War on Terrorism

War on Terrorism. On September 20, 2001, in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush in a televised speech before Congress declared a “war on terrorism.” Warning of a “lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen,” Bush promised retaliation against Al Qaeda, a loosely affiliated, transnational network of Islamic militants, and against states that harbored its sympathizers. At the administration's request, Congress on September 14 had passed the “Joint Resolution Authorizing Use of United States Armed Force against Those Responsible for Recent Attacks against the United States”. This measure empowered the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized or aided the terrorist attacks.” Though not a declaration of war, this act and the subsequent USA Patriot Act provided the legal basis for an array of conventional and non-conventional actions to fight “terrorism” at home and abroad.

Although the phrase “war on terrorism” did not come into widespread usage before September 11, its roots can be found in the previous two decades. During the 1980s, the U.S. government and networks of Islamic fundamentalist fighters shared a common goal: overthrowing the Soviet-imposed government in Afghanistan. The United States bankrolled the Afghan mujahedin and foreign jihadis battling the Soviets. With the Soviet Union's departure from Afghanistan in 1989, the United States largely ignored the continued growth of the militantly anti-Western Islamic movements it had earlier encouraged. Under fundamentalist cleric Mullah Mohammed Omar, a group called the Taliban established an oppressive regime in Afghanistan and provided a haven for Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, from a prominent and wealthy Saudi Arabian family, had reacted with fury when the United States established a military base in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Determined to attack U.S. interests globally, bin Laden set up training camps in Afghanistan for a militant Islamic group called Al Qaeda and recruited followers worldwide.

Protected by the Taliban and supported financially by Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda accelerated its attacks on U.S. targets during the 1990s. Its operatives bombed New York's World Trade Center in 1993, attacked U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and hit the U.S.S. Cole docked in Yemen in 2000. Bin Laden declared war on the United States on August 26th, 1996. but few Americans had ever heard his name before September 11, 2001.

The rising threat of Al Qaeda's terrorism had not gone unnoticed in Washington, however. In the years before 9/11, many reports, hearings, and think tanks raised the alarm, and the government's top terrorist expert, Richard Clarke, issued a series of warnings. The administration of President Bill Clinton ordered air strikes against presumed Al Qaeda facilities in the Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998 and foiled a terrorist plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport in December 1999. But neither Clinton nor his successor, George W. Bush, developed a comprehensive plan to deal with Al Qaeda. Despite a rising level of intelligence “chatter” about imminent dangers and a briefing sent to President Bush on August 6, 2001, entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack inside U.S.,” the White House did not urgently engage the “war” until after the September attacks.

The open-ended post-9/11 war on terrorism, the defining feature of the Bush presidency, prompted both structural change and controversy. The Patriot Act and the newly created Department of Homeland Security enlarged the government's surveillance powers and broke down the legal wall that prevented the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency from sharing information and fully cooperating. New restrictions bolstered U.S. border security and tightened immigration and visa procedures. In the weeks after the attacks, the FBI arrested thousands of aliens, detaining and often deporting them in secrecy. Even some U.S. citizens disappeared into secret custody and legal limbo. The Bush administration and its controversial attorney general, John Ashcroft, argued that this new kind of “war” necessitated new rules. Critics, including the American Bar Association, warned against the erosion of civil liberties and due process. The war on terrorism thus sparked on-going legal-constitutional debates about the limits of Executive-Branch power.

Moving against Al Qaeda globally, the Bush administration adopted measures to disrupt its finances and the president authorized a covert campaign to kill or capture Al Qaeda's top leaders. Defining “terrorists” proved difficult, however, and critics pointed out that organizations and individuals could be placed on a terrorist list using secret evidence and with no judicial review. The precise numbers and names of aliens and organizations that fell under suspicion remained shrouded in secrecy.

Rapidly organized military actions soon became the centerpiece of the war on terrorism. On October 7, 2001, the United States launched a bombing campaign to destroy the Taliban and bin Laden's supporters in Afghanistan. Within three months, U.S. forces, allied with anti-Taliban fighters, gained control of Kabul, Kandahar, and other Afghan cities. Working with other nations and the United Nations, the United States then formed a new Afghan government under the leadership of Hamed Karzai. Mullah Omar and bin Laden escaped, however, perhaps taking refuge in the rugged tribal area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Despite a 25-million dollars reward, teams of U.S. Special Forces, and a major military effort by Pakistani troops early in 2004, these two major targets of the war on terrorism remained at large as of mid-2004.

In a highly controversial move, the Bush administration soon shifted focus to Iraq and its dictatorial ruler Saddam Hussein, who had emerged unscathed from the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Administration supporters portrayed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, undertaken on March 20, 2003 by a “coalition of the willing” (including Great Britain, Spain, and Poland) without UN backing, as part of the war on terrorism. Saddam had close ties to Al Qaeda, they alleged, and possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Critics, however, viewed Iraq as a costly diversion from the anti-terrorism effort. U.S. cooperation with allies and with the UN, they contended, could contain Saddam's threat. They noted the bitter enmity between Saddam's secular government and Islamic fundamentalists such as Al Qaeda; and they later highlighted the post-war failure to find WMD in Iraq or to establish an Iraq-Al Qaeda link. The Iraq War seriously eroded world support for the Bush administration's anti-terrorist campaign.

The war on terrorism brought other controversies as well. The administration had characterized Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan, some 600 of whom were sent to a hastily constructed prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as “enemy combatants,” not prisoners of war, and therefore unprotected by the Geneva Conventions for the humane treatment of prisoners. Although the administration professed to be observing the spirit of the Geneva conventions, special intelligence units engaged in interrogation practices that international bodies saw as violations of international norms. These practices spread from prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo to those in Iraq, prompting international and domestic outrage during the spring of 2004.

Meanwhile, terrorist-style attacks erupted in many countries allied with the United States. Tunisia, Pakistan, Yemen, Kuwait, Indonesia, and Kenya were targeted in 2002; Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Turkey in 2003. A coordinated bomb attack on ten crowded commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, in March 2004 left 191 dead and at least 1800 injured. In many of these countries and in others, special contingents of U.S. troops engaged alleged terrorist groups or advised local police forces. Anti-American terrorist attacks in Iraq, including suicide bombings and roadside explosive devices, took many lives in 2003–04, despite the formal end of hostilities.

The war on terrorism, which in 2001 had united the nation and rallied its allies, quickly became a controversial endeavor. Many U.S. allies in Europe, while committed to the anti-terrorist cause, refused to support the Bush administration's unilateralist and Iraq-centered policy. At home, critics charged that the White House's war on terrorism had brought more loses than gains by weakening respect for civil liberties, due process, human rights, and international procedures. The administration claimed that two-thirds of Al Qaeda's top leadership had been captured or killed by the summer of 2004. Critics worried, however, that the methods of the Bush administration, especially in Iraq, might have helped the increasingly decentralized terrorist networks recruit new members. Although all Americans opposed terrorism, how to define and fight it stirred ongoing controversy.
See also Federal Government, Executive Branch, Other Departments: Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security; Foreign Relations; Iraq War and Aftermath; Military, The.

Bibliography

Walter Russell Mead , Power, Terror, Peace, and War : America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk, 2004.
Richard A. Clarke , Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, 2004.

Emily S. Rosenberg