9/11 Terrorism Impact
Terrorism can be described as any act of violence intended to cause death or serious bodily harm in order to intimidate the population or to compel a government and international agencies from doing something. To the United States, the most horrific terrorist attack to happen occurred on September 11th 2001 when terrorists hijacked four planes and crashed them into the twin towers and the pentagon. It not only resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, but it would change American policy for decades to come. In the aftermath of 9/11, the United States started a policy of a global war on terror(GWOT) which would end up costing an unimaginable amount of money and hundreds of thousands of deaths. In this paper, I will review four
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academic journals discussing varying aspects of the war on terror and how it will ultimately be a failure.
The first academic journal that I reviewed was The origins of the U.S war on terror: Lebanon, Libya and American intervention in the Middle East by Mattia Toaldo. The journal examines the origins of the war on terror during the Reagan administration in the mid-1980s. It explains how the administration failed to realize that the events related to terrorism, such as the Iranian hostage crisis were being influenced by “regional dynamics and the rise of political Islam rather than by Moscow-based puppet masters” (Toaldo, 2015). The United States by trying to modernize the Middle East led to the opposite of what they were intending. It led to the overthrow of pro-American regimes and gave way for the rule of dictators who were hostile to the United States such as Libya and Iraq. This idea of the war on terror was developed by the Secretary of State at the time,George Shultz, in response to the Beirut bombings that killed 241 U.S soldiers. This policy gave way to the militarization of the war on terror. This policy's primary goal was retaliation and paid little respect to the “nature of the enemy-its goals, its organizations, [and] its ideology” (Toaldo, 2015). In conclusion, the militaristic approach the United States took led to the US becoming targets of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and it was flawed and led to little success in combating the threat of terror at home and abroad and abroad.
The second academic journal that I reviewed was the $4 Trillion war on terror by James Bovard.
The journal examines the cost of the programs and agencies that were created in the post 9/11 era and the existing agencies that saw an increase in funding. In the post 9/11 era the United States saw a dramatic increase in funding to the war on terror. The FBI received an $30 billion to combat terrorism, the TSA has spent $70 billion since 9/11 , the creation of the department of homeland security which receives $200+ billion a year and let's not forget the amount spent on the actual war on terror which is in excess of $3 Trillion dollars. Many of these agencies and programs saw huge increases in funding in order to combat the threat of terrorism but the results cannot always be seen. A study found that “nearly 50 percent of the of the federal counter terrorism convictions since 9/11 resulted from informant based cases” which means the informants job was to trick people into terrorist plots that they most likely would not have committed without the influence of agency informants (Bovard, 2016). The TSA received funding for whole body scanners and behavior detection officers(BDO) whose job was to observe individuals who had the potential to be a terrorist. Since the implementation of the programs, they have seen more controversy than success, the scanners failed to detect 96% of weapons and mock bombs while being tested and the BDO’s have led to minority groups receiving the brunt …show more content…
of this and many times the officers are forced to meet quotas. In the weeks after 9/11 congress created the department of homeland security which was in theory suppose to centralize multiple agencies under the watch of a senate committee. The DHS programs that provide aid and grants to state and local officials have been wasteful and ineffective. As a result of this, we see police forces becoming militarized through DHS programs that provide them with those supplies. The actual war on terror has been a huge cost at $3+ trillion dollars and has resulted in the deaths of 370,000 people and millions displaced. With all the funding, “the budget increases have not significantly contributed to our post 9/11 security” and many people fear another 9/11 style attack is likely (Bovard,2016).
