{"id":8462,"date":"2006-09-14T10:24:27","date_gmt":"2006-09-14T14:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8462.html"},"modified":"2006-09-14T10:24:27","modified_gmt":"2006-09-14T14:24:27","slug":"barnes-explains-bushs-strategy-for-combating-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/barnes-explains-bushs-strategy-for-combating-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"Barnes explains Bush’s ‘strategy for combating terrorism’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bush administration’s counter-terrorism policy seems hopelessly confused. Based on the current policy<\/a>, we’re not reducing the number of terrorists, we’re not curtailing the number of terrorist attacks, and we’re not addressing the root causes of terrorism. If there’s a logic to this method, it’s hiding well.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, the president explained his philosophy<\/a> to the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes this week during a White House interview.<\/p>\n

We now know why the Bush administration hasn’t made the capture of Osama bin Laden a paramount goal of the war on terror. Emphasis on bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism. Here’s how President Bush explained this Tuesday: “This thing about . . . let’s put 100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work.”<\/p>\n

Rather, Bush says there’s a better way to stay on offense against terrorists. “The way you win the war on terror,” Bush said, “is to find people [who are terrorists] and get them to give you information about what their buddies are fixing to do.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At a minimum, I’m glad to hear the president’s thoughts on the issue, if for no other reason because I was convinced he was making up the policy as he went along. At least now I understand what Bush thinks<\/i> is an effective counter-terrorism strategy.<\/p>\n

Of course, there’s the downside to his approach: it’s misguided and ineffective.
\n
\nWhen Bush says the key to success is getting suspected terrorists to “give [us] information,” we now know the president is talking about abusive techniques<\/a>, which the administration euphemistically calls “an alternative set of procedures,” but which are more accurately described as torture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is not, however, the way to “win the war on terror,” because as a means of intelligence gathering, it doesn’t offer what we need<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Military leaders argued this week that they did not believe abusive tactics worked in extracting information.<\/p>\n

“No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tell us that,” said Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence.<\/p>\n

Information extracted by abusive tactics was of questionable credibility, Kimmons said. Moreover, any good that came from the information would be undercut by the damage to America’s reputation once the abuse became known.<\/p>\n

“And we can’t afford to go there,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, practical concerns aside, there’s also supposed to be a moral component to American policy. Torture doesn’t work, but it’s probably worth remembering, from time to time, that the United States is supposed to be better than this<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, when it comes to the president’s ideas on the issue, the last week or so have been elucidating but tragically disconcerting. We’ve seen him brag<\/a> about torture, lie<\/a> about torture, and now insist that torture is literally the best way to win a war on terror.<\/p>\n

Only 858 days to go….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bush administration’s counter-terrorism policy seems hopelessly confused. Based on the current policy, we’re not reducing the number of terrorists, we’re not curtailing the number of terrorist attacks, and we’re not addressing the root causes of terrorism. If there’s a logic to this method, it’s hiding well. Thankfully, the president explained his philosophy to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}