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Via Matt Yglesias, Robert Wright takes a look at whether drone strikes aimed at killing terrorist leaders are effective. A tentative answer comes from Jenna Jordan of the University of Chicago, who examined the results of 298 attempts between 1945 and 2004 to weaken terrorist groups through “leadership decapitation”:

Her work suggests that decapitation doesn’t lower the life expectancy of the decapitated groups — and, if anything, may have the opposite effect.

Particularly ominous are Jordan’s findings about groups that, like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, are religious. The chances that a religious terrorist group will collapse in the wake of a decapitation strategy are 17 percent. Of course, that’s better than zero, but it turns out that the chances of such a group fading away when there’s no decapitation are 33 percent. In other words, killing leaders of a religious terrorist group seems to increase the group’s chances of survival from 67 percent to 83 percent.

Of course the usual caveat applies: It’s hard to disentangle cause and effect. Maybe it’s the more formidable terrorist groups that invite decapitation in the first place — and, needless to say, formidable groups are good at survival. Still, the other interpretation of Jordan’s findings — that decapitation just doesn’t work, and in some cases is counterproductive — does make sense when you think about it.

Italics mine. Jordan’s sample size for religious groups is 35 — which isn’t too bad — and if you combine both the ones that were targeted for decapitation and those that weren’t, a grand total of eight collapsed. This suggests that religious terrorist groups are just pretty hardy organizations regardless of how you fight them. In fact, that really seems to be one of her main findings: only 22% of religious terrorist groups collapsed, compared to 70% for all the other kinds of terrorist groups. So al-Qaeda is going to be a pretty tough nut no matter how we go about fighting them.

Similar results come from a study by Aaron Mannes, which Wright mentioned last year. Mannes’ conclusion:

The result that consistently stood out from this research was the propensity of decapitation strikes to cause religious organizations to become substantially more deadly. There are several possible reasons to explain this outcome. Many religious organizations are robust, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, which is an important criterion for surviving the loss of a leader as well as having the resources to strike back….The indication that killing religious organization’s leaders rather than arresting them is more likely to lead to a surge of deadly violence may be worth further exploration.

So then: killing the leaders of a religious terrorist group doesn’t cause them to collapse but it does cause them to embark on even more deadly attacks. What’s more, the collateral damage on civilian populations is, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it yesterday, “one of the greatest risks to the success of our strategy.” That’s worth further exploration, all right.

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“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

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Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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