The third academic journal I reviewed was the United States “war on terrorism” has been overtaken by events by Jon Dorscher. The journal discusses how the United States approach to terrorism has had underlying consequences. Most will agree that 9/11 was the event that kicked off the current global war on terror. Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks, goal “was to bleed the United States, which he hoped would commit enormous economic and military resources in an emotional knee jerking response” and the United States did just that (Dorschner,2013). Instead of pursuing Al-Qaeda and the perpetrators of 9/11, Bush embraced the idea of fighting the global war on terror and he invaded Iraq which had no involvement in 9/11. President Obama had inherited this policy and he quickly learned it was not sustainable. His plan was to scale down the GWOT and implement a more counter terrorism effort which would rule out the large scale intervention in Middle Eastern countries. President Obama was caught in the moral ambiguity involving conflicts in the Middle East. He has to make decisions that are often lose-lose in an attempt to not draw the United States into another conflict, such as ISIS but still be seen as combatting terrorism. The United States GWOT for too long “has been an overarching concern and far more pressing concerns require America's attention and expenditure,” the United States has put too much into the GWOT with limited results (Dorschner,2013).
The fourth and last academic journal I reviewed was Living with Terrorism: unimaginable nightmare or prospective reality by Jerome Kahan. Under the Bush administration, the global war on terrorism was very broad and ever expanding, when Obama came into office his goal was to target and dismantle specific terrorist groups that threaten the citizens of the United States. Obama's goal in dealing with terrorism is not to kill everyone before they can launch a terrorist attack, but by “taking out terrorist leaders in preemptive strikes when feasible, using airstrikes and limited ground troops” (Kahan,2016). He also says that Obama has taken a less aggressive tone on ISIS because they do not pose a serious external threat to the United States so the response will be measured accordingly. While this has caused some backlash from the media and congress, Obama thinks it the long run this will be more successful. Both Bush and Obama did agree on the fact that the global war on terror needed to end, but getting to the end was quite different. The journal concluded by saying that “if we allow ourselves to succumb to the never ending threat of domestic terrorist attacks, fear itself could become our greatest enemy” because this fear would result in increased surveillance, unrest and hate crimes against targeted individuals (Kahan,2016).
After reviewing all of these journals, it gave me a view of the war on terror that I had not known about.
I learned that under the leadership of President Bush, we implemented a global war on terror policy that involved going after all parts of terrorism instead of going after the group and individuals that were responsible for 9/11. I took from it that the war on terror has not been successful in keeping the United States safe or even giving the perception that we are safer now than we were during 9/11. Even with all the funding and foreign policy, little success can be shown. We have seen the emergence of more extremist groups such as ISIS who are more aggressive in their tactics than groups in the past. President Obama has tried to end the war of terror that Bushed passed down to him, but often times his hands are tied. I also took from it that we can see the origins of the war on terror back in the 1980’s when the United States took the wrong approach by thinking that terrorism was a part of the cold war and being sponsored by the Soviet Union and not taking into factors that would later have dire consequences. The main thing I took from all these journals together was that the US failed to understand the enemy that they were fighting in the global war on terror, they didn't know back in the 80s and they didn't know in the post 9/11 era. This inability to know who they were fighting and why they were fighting led to trillions of dollars being spent wastefully and
thousands of Americans being killed in order to make sure something like 9/11 never happens again.
All of the journals that were reviewed did agree for the most part. They agreed on the fact that Bush's approach to the global war on terror was misguided and wasteful and that even though Obama tried to end the global war on terror by shifting from a large scale military intervention to a small scale counter-terrorism effort would not be enough to end the war on terror. They also agree that the war on terror is not something that can be easily won, it will be very long and bloody conflict that most Americans don’t want because they believe American resources can be put to better use and as Americans we don’t like seeing US soldiers being killed on foreign soil for a cause they don't understand. They also agree that a full scale military approach to terrorism will not solve the problem without taking into factors such as regional dynamics and the religious sects of the region, as we saw in Iraq in 2004 and in the 80s with Reagan's response to the war on terror.
