War on Terror Research Paper

state of warfare on Terror Do you ever return one of those moments in your life in which you pass on never freeze where you were? I remember waking up early on folk 11, 2001, getting ready for school and my dad telling me hurry up to watch the news with him. Being in 8th grade at the time, the news re wholey wasnt some melt offg I would watch in the mornings so I knew it had to be something important. Then I saw it. An airplane crashing into a tower, volume panicking, and mayhem ensuing in a city very(prenominal) intimately known to me. When any tragic event equivalent 9/11 occurs, the effect it will fuck off on a soil is tremendous.It left the States in shock, anger, and sadness just to name a few adjectives to describe the insurmountable amount of feelings that we felt on that day. With the States being such a powerful res publica, after recovering from the plan of fill appear the coterminous ideal measurement would be to seek retaliation, right? rise up on Oct ober 7th 2001, the war fartheste in Afghanistan began marking the first step in the contend on Terror. The 9/11 tragedy was very devastating to the American morale and our sense of security. America being so powerful and strong it may be logical to see how we had a false sense of security when it came to attacks on us.I mean, who would heartyly want to attack one of the strongest nations on Earth? No new(prenominal) nation in their right mind would, right? Wrong. When those two planes hit our towers and a nonher hitting the pentagon we were slapped with a reality check. We werent as safe as we theory we were. To add onto things, on September 18th and October 9th, 2001, we were hit by the anthrax attack that killed five and injured seventeen Americans. Something had to be done just about this. We shouldnt be letting other nations attack us like this. So George W. Bush began the War on Terror.The single person who withalk business for these attacks on America is the notorious Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden founded the jihadist terrorist cheek known as al-Qaida at around 1988 to late 1989. The stand, which translates into The Base, is well known for the September 11th attacks on the United States, but is also responsible for the 1998 US embassy bombings as well as the 2002 bombings in Bali. The war on terror started with America going on the offensive against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. With Osama bin laden becoming the most wanted outlaw in the United States, f not the entire world, other countries would coupling in our attempt to dismantle the al-Qaeda and their usage of Afghanistan as a home base. Australia, United Kingdom, and the united afghan front became our any last(predicate)ies in the war in Afghanistan. These nations would launch procedure stomach immunity. While action Enduring Freedom was mainly targeting Afghanistan, it also had many subordinate operations. on with Afghanistan, at that place were operations in the Philippines, schn ozzle of Africa/Somaliana, Pankisi Gorge, Trans Sahara, Caribbean and Central America, and Kyrgyzstan.The terrorist regimes were placed exclusively over the world and the nations fighting terrorism found it necessary to hang these other countries in eliminating those hostile forces in their territory. Operation Enduring Freedom Philippines is a currently active committee to fight the terrorist forces of Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah. Abu Sayyaf is an Islamist separatist classify that was residing around the southern islands of the Republic of the Philippines while Jamaah Islamiyah is a militant Islamic terrorist group that was spread out th uneven Southeast Asia in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, split of Thailand, and the Philippines.This operation is becalm ongoing and has tallied 17 US soldier casualties with >315 enemies killed, including Abu Sayyaf loss leader Janjalani. Another one of the Operation Enduring Freedom missions was the Horn of Africa (Northeas t Africa/Somali Peninsula). This mission was dedicated to stopping terrorism and piracy in the Horn of Africa. The United States lost 29 due to non-combat fatalities, but so far rush been able to kill 149-160 insurgents, 67-78 pirates, and captured around 1000 pirates. This mission is put away ongoing since October 7th, 2002.There was also another operation held in Africa referred to as Operation Enduring Freedom Trans Sahara. A 500 million budget was canonic for the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI) that would be spent over a six-year span to strengthener those countries that were facing threats from the al-Qaeda. These countries were primarily Chad, Algeria, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco, Mali, and Mauritania. Along with the attempts to thwart terrorism, the TSCTI were also focusing on drug and weapon trafficking. One of the main points of this specific mission was to tick these 10 nations with the ecessary skills and equipment to combat these problems on their o wn. The last two Operation Enduring Freedom missions argon Caribbean and Central America and Kyrgyzstan. The Caribbean and Central American mission has forces deployed in El Salvador, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Belize, Honduras, and Costa Rica. The US Air quarter at Manas International Airport primarily runs the operation in Kyrgyzstan high-priced the capitol Bishkek. Now onto the main mission in Operation Enduring Freedom, the War in Afghanistan.The main reason merchant ship this war was to dismantle the al-Qaeda organization and stopping them from using Afghanistan as their base. The United States would also go on to state that they were attempting to take the Taliban out of power and create a nation with a more(prenominal) democratic government. This war began on October 7th, 2001, and is still ongoing today making it the United States long-lived running war. bind 51 permits a victimized state to engage in singular or collective self-defense until recourse has been taken by the protection Council to establish peace (Maogoto, 2003).The reason that this war was criticized so much was because large number felt that bombing and attacking Afghanistan was not self-defense because the 9/11 attacks were done by non-state actors, not Afghanistans own army. Either way, professorship George W. Bush was given authorization by Congress to go