Sunday 2 May 2010

Who's Winning the War on Terror?

The attempted bomb attack in Times Square has prompted me to ask the above question because the answer seems to be "not us". It's now nearly ten years since 9/11, after which, the then President Bush and the then Prime Minister Tony Blair launched their military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq. Since then, thousands of people of many nationalities, mostly innocent civlians, have been killed, maimed or driven out of their homes. Vast amounts of money have been spent on the war effort. Yet still we are told that this is being done in our name and is protecting us from terrorist plots. I don't know who was behind the incident in New York (it might not have been Jihadis), but it certainly highlights the fact that terrorists don't need a base in Afghanistan or Iraq to launch operations in the USA or Europe. The 7/7 bombers certainly didn't. So: is the War on Terror a wasteful, failed effort, or is it keeping things from getting worse? All views very welcome here.
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2 comments:

  1. Chas King2 May 2010 at 16:40

    I consider it to be a failed effort and when things fail they are renamed as the Obama administration requested that Pentagon staff members avoid use of the term, instead using "Overseas Contingency Operation".[

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  2. Neville Grundy3 May 2010 at 19:52

    The phrase War on Terror is one of those vacuous phrases beloved by politicians, but has little connection to reality. Terrorism isn't a single entity, so you can't have a war on it. It also isn't anything new, but we never spoke about a War on Terror when the IRA and UDA were engaged in terrorist activities within our country.

    I don't believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have protected us from anything. On the contrary, I think they have made us more of a target, especially when we and the USA appointed ourselves as the world's police force and decided to invade sovereign nations on the basis of lies, which has resulted in some people in the world viewing us as the terrorists.

    So, if there isn't any such thing as a War on Terror, if terrorism is a matter of your viewpoint rather than moral certainties, then there's nothing that can be won or lost in any meaningful sense. Politicians realising this will be the first positive step in the process of dealing with terrorism.

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