| Chapter 1: | The Challenge of Global Terrorism |
Subsequently, and on the basis that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or otherwise posed a potential terrorist threat, the Bush administration, together with a smaller coalition of countries, proceeded to invade Iraq to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein.
The effectiveness of these military actions and the preemptive strategy underlying them are matters of considerable debate. As the U.S. presidential elections approached in 2004, the Bush administration congratulated itself on the capture of Saddam Hussein, and it claimed that as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (both articulated as part of the GWOT), al Qaeda had lost its sanctuary, that three fourths of its leadership were captured or killed, that the remnants were now on the run, and that the ability of this group and its associated and affiliated organizations to conduct terrorism had been severely limited. Nonetheless, it was struggling with evidence, based on photos released in April 2004, of U.S. abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. In this climate, scholars such as Lake (2002) argued that the new strategy of preemptive force was an “overreaction” and precisely the kind of overreaction the perpetrators of 9/11 aimed to provoke.17 According to this view, the Bush administration’s strategy of force had inflamed moderates in the Muslim world and increased al Qaeda’s recruiting power and operational capacity.18 As a result, al Qaeda had only “morphed” into a looser organization with greater support and more offshoots and associated organizations, which were now engaged in more terrorist activity than ever before.
Questions
Has the GWOT, with its underlying strategy of preemptive force, decreased transnational terrorist activity, or has it had the reverse effect and widened this threat? And to what extent have associated events, including the invasion of Iraq, the capture of Iraq’s former dictator, Saddam Hussein, and evidence, after Abu Ghraib, of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees, affected this dynamic?