Terror survey has frightening outlook
By David Grant
07/18/06 -- - WASHINGTON, July 17 (UPI) -- Terrorists are making the
world an increasingly dangerous place for U.S. citizens, a new
survey warns.
Analysts and policy experts across the political spectrum believe
that the world is becoming increasingly more dangerous for America
and her citizens, according to the Terrorism Index released last
month by the liberal Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy
magazine.
Eighty-six percent of the hundred liberal, conservative, and
moderate experts surveyed believe that the world is progressively
becoming more perilous, with 30 percent attributing this condition
to some form of Islamic animosity. Twenty-eight percent attributed
the worsening of the situation to the war in Iraq.
Some 84 percent of the analysts disagreed with President George W.
Bush's assessment that the United States was winning the war on
terror.
Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit and author
of Imperial Hubris, a critical study of the Bush administration's
War on Terror policies, told a recent CAP meeting discussing the
study, "The findings that the war is somehow out of our control is
disturbing because it follows along with so many things in the
country today that are 'too hard to do.' Its too hard to control the
borders, its too hard to secure the Soviet nuclear arsenal, it's too
hard to do most of anything. I really think that America has it's
future in it's own hands."
Forty-five of the respondents identified themselves as liberal, 40
as moderate, and 31 as conservative. The survey weighted each group
to one-third of the total ranking said Joseph Cirincione, CAP senior
vice president for national security.
Lawrence Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the Department of Defense
and as Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff from
2002-2005, said there was a discrepancy in the current U.S. budget
between the $450 billion allocated for the Pentagon and the $30
billion allocated for the State Department. He noted that 87 percent
of respondents said the State Department and other federal
diplomatic groups should receive an increase in funding while 52
percent wanted a decrease in the Defense and military budget.
"It's not the revenge of the Foggy Bottom crowd," said David Bosco,
senior editor of Foreign Policy magazine. Foreign Policy magazine
collaborated with the CAP to choose the 100 respondents.
"If there was just a new deal in the Middle East, if we could put
people to work and give them schooling and provide more development
aid that would make a difference," that idea goes, Scheuer said.
"That is a tragic leftover of the last 30 years. It hasn't worked,
it won't work."
Scheuer advocated a more confrontational approach in the war on
terror for U.S. policymakers.
"We vastly underestimate the amount of killing we will have to do.
The idea that somehow the military has done all that it can do is a
mistake. It hasn't done all it can do because politicians won't let
it and many more of the people who oppose us are going to have to be
killed before we bring this to a tolerable state," he said.
Wilkerson said that at the first CIA briefing that he attended after
the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks one analyst claimed that between
40 million and 100 million of the 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide
supported al-Qaida through their monetary contributions.
"Bombs, bullets, and bayonets are not the answer to this problem,"
Wilkerson said. "It's going after that 40 (million) or 100 million
and convincing them that killing innocent men, women and children
for political objectives is not the way to do business. And you
don't do that with (the) military."
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