The main question being asked in these journals is, has the war on terror made us safer since 9/11? Unfortunately no, we are not safer than we were during 9/11. As we saw in the journals, the same type of negligence in the thinking about terrorism that occurred in the 80s was repeated post 9/11. We rushed into a fight that we did not understand and by many standards, did not want to understand. We thought we could go into the Middle East, topple a government and install a new democratic one and all would be fine but that is not what happened. Our actions in the Middle East have had serious repercussions such as the Syrian civil war and ISIS among others. These all lead to new problems that have the potential to draw more US attention in terms of money and manpower.
I learned that the war on terror is a very broad and complex issue that is not easily solved. I came into this paper with the idea that the war on terror was not necessarily a success, but that it had worked and through this assignment I learned that the war on terror when you dig deep has not been successful for either side.
A major strength of the journals was their use of data and examples. They were able to provide unquestionable proof of their argument with the data. The numbers clearly show what the author was trying to get across. Another strength that can be seen in 3 of the journals is that they brought in opposing views which made the argument far more effective, the one that did not was the $4 trillion war on terror did not because their argument was made effective by the use of data and figures. A weakness that can be seen in journals is that they lay out what the problem is and provide evidence to support the claim, but they only one of the journals provides a recommendation/ solution to the problem. The article on living with terrorism is able to lay out the problem and provide recommendations/ solutions for the war on terror, the author was able to recognize that a solution is not white and black and was willing to try and provide insight on how one might go about solving it. I think that the journals did miss a few facets of the issue being discussed. They did do a good job of explaining the specific problem related to the war on terror. The war on terror is a very complex problem and there are many factors that go into it but the journals that were reviewed did a good job of showing the most prevalent and important problems in order to educate their readers. In my opinion, I think the war on terror has been a failure on the part of the government but also on the part of the American people. When things don't turn out as planned, we as American automatically look for someone to blame and I think that is wrong. We are a democratic nation and we elect the people who we feel will do the best job and when they fail, it's also a failure on us. Instead of looking for someone to blame for the war on terror and the consequences that resulted from it, we need to unify together under one solution, whether that be staying out of the Middle East and its problems or finding a solution that will benefit everyone. Personally I think we need to be doing more in the Middle East to combat terrorism. Yes, there are more pressing threats to the nation such as the cartels and racial inequality, but if we cannot just stand around while there are injustices being committed. If we wouldn't allow terrorism in our own country we can't let it happen in others.
academic journals discussing varying aspects of the war on terror and how it will ultimately be a failure.
The first academic journal that I reviewed was The origins of the U.S war on terror: Lebanon, Libya and American intervention in the Middle East by Mattia Toaldo. The journal examines the origins of the war on terror during the Reagan administration in the mid-1980s. It explains how the administration failed to realize that the events related to terrorism, such as the Iranian hostage crisis were being influenced by “regional dynamics and the rise of political Islam rather than by Moscow-based puppet masters” (Toaldo, 2015). The United States by trying to modernize the Middle East led to the opposite of what they were intending. It led to the overthrow of pro-American regimes and gave way for the rule of dictators who were hostile to the United States such as Libya and Iraq. This idea of the war on terror was developed by the Secretary of State at the time,George Shultz, in response to the Beirut bombings that killed 241 U.S soldiers. This policy gave way to the militarization of the war on terror. This policy's primary goal was retaliation and paid little respect to the “nature of the enemy-its goals, its organizations, [and] its ideology” (Toaldo, 2015). In conclusion, the militaristic approach the United States took led to the US becoming targets of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and it was flawed and led to little success in combating the threat of terror at home and abroad and abroad.
The second academic journal that I reviewed was the $4 Trillion war on terror by James Bovard.
