CAN THE WEST POSSIBLY WIN THE WAR ON TERROR
September 11, 2001, 10:30 am, New York: 2,976 innocent lives have just been lost following a vicious attack orchestrated by deadly terrorists. In addition to this barbaric act, both the World Trade Centre’s North and South towers lie in a pile of rubble and destruction 1,368 ft below where they stood proudly. And so the ‘War on Terror ‘had begun.
The now world-renowned phrase can trace its humble beginnings back to President George. W. Bush and his administration who coined the ‘war on terror’ to combat the Islamist group, Al-Qaeda, founded sometime between 1988 and 1990 by Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda is a radical Islamist movement calling for global jihad as the religious duty of Muslims. Characteristic techniques of this group include suicide attacks and simultaneous bombings of different targets. Bush’s plan for his ‘war’ was infact simple in theory: bomb Afghanistan, get Bin Laden and return home with heads held high after a quick and decisive victory over a bunch of Third World farmers. However, Bush made the crucial error of misunderestimating his enemies, believing himself to be battling a group of politically motivated insurgents, rather than the religiously incited individuals whom he actually faced and could not possibly defeat in the same way conventional insurgents could be dealt with. And so the war rages on today.
Terrorism is by no means a modern catastrophe and has infact plagued the world for centuries. The term ‘terrorism’ was originally used to describe the actions of the Jacobin Club during the ‘Reign of Terror’ in the French Revolution in 1795. Although these acts are in no way acceptable; One must admire the fact that certain individuals are more than willing to give their lives in order to force the world to ‘sit up’ and listen to the ideas which they believe in. If the attack on the twin towers has taught us anything, it is that such a method is more than capable of achieving such a goal. How...