forrad and begin the war against Afghanistan on September 18th 2001, when a economy called Authorization for Use of Military Forces Against Terrorists, was passed. With the War in Afghanistan being the longest war that the US has run, it is understandable that there are many losses.In our fusion there were 3,097 killed with 2,031 of them being from the United States, over 23,500 wounded, and 1 missing/captured. Of the contractors traind, there were 1,143 killed and over 15,000 wounded. The Afghan Security Forces lost 10,086+ and the Afghan Northern adherence lost over 200. As for the opposing forces, the re was no real reliable estimate, but the Taliban forces were estimated to be around 25,000 strong. One of the more dire numbers to be brought up in losses is how many civilians were killed during the attacks.A rough estimate of civilian casualties is 12,500 14,700. While there were many causes for the civilian casualties, the absolute majority of the losses came from the airstrikes and improvised explosives by the insurgents. The civilian deaths caused a lot of focus between the out human face countries and Afghanistan government causing President Karzai to summon his foreign military commanders to tell them his peoples patience was wearing thin (BBC, 2007). Even though there were many losses suffered by all participants and those civilians, there was a huge victory for the United States on whitethorn 2nd, 2011.This was the day that al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, was finally shot and killed by the US forces in Pakistan (BBC, 2011). They would later confirm the death done D NA tests This could catch also been another one of those youll never forget where you were events for many beholding how he caused so much damage with the 9/11 attacks. The next war to start after Operation Enduring Freedom began was the Iraq war. The reasons behind this war have been extremely debated and discussed since it started. The official factors were listed in the Iraq Resolution. Here are some of the reasons to invade Iraq (President George W.Bush, 2002) * Members of al-Qaeda, the ones responsible for attacks on the US, were residing in Iraq. * Iraq paid bounties to suicide bombers families. * Iraq was brutally repressing their civilian population. * Iraq was not complying with the 1991 ceasefire symmetricalness while also interfering with U. N. weapons instructors. * Iraq was continuing to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, that also included anti-United States terrorist organizations. * Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia wanted Saddam out of p ower in Iraq and feared what he may do.Those were listing only a few reasons, but another big factor in the Iraq War was that Saddam Hussein did not stop producing weapons of mass destruction in 2003 after the Duelfer Report revealed that information. In 1991, Husseins WMD cleverness was essentially destroyed by sanctions to restore Iraqs economy to a more stable condition. On October 21, 2011, Obama announced, After nearly 9 years, Americas war in Iraq will be over. The last forces to leave Iraq were leaving by January 1st, 2012, and that the troops in Afghanistan would start to dumbfound home as well.A big problem that these wars caused for America, aside from the casualties, was how much money was spent. A lot of people look at the War on Terror and the Iraq War as the main reasons the American economy has taken a huge dive the last decade or so. From 2001 through 2011 the Afghanistan war damage the United States about $433 billion dollars (Bingham, 2012). The Iraq war has constitute about $806 billion dollars so far, but Obama has said it may live over $1 trillion dollars when it is all over (Krutzleben, 2011).However, with all these wars not completely wrapped up, the final price of war could be as high as $4. 4 trillion dollars when all is told (costofwar. org, 2012). War affects every country involved, but specifically the veterans who participated and contributed to the war. It would only seem logical that those countries that have had veterans deployed and fight for their nation should be taking care of them as scoop out they can. From the veterans who came back from the Iraq war, 20. 3% of active soldiers and 42. 4% of backwardness soldiers required psychogenic health treatment (Milliken, 2007).The total numbers of those diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from the Iraq and Afghanistan war is about 30% of the 834,463 who were in those wars (Reno, 2012). These numbers were only the veterans that were treated by the V. A. (Veterans Association) hospitals, so there could actually be more who have not looked for further treatment after returning. With some of these numbers climb as more soldiers are returning from the wars, this would mean the V. A. hospitals would need to hire more mental health professionals to deal with the influx in posttraumatic stress disorder cases continuing to go up.The V. A. has increased their mental health investments by more than 1/3rd in the last three years. They have hired more than 4,000 mental health professionals and in April 2012 have announced they will add 1,600 more professionals, totaling their mental health staff to 22,000 (Reno, 2012). War has never been a good thing and there is never one side that is completely victorious when you consider how many people are killed on each side, civilians included. After the 9/11 attacks on the United States it would be hard to simply let that go unpunished, something HAD to be done.As unpopular war is in the United States, there w as a lot of support from the nation as a whole. I personally found it hard for there to be some type of peaceful way to come to an proportionateness with a terrorist organization so I also supported the war. The cost of these wars have been devastating to our economy though and a lot of people thought we were in these places for too long trying to do too much. Overall, its really hard to judge whether these wars have been a success. Its really a matter of opinion and how a person wants to take the results.I can only hope that we defend our nation much better, that all the troops come back, and that they receive the care they all deserve. We are doing our veterans a great disservice if we cannot properly accommodate them for life after war. Bibliography Bilmes, L. (2006, February). 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