The War on Terror: The Americans War or a Real International Crisis

The aim of my essay is to argue whether or not America started the idea of the war on terror for its own selfish needs, which is widely believed to be oil, or whether it is a crisis that could have been avoided. I want to show that the Americans have used excessive force in dealing with the people believed to be responsible and who are mainly from Middle Eastern countries. The Americans have forcefully occupied countries like Afghanistan and Iraq and in the process opened special prisons like Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba where terror suspects are tortured in order to force confessions out of them. This develops a feeling of hatred among Middle Easterners and a reason for them to bring in the Jihad, which is the Holy Islamic war, where they carry out suicide bombings with the belief that they will be rewarded in the after life because they are dying in defense of Islam.

I believe that this war has very little to do with fighting terror, but instead just to enable America to get its hands on middle Easter oil. Therefore this is America’s war and it has no right driving the rest of the world into it, with the belief that we are defending ourselves from harm.

According to the Encarta Dictionary the definition of terrorism is:

“Violence or the threat of violence, especially bombing, kidnapping, and assassination, carried out for political purposes.”

In addition, the Encarta Encyclopedia has defined the war on terrorism as:

“A campaign begun by the Bush administration which includes various military, political, and legal actions taken to ostensibly "curb the spread of terrorism" following the September 11th 2001 attacks on the United States.”

I believe that both the phrase “War on Terrorism” and the policies it denotes have been a source of ongoing controversy. This is because critics argue that it has been used to justify unilateral preemptive war, perpetual war, Human Rights abuses, and other violations of international law.

Terrorism is not new to us; in fact, the earliest known organization to exhibit characteristics of a modern terrorist organization was between the 1st - 14th Century AD among the Zealots of Judea. They were known to the Romans as sicarii or dagger-men. The Zealots assassinated the Romans who were at that time, the occupational forces of Israel and also any Jew who collaborated with them. The motive for doing this was the belief that they could not remain faithful to their Christian faith while living as Roman subjects. Eventually, the Zealot revolt became open, and they were finally besieged and committed mass suicide at the fortification of Masada.

There have been attacks on America and their allies by terrorist organizations during the latter part of the 20th century and this has prompted fierce military retaliation by the Americans. A very good example of this is 7th September 1998, when there were simultaneous bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in which a total of 212 people were killed and approximately 4000 seriously injured. Most of the casualties were local civilians although the bombings were mainly aimed at American facilities. The al Qaeda terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden, claimed responsibility for the attacks and this brought bin Laden and the al Qaeda to international attention for the first time. This resulted in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation placing bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted list.

The then United States President, Bill Clinton launched �Operation Infinite Reach’ which was a bombing campaign in Sudan and Afghanistan against targets believed to be associated with the al-Qaeda. These targets included the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, which produced 90% of the region's malaria drugs claiming that they had enough evidence to prove that the plant produced chemical weapons. Four people were killed in the air strike. Investigations in the area after the missile strike proved that there were not any traces of chemical weapons in the area therefore I think that the Americans had their own hidden agendas for carrying out the attack.

The Terrorists retaliated in October of 2000 with a suicide bombing attack against the U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer USS Cole while it was harbored in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen sailors were killed and thirty nine other were injured. This was closely followed by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on Americas own soil, where four hijacked commercial airplanes were flown into the twin towers in New York City. Approximately 2,974 people were killed and these attacks created a sense of bitterness among the Americans because they lost many loved ones thus they did not think twice about supporting