George Bush's Record in the War on Terror

I’ve found it baffling that George W. Bush has continued for so long to be perceived by much of the American electorate as doing a good job of making America safer. The facts suggest that President Bush has made extremely serious mistakes in the war on terror at almost every step.

What Needs to be Accomplished
The minimum goals of a post-9/11 war on terror should have been:
1. Capture the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks and neutralize their organization;
2. Forge a global collaboration for intelligence sharing and coordinated attacks on the terrorists’ infrastructure;
3. Develop a comprehensive domestic security policy to
a. prevent additional terror attacks and
b. better prepare front-line responders to react to possible future attacks;
4. Determine what America can do toward winning the trust, confidence, and cooperation of people in the Islamic and Arabic nations.

Unfortunately, President Bush has failed to completely achieve any of these objectives. In my opinion, he has actually made the situation worse.

What President Bush did Right
Immediately after the attacks of 911, President Bush offered much needed comfort and moral support to Americans. His administration uncovered an incredible number of details about the perpetrators of the attacks and identified Osama bin Laden as their primary leader. The administration determined that Bin Laden was located in Afghanistan and the United States made almost every attempt to legally extradite him before attacking that country.

The Failure in Afghanistan

Unfortunately, after decisively removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, President Bush did not press his advantage against Al Qaeda and continue to persue them in Afghanistan. On top of that, he missed a golden opportunity to demonstrate the benefits to Islamic countries of partnering with the West. Instead of investing billions of dollars in attacking Iraq, the United States could have turned Afghanistan into a showcase of democracy and Western friendship by strengthening the elected central government and by rebuilding the roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and power utilities lost during years of warfare and Taliban rule.

Despite the lack of any clear threat from Iraq, President Bush chose shifted his focus to that country and decided to launch an invasion. This should have been a surprising choice, given the advice the president was receiving from so many quarters.

According to Senator Bob Graham, speaking on “Face the Nation” on September 5, 2004 about his book "Intelligence Matters: The CIA, The FBI, Saudi Arabia and the Failure of America's War On Terror,"
“[General Tommy Franks, in a February 2002 meeting,] laid out a very precise strategy for fighting the war on terror. First, we should win the war in Afghanistan; second move to Somalia, which as he described was almost anarchy but with substantial number of al-Qaeda cells, then to Yemen, and that we should be very careful about Iraq because our intelligence was so weak that we didn't know what we were getting into. And then, interestingly suggested that several European countries knew more about the realty of the situation in Iraq than we did, and that we should look to them for advice.”

Instead of pursuing a true victory in Afghanistan, the United States all but abandoned the country to warlords in most of the country, leaving only 9,000 troops to continue the search for Bin Laden and members of al-Qaeda. Now, several years after the fall of the Taleban, Bin Laden remains free and armed militias and Mujahideen factions are still the most powerful political players in Afghanistan. As reported in the November 1, 2004 issue of Time:
“Of the 30 high-value al-Qaeda targets identified by the CIA in 2001, [more than half are still at-large]… The International Institute of Strategic Studies estimates that as many as 90% of the 20,000 militants trained in al-Qaeda camps are still at large.”

The BBC summarized the result of President Bush’s Afghanistan policies:
“The security vacuum in Afghanistan created since the fall of the Taleban, has significantly increased the power of the factions. … Warlords have become entrenched. Turf wars between local commanders have been a feature of the post-Taleban period. And the Taleban themselves have re-emerged as a fighting force, worsening the security situation in the east and south-east.”

The Failure to Create a Global Collaboration
Contrary to the initial advice of General Franks and other advisors, President Bush turned his eyes toward Iraq. Based on unreliable sources, such as Ahmed Chalabi, and unsubstantiated assumptions and speculation by the intelligence community, President Bush chose to advocate an immediate military strike against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor to Present Ford and Bush, warned at the time:
“An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter terrorist campaign we have undertaken.”

