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Criticism of the War on Terrorism

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   Criticism of the War on Terrorism addresses the issues, morals, ethics,
   efficiency, and other questions surrounding the War on Terrorism.
   Arguments are also made against the phrase itself, calling it a
   misnomer.

   The notion of a "war" against "terrorism" has proven highly
   contentious, with critics charging that it has been exploited by
   participating governments to pursue long-standing policy objectives,
   reduce civil liberties, and infringe upon human rights. Some argue that
   the term war is not appropriate in this context (as in War on Drugs),
   since they believe there is no tangible enemy, and that it is unlikely
   international terrorism can be brought to an end by means of war.
   Others note that "terrorism" is not an enemy, but a tactic; calling it
   a "war on terror," obscures differences between conflicts. For example,
   anti-occupation insurgents and international jihadists.

   Initial opposition to the War on Terrorism was limited in the United
   States and Europe. On September 14, when the United States House of
   Representatives voted on a bill authorizing the use of military force
   in the War on Terrorism, there was only one dissenting
   vote--Representative Barbara Lee of California. Much of the opposition
   that existed came from long-standing pacifist groups as well as the
   anti-globalization (or so-called alternative globalization) movement.

Methods

   Many people contend that a "war" against terrorism is plainly wrong
   since terrorist attacks are considered criminal acts like murder and
   therefore should be investigated by the police with the perpetrators
   brought to justice and given a fair trial in a court of law. The use of
   the military often escalates violence by killing civilians and
   potentially creating more terrorists out of bereaved individuals
   seeking revenge.

   Many people believe that interrogation methods employed by the U.S.
   forces violate international Geneva Conventions in places such as
   Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Abu Ghraib, Iraq. They believe that if U.S.
   forces act immorally or unethically then those forces are no better
   than the insurgents they are trying to find.

   Another criticism is that the "war on terrorism" is effectively an act
   of terrorism in itself. Critics point to incidents such as the Bagram
   torture and prisoner abuse scandal, the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner
   abuse scandal, the alleged use of chemical weapons against residents of
   Fallujah , and the use of military force to disperse anti-American
   demonstrations in Iraq .

   Some Libertarians believe that a "war" against terrorism is wrong
   because it makes national security into such a high government
   priority, that any sacrifice of personal liberty and freedom is deemed
   necessary, no matter how large or small . They believe this leads not
   only to an unjustified erosion of liberty, but to a general climate of
   fear in which people become unwilling to exercise their civil
   liberties. They warn of the danger of the public being enslaved under
   mass surveillance, as eventually everyone comes under suspicion of
   being a potential terrorist.

   Critics also maintain that a strategy of tension was employed prior to
   the Iraq War, which is now being repeated against countries described
   as the " axis of evil", such as Iran.

"War on Terrorism" seen as pretext

   Some have argued that part of the "War on Terrorism" has little to do
   with its stated purpose. They point out that Iraq had nothing to do
   with the September 11 attacks and that the invasion of a largely
   secular country was carried out on the basis of faulty intelligence.
   Excerpts from an April 2006 report compiled from sixteen US government
   intelligence agencies has strengthened the claim that engaging in Iraq
   has increased terrorism in the region.

Terminology

   Jason Burke, an expert in radical Islamic activity, has this to say on
   the terms "terrorism" and "war against terrorism":

          "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 analyse them in a
          clearer way." ("Al Qaeda", ch.2, p.22)

Civilian deaths

   Civilian deaths caused by United States and Coalition military action
   have been criticized.

   Estimates of civilian deaths vary greatly. Within Iraq, these estimates
   are between 50,000 to 100,000, with 100 deaths per day. The United
   States Department of Defense does not record the deaths of
   non-Coalition persons, a so-called " body count." Estimates prominently
   cited have come from IraqBodyCount, a database of deaths reported on
   the mass media; the Iraqi Ministry of Health; and the independent
   United States report "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of
   Iraq" in The Lancet.

   Iraq Body Count has estimated civilian deaths reported by the mass
   media to be between 41,650 to 46,350, including deaths caused by
   insurgents and inadequate health care. The report published in The
   Lancet, "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq", cited
   100,000 (8,000 to 194,000 at a 95% confidence interval) civilian deaths
   as attributed to the invasion from a statistical survey. This was
   rejected by United Kingdom Foreign Minister Jack Straw as inaccurate.
   He gave instead figures from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which were
   3,853 dead since the invasion to that time.

