Politics - Is the War on Terror an invented conflict - Essay Example

This single incident was by itself proof that the threat of terrorism was real enough, perceptible enough and urgent enough to merit the highest degree of priority, attention and action. “Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.” (Bush, 2001, pp. 5) The President then went on to state in no uncertain terms that the United States “is fighting a war against terrorism of global reach.

” (Bush, 2001, pp. 5) Subsequent references to a concerted fight against terrorism on a worldwide scale by the President and others of the administration finally led to the coinage of the now formal and widely accepted term ‘Global War on Terrorism’ along with its acronym GWOT. If the 9/11 attacks were not ‘invented’, then it follows logically that all efforts to fight and eradicate those who were behind the attack and others who pursue the path of terrorism, are also real enough. The objective of this paper is to present an analysis of what makes the Global War on Terrorism a very real effort fighting a very real danger to the world.

The paper will, however, also examine the drawbacks and weaknesses in the formulation of GWOT, that have resulted in the misconception that the entire effort is an invented one – that it is the fantasy of some collective devious mind. In order to be able to do so, we must first examine what is exactly implied by the term ‘Global War on Terrorism’. ‘War’ as implied in the GWOT is a very different kind of war compared to conventional warfare. Traditionally, war has involved military conflict between well defined entities such as states or insurgent groups trying to take over the control of a state.

The primary medium for war has been combat between fielded military forces, be they regular (state) or