The War on Terror (or War on Terrorism) is a campaign that was launched by the United States of America with support from NATO and other allies with the stated goal of ending international terrorism, which is typically understood to refer particularly to radical Islamist terrorism. The campaign was launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, for which Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility. The "War on Terror" has taken many forms, such as diplomacy, going after "terrorist financing," domestic provisions aiming to prevent future attacks, and joint training and peacekeeping operations with a wide variety of nations.[1]
With the election of President Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 and a policy of "leading from behind," the aims significantly altered. Terrorist recruitment and training shifted from the remote mountains of Afghanistan to Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Central Africa. Jihadism exploded, and the European Union was overrun by three million Muslims, 80% of which were male between the ages of 14 to 34, the prime ages for jihadist recruitment. The globalists to whom Obama ceded American leadership to consciously imported a rape jihad to Europe.
The War on Terror has been referred to multiple times as World War IV (World War III being the Cold War against communism).[2][3]
In March 2007, a memo sent to Democratic staffers on the House Armed Services Committee instructed Congressional aides not to use the specific phrases, "global war on terrorism" and "long war" in Defense authorization requests for the fiscal 2008 budget. The memo reads,
CNN's Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware reported in April 2007,
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware said in the weeks immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran.”[6][7][8][9] In 2011 a U.S. district court ruled that Iran was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.[10]
The Obama administration has discontinued use of the phrase 'war on terror', and its multiple variants. He claims that he will "go after" extremists and "win this fight."[11] The administration has also introduced the term "Overseas Contingency Operation", in order to downplay the importance of the conflict.[12]
In immediate response to the 9/11 attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and deny al-Qaeda a base of operations.
Three weeks after the 9/11 attacks, on October 3, 2001, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware proposed on the Senate floor a billion dollars in aid to a yet-to-be-formed Afghan interim government. The amount was almost twice as much as U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan proposed,[13] and more than triple what the Bush administration asked for.[14] Sen. Biden, who spoke for the Democrats in Congress, wanted more than just removal of the Taliban and degrading al Qaeda. Biden wanted nation building. Biden wanted to flood the new government with cash, which ultimately corrupted the new Karzai regime, and created an anti-Western, anti-corruption, pro-Taliban resurgence and backlash.
On October 22, 2001, Sen. Biden, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations insisting that U.S. goals—rooting out al-Qaeda and helping establish a friendly successor government to the Taliban—would require U.S. boots on the ground far beyond the small number of Special Forces that the Pentagon had recommended. Biden said, "There is no way that you can, in fact, go after and root out al Qaeda and or Bin Ladin without folks on the ground, in caves, risking and losing their lives. And I believe that the tolerance for that in the Islamic world is significant, exponentially higher, than it is for us bombing."[15] Under pressure from U.S. military and anti-Taliban forces however, the Taliban disintegrated rapidly, and Kabul fell on November 13, 2001.
Hamid Karzai formed an interim government on 22 December 2001 until elections could be held after the removal of Taliban rule by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces. On January 10, 2002 Biden arrived in Afghanistan on a four-day fact-finding visit and at Bagram Airforce Base. The Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility had been prepared to receive jihadis. Bagram was a major collection point for preliminary interrogation. Sen. Biden said, "These are some real hard, hard, hard cases. But unless we gather the list of leaders which we -- I have in my pocket here...the possibility of them being able to do guerrilla kind of attacks on military here are real."[16]
In 2002 and 2003, when Afghan tribal councils gathered to write a new constitution, the U.S. government gave “nice packages” to delegates who supported Washington’s preferred stance. “The perception that was started in that period: If you were going to vote for a position that Washington favored, you’d be stupid to not get a package for doing it,” according to a U.S. official interviewed by the Washington Post who served in Kabul at the time.[17]
According to The New York Times, beginning in December 2002 throughout Karzai's terms of office, Karzai's office was funded with "tens of millions of dollars" of black cash from the CIA in order to buy influence within the Afghan government. TheNYT stated that "the cash that does not appear to be subject to the oversight and restrictions." An unnamed American official was quoted by The New York Times as stating that "The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan was the United States."[18]
The Iraq War, also known as the Second Persian Gulf War, began in March 2003 when the United States and a coalition of forces willing to enforce United Nations Resolutions removed Baathist dictator Saddam Hussein's from power. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the multinational forces has characterized the Iraqi war as a decentralized fight against clan or family-based terror networks supplied by Iran and Syria, against which more and more Iraqis are willing to fight. Research using robust surveying techniques has estimated that over 650,000 Iraqis have died [19] since the fall of the Ba'athist regime.
Iran is actively assisting the major Shiite Muslim political factions in Iraq, most of which have long-standing ideological, political, and religious sectarian ties to Tehran. A key U.S. concern is that Iran is purportedly arming the militias fielded by those factions - militias that have attacked U.S. forces. Since December 2006, the Administration has tried to reverse Iranian influence in Iraq while also engaging Iran diplomatically on Iraq.
Of greater concern to U.S. officials than the Iranian political support to Iraq's Shiite factions is Iranian material support to militias fielded by the major Shiite groupings. The militias are widely accused of the sectarian violence against Sunnis that is gripping Iraq and which has been repeatedly identified by U.S. officials as a leading security problem, although Iraqi Shiites say they are retaliating for Sunni violence against them.
Senior U.S. and allied military officials and policymakers have provided specific information on Iranian aid to Shiite militias.
One press report said there are 150 Iranian Qods Forces and intelligence personnel in Iraq.[23] In December 2006, U.S. forces arrested two Qods Forces senior officers in the compound of SICI leader Hakim, where they were allegedly meeting with Badr Brigade leader (and member of parliament) Hadi al-Amiri; the two were later released under Iraqi government pressure. In January 2007, another five Iranian agents were arrested in a liaison office in the Kurdish city of Irbil, reportedly against the urging of Iraq's Kurdish leaders. They remain under arrest until at least October 2007 when their case will be reviewed. Iranian diplomats were allowed access to the five on July 7, 2007, and the Iranians reportedly were told that there are two other Iranian government employees held by U.S. forces.
MSNBC reports that Hezbollah, the Iranian created and supported terror organization that until the September 11 attacks had killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization, has set up operations within the rural regions known as South America's Tri-Border Area.[24] This area is located between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, and borders Venezuela and Bolivia. All of these countries face the common enterprise of narco-terrorism. These funds are, in turn, are used to wage war against US and Coalition Forces in the Middle East and for clandestine training of future terrorist operatives in their jihad against the West. Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda are all coordinating to affect jihad in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America. Further, many Western intelligence agencies report that al Qaeda nuclear whiz-kid Adnan el Shukrijumah has been spotted throughout South America, the United States and Canada.
Other known terrorist organizations in the region, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), facilitate the trafficking of narcotics and the laundering of money derived from that enterprise.[25]
The Second Lebanon War was fought between Israel and Hezbollah, primarily in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, in the summer of 2006.
The Waziristan War (2004-2006) was fought between Pakistan and al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and sympathetic tribal militias in the Waziristan province of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan. A second offensive was carried out by the during early May to early December 2009, driving the Taliban from the region.[26][27]
After Saudi Arabian missiles were located by Egyptian insurgents, a militant group of Egyptian insurgents launched a reconnaissance mission in late 2008. Al queda forces were located in several strongholds; the Egyptians fought and captured the missiles, preventing a nuclear attack holocaust. Due to cover up by the lamestream media, very few people know this story.[Citation Needed]
The U.S. has also used armed drones, CIA operatives, Special Forces, and local allies to fight Islamists and Al Qaeda in many other countries. Missile strikes on Taliban and Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan are now routine, having been escalated under the Obama administration. Special Forces incursions, especially the Bin Laden raid, are now increasingly common. Drone strikes by the military and CIA have also increased in Yemen, recently killing Anwar al-Awlaki and several others. CIA operatives are also present in other countries, including Somalia, where they assist the Transitional Federal Government.
Some disapprove of the War on Terror, claiming that deliberate deception was used to justify the Iraq war. Many people internationally disagree with their countries joining the "Coalition of the willing", Germany and the United Kingdom for example.[28][29] They also feel that the use of extrajudicial internment and trials which are perceived to be unfair in Guantanamo Bay are a disgrace to the United States.
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Categories: [War] [United States Political Terms] [Terrorism]