After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, American foreign policy was confronted with the security threat of terrorism. The immediate response was to launch a so-called “War on Terror”, with military interventions to curtail terrorism. The first intervention was an invasion of Afghanistan, which housed the Taliban, who were held to be responsible for the 9-11 attacks. This was followed by an invasion of Iraq, whose connections were much more dubious to terrorism. Accordingly, the particular strategic approach to combating terrorism pursued by the U.S. government has become questionable. Above all, however, the war on terror seems to be a flawed concept. The war on terror is a flawed strategy to curtail terrorism, because to fight terrorism through large-scale military violence only further fuels terrorism, justifying the terrorists’ views of America as an aggressive nation. The War on Terror has become an aggressive foreign policy approach which goes against the very democratic principles the U.S. has been historically committed to.
When the United States invaded Afghanistan, there was large support from the world community. The links between the Taliban and 9-11 were fairly well supported. Accordingly, dethroning the Taliban regime, which was also known for its human rights violations by the world community, was not viewed as an aggressive American strategy. Nevertheless, this changed with the invasion of Iraq. The largest protests in human history aimed to prevent what was viewed by many as a war of aggression by the United States. The Bush administration attempted to fit an invasion of Iraq into the War on Terror, but these claims, as time eventually realized fell apart. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and there were no clear links between Hussein’s Ba’ath regime – an ideology that attempts to promote secularism, as opposed to Islamic fundamentalism – to Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. What happened with the Iraq war was a certain change in perspective, where the world community and many American citizens began to look at U.S. foreign policy of the War on Terror as a series of aggressive wars by the American government into order to secure U.S. power in the region.
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"Protest Against the War on Terror".
The problem with this strategy is that it is a clear violation of democracy and autonomy. Claiming on the one hand to be a democratic nation that values autonomy and respects nation states’ sovereignty, and then, on the other hand, invading countries in the name of a War on Terror which seem to not even have a firm link with terrorism shows a clear hypocrisy. What this strategy actually does is provide support to the terrorists’ viewpoints of the United States. Those terrorists who have thought of the U.S. as aggressors now have more proof for their allegations with the dubious logic for the War on Terror.
This dubious logic for the War on Terror is further shown in the current war in Syria. Those who are opposed to the al-Assad government include Islamic fundamentalists. These are groups associated with the same groups that the U.S. has claimed to oppose as terrorists. Yet the U.S. has supported these groups against al-Assad. How can this be reconciled with the War on Terror?
Obviously, it shows that the War on Terror is really a name to hide an aggressive U.S. foreign policy. It is a violation of some of the core beliefs of the American constitution, such as freedom, the rights of man and autonomy. Furthermore, by pursuing this strategy, one is justifying the negative image of the United States in the eyes of the world. To be against the War on Terror is to be for a sensible foreign policy, which defends democratic ideals, as opposed to violating these ideals with an aggressive foreign policy.
