hello and welcome to cross talk were all things are considered on peter lavelle the ultimate cost benefit analysis assessing the so-called war on terror after costing chileans of dollars sacrificing personal freedoms and ingratiating rent seeking corporations can anyone claim the us in the world is any safer from the insidious plans of terrorists and what is the difference between an act of terrorism and western style humanitarian intervention. cross-talk terrorism versus interventionism i'm joined by john glaser in washington

he is a contributor to antiwar dot com and a columnist with the washington times community section and in new york we cross to max abrams he is a terrorism expert and fellow at the johns hopkins university all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it john in washington you first give me a cost benefit analysis of the twelve last twelve years what's the balance what's the ledger say. so most of all costs in the defense budgets and every other kind of budget in washington has ballooned to you know unprecedented degrees the costs of the war and wars in afghanistan and iraq some estimates when that when all the pays or do it it might end up being something like four or five trillion dollars and it hasn't benefited us in terms of security because. you know the reasons that we were attacked on nine eleven remain

and actually have been exacerbated we still peppered the entire middle east with military installations and bases we still prop up autocratic dictatorships that terrorists us apostates we still support israel overwhelmingly over the palestinians even as it carries out illegal activities in the occupied territories and we've killed in a men's almost uncountable number of muslims in the arab world since since nine eleven so we have not changed anything for the better and we've only costed lives and money and treasure and blood ok max a lot said there do you want to reply to any of it yeah i mean by yes i mean my my colleague in washington d.c. left out an important point in that is that we've killed. innocent muslim civilians but i'm not sure if he's aware we've also killed

a very large number of terrorists themselves including numerous senior al-qaeda members all the way from the top to low level operatives and the question that we should ask ourselves is not simply what is the united states achieved in the war on terrorism with counterterrorism focus but what have the terrorists themselves achieve and so. this morning you know i took i went into the holland tunnel and i remember thinking to myself that i don't want to blow up this tunnel but but they did in fact does not blowing up much at all and part of the reason why is because of the effectiveness of the drone campaign which is really decimated the organization to virtually nothing and so i think that it's extremely one sided it's demonstrably one sided to say that the u.s. is unequivocally losing the war on terrorism when there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of terrorism but we can indeed count many terrorists lives which are no

more john rejoined to replying to that i mean was it all of this expenditure going to losing or winning are sort of very bad terms to use in this context we're not in a game we're also not in a state on state war we're not in a cold war like we were with the soviet union we are in a situation where the terrorist threat has is low as it has always been nine eleven was a was a blip it was a strange occurrence that probably couldn't happen again it was a lot of luck and it was a you know out of the ordinary if we look at the statistics prior to nine eleven and into today there isn't much difference that is to say americans are not really at risk of being killed by terrorists it's a negligible statistical sort of tiny little minute thing that we don't have to

pay attention to compared to how many people die of heart disease or car accidents and so you know this is always been small and the thing is that i'm not saying winning or losing what i'm saying is that this is a small threat that we have responded to by putting ourselves into immense amounts of debt again. ing our own soldiers killed and killing far more civilians since nine eleven than we have core al qaeda people but only that but we're really no actually the number is a gestating so we are on our way here so you just let me finish the i was watching . ministration people minutes ago we didn't even are to consistent with what you're saying to say that more civilians have been killed in the drone campaign then then combat in sight i don't think it's just you know it's like this to occur as if it was some x.

and i and frankly i do feel comfortable saying the facts there are some victories in the war on terrorism in and one of the victories is safe let's go to my new job no no no no no because if we're talking about numbers here john i think it's dangerous for the state of the state department gave some numbers for two thousand and twelve if i'm not mistaken. the state department numbers from two thousand and twelve say that ten americans have were killed ten private americans were killed by acts of terror in that entire year none of them were in the united states they were in mostly in afghanistan one in iraq this is not a threat right now this isn't for you when i say i was referring to a device that we do know you and i finished civilians in john john finish it well you know you john you finish your flight number you will go to max max and to be fair fair time go ahead point john. he keeps mentioning this this

ratio of how many killed in the drone war versus civilians and how many core al qaeda that's not what i was referring to to begin with i mean i was talking about overall our policies in the middle east since nine eleven have killed far more civilians then then terrorists and the i'm talking about the iraq war which reasonable estimates peer reviewed estimates go higher than six hundred fifty thousand people if you think all of those were terrorists to go. into a mental institution i'm talking also about in afghanistan talking about in pakistan as well with the drone war you know the drone war is it can easily be talked about in terms of how many terrorists we kill but that obviously depends on whether you trust the government to say when a terrorist is killed or when some nameless landless no civilian is killed we know from the new york times for example that the obama administration considers

every one killed in the drone war to be a terrorist unless they're posthumously proven to be guilty of terrorism and so you know these numbers are a little bit on the right john i grant him that i'm going to jump in here for of course of prayer time sake go ahead max baer time go ahead. sure when i say that there are some successes in the drone campaign you need not take the word simply of the u.s. government the terrorists themselves say that the drone campaign has been overwhelmingly effective in decimating their own organisation they say that they're on the run they say that it's harder to be a terrorist they say rely on inspire magazine and make bombs in your in your mama's kitchen don't come back to pakistan don't come back to these areas because it's unsafe for us so when i don't actually go they go to syria. because of the