The journal examines the cost of the programs and agencies that were created in the post 9/11 era and the existing agencies that saw an increase in funding. In the post 9/11 era the United States saw a dramatic increase in funding to the war on terror. The FBI received an $30 billion to combat terrorism, the TSA has spent $70 billion since 9/11 , the creation of the department of homeland security which receives $200+ billion a year and let's not forget the amount spent on the actual war on terror which is in excess of $3 Trillion dollars. Many of these agencies and programs saw huge increases in funding in order to combat the threat of terrorism but the results cannot always be seen. A study found that “nearly 50 percent of the of the federal counter terrorism convictions since 9/11 resulted from informant based cases” which means the informants job was to trick people into terrorist plots that they most likely would not have committed without the influence of agency informants (Bovard, 2016). The TSA received funding for whole body scanners and behavior detection officers(BDO) whose job was to observe individuals who had the potential to be a terrorist. Since the implementation of the programs, they have seen more controversy than success, the scanners failed to detect 96% of weapons and mock bombs while being tested and the BDO’s have led to minority groups receiving the brunt …show more content…
of this and many times the officers are forced to meet quotas. In the weeks after 9/11 congress created the department of homeland security which was in theory suppose to centralize multiple agencies under the watch of a senate committee. The DHS programs that provide aid and grants to state and local officials have been wasteful and ineffective. As a result of this, we see police forces becoming militarized through DHS programs that provide them with those supplies. The actual war on terror has been a huge cost at $3+ trillion dollars and has resulted in the deaths of 370,000 people and millions displaced. With all the funding, “the budget increases have not significantly contributed to our post 9/11 security” and many people fear another 9/11 style attack is likely (Bovard,2016).
The third academic journal I reviewed was the United States “war on terrorism” has been overtaken by events by Jon Dorscher. The journal discusses how the United States approach to terrorism has had underlying consequences. Most will agree that 9/11 was the event that kicked off the current global war on terror. Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks, goal “was to bleed the United States, which he hoped would commit enormous economic and military resources in an emotional knee jerking response” and the United States did just that (Dorschner,2013). Instead of pursuing Al-Qaeda and the perpetrators of 9/11, Bush embraced the idea of fighting the global war on terror and he invaded Iraq which had no involvement in 9/11. President Obama had inherited this policy and he quickly learned it was not sustainable. His plan was to scale down the GWOT and implement a more counter terrorism effort which would rule out the large scale intervention in Middle Eastern countries. President Obama was caught in the moral ambiguity involving conflicts in the Middle East. He has to make decisions that are often lose-lose in an attempt to not draw the United States into another conflict, such as ISIS but still be seen as combatting terrorism. The United States GWOT for too long “has been an overarching concern and far more pressing concerns require America's attention and expenditure,” the United States has put too much into the GWOT with limited results (Dorschner,2013).
The fourth and last academic journal I reviewed was Living with Terrorism: unimaginable nightmare or prospective reality by Jerome Kahan. Under the Bush administration, the global war on terrorism was very broad and ever expanding, when Obama came into office his goal was to target and dismantle specific terrorist groups that threaten the citizens of the United States. Obama's goal in dealing with terrorism is not to kill everyone before they can launch a terrorist attack, but by “taking out terrorist leaders in preemptive strikes when feasible, using airstrikes and limited ground troops” (Kahan,2016). He also says that Obama has taken a less aggressive tone on ISIS because they do not pose a serious external threat to the United States so the response will be measured accordingly. While this has caused some backlash from the media and congress, Obama thinks it the long run this will be more successful. Both Bush and Obama did agree on the fact that the global war on terror needed to end, but getting to the end was quite different. The journal concluded by saying that “if we allow ourselves to succumb to the never ending threat of domestic terrorist attacks, fear itself could become our greatest enemy” because this fear would result in increased surveillance, unrest and hate crimes against targeted individuals (Kahan,2016).
After reviewing all of these journals, it gave me a view of the war on terror that I had not known about.