   In any estimate, non-Coalition civilian deaths exceed those of the
   United States in the attacks of 11 September 2001 from which the "war
   on terrorism" began. This has been the subject of criticism such as "it
   appears that American life is held above all others." The Women of
   Color Resource Centre opposed the "War on Terrorism," arguing that
   United States military tactics focus on minimizing U.S. casualties at
   the cost of civilian casualties as " collateral damage".

   United States General Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. Central
   Command, gave an estimate of 30,000 deaths among Iraqi soldiers during
   the invasion.

Perpetual war

   U.S. President George W. Bush articulated the goals of the "war on
   terrorism" in a September 20, 2001 speech, in which he said 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." To critics, such goals create a state of perpetual
   war. They have argued that terrorism is itself only a tactic which can
   never be defeated. It is further disputed that the "War on Terrorism"
   qualifies as a war as there is no party whose defeat can bring victory.
   Ira Chernus, professor at the University of Colorado, argues that the
   ideology underlying the war on terrorism inevitably leads to a state of
   perpetual war, because it is based on Bush's domestic crusade against
   sin and evil.

   The Bush administration has given various answers concerning what would
   constitute victory. In a news conference on September 20, 2001, Defense
   Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "I say that victory is persuading the
   American people and the rest of the world that this is not a quick
   matter that's going to be over in a month or a year or even five years.
   It is something that we need to do so that we can continue to live in a
   world with powerful weapons and with people who are willing to use
   those powerful weapons. And we can do that as a country. And that would
   be a victory, in my view".

   Jacob Levenson wrote, "Three years after the United States attacked
   Afghanistan, it is extremely difficult for the press to gauge where the
   United States stands in the war on terror because the term itself
   obscures distinction".

   It has also been noted that by formally styling the situation as a
   "war", some semblence of legitimacy is offered to many subsequent
   retaliatory acts undertaken by terrorists, since they simply become
   acts of war, wherin offensive strikes are permitted.

Pre-emptive war

   The justification given for the invasion of Iraq (prior to its
   happening) was to prevent terrorist or other attacks by Iraq on the
   United States or other nations. This can be viewed as a conventional
   warfare realisation of the war on terror.

   A major criticism levelled at this is that it does not fulfil one of
   the requirements of a just war, and that in waging a war pre-emptively,
   the United States has undermined international law and the authority of
   the United Nations, particularly the United Nations Security Council.
   On this ground it has been advocated that by invading a country that
   does not pose an imminent threat and without UN support, the US has
   violated international law, including the UN Charter and the Nuremberg
   principles and committed a war crime.

   Another criticism that has been raised is that the United States has
   set a precedent, under the premise of which any nation could justify
   the invasion of other states.

Defiance of international laws

   Opponents feel the Bush administration is creative in suggesting legal
   loopholes and exception laws. However, most human rights organizations
   and even allies of America think there are breaches of international
   and US law. They point to the use of enemy combatant status,
   extraordinary rendition, widespread use of prisoner abuse which to
   observers outside the Bush administration constitutes torture.

   The status " enemy combatant" comes out of an argument from the Bush
   administration that the Taliban regime created a "failed state", thus
   they had no right to a legitimate military of uniformed soldiers and
   officers under the Geneva Conventions.

   It is suggested that any enemy soldier may be called an "enemy
   combatant". By extension, any Iraqi may be considered an "unlawful
   combatant," provided that they not fall under the protections of the
   Third Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War,
   and by extreme extension, any (non)-American national can be thought of
   as the same, assuming the same provisions. The Bush administration's
   position is that unlawful combatants have no rights under the Geneva
   Conventions and therefore can be sent anywhere without trial or
   charges. However, this claim is widely disputed by legal experts. For
   details on the subject see unlawful combatant. More specific is the
   case of Maher Arar , a Canadian citizen of Syrian birth. During a
   flight transfer in New York, he was approached by authorities and
   eventually sent to a Syrian prison for 374 days without charges. Under
   international law, Arar would have been exiled to Canada. American
   birth is the only defense against forced exile. American national birth
   should not protect American-born terrorists or fail to protect
   naturalized citizens, yet it does both.

   Whatever the legal justification of the Bush administration,
   commentators note that command responsibility is a well established
   doctrine, making those responsible for these policies liable for
   prosecution.

Unilateralism

   "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror," a
   remark by U.S. President Bush in 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."

   America has a network of secret jails for terror suspects , Abu Ghraib
   is but one example. Many of the countries those jails are in would
   consider the existence of secret torture jails in their territory
   without their knowledge as an act of war if a lesser nation would have
   done it.

