What Works Against Terrorism?

We haven’t a clue:

The Afghanistan war has cost $657.5 billion so far, we spend $17.2 billion in classified funds a year fighting terrorism through the intelligence community, and the Department of Homeland Security spent another $47.4 billion last year. And we have very little idea whether any of it is preventing terrorist attacks. …

It’s scandalous that we spend billions every year on counterterrorism but barely spend any effort on evaluating whether what we’re doing works. The federal government is showing slightly more interest than it once did. “We’re lucky because there’s a criminologist in DHS who helps the partnership along a bit,” [criminologist Cynthia] Lum tells me. But the scale of the efforts pales in comparison the efforts to build evidence on health, education, social welfare, or crime policy. That has to change.

And I think that’s underlying public discontent with respect to Syria. The cost-benefit analysis of the last decade makes – and should make – anyone shudder at the thought of anything like those policies being continued. Obama, for the most part, has avoided them. But the huge budgets for the NSA and DHS and the post-9/11 Pentagon have no serious accounting for them in terms of benefits to the American people. I suspect Washington’s political class need to address this question – and answer it thoroughly – before they will ever get backing for war again.