More accurately, it is the author's "opinion" on why he thinks the report is wrong. He has his own political agenda that he readily admits to. The take away from the CSIS in my opinion is we won't be able to apply sufficient military force to compel jihadists to cease their jihad or deter them from further attacks. They're true believers in their cause, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves if just give them a little economic assistance they'll stop. Therefore, an active defense is probably the most sustainable and effective strategy to mitigate risks to our collective interests. An active defense includes offensive operations, but the focus is on disrupting attacks and eliminating known cells to protect our homeland that of our allies, not on conducting industrial scale COIN, which conflates insurgency with transnational terrorists.Originally Posted by davidbfpo
Getting back to the fuzzy math, I agree with the author that the Taliban are not transnational terrorists, they are insurgents who use terrorist tactics. All insurgents do, and I doubt there were any successful insurgencies in history that didn't apply terrorism to some level to control certain elements of the population who didn't willingly rally around their cause. Mao sure as heck used a great deal of terrorism to compel compliance, so much for the siren song of legitimacy. However, back to 2018, the Taliban are not seeking to conduct terrorist attacks on our homeland. Looking at it from the perspective of hard core transnational terrorist networks like al-Qaeda members and subsequent groups like ISIS, and comparing their impact now to 9/10/2001 and prior, my gut tells me there are a lot more now than the few hundred of hard AQ operatives that existed then. They are dispersed globally through Syria, Libya, Iraq, UK, mainland Europe, West Africa, East Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, etc. Some are transnational terrorists, which are the greatest threat to our security, and others are insurgents.
In defense of the original CSIS report, I think their argument about the expansion of jihadist militants (not necessarily hard core al-Qaeda/ISIS types, but local insurgents) is clearly justifiable. There are many more active jihadists movements around the world now than there were in prior to 9/11. The actual number of militants isn't immaterial, but it is unknowable. What is knowable is the scale of the threat has expanded significantly. Most of these are insurgents seeking to impose their version of Sharia within their country/region.
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