On February 5, 2003, the United States Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the UN to establish the urgency of engaging in a war with Iraq. The presentation failed to convince most of the UN Security Council -- with open skepticism by France, Germany, Russia, and China. Three weeks later, the U.S., the U.K. and Spain presented a draft resolution to the Security Council declaring that Iraq had failed to take its final opportunity. They were forced to withdraw the resolution when it became clear that such a declaration would be rejected by the international community. However, this U.S. engineered declaration had already created a serious rift between America and its allies.

The reckless march to war against Iraq was squandering the opportunities for international cooperation that had resulted from the goodwill felt by the world for America after the heinous attacks of 9/11.

Debacle in Iraq
President Bush maintained that there could be no delay, even though Iraq was diplomatically isolated, hobbled by economic sanctions, pinned down by “no-fly zones”, and in the midst of intense United Nations weapons inspection. President Bush not only claimed to have irrefutable proof that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction, but also asserted that the Iraqi regime had ties to terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda.

This opinion was contradicted by many sources.
“It is unlikely that Iraq currently possesses an offensive chemical weapons capability comparable to its pre 1991 level. its ability to disseminate efficiently CW agent with missile warheads is extremely limited and unlikely to cause large casualties.” --- International Institute for Strategic Studies Dossier “Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction: a net assessment.” Sep 9th 2002

“The Iraqi air force now has approximately 200 fighter planes in active service but with low serviceability levels. Of this inventory, only about 20 are advanced planes that have any ability to confront most of the planes possessed by the United States or Israel. The rest are old planes from the 1970s, or even before.”--- General Shlomo Brom (ret.), Senior Research Associate Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University

“Iraq and al-Qaeda are not obvious allies. In fact, they are natural enemies. A central tenet of Al-Qaeda’s jihadist ideology is that secular Muslim rulers and their regimes have oppressed the believers and plunged Islam into historic crisis … Mr. Hussein has remained true to the unwritten rules of state sponsorship of terror: never get involved with a group that cannot be controlled, and never give a weapons of mass destruction to terrorist who might use it against you.” -- Daniel Benjamin, former Member of the U.S. National Security Council

In spite of world opinion that reflected the views of Daniel Benjamin and General Brom, and without any tangible evidence to support claims of Iraqi WMD, President Bush launched an invasion at 9:34 PM EST on March 19, 2003 with a token coalition.

The takeover of Iraq by the U.S. was an unparalleled military success. Three weeks after the invasion began, the U.S. had toppled Saddam Hussein, but it soon became obvious that the results were not what President Bush had predicted. There were no massively destructive weapons. There were no ties to al-Qaeda. The U.S. troops were not welcomed with flowers and garlands. Instead, the country was plunged into near-anarchy and civil war. Hundreds of tons of unprotected weapons fell into the hands of insurgents. Terrorist recruits flocked to the country in droves. American troops became sitting-duck targets. More than 2,000 young American women and men have been killed. Many tens of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives. Car bombs echo through the streets of Baghdad. The country is falling into civil war.

Pat Buchanan, in his book "Where the Right Went Wrong," wrote:
“In 2003, the United States invaded a country that did not threaten us, did not attack us and did not want war with us to disarm it of weapons we have since discovered it did not have. ... Now our nation is tied down, our Army is being daily bled in a war to create democracy in a country where it has never before existed. ... With the guerrilla war, U.S. prestige has plummeted."

Appearing on “Face the Nation” on September 5, 2004, Mr. Buchanan accurately summed it up:
“The United States, by invading that country and taking over its capital, we have inflamed the entire Middle East and Arab and Islamic world. American prestige and support for the president and the United States has never been lower in that part of the world. And Mr. Rumsfeld's question has been answered.

“He asked, ‘Have we been creating more terrorists than we are killing?’ When he said that, some 5,000 insurgents were said to be in Baghdad by General Abizaid. The latest count is 20,000. I believe this war itself is creating a pool, a spawning pool out of which Osama bin Laden can draw recruits. I think that there has been nothing that has done more to put Osama bin Laden, if you will, in the mainstream of the Arab cause of nationalism than what appears to the Arabs to be to be a near-imperial adventure by the United States in Iraq.”

