Define Desired Outcome for War on Terror

We have spent trillions of dollars to defend ourselves from terrorism on American soil. We have aided other nations in protecting them as well. Yet we do not know when the War on Terror will be successful, mainly because we have not defined what it is that we are fighting for.

In the beginning, George W said it was to ‘get Bin Laden.’ Well, we did a lot more than that in the ten years it took us to find and kill him. Meanwhile, the war was waged throughout the globe at the behest of Al Qaeda and other jihadists. So many groups are waging a war of terror on so many ‘enemies’ we have lost sight of who is their enemy. It is not only America or the USA. Nor are our enemies just Al Qaeda but many.

Muslim is a religion, not an ethnicity or nationality. Muslim is also not an occupational title synonymous with terrorist. Many Americans believe otherwise, but a Muslim, like Jews and Christians, are peace loving religious practiced by more people than the other two religions combined. Billions, in fact.

OK. With all of that said, what is our objective for the War on Terror? Is the goal straightforward and conclusive? Or is it an on-going struggle that will take an eternity to wage?

Absolutes do not make effective goals. Sounds good but not practical in taking actions, organizing resources for that action, and even more difficult to pull millions of people together to wage the actions. One does not build an intricate piece of machinery from a shop floor mired in glue and adhesives. And dirt. The going gets tough and finally grinds to a halt.

With it understood that we don’t have a well worded objective, let’s attempt to begin that task.

1.       What enormous end-result outcome would we be overjoyed with?

2.       Who are the warriors? Us, them or a large bunch of nations? Maybe all nations?

3.       Who pays for this defensive infrastructure?

4.       How do we know we have succeeded?

5.       Before success is declared, what benchmarks tell us that we are on the right track or are falling off those tracks?

I do not profess the knowledge to answer these questions. However, is now the time we should finally work on finding answers?  I’m not saying we are free from terror today; far from it, we live in a violent world.

Interestingly, America’s social landscape is filled with home-grown terrorism. It is mostly fueled by white people thinking they are better than everyone else and fighting the inevitable minority status that whites face in the USA. It is only a matter of 10 years or so when we will be outnumbered by ‘all other’ ethnicities and nationalities within our own borders. It is not foreigners attacking us as it was on 9/11/01; no, American citizens are the terrorists today.

Seems to me that is a great starting point: rid our own land of domestic terrorism. Then let us consider what to do about the global pandemic. First off, I think we should place this firmly in the United Nations for global management of international terrorism. At least it affects us all; we should all be in the game to eliminate it or reduce it to an annoyance level.

September 23, 2021