100 US Foreign Policy Experts Agree: BUSH ADMIN NOT WINNING WAR ON TERROR

[kpete]

The Terrorism Index

By FOREIGN POLICY & The Center For American Progress Page 1 of 1

July/August 2006

Is the United States winning the war on terror? Not according to more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy hands. They see a national security apparatus in disrepair and a government that is failing to protect the public from the next attack.


Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans understandably rallied around the flag. Having just suffered the deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil, huge percentages believed another attack was imminent. But Americans also had enormous faith that the Global War on Terror would help keep them safe. Just one month after 9/11, for instance, 94 percent of Americans told an ABC News/Washington Post poll that they approved of how the fight against terrorism was being handled. The United States then quickly went to war in Afghanistan, closing down a terrorist sanctuary and capturing or killing a number of high-level al Qaeda operatives in the process.

Since 2001, terrorists have found their targets on almost every continent, with bombings in Bali, London, Madrid, and elsewhere. Five years on, however, America has yet to experience another attack. But Americans appear less convinced that their country is winning the war on terror. In the face of persisting threats, including a growing number of terrorist attacks around the world, numerous reports show that Americans are losing faith in their government’s ability to wage the war successfully and to protect them from the terrorists’ next volley. Barely half of Americans today approve of the way in which the war on terror is being handled, and more than one third believe the United States is less safe today than it was before 9/11.



The index’s experts were similarly critical of most of the policy initiatives put forward by the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush since September 11. Eighty-one percent, for instance, believe the detention of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, negatively affects the war on terror. The index’s experts also disapprove of how America is handling its relations with European allies, how it is confronting threatening regimes in North Korea and Iran, how it is controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and its dealings with failing states, to name just a few. “We are losing the war on terror because we are treating the symptoms and not the cause,” says index participant Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “ur insistence that Islamic fundamentalist ideology has replaced communist ideology as the chief enemy of our time ... feeds al Qaeda’s vision of the world.”

more at:
http://web0.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2006/TI-index/index.html

[Fridays Child]

1. Bush doesn't want to win it. He wants to perpetuate it, ad infinitum.

[Sherman A1]

4. Agreed

and very well said!!!

[opihimoimoi]

2. The BushFrauds are faking their way through as they rob us of our future

Despicable and EVIL...they are clueless with solutions and instead...dictate to us their crap.

They reduced to GUESSING

[saltpoint]

3. Mission accomplished! Freedom's on the march! Bring it on!

Smoke 'em out! Dead or alive!

I'm glad these folks are weighing in. A lot of DU posters had the inside lane in this race, though. They could have checked these boards a few years ago and learned a lot.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. The disconnect between the public and the experts is terrifying

and the illogicality of public opinion can be too. From the 'sidebar' webpage:



Great - most of the American public think America is winning the war on terror, and there will be a major terrorist attack in the USA this year. Some win, huh?