Massive increase of terrorism since Iraq invasion

The charts below from a Mother Jones study on the increase of terrorism since the invasion of Iraq.

Comments

[Dan]

Don't these charts show that there *hasn't* been a significant increase in terrorism "worldwide"? The "Excluding Iran and Afghanistan" columns show scarcely any difference. And within Iraq and Afghanistan, well, those are war zones--a "terrorist" attack there can be just a military attack with a different name slapped on it. The linked article says: "But even excluding Iraq and Afghanistan—the other current jihadist hot spot—there has been a 35 percent rise in the number of attacks, with a 12 percent rise in fatalities." That does sound alarming, but the graphs show that this 35% rise is really something like 5 to 10 attacks worldwide, and the 12% rise is something like 20 or 50 extra fatalities, worldwide. Considering that at least some of these terrorist attacks/death have nothing to do with Iraq or America (Kashmir and India proper, Sri Lanka, Nepal, even the Israel/Palestinian territories though there you could make some case of correlation I guess), couldn't you argue from these numbers that the invasion hasn't, or has hardly, budged the numbers "worldwide"? I'm not just trying to be contrarian here--nor am I trying to suggest that those extra 20 or 50 dead, on average each year, is not important. But... am I missing something?

Also, averages can be misleading... you get one big explosion in Delhi or Bombay and that'll up the non-Iraq, non-Afghanistan average a big way, if you're dealing with only a set of a few years (which, for "post-Invasion" numbers, is really a very small set). I don't recall how many people died, for example, in that Delhi train bombing some time back... something like that has nothing to do with Iraq (I think? Am I wrong?)

In short I don't see these charts or the article actually showing what the linked articles headline suggests. (I could definitely see, however, down the line, once Iraq is over, all these people/terrorists fighting will maybe not just go back to being farmers and drivers and engineers or whatever, and cause a longer term problem or increase. That I could see.)

[Issandr El Amrani]

You're definitely right in the last thing you said, Dan. It'll be the Afghan Arabs all over again.

Good point about the charts, too. MJ is being sensationalistic, but you of course it's hard to evaluate the global impact of the Iraq war not only on violent groups but also anti-Americanism more generally, whether Muslim or otherwise.

One thing about Iraq and Afghanistan, though: even though people are resigned to the current realities of these places now, this is not the result that was promised by the Bush administration -- by far.

[romunov]

Hehe, my thoughts on the middle chart (sans Iraq/Afgh) exactly.

[Bill Murray]

I would consider that an increase of over 300% as being a substantial increase in world wide terrorism since the invasion of Iraq.

[Bill Murray]

There is no doubt that the invasion of Iraq has exacerbated terrorism; not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but worldwide as well. It is just a matter of time before we here in the US will experience new terrorist attacks. The animosity and anger we trigger around the world by our aggressive actions only increase the likelihood of it happening.