After 13 years, 2 wars and trillions in military spending, terrorist attacks are rising sharply

[applegrove]

After 13 years, 2 wars and trillions in military spending, terrorist attacks are rising sharply

By Christopher Ingraham at the Washington Post


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/18/after-13-years-2-wars-and-trillions-in-military-spending-terrorist-attacks-are-rising-sharply/?tid=rssfeed

"SNIP..........................

Last year saw the highest number of terrorist incidents since 2000, according to the latest Global Terrorism Index released by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Worldwide, the number of terrorist incidents increased from less than 1,500 in 2000 to nearly 10,000 in 2013. Sixty percent of attacks last year occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.

..........

The report suggests that U.S. foreign policy has played a big role in making the problem worse: "The rise in terrorist activity coincided with the US invasion of Iraq," it concludes. "This created large power vacuums in the country allowing different factions to surface and become violent." Indeed, among the five countries accounting for the bulk of attacks, the U.S. has prosecuted lengthy ground wars in two (Iraq and Afghanistan), a drone campaign in one (Pakistan), and airstrikes in a fourth (Syria).

The report defines terrorism as “the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.”

The U.S. will invest somewhere between $4 and 6 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with untold additional resources spent on anti-terrorism efforts elsewhere, according to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. While we haven't suffered any major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, the Global Terrorism Index numbers cast considerable doubt on whether that money's been well-spent. And they give some credence to the notion that our ham-handed foreign policy is actually a destabilizing factor in world affairs.


..........................SNIP"

[Initech]

1. Gee thanks military industrial complex!!!

[applegrove]

2. Add to it the internet exploding as a way to diffuse power in a way it has never been diffused

before.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Maybe...just maybe...could it be....that there's something wrong with the WOT strategy?

That chasing flies with sledgehammers only produces more flies? That killing lots of people, destroying infrastructure, and creating millions of refugees makes people mad?

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Isaac Asimov

[LuvNewcastle]

4. Violence breeds more violence.

Observers have been saying that for centuries. Unfortunately, this country's economic system has been so perverted that it must have war in order to sustain itself. That's why the MIC hates it when we talk about 'green jobs' and sustainability. The MIC profits from turmoil and disaster; building a sustainable economy is a threat to its very existence. I'd say that most of the people we have in power today are somehow profiting from war and other disasters. How likely is it that they will change this awful system, then?