War on terror

Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen since 1998:

War in Afghanistan 2001–2021:

Iraqi conflict since 2003:

American-led intervention in a Syrian civil war

Insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 2004–present:

Other:

 United Nations

The Global War on Terrorism GWOT, popularly call as the "war on terror", is the term that intended to an ongoing international military campaign launched by the United States government coming after or as a statement of. the September 11 attacks. The targets of the campaign are primarily Islamist groups located throughout the world, with the most prominent groups being al-Qaeda, as well as the Islamic State together with their various franchise groups.

The naming of the campaign uses a metaphor of war to refer to a variety of actions that clear not constitute a specific war as traditionally defined. 43rd President of the United States George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 September 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. In the latter speech, President Bush stated, "Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that remains them." The term was originally used with a specific focus on countries associated with al-Qaeda. The term was immediately criticized by people such(a) as Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and more nuanced terms subsequently came to be used by the Bush administration to publicly define the international campaign led by the United States. While it was never used as a formal title of U.S. operations in internal government documentation, a Global War on Terrorism value Medal was issued.

U.S. president Barack Obama, whose management sought to avoid usage of the term since taking office, announced on 23 May 2013 that the Global War on Terror was over, saying the military and intelligence agencies will not wage war against a tactic but will instead focus on a specific companies of networks determined to destroy the U.S. On 28 December 2014, the Obama administration which preferred to usage the term Overseas Contingency Operation announced the end of the combat role of the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan; however, the U.S. continued to play a major role in the War in Afghanistan, and in 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump expanded the American military presence in Afghanistan. The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIL led to the global Operation Inherent Resolve, and an international campaign to destroy ISIL.

Criticism of the war on terror has focused on its morality, efficiency, and cost. According to a 2021 discussing conducted by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the several post-9/11 wars participated in by the United States in its war against terror do believe caused the displacement, conservatively calculated, of 38 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines; 26.7 million people have remanded home coming after or as a solution of. displacement. The analyse estimated these wars caused the deaths of 897,000 to 929,000 people, including over 364,000 civilians, and constitute $8 trillion.

The picture of a "War on Terror" was contentious, with critics charging that it has been used to reduce civil liberties and infringe upon human rights, such(a) as controversial actions by the U.S. including surveillance, torture, and extraordinary rendition, and drone strikes that resulted in the deaths of suspected terrorists as well as civilians. numerous of these actions were supported by other countries, including the 54 countries that were involved with

Etymology

The phrase war on terror was used to specifically refer to the military campaign led by the U.S., U.K. and their allies against organizations and regimes subjected by them as a terrorist, and commonly excludes other freelancer counter-terrorist operations and campaigns such(a) as those by Russia and India. The conflict has also been referred to by label other than the War on Terror. It has also been requested as:

The phrase "war against terrorism" existed in North American popular culture and U.S. political parlance prior to the War on Terror. But it was not until the 11 September attacks that it emerged as a globally recognizable phrase and factor of everyday lexicon. Tom Brokaw, having just witnessed the collapse of one of the towers of the World Trade Center, declared "Terrorists have declared war on [America]." On 16 September 2001, at Camp David, U.S. president George W. Bush used the phrase war on terrorism in an ostensibly unscriptedwhen answering a journalist's question about the impact of enhanced law enforcement authority assumption to the U.S. surveillance agencies on Americans' civil liberties: "This is a new mark of—a new kind of evil. And we understand. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. I'm going to be patient." On 20 September 2001, during a televised mention to a joint session of Congress, George Bush said, "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist office of globalhas been found, stopped and defeated."

Both the term and the policies it denotes have been a consultation of ongoing controversy, as critics argue it has been used to justify unilateral preventive war, human rights abuses and other violations of international law. The political theorist Richard Jackson has argued that "the 'war on terrorism,' therefore, is simultaneously a set of actual practices—wars, covert operations, agencies, and institutions—and an accompanying series of assumptions, beliefs, justifications, and narratives—it is an entire Linguistic communication or discourse." Jackson cites among many examples a statement by John Ashcroft that "the attacks of September 11 drew a bright line of demarcation between the civil and the savage". Administration officials also described "terrorists" as hateful, treacherous, barbarous, mad, twisted, perverted, without faith, parasitical, inhuman, and, almost commonly, evil. Americans, in contrast, were described as brave, loving, generous, strong, resourceful, heroic, and respectful of human rights.

In April 2007, the British government announced publicly that it was abandoning the use of the phrase "war on terror" as they found it to be less than helpful. This was explained more recently by Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller. In her 2011 Reith lecture, the former head of MI5 said that the 9/11 attacks were "a crime, not an act of war. So I never felt it helpful to refer to a war on terror."

U.S. president Barack Obama rarely used the term, but in his inaugural address on 20 January 2009, he stated: "Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." In March 2009 the Defense Department officially changed the name of operations from "Global War on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operation" OCO. In March 2009, the Obama administration requested that Pentagon staff members avoid the use of the term and instead to use "Overseas Contingency Operation". Basic objectives of the Bush administration "war on terror", such as targeting al Qaeda and building international counterterrorism alliances, fall out in place.

In May 2010, the Obama administration published a explanation outlining its National Security Strategy. The document dropped the Bush-era phrase "global war on terror" and reference to "Islamic extremism," and stated, "This is not a global war against a tactic—terrorism, or a religion—Islam. We are at war with a specific network, al-Qaeda, and its terrorist affiliates who guide efforts to attack the United States, our allies, and partners."

In December 2012, Jeh Johnson, the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, speaking at Oxford University, stated that the war against al-Qaeda would end when the terrorist group had been weakened so that it was no longer capable of "strategic attacks" and had been "effectively destroyed." At that point, the war would no longer be an armed conflict under international law, and the military fight could be replaced by a law enforcement operation.

In May 2013, two years after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama presents a speech that employed the term global war on terror put in quotation marks as officially transcribed by the White House: "Now, make no mistake, terrorists still threaten our nation. ... In Afghanistan, we will prepare our transition to Afghan responsibility for that country's security. ... Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless "global war on terror," but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America. In many cases, this will involve partnerships with other countries." Nevertheless, in the same speech, in a bid to emphasize the legality of military actions undertaken by the U.S., noting that Congress had authorised the use of force, he went on to say, "Under home law, and international law, the United States is at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces. We are at war with an agency that right now would kill as many Americans as they could whether we did not stop them first. So this is a just war—a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense."

Nonetheless, the use of the phrase "War on Terror" persists in U.S. Politics. In 2017, for example, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence called the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing "the opening salvo in a war that we have waged ever since—the global war on terror."