Vinod's Blog:Post 9/11 Scorecard

I received a couple pieces of email about this statement in an earlier blog post:

My single biggest concern, however, is that I fundamentally believe we're on the right track with our policy towards the Middle East. Sure there are some small tactical course changes / nit picks that might be worth implementing but at the end of the day, we're in a War and we're winning it.

Here's my highly unofficial account of what's been going right since 9/11 -

Afghanistan - Free and getting better. No longer a country-sized terrorist training camp. In a neighborhood made up of such wonderful properties as W. Pakistan, Azerbaijain, Iran, & Uzbekistan, Kabul has gone from least to possibly most desirable place for a 20something person to live. The first constitutionally limited, elected body - the Loya Jirga - is on the eve of taking full power - an unbelievable rarity in the Arab world.
Iraq - Free and getting better. Plastic / Human shredding machines shut down. Summary executions over. Kurds and Marsh Arabs no longer terrorized. Economy professionally managed rather than a large kleptocracy.
- Saddam - tyrant of his own little prison cell
- Sons&Heirs - discovering just how warm hell can be
- no more blood money flowing to Palestine.
No new spectacular attacks on US soil -- Do you remember how cautiously we approached Thanksgiving, '01; X'mas '01; New Years '02; the SuperBowl '02; hell, even the Academy Awards '02? In hindsight, it feels almost absurd to think that of the Oscars were considered a National Security Class A target for terrorists - but that's really how we were just a few short years ago. Now I'll be the first to acknowledge the flaw of using "absence of evidence as evidence of absence" - this amazing chain can be broken 2 minutes after I hit the "publish" button. But can we acknowledge that some pretty amazing progress has been made here?
Libya - compliant, open, giving us their intelligence resources; Hell Gaddafi went so far as to publicly advocate on TV that Syria, N Korea and Iran tow the US line. He told the Italian government that he saw what happened to Hussein and strove to avoid the same fate. This is a direct product of Iraqi intervention.
Saudi's -- on track to seriously reducing our dependence upon them. No more US military presence. New international oil will start flowing from Iraq. Royal family finally realizing that their faustian bargain with Al Qaeda / Wahabi's coming home to roost (Terrorist attacks are now more frequent on Saudi soil than US soil! Terrorism sucks for sure but this is an arrangement I am far more comfortable with vs. the alternative)
Pakistan - prior to 9/11 - actively supporting the Taliban, actively ignoring Al Qaeda, and actively antagonizing India. Now - flipped around & starting talks with India on *everything*. AQ Khan's proliferation ring - busted wide open; accounts are that this has been in operation since at least the tail end of the Reagan presidency. The compounded mistakes by all the folks that were in charge & let it flourish were all shameful - but we can chalk this up as a post 9/11 intelligence / military victory? Iraq gave us Libya, Libya gave us Khan. Khan is giving us Pakistan. Expect Musharraf to be rather eager to help us in the spring offensives in Afghanistan
Syria - They've cracked down on their own Baathist party and are making peace overtures towards Israel . Could you imagine human rights protestors in Damascus a few years ago? (comments from Drezner)
Palestinians - rapidly losing funding for their kleptocracy;
Iran - student protestors energized and clamoring for democracy; The govt has yielded (a tad) and is now agreeing to spot inspections by IAEA.
Arab Political Discourse - a new, unprecedented wave of political openness is wafting through Arab society. Friedman reports. Would the UNDP report on the state of the Arab world been anywhere near as frank & honest had the Bush Administration NOT shined a giant spotlight on the entire region?

If you were asked on on the evening of Sept 11, 2001 what you thought the next 3 years would hold, would you have even BEGUN to enumerate some of these triumphs? Now, I"m a good enough techie to recognize that not all of these "good" threads are automatically attributable to our Post 9/11 policy (an absurd extension to this fallacy, for ex., would be to attribute it all to my 27th birthday which happened in 1999 ). Iranian students, for ex., have been stirring for at least the past 5 years. Skeptics will no doubt note exceptions like this and others (including a non-trivial number who simply think that because Iraq isn't Switzerland yet, the whole project was a failure).

However, FAR more progress has been made in the Arab world in the last 3 years than the previous 10. And given how *BAD* the prognosis looked on Sept 12, 2001, and how radically our policies towards the region shifted, we've gotta acknowledge what a forceful thread for change has been unleashed there.

UPDATE - EXCELLENT article from Fareed Zakaria tallying up the state of the Post-9/11 Arab world:

If you're wondering how Al Qaeda and its type of militant Islamic groups are doing these days, there was interesting news last week. The tragic bombings of Shiites during their Ashura commemoration, apparently planned by one such group, exposed the weakness of the radicals. That Islamic extremist groups are now targeting Shiites is surely a sign of desperation. Unable to launch major terrorist attacks in the West, unable to attract political support in the Middle East, militant Islam is searching for enemies and causes.

...In political terms they have fared even worse. Support for violent Islam is waning in almost all major Muslim countries. Discussions from Libya to Saudi Arabia are all about liberalization.

...Most important, by waging war on fellow Muslims, Islamic radicals are proving that the war against terror is not a clash between civilizations, but a clash within a civilization. And the bad guys are losing.

Well said. This is a civilization-wide struggle folks.

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