The invasion of Iraq, far from making the world safer from terrorism, has stoked the fires of anti-American hatred:
‘Western intelligence officials and leaders in the Muslim world say the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has, at the least, given bin Laden and his allies a potent recruiting tool” – Time Magazine, November 1, 2004

Failure to Safeguard the Homeland
The White House tells us:
“With strong bipartisan support President Bush created the Department of Homeland Security – the most comprehensive reorganization of the Federal government in a half-century. The Department of Homeland Security consolidates 22 agencies and 180,000 employees, unifying once-fragmented Federal functions in a single agency dedicated to protecting America from terrorism.” --- The White House Website.

Although the White House has spent billions of dollars on the Department of Homeland Security, the results have been very disappointing. An “orange” or “red” color code announcement based on “chatter” or the discovery of four year old emails does little to protect America. When I hear that we are at level “orange”, what should I do? Should I stay home from work? Should I keep my children home from school? Should I duct tape my windows?

When the 9/11 Commission was proposed to investigate ways to prevent future terrorist attacks and improve our preparedness, President Bush opposed it.
“President Bush and Vice President Cheney both contacted then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in the months after 9/11 to insist on strict limits in the scope of any investigation into the attacks. And despite entreaties from the families of victims of 9/11 attacks and a bipartisan group of senators and congressmen, the president vocally resisted forming an investigatory commission. President Bush only relented on November 27, 2002, a year after the attacks.” -- Center for American Progress

Three years after the attacks, according to the presidential candidates in the last election, between 4,000 and 8,000 people still stream illegally across our borders each day. 95% of containers that come into our ports are not inspected. Assault weapons are, for the first time in years, legally available in the United States to any domestic terrorist that desires to purchase them.

The Bush administration has failed to adequately fund our first responders in the event that another attack takes place.
“Despite the fact that a blue-ribbon panel warned more than a year ago that the United States is not providing adequate resources to local emergency responders, the [Republican] Senate today failed to pass an amendment to the Homeland Security Appropriations bill, authored by Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT), that would implement the panel’s recommendations.

“It was Stabenow’s second attempt to provide an additional $15 billion to train and equip first responders, a legislative proposal based on the recommendations of a task force headed by former Republican Senator Warren Rudman and including Nobel laureates, U.S. military leaders, former high-level government officials and other senior experts. The panel’s findings were released in June 2003 in a report titled “Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared.” – Website of United States Senator Debbie Stabenow, Michigan, September 9, 2004

Our nuclear facilities and military research organizations remain virtual sieves leaking classified data and nuclear material.

CBS News reported on January 1, 2004:
“The Energy Department is conducting a widespread review of security at America's nuclear weapons laboratories after reports of hundreds of missing keys, some of which could allow access to sensitive areas.”

CBS News reported on April 22, 2004:
“Two pieces of a highly radioactive fuel rod are missing from a Vermont nuclear plant, and engineers planned to search onsite for the nuclear material, officials said… The material would be fatal to anyone who came in contact with it without being properly shielded, Sheehan said. Spent nuclear fuel also could be used by terrorists to construct so-called dirty bombs that would spread deadly radiation with conventional explosives.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on July 16, 2004:
“All classified research was halted Thursday at the University of California-run Los Alamos National Laboratory as investigators entered the eighth day of a frustrating search for two missing computer data storage devices.”

Where is the evidence that George Bush has made America safer?

George Bush's Failure to Make America Safer
George W. Bush is not keeping America safe. His policies have been reckless and risky. They are neither comprehensive nor complete. They put us in greater danger every day. His choices are based on faith instead of facts. The results are catastrophic and portend disaster for our country if they are allowed to continue.

Why do so many Americans still continue to view President Bush as an effective enemy of terrorists? Please tell me. I’m listening.