u.s. government but they go to syria now they go to syria go ahead john i'm sorry continue go ahead john. yes so he's saying that the people are scared of the drones are saying get out of pakistan one of the problems is that the civilian population is saying the exact same thing they're living under a terrorist feeling every single day because they have these white little remote controlled planes flying over their head and bombing people when they gather for a wedding or a funeral or something like this you know there have been a number of cia officials top cia officials that are now retired who have identified the drone war as one of the primary recruiting mechanisms for al qaeda because people become so angry that their relatives were killed even if one al qaeda person was killed in the same bombing that they say to themselves i'm going to turn my sights on america now that's happened that phenomenon it's

a right john bunning a good point stand a good point now let's go to max let max respond to that. you know i mean i have several things to say i mean when when when when when somebody says that they oppose the drone campaign it's very important for them to come up with some kind of alternative instrument to deal with the terrorism threat and so the alternative to the drone campaign is probably not doing nothing at all it may well be you know putting boots on the ground which could be even more disruptive to civilian populations i support the drone campaign not only because it's been so successful in decimating the senior al qaeda leadership and reducing the overall amount of terrorism but also because although tragic that sometimes you know we err in mistakenly kill civilians the cost to that to that same population to the civilian population may well be higher with an alternative military response ok john would

you like to reply i mean another alternative ok go ahead alternative. would disappear pretty quickly if we stole from them their main grievances which helped them propagandizing recruit that is to say if we stopped peppering the entire middle east with u.s. military bases if we stopped trying to control the oil resources if we stopped propping up an autocratic dictatorships if we stopped. you know unjustified support for israel's illegal actions and in palestine you know these are all policy prescriptions that are doable so long as there is political will in washington but they don't want to do it because that they would have to be relinquishing their own power and control so they are saying to themselves and to the american people we will keep you at risk of al-qaeda attacks john i have to jump you john in max i

have to jump yes we're going to go into it we're going to have a short break and out to a short break we'll continue our discussion on terrorism stay. leave the only thing. is that. nobody chooses to be homeless nobody chooses to me and now sorrow. is the world for the seven to. get in the six pm get out six be the six they have. a really strange school day. not to be the class people.

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cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle show my. we're discussing terrorism versus interventionism. ok max and before we went to the break john gave a lot of prescriptions about policy american policy in the arab middle east would you like to reply to that please do. yeah i would i think that the emphasis should be on the word a lot you know you look at bin laden's fatwa in ninety six in ninety eight and there are a lot of stated grievances now john here in washington is saying if only the united states were to you know modify its foreign policy make some concessions then i would quickly i think use the word dry up or lose support somehow the problem is that it's just a never ending list of complaints about u.s.

foreign policy which are together impossible to marry. any of those grievances legitimation play madison or any are any of those grievances legitimate in your mind any of them. yes some of them are illegitimate one of the points that al qaeda has consistently stress is that it wants the united states to reduce if not entirely eliminate the killing of muslims around the world in the crusader wars as they call them ironically however. terrorism has itself been responsible for a very large number of muslim deaths and of course the terrorist attacks have provoked an aggressive counter terrorism policy which as john is quick to highlight has had some very negative effects throughout the muslim world particularly on the civilian population i also want to make an empirical point however and that is that

even when terrorists are lucky enough to achieve their strategic demands that doesn't mean that they then you know go out of the terrorism business take hezbollah for example hezbollah was created in the early one nine hundred eighty s. in order to get israel out of southern lebanon and israel got out of southern lebanon in one nine hundred eighty four and then entirely in two thousand and hezbollah's stated political objectives simply changed and so this is why the al-qaeda expert jessica stern referred refers to al-qaeda as having protean demands because of the mathematics. in the west and it really makes me nothing think. there's nothing the west as he creates terrorism in the world is not yours position nothing. you know i do think that there are certain actions that the u.s. can take and does unfortunately sometimes doesn't fact take which are conducive to

fanning terrorism one of those would be foreign occupation so i'm going further into the work of robert pape at the university of chicago i think having large numbers of boots on the ground in these muslim countries irritates the local population and is conducive to growing the number of terrorist members and expanding the organization and so that can be quite counterproductive but again that's an alternative strategy to the drone campaign and that's precisely why i'm in support of the drone campaign because the alternative of having boots on the ground is even less effective ok so john as long as other people are killed and not our people that's fine. that's the drone campaign in a nutshell yeah i mean. this is a little bit of a. sort of academic point but i want to make it quickly and move on you know it's not about making concessions specifically to al qaeda they're not a cohesive body that we can make such concessions to what i'm saying is that if we

reevaluate our foreign policy to one that doesn't support dictatorship and israeli occupation and consistently and persistently kill muslims all all around the middle east then we'll see the recruitment mechanisms for al qaeda dry up and then they'll be even weaker than they are now what's happening now instead is that we have been as max has said taking out the core al qaeda the senior leadership some of them at least according to internal documents that have been reported upon about two percent of all those casualties in the drone war have been senior al qaeda operational leaders however what we're doing is taking out some of the senior leadership and at the same time expanding the possibilities for the local population to start to sympathize with al qaeda this is happening in pakistan and yemen so i'm saying is if we reevaluated and stop killing people and stop

supporting horrible authoritarian governments and stop supporting israel we will get to a point where the local population in the in the broader population the middle east won't feel the need to sympathize with al-qaeda and they will lose their support base this will make them eventually dissolve and we want to kill innocent people in the drone war to do it max would you like to reply to that and it won't risk blowback you guys and i'm very happy to respond i mean if you if you listen to my fellow panelists john here you would believe that the counterterrorism response of the united states after nine eleven happened without any provocation but the reason why the united states is responding with such an. dress of counterterrorism response in the first place is precisely because there was terrorism which preceded it and it it's not it's just not empirically accurate to say that if only the united states didn't respond in a heavy handed fashion there wouldn't be a terrorism threat so in nine hundred ninety six they blew up the khobar towers in

saudi arabia the united states did very very little in one nine hundred ninety eight there was the east african bombings the united states did very little in two thousand that was the core bombing the you know yes a very nine hundred ninety three in the game specially with attack for the first time the united states did very little and so there's a history of targeting westerners candidates and u.s. targets in international terrorism which preceded this heavy handed response and so i don't think there's a strong imperial basis to say well if only the united states didn't respond in this fashion after nine eleven al qaeda would go away because it didn't go away before the united states acted that way ok john go ahead max max you missed you misunderstand me i'm not saying that soley the united states is response after nine eleven has contributed to more terrorism what i'm saying is that u.s. policy since the second world war has contributed and developed and generated terrorism this is all blowback it was blowback on nine hundred ninety s.

before george bush in his crazy iraq war and before obama. you know. launched his drone war that was a reaction as well and you're talking about what preceded it let's talk about what u.s. policy preceded it we supported the saudi dictatorship and had military bases on their land which pissed off a lot of people we had been supporting israel to end its possession of the palestinian lands for decades and by the way in the ninety's we're also the lead nation that was imposing horrible. genocidal sanctions on iraq that according to the united nations might have killed about a million people as a direct result of the sanctions so i mean this terrorism that you cited starting in one thousand nine hundred six was in fact their reaction to already standing

u.s. policy that was killing immense amount of people and causing immense suffering among middle eastern people suffering under dictatorship so look we can always go back and back and back and back further and further but the truth of the matter is that since world war two we've had terrible policies towards the middle east that have that of anger at a lot of people and cause a lot of resentment maxie think the curbing of liberties that home. is is worth it considering the war on terror i mean we can talk about the middle east but what about in the united states and western countries losing our freedoms in this conflict if we can use that term so worth it yeah sure that's a very different kind of question in my answer may actually surprise you i do think that our counterterrorism responses have been a little bit too heavy handed in the sense of restricting civil liberties at home i do agree with that what i was saying is simply that we shouldn't you know be so

partisan and so ideological as to say that there have been no benefits whatsoever to our counterterrorism response because indeed there have been at the same time it's a valid question as peter points out to ask you know given the fact that terrorism is not the foremost threat affecting the united states and indeed affecting almost any other country is it worth it to sacrifice major things like freedom and liberty etc and so i'm actually very sympathetic to the think tank out of washington d.c. called the cato institute and they're always quick to point out how you know relatively small the. terrorism threat is in comparison to other threats that affect the united states and so i do think that a strong arguing argument can be made not that our counterterrorism a sponsor has achieved nothing but that the costs simply haven't been worth it in

other areas like freedom you know john it seems to me this whole war on terror the we still use the term it should be to start with police practices ok a crime is committed and you call the police you treat it that way not this international global you know attempts to snuff out everything should be more precise. yeah and i you know i think that it's really an important question to ask why the government chose to go the war of the global borderless war route as opposed to the police action wrote i think there's a very good reason in times of war the government is able to expand its scope and power and control more than any other time so under a war footing. the united states government can throw a b.s. corpus out the window under a war footing the united states government can illegally torture people under a war footing the fourth amendment rights of millions and millions and millions of

americans can be a vis aerated by an n.s.a. that wants to collect all of our method data and. in the interest of fairness in the interest of fairness i want to go to give max a last forty seconds in the program go ahead max. well i have actually seen the statistics on the efficacy of various counterterrorism responses in particular the difference between police responses versus military responses police responses as you've correctly implied are indeed correlated with a higher level of counterterrorism success than military responses are that is to say military responses are more likely to fail in the realm of counterterrorism than our police responded very accurately point max i'm sorry he didn't get to finish your point thank you gentlemen we've run out of time many thanks to my guest today in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here

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breaking news this hour reports are coming in that whistleblower edward snowden has been given temporary paperwork to finally leave the moscow airport has been holed up in a four amongst. all caught on. linked militants hold around two hundred kurdish civilians hostage in northeastern syria we try to gauge the many faces of the country's opposition. and the situation in iraq is spiraling out of control with a plot of prison breaks and fresh terrorist attacks setting record death tolls.