Good News and Bad Logic in the War on Terror

Over at RealClearPolitics, Michael Barone finally has some good news to report in the War on Terror. Barone reports that a recent survey of public opinion in six Muslim countries (conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project) indicates a significant drop in support for terrorism. He writes:

"[S]upport for terrorism in defense of Islam has
'declined dramatically,' in the Pew report's words,
in Muslim countries, except in Jordan (which has a
Palestinian majority) and Turkey, where support has
remained a low 14 percent. It has fallen in Indonesia
(from 27 percent to 15 percent since 2002), Pakistan
(from 41 percent to 25 percent since 2004) and Morocco
(from 40 percent to 13 percent since 2004), and among
Muslims in Lebanon (from 73 percent to 26 percent
since 2002)."

If these numbers can be believed, this is indeed very promising news. After all, the War on Terror (as the Bush administration is belatedly starting to realize) is primarily a war of ideas. As history indicates, terrorist groups cannot survive without popular support (or at least popular acquiescence). Loss of public support ultimately ended the threat of the IRA in Northern Ireland, the Shining Path in Peru, and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The only way Al Qaeda will be defeated is when public opinion in the Muslim world turns decidedly against them.

Not surprisingly, Barone takes this bit of good news, and with virtually no further analysis, construes it as a vindication of the Bush administration's overall strategy in fighting terror. He writes:

"Two generations ago, Americans, at the cost of
hundreds of thousands of deaths, changed minds
in Germany and Japan. The Pew Global Project
Attitude's [sic] metrics give us reason to believe that
today's Americans, at far lower cost, are changing
minds in the Muslim world."

But Barone never really attempts to explain why support for terrorism is dropping. He simply implies that it is due to Bush's policies. I'm certainly no expert on public opinion in the Muslim world, but I somehow doubt that this change has anything to do with Bush's rhetoric or his Iraq policy. Who knows, perhaps when the people of Morocco heard Bush use the word "evildoer" for the 500th time, the truth of his words finally sunk in. I think it's more likely, however, that there is another explanation. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd attribute the apparent decrease in public support for terrorism to the increased targeting of Muslim civilians by terrorist groups. For instance, when Al Qaeda began targeting Saudi civilians, instead of just foreigners, support for Al Qaeda within Saudi Arabia dropped significantly. In Iraq, insurgents and foreign jihadists have increasing targeted Iraqi civilians instead of (or in addition to) U.S. soldiers. This slaughter of Muslim civilians has been covered extensively by Al Jazeera and other Muslim media outlets. It's not surprisingly, therefore, that public approval of terrorist tactics has diminished.

But how exactly does Bush deserve credit for this? Is it Barone's contention that when planning the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration intended to created a violent insurgency that would then miscalcute politically by murdering too many Iraqi civilians? Will this be the next in a long line of post-hoc justifications for the war offered by Bush apologists? Perhaps we can call it the "civilian bait theory." The guys at the Corner can explain to us how the plan all along was to provide terrorists with a venue in which to showcase their brutality, thereby undermining public support for terrorism in the Muslim world.

It's encouraging to learn that the Muslim world may finally be realizing what monsters the extremists in their midst really are. It seems to me, though, that this bit of progress most likely occurred despite Bush's policies, not because of them.