring. That has repercussions for our ability to get intelligence in the future. In the process, we also convinced the entire world that we were much weaker than they ever thought. Think about it: the world's most powerful military was completely sandbagged by the remnants of a third rate army in an impoverished state for years. All our fancy technology? Most of it worthless. US soldiers getting killed one and two at a time every day for years. Our impotence made manifest. We gave AQ exactly what they wanted. Many people in the Islamic world used to think that AQ was a joke before 9/11; we made them into our nemesis and thus elevated them to our level. Rather than saying "these are a bunch of criminals and we'll bring them to justice, just like any other criminal gang that kills innocent people," we convinced the world that there was a global movement which AQ represented and that we were going to destroy it. And then we failed at just about everything. As for the general proposition, at the highest level, do you think weakness encourages or discourages attack? I think anyone asking the question needs to go read some IR theory and history. Look, organizations make decisions based on their capabilities and their own internal dynamics. Was the US strong or weak in 2000? It depends. There is no objective answer because the question is ill-posed. So anyone can justify any answer. People in AQ who wanted to act convinced themselves that the US was weak. If the facts had been otherwise, they would have twisted those facts into justifying attack as well. What you're talking about here is signaling theory and you really should read about it. Historically, governments have been convinced that by taking various actions, they were "signaling" or "sending messages to" their opponents. But years later when historians looked through the opponents' archives they discovered that those opponents never got the message. Or that they interpreted the message in ways that suited their own internal biases. Showing resolve and demonstrating strength sound good to people but are fundamentally misguided actions.
    - 16y ago

sophacles 16y ago

There was terrorist activity before 9/11. Think OK boming, the first WTC bombing, abortion clinic attacks.

chadgeidel 16y ago
You are correct. I should have been clearer. Has there been a marked reduction in (US) terrorist-type activity after 9/11? It doesn't seem that's the case.
- hga 16y ago
  I'm not sure we can make a useful judgment here. After that stunning success (in the eyes of terrorists), you'd expect more people to try. Also, you should normalize against the general level of world wide terrorism of this nature, e.g. start with early post-9/11 examples like Bali and Madrid, each of which killed about 200 people.
- billswift 16y ago
  Considering the extremely small numbers both before and after I doubt you could find any statistically significant trend either way.