Are We Safer Now?

During the Democratic debate last Sunday, Hillary Clinton claimed that

I believe we are safer than we were . . . We are not yet safe enough, and I have proposed over the last year a number of policies that I think we should be following (via TalkLeft).

The idea that "we are safer than we were" has been widely criticized in the blogosphere even if it hasn't caused much of a stir in the mainstream media. In the final analysis, I think it's appropriate to stick with the standard Democratic line of thought that the Bush administration's initial actions in Afghanistan worked relatively well but that we've squandered whatever gains we madein Afghanistan through the invasion of Iraq.

In certain ways, the U. S. is safer from terrorist attack as a result of the Bush administration's initial response to 9-11 and the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The big plus is that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization was largely broken up. As a result, there is no more central planning of global terrorism, no large-scale training facilities, and a gradual decrease in the scale of terrorist attacks. If al-Qaeda in Iraq really has been as decisively weakened in Anbar province as the Bush administration has claimed for the last several months, that dramatically reduces the terrorist threats emanating from Iraq itself (and also eliminates one reason for the U. S. military to stay in Iraq).

The most important negative is that the invasion of Iraq inspired thousands of young Muslim men to travel to Iraq and fight American and Iraqi forces before returning to their home countries. As a result of those young men receiving military training and acquiring leadership skills, there will be a large pool of potential global terrorists in the Middle East, North Africa, Bosnia, and Chechnya for at least a generation. This is where the Madrid and London bombing came from as well as the recent conflicts in Lebanon. It is also out of this pool of battle-hardened fighters that future bin Ladens would emerge.

There are other ways that the situation is less secure than it was. Most importantly, hostility to the U. S. has increased dramatically among Muslim populations in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. There's also a real danger of non-Islamic terrorists launching major attacks in the U. S. Other negatives are less important. Our alliances are weaker than they were in 2001, but I think the decline of the alliances has not had a big impact on the security situation. I also believe that the problems with our alliances are temporary. Our major alliances can also be repaired once the Bush administration and their neo-con advisers were out of office.

The feckless effort to force a moderate, democratic regime on Iraq has also weakened the U. S. military, but that does not make all that much difference to the fight against global terrorism. Contrary to the Bush administration, the "war on terror" is mostly a police operation and is being fought through intelligence work, police forces, border patrols, and things like that. Given that terror is still the primary security threat to the United States, it would make sense to spend less on advanced fighters, aircraft carriers, and submarines and more on "policing" types measures.

On the whole, I think that Hillary is wrong but not that far off.