The U.s. Military Response

Foreign and domestic policies are not linear, rather the policies are connected in a circle, with each policy reinforcing the values of another. Domestic American terrorism in the prison and detention systems and governmental reforms are influenced by the mobilization and ethnocentrism abroad. The militarization internationally is justified by the domestic handling of the same cultural issues within the United State borders. The United States has strangely used a near Catch-22 to handle dilemmas. The United States has allowed perspective to become reality, whether with oneself or regarding issues abroad, specifically in the Middle East. Terrorism is the use or threat of fear for political or economical gain. An internal characteristic of terrorism is how dependent it is of perspective, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To understand “terrorism,” a focus must be applied to the history, what drove an organization to commit such acts. Respectively, the Middle East has been a hotbed for the key word “terrorism,” especially because of 9/11. Subsequently, Muslims have been stigmatized by the United States as terrorists. The consequences spawned because of 9/11 require a look to the past to understand the present.

Post measures lead to the view of international law on the military action against non-state groups. The question was asked. “To what extent can a state actor use force, in self-defense, on the territory of another state, in order to punish a non-state group, if that state is not directly responsible for the actions of the non-state group” (Jennifer 2011, 1). The US has informed the UN Security Council citing that they will use its right of self-defence, under the terms of the UN Charter, to attack al-Qaeda training camps and Taliban military installations in Afghanistan (Martyn 2002, 1). Dramatic measures had to be taken by the US being a state actor; there was a status they had to

The dilemma facing state leaders for the past decades has been whether to respond to terrorism through a criminal justice approach or a more involved military approach. The criminal justice approach treats terrorism as a law-and-order problem in which the main burden is placed on the judiciary and police. In contrast, the military approach treats terrorism as a perilous threat to the national security of the state, which can only be countered with military force and wartime procedures. The argument of this paper is that military procedures are not warranted in dealing with terrorism because the terror threat is not lethal or influential enough to threaten our democracy, and even if it was, military action has proven itself to be so fraught with problems and costly risks in past interventions that continued use of such a tactic would not only harm our