Criticism of the war on terror addresses the morals, ethics, efficiency, economics, as well as other issues surrounding the war on terror. It also touches upon criticism against the phrase itself, which was branded as a misnomer. The notion of a "war" against "terrorism" has proven highly contentious, with critics charging that participating governments exploited it to pursue long-standing policy/military objectives,George Monbiot, "A Wilful Blindness" ("Those who support the coming war with Iraq refuse to see that it has anything to do with US global domination"), monbiot.com (author's website archives), reposted from The Guardian, March 11, 2003, accessed May 28, 2007. reduce civil liberties, and infringe upon human rights. It is argued by critics that the term war is not appropriate in this context (as in war on drugs), since there is no identifiable enemy and that it is unlikely international terrorism can be brought to an end by military means.
Other critics, such as Francis Fukuyama, say that "terrorism" is not an enemy but a tactic, and calling it a "war on terror" obscures differences between conflicts such as anti-occupation insurgents and international mujahideen. With a military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its associated collateral damage, Shirley Williams posits that this increases resentment and terrorist threats against the West.Williams, Shirley."The seeds of Iraq's future terror". The Guardian, 28 October 2003. Other criticism include United States hypocrisy,American Hegemony: How to Use It, How to Lose It by Gen. William Odom media induced hysteria, and that changes in American foreign and security policy have shifted world opinion against the U.S.
Terminology Various critics dubbed the term "war on terror" as nonsensical. Billionaire activist investor George Soros criticized the term "war on terror" as a "false metaphor."Soros, George. "A Self-Defeating War ". The Wall Street Journal, August 2006. Linguist George Lakoff of the Rockridge Institute argued that there cannot literally be a war on terror, since terror is an abstract noun: "Terror cannot be destroyed by weapons or signing a peace treaty. A war on terror has no end."Lakoff, George. "'War on Terror,' Rest In Peace".Rockridge Institute, February 2006. Jason Burke, a journalist who writes about radical Islamic activity, describes the terms "terrorism" and "war against terrorism" in this manner:
There are multiple ways of defining terrorism and all are subjective. Most define terrorism as 'the use or threat of serious violence' to advance some kind of 'cause'. Some state clearly the kinds of group ('sub-national', 'non-state') or cause (political, ideological, religious) to which they refer. Others merely rely on the instinct of most people when confronted with an act that involves innocent civilians being killed or maimed by men armed with explosives, firearms or other weapons. None is satisfactory and grave problems with the use of the term persist.
Terrorism is after all, a tactic. The term 'war on terrorism' is thus effectively nonsensical. As there is no space here to explore this involved and difficult debate, my preference is, on the whole, for the less loaded term 'militancy'. This is not an attempt to condone such actions, merely to analyze them in a clearer way.
Perpetual war Former U.S. President George W. Bush articulated the goals of the war on terror in a September 20, 2001 speech, in which he said that it "will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." In that same speech, he called the war "a task that does not end", an argument he reiterated in 2006 State of The Union address. Excerpts from an April 2006 report compiled from sixteen U.S. government intelligence agencies, however, has strengthened the claim that engaging in Iraq has increased terrorism in the region.Glaister, Dan. "Campaign in Iraq has increased threat, says American intelligence report". Guardian Unlimited, September 25, 2006.
Preventive war One justification given for the invasion of Iraq was to prevent terroristic, or other attacks, by Iraq on the United States or other nations. This can be viewed as a conventional warfare realization of the war on terror. A major criticism leveled at this justification is that it does not fulfill one of the requirements of a just war and that in waging war preemptively, the United States undermined international law and the authority of the United Nations, particularly the United Nations Security Council. On this ground, by invading a country that did not pose an imminent threat without UN support, the U.S. violated international law, including the UN Charter and the Nuremberg principles, therefore committing a war of aggression, which is considered a war crime. Additional criticism raised the point that the United States might have set a precedent, under the premise of which any nation could justify the invasion of other states.
Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that on the eve of U.S. intervention in 2003, Iraq represented, at best, a gathering threat and not an imminent one. In hindsight he notes that Iraq did not even represent a gathering threat. "The decision to attack Iraq in March 2003 was discretionary: it was a war of choice. There was no vital American interests in imminent danger and there were alternatives to using military force, such as strengthening existing sanctions." However, Haass argues that U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 began as a war of necessity—vital interests were at stake—but morphed "into something else and it crossed a line in March 2009, when President Barack Obama decided to sharply increase American troop levels and declared that it was U.S. policy to 'take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east' of the country." Afghanistan, according to Haass, eventually became a war of choice.