   Independent journals in Iraq were repeatedly bombed to the ground in
   several locations (amid claims of mistaking them for Al-Quaida
   buildings), yet a memo about the planned bombing of the very same
   al-Jazeera TV headquarters without notifying first the peaceful allied
   nation of Qatar (where al-Jazeera resides) surfaced and embarrassed the
   Bush administration.

   This suggests the rights of other nations are to be rearranged
   retroactively by loopholes and exceptions to fit the needs of the "war
   on terror" being waged. In part by misleading allies rather than
   negotiating with them, which has been the reaction of smaller
   democracies fighting terrorism.

Aiding terrorism

   British Liberal Democrat politician Shirley Williams writes that the
   American and United Kingdom governments "must stop to think whether it
   is sowing the kind of resentment which is the seedbed of future
   terrorism." The United Kingdom ambassador to Italy, Ivor Roberts, said
   that U.S. President Bush is "the best recruiting sergeant ever for al
   Qaeda." The United States granted "protected persons" status under the
   Geneva Convention to the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian group classified
   by the U.S. Department of State as a terrorist organization, sparking
   criticism.

Political

   The leadership of the German Green Party, a party historically known
   for its pacifist principles, supported the "War on Terrorism" but
   condemned the use of cluster bombs. This support led to an internal
   division within the party and a confidence vote called by German
   Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, in which he retained the support of enough
   Greens to stay on.

   Another aspect of political resistance to the war on terror is a
   critique of legalistic approaches. Some argue that legal approaches
   don't confront the war on terror head on because such approaches only
   ask whether the president's actions are lawful, not whether they are
   politically justified. These critics argue that instead of focusing on
   the constitutionality of actions, we should reject the idea that we are
   at war and reject the idea that there is a national emergency.

Pax Americana

   One analysis is that the United States intends "to establish a new
   political framework within which [it] will exert hegemonic control" (
   World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board). Many people say the United
   States seeks to do this by controlling access to oil or oil pipelines.

   This view is shared by a broad variety of ideological streams,
   including social democrats (e.g. Michael Meacher: "The global war on
   terrorism has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the
   way for a wholly different agenda -- the U.S. goal of world hegemony,
   built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required
   to drive the whole project"); anarchists, Greens (e.g. George Monbiot);
   and Marxists. In addition, many people on this side of the political
   spectrum opine that the war is being fought to benefit domestic
   political allies of the Bush administration, especially arms
   manufacturers. (See Military-industrial complex.)

   Proponents of the hegemony hypothesis point out that achieving such a
   situation is the stated aim of the Project for the New American
   Century, a conservative think tank that includes many prominent members
   of the Republican Party and Bush administration among its present and
   former members. It is even arguable that this attitude was what led to
   the rise in Middle Eastern hostility in the first place.

Domestic civil liberties

   It is alleged that civil liberties in coalition countries have suffered
   or will suffer.

   Within the United States, critics argue that the Bush Administration
   and lower governments have restricted civil liberties and created a "
   culture of fear". Bush introduced the USA PATRIOT Act legislation to
   the United States Congress shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks,
   which significantly expanded U.S. law enforcement's power. It has been
   criticized as being too broad and having been abused for purposes
   unrelated to counter-terrorism. President Bush had also proposed Total
   Information Awareness, a federal program to collect and process massive
   amounts of data to identify behaviors consistent with terrorist
   threats. It was heavily criticized as being an " Orwellian" case of
   mass surveillance.

   Many opponents focus on the domestic aspects, complaining that the
   government is systematically removing civil liberties from the
   population or engaging in racial profiling. They also allege that this
   approach increases public hostility to dissenting voices by encouraging
   the view that such people are being unpatriotic or even treasonous for
   simply disagreeing with the administration. Some, such as Giorgio
   Agamben, criticize a "generalised state of exception", which could be
   followed by a more or less deliberate strategy of tension (using false
   flags terrorist attacks and other ruses of war tactics).

   In the United Kingdom, critics have claimed that the Blair government
   has used the War on Terrorism as a pretext to radically curtail civil
   liberties, some enshrined in law since Magna Carta. For example:
   detention-without-trial in Belmarsh prison ; controls on free speech
   through laws against protests near Parliament and laws banning the
   "glorification" of terrorism ; and reductions in checks on police
   power, as in the case of Jean Charles de Menezes (a Brazilian
   electrician shot dead after being mistaken for a terrorist ) and
   Mohammed Abdul Kahar (a Londoner shot by the Metropolitan Police after
   a false tip-off, but then released along with his brother without any
   charges ).

   Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Menzies Campbell has also condemned Blair's
   inaction over the controversial US 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.

Political Double-Standards of the Bush Administration

   There have been important criticisms that there are double-standards in
   Bush Administration's War on Terrorism. These double-standards have
   involved the unwillingness of the United States to send military troops
   into Pakistan to search for Osama Bin Ladin because the Bush
   adminstration has been unwilling to violate the sovereignty of
   Pakistan, who has exported nuclear technology to North Korea. Whereas
   the Bush Administration has had no inhibitions about violating the
   sovereignty of Iraq on baseless claims that Sadddam Hussein possessed
   weapons of mass destruction and had ties to Al-Quaida.

Religious hypocrisy

   Some have referred to the war as a Christian crusade versus an Islamic
   jihad. Journalist Alexander Cockburn labelled it the Tenth Crusade,
   referencing the medieval wars. Ira Chernus has analyzed the links
   between the religious views expressed by Bush and the neoconservatives
   and their justifications of the war on terrorism (see Perpetual War,
   above).

Misleading information

   Some critics argue that some politicians supporting the "war on terror"
   are motivated by reasons other than those they publicly state, and
   critics accuse those politicians of cynically misleading the public to
   achieve their own ends.

   For instance, in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq,
   President Bush and members of his administration indicated that they
   possessed information which demonstranted a link between Saddam Hussein
   and al-Qaeda. Published reports of the links began in late December,
   1998. In January, 1999, Newsweek magazine published a story about
   Saddam and al-Qaeda joining forces to attack U.S. interests in the Gulf
   Region. ABC News broadcast a story of the link between the two soon
   after. ABC News video report Polls suggest that a majority of Americans
   believe that Saddam Hussein was linked to the attacks of September 11,
   2001. Although this has been the position of the Bush Administration,
   an investigation by the 9/11 Commission found no credible evidence that
   Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda with the 9/11 attacks.

   Regardless of whether or not the Bush administration was deliberately
   misleading the people, wrong information was distributed, resulting in
   increased support for the war.

   Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan criticized the use
   of pro-humanitarian arguments by Coalition countries prior to its 2003
   invasion of Iraq, writing in an open letter: "This selective attention
   to human rights is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of
   the work of human rights activists. Let us not forget that these same
   governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International’s reports of
   widespread human rights violations in Iraq before the Gulf War."

Nuclear proliferation

   Oxford Research Group has predicted that the actions of the United
   States in the "war on terrorism" may lead to an increase in nuclear
   proliferation in terrorist groups arising from instability. It is also
   argued, by Ian Williams, that the status of the United States as an
   unmatched conventional military power will result in widespread nuclear
   proliferation among states which feel threatened by the U.S.. The
   rationale for this development is, that until now, it never has
   happened that a nuclear-armed country was invaded by military means.

   The Bush administration itself advocated first strike with nuclear
   weapons against non-nuclear nations, in a reversal of all previous
   nuclear nonproliferation treaties and non-first-strike policies against
   either nuclear or non-nuclear nations. Such nuclear use, threat, weapon
   program, or speculation by any other nation would immediately be called
   "Terroristic"; thus erasing the most important distinction between
   terrorism and the war on terror: that massive destruction of civilians
   cannot be done purely as the carefully planned initiative of the
   "anti-terrorism" side.

Double standards

   Venezuela accuses the U.S. government of having a double standard on
   terrorism for giving safe haven to Luis Posada Carriles.

Pejorative terms

   Critics have replaced "war on terrorism" or related phrases with
   pejorative terms:
     * "War on Terra", an ad hominem attack on the accent of U.S.
       President Bush and an allusion to a concept of Pax Americana as
       worldwide U.S. dominance advocated by the Project for the New
       American Century.
     * Britons and Australians may call it " TWAT" (The War Against
       Terrorism)
     * Justin Butcher has parodied it as a "War against tourism," partly a
       reference to the accent of President Bush.
     * "War OF Terror" (also said by Borat in his movie, followed by a
       cheering rodeo crowd in Virginia.)
     * "Operation Iraqi Liberation" — abbreviated as "O.I.L" — is often
       used to criticise both the euphemistic terminology used by the
       government for the Iraqi invasion and the impoundment of Iraq's oil
       resources which is very often considered the real purpose of the
       invasion. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer actually used
       this term in press briefings on 2003/03/24 and 2003/04/01
     * " The War on Errorism" is an album by NOFX.

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