When Bush said "Bring it on!"l, they did. Terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, both
Research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, conucted the most in-depth analysis of terrorist activity since the Iraq War began.
From Bush, to Rumsefeld, to Negroponte, we've heard over and over that there is no proof Iraq had any influence on terrorist recruiting. That's patently false, but here's a great study to prove it. Here's the study to prove it.
The president’s argument conveyed two important assumptions: first, that the threat of jihadist terrorism to U.S. interests would have been greater without the war in Iraq, and second, that the war is reducing the overall global pool of terrorists. However, the White House has never cited any evidence for either of these assumptions, and none appears to be publicly available.
They conducted an in-depth analysis using the best database of terrorist attacks, and found out:
Our study shows that the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.
But that's not the killer quote. This is:
Our study yields one resounding finding: The rate of terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the average fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, which accounts for fully half of the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks in the post-Iraq War period. But even excluding Iraq, the average yearly number of jihadist terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities still rose sharply around the world by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively.
I urge you to read the whole thing, they breakdown what is included and why and offer the best analysis I have seen to date in assessing this.
I am still blown away by that 600% number--they lie us into war, lie to defend that war, out people like Valerie Plame, and call us traitors while they merrily go about wrecking the world.
Fixing this is going to take a long time, and Democrats need to step up the plate and restore the value of honesty and truthfulness to American foreign relationships. How many people overseas hate us? We all know it is a lot. Here's what their study found:
One measure of the impact of the Iraq War is the precipitous drop in public support for the United States in Muslim countries. Jordan, a key U.S. ally, saw popular approval for the United States drop from 25 percent in 2002 to 1 percent in 2003. In Lebanon during the same period, favorable views of the United States dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, and in the world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia, favorable views plummeted from 61 percent to 15 percent. Disliking the United States does not make you a terrorist, but clearly the pool of Muslims who dislike the United States has grown by hundreds of millions since the Iraq War began.
The article then traces the results this radicalization has had throughout the world.
The summary?
Our survey shows that the Iraq conflict has motivated jihadists around the world to see their particular struggle as part of a wider global jihad fought on behalf of the Islamic ummah, the global community of Muslim believers. The Iraq War had a strong impact in jihadist circles in the Arab world and Europe, but also on the Taliban, which previously had been quite insulated from events elsewhere in the Muslim world. By energizing the jihadist groups, the Iraq conflict acted as a catalyst for the increasing globalization of the jihadist cause, a trend that should be deeply troubling for American policymakers. In the late 1990s, bin Laden pushed a message of a global jihad and attracted recruits from around the Muslim world to train and fight in Afghanistan. The Iraq War has made bin Laden’s message of global struggle even more persuasive to militants.
So what do the words "You're with us or you're against us" mean now? I'm sure OBL is just loving it.
Here's their data if you want a detailed look.