I learned that under the leadership of President Bush, we implemented a global war on terror policy that involved going after all parts of terrorism instead of going after the group and individuals that were responsible for 9/11. I took from it that the war on terror has not been successful in keeping the United States safe or even giving the perception that we are safer now than we were during 9/11. Even with all the funding and foreign policy, little success can be shown. We have seen the emergence of more extremist groups such as ISIS who are more aggressive in their tactics than groups in the past. President Obama has tried to end the war of terror that Bushed passed down to him, but often times his hands are tied. I also took from it that we can see the origins of the war on terror back in the 1980’s when the United States took the wrong approach by thinking that terrorism was a part of the cold war and being sponsored by the Soviet Union and not taking into factors that would later have dire consequences. The main thing I took from all these journals together was that the US failed to understand the enemy that they were fighting in the global war on terror, they didn't know back in the 80s and they didn't know in the post 9/11 era. This inability to know who they were fighting and why they were fighting led to trillions of dollars being spent wastefully and
thousands of Americans being killed in order to make sure something like 9/11 never happens again.
All of the journals that were reviewed did agree for the most part. They agreed on the fact that Bush's approach to the global war on terror was misguided and wasteful and that even though Obama tried to end the global war on terror by shifting from a large scale military intervention to a small scale counter-terrorism effort would not be enough to end the war on terror. They also agree that the war on terror is not something that can be easily won, it will be very long and bloody conflict that most Americans don’t want because they believe American resources can be put to better use and as Americans we don’t like seeing US soldiers being killed on foreign soil for a cause they don't understand. They also agree that a full scale military approach to terrorism will not solve the problem without taking into factors such as regional dynamics and the religious sects of the region, as we saw in Iraq in 2004 and in the 80s with Reagan's response to the war on terror.
The main question being asked in these journals is, has the war on terror made us safer since 9/11? Unfortunately no, we are not safer than we were during 9/11. As we saw in the journals, the same type of negligence in the thinking about terrorism that occurred in the 80s was repeated post 9/11. We rushed into a fight that we did not understand and by many standards, did not want to understand. We thought we could go into the Middle East, topple a government and install a new democratic one and all would be fine but that is not what happened. Our actions in the Middle East have had serious repercussions such as the Syrian civil war and ISIS among others. These all lead to new problems that have the potential to draw more US attention in terms of money and manpower.
I learned that the war on terror is a very broad and complex issue that is not easily solved. I came into this paper with the idea that the war on terror was not necessarily a success, but that it had worked and through this assignment I learned that the war on terror when you dig deep has not been successful for either side.
A major strength of the journals was their use of data and examples. They were able to provide unquestionable proof of their argument with the data. The numbers clearly show what the author was trying to get across. Another strength that can be seen in 3 of the journals is that they brought in opposing views which made the argument far more effective, the one that did not was the $4 trillion war on terror did not because their argument was made effective by the use of data and figures. A weakness that can be seen in journals is that they lay out what the problem is and provide evidence to support the claim, but they only one of the journals provides a recommendation/ solution to the problem. The article on living with terrorism is able to lay out the problem and provide recommendations/ solutions for the war on terror, the author was able to recognize that a solution is not white and black and was willing to try and provide insight on how one might go about solving it. I think that the journals did miss a few facets of the issue being discussed. They did do a good job of explaining the specific problem related to the war on terror. The war on terror is a very complex problem and there are many factors that go into it but the journals that were reviewed did a good job of showing the most prevalent and important problems in order to educate their readers. In my opinion, I think the war on terror has been a failure on the part of the government but also on the part of the American people. When things don't turn out as planned, we as American automatically look for someone to blame and I think that is wrong. We are a democratic nation and we elect the people who we feel will do the best job and when they fail, it's also a failure on us. Instead of looking for someone to blame for the war on terror and the consequences that resulted from it, we need to unify together under one solution, whether that be staying out of the Middle East and its problems or finding a solution that will benefit everyone. Personally I think we need to be doing more in the Middle East to combat terrorism. Yes, there are more pressing threats to the nation such as the cartels and racial inequality, but if we cannot just stand around while there are injustices being committed. If we wouldn't allow terrorism in our own country we can't let it happen in others.