Declining Support for Suicide Bombings - A Very Dim Bright Spot

Typically, terrorism is one of the tactics pursued by those who know that they would face certain, immediate, and overwhelming defeat in a conventional military confrontation with their opponents. Thus environments that support relatively small cores of zealous terrorists are, almost by definition, those in which terrorism can flourish.

It is tempting at first glance to view as good news for the “Global War on Terror”, new Pew Global Attitudes Project data, showing declining support for suicide attacks (for instance, the striking decrease from 40% in 2004 to 13% in the current report for Moroccan respondents), and that was recently reported in a letter to the editor in my local newspaper. Such a decline in support can be helpful in combatting terrorism; it is not, however, by any means the end of the story.

Since a terrorist movement can be, and usually is, structured around relatively small zealous cores of followers, it is well worth asking whether declines in support that still leave significant minorities supporting terrorist acts are consistent with other trends in the ongoing “Global War on Terror” in which we have been engaged now for six years. That’s where the data gets very ugly. In 2004 the U.S. State Dept proudly rolled out data showing that by several measures, incidents of international terrorism in 2003 had reached their lowest levels since 1969, at least implying that the “Global War on Terror” was responsible. Let’s make this clear – this data, incidents of international terrorism, is what the State Department self-selected as an assessment of progress in the “Global War on Terror”.

What has happened since then? The most recent State Department report of incidents of international terrorism, for 2006, shows that by virtually every measure acts of terrorism have skyrocketed. Let’s pick a single measure: number of individuals killed in terrorist acts. In 2001, an especially notorious year for deaths from terrorist acts, the State Department reported 3547 worldwide deaths from terrorist acts. Five years later, deep into the “Global War on Terror”, the State Department reported 20,498 deaths in terrorist acts, this following 2004 during which they tallied 14,618 deaths. So briefly, our five year investment has bought us a well over 500% INCREASE from 2001 in this measure of the effectiveness of the “War” that presumably should be decreasing if we are succeeding.

An alternative hypothesis to the “good news” of the Pew Report is that the “Global War on Terror” is having the effect of metastasizing and hardening, and perhaps even growing, international terrorist movements. Popular sentiment may be growing against these movements, indeed, perhaps largely because of these effects, but once more, terrorism can and does thrive, is designed to operate, in small cores at the margin. And don’t get me started on how this analysis is also consistent with recent National Intelligence Estimates.

So…, Pew, Schmew, I think we’re in deep, deep Doo-Doo.