Measuring the War on Terrorism: A First Appraisal

Scholars and pundits alike regularly opine that the United States is “winning” or “losing” the war on terrorism. Optimists point to successes such as a disrupted attack or arrested leader. Pessimists note continued Al Qaeda assaults or growing allied weariness. Unfortunately, for all the significant research that gauges military effectiveness, measures of counterterrorism efforts remain superficial and, in many cases, misleading. On the surface, understanding progress in the war on terror might seem intuitive. If terrorists do not conduct attacks, and if they regularly are arrested or killed, all seems well. Yet counterterrorism is in fact difficult to assess. Unlike a conventional military campaign, a war on terrorism has no enemy capital to seize or industrial base to destroy. Even a terrorist organization that is divided and demoralized can lash out and kill many innocents. Failure to identify proper measures has bedeviled past attempts to understand insurgency and conventional war. For example, ambiguities about the Vietcong order of battle—whether part-time combatants should be included, for instance—made it far more difficult to assess the guerrilla movement’s true strength. As much in a war against terrorists as against conventional enemies, inadequate measures of effectiveness can contribute to complacency, poor resource allocation, and terrible surprise. Too often, efforts to gauge success amount to little more than body counts. In appearances before Congress, for example, FBI Director Robert Mueller, CIA Director George Tenet, and other senior officials have documented progress by emphasizing the number of arrests and disruptions of Al Qaeda members and associates. “We have charged over 200 suspected terrorists with crimes,” Mueller testified in March. “More than one-third of the top Al Qaeda leadership identified before the war has been captured or killed,” Tenet noted in February. President George W. Bush himself is said to keep a “scorecard” that notes which Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have been killed or captured. The problem with a body-count approach— however appealing as a concrete measure of success and failure—is that it easily misleads. First, a terrorist cadre’s total size often is unknown, and many of those killed or captured may be easily replaced low-level recruits. Indeed, a terrorist group that loses members to arrest may actually increase in overall size if the crackdown generates a backlash. The Provisional Irish Republican Army, for example, capitalized on indiscriminate British crackdowns to gain recruits. Second, a body-count approach fails to provide an assessment of the adversary’s morale and its ability to recruit, fundraise, and conduct sophisticated attacks—all vital components of a successful counterterrorism campaign. Finally, the strength of a group and the success of its cause are related, but not identical. Terrorism in essence is a political strategy, and it can triumph even when it fails by strict operational measures. Defeating terrorism often requires larger strategies that aim beyond the group in question, affecting entire populations in a variety of ways. Going beyond a body count to assess counterterrorism effectiveness can be a daunting task. Data often are scarce regarding clandestine groups and the sometimes classified or politically sensitive Measuring the War on Terrorism: A First Appraisal