War on terror seen as pretext Domestic civil liberties
In the United Kingdom, critics have claimed that the Blair government used the war on terror as a pretext to radically curtail civil liberties. For example, the detention-without-trial in Belmarsh prison, controls on free speech through laws against protests near Parliament, laws banning the "glorification" of terrorism, and reductions in checks on police power as in the case of Jean Charles de Menezes and Mohammed Abdul Kahar.
Former Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Menzies Campbell has also condemned Blair's inaction over the controversial U.S. practice of extraordinary rendition, arguing that the human rights conventions to which the UK is a signatory (e.g. European Convention on Human Rights) impose on the government a "legal obligation" to investigate and prevent potential torture and human rights violations.
Richard Jackson notes how countries like Russia, India, Israel and China also adopted the language of the war on terror to describe their own fight against domestic insurgents and dissidents. He argues that "Linking rebels and dissidents at home to the global 'war on terrorism' gives these governments both the freedom to crack down on them without fear of international condemnation, and in some cases, direct military assistance from America".
Unilateralism U.S. President George W. Bush's remark of November 2001 claiming that "You're either with us or you are with the terrorists,""Bush says it is time for action " has been heavily criticized. Cable News Network, 6 November 2001. has been a source of criticism. Thomas A. Keaney of Johns Hopkins University's Foreign Policy Institute said "it made diplomacy with a number of different countries far more difficult because obviously there are different problems throughout the world."Taylor, Susan Martin. "With us or against us? Mideast is not that simple". St. Petersburg Times, 9 May 2002. Richard Jackson notes how "the grammatical construction of this choice is extremely powerful. On the one hand, it obliterates all neutral ground and denies any possibility of withholding judgment or weighing up the evidence ... On the other hand, it is loaded in such a way that any choice other than fully supporting the United States results in condemnation".
As a war against Islam and Muslims
Since the war on terror revolved primarily around the United States and other NATO states intervening in the internal affairs of Muslim countries (i.e. in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) and organisations, it has been labelled a war against Islam by ex-United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark, among others. After his release from Guantanamo in 2005, ex-detainee Moazzam Begg appeared in the Islamist propaganda video 21st Century CrUSAders and claimed the U.S. was engaging in a new crusade: "I think that history is definitely repeating itself and for the Muslim world and I think even a great part of the non-Muslim world now, are beginning to recognize that there are ambitions that the United States has on the lands and wealth of nations of Islam.""21st Century CrUSAders: A War on Muslims in Iraq and Palestine" DVD/VHS, Green 72 Media, 2005. Professor Khaled A. Beydoun of the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville School of Law states that the war on terror exports Islamophobia to other countries, which utilize it to persecute and punish their own Muslim populations. Two countries he mentions that facilitate structural Islamophobia as a result of the war on terror are India and China.
Methods
Imperialism Professor of Law Antony Anghie criticised the "war on terror" as a breach of International law and Charter of the United Nations, and condemned it for reviving age-old imperialist notions. Comparing it to the Spanish War against American aboriginals, Anghie writes: "The war on terror inaugurated by the Bush administration has profoundly challenged the system of international law and relations created by the United Nations (UN)... Novel situations require novel remedies. My basic argument here is that the Bush doctrine-which consists basically of pre-emption, the identification and then transformation of rogue states-is essentially imperial in character. It is yet another version of the civilizing mission that, I have argued, has animated the international system from its very beginnings."
Aiding terrorism
University of Chicago professor and political scientist, Robert Pape has written extensively on suicide terrorism and states that it is triggered by military occupations, not extremist ideologies. In works such as Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism and Cutting the Fuse, he uses data from an extensive terrorism database and argues that by increasing military occupations, the U.S. government is increasing terrorism. Pape is also the director and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST), a database of every known suicide terrorist attack from 1980 to 2008.It's the Occupation, Stupid
In 2006, a National Intelligence Estimate stated that the war in Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism. The estimate was compiled by 16 intelligence agencies and was the first assessment of global terrorism since the start of the Iraq war. Cornelia Beyer explains how terrorism increased as a response to past and present military intervention and occupation, as well as to 'structural violence'. Structural violence, in this instance, refers to economic conditions of backwardness which are attributed to the economic policies of the Western nations, the United States in particular.Beyer, Cornelia (2008), "Violent Globalisms", Ashgate, London