John McCain continues to pound his chest about what a great commander-in-chief he would make. Just like his war loving Siamese twin brothers Bush/Cheney his only tool is the hammer of the military and every problem looks like the nail of a war. Now one of their favorite institutional friends the Rand Corporation(the folks who brought you the brilliant strategy of Vietnam) are saying that the "War on Terror" is a stupid concept because it doesn't work.
In a study released July 29th entitled How Terrorism Ends: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida Seth Jones,Ph.D. and Martin C. Libicki make the case that the "War on Terror" has failed to curb the world wide terrorist activities of al Qa'ida. They examined 648 terrorist groups that existed between 1968 and 2006 looking for how they eventually ended their activities. What their, dare I say it, scientific, study revealed is that the concept of a military solution to the problem of terrorist activity has never worked. Instead, "most terrorist groups end either because they join the political process, or because local police and intelligence efforts arrest or kill key members." Not that most of the readers of this site didn't already know it but they also found that the terrorist activities of al Qa'ida have only increased since 9-11 and that they also have expanded into Europe, Asia, Africa and of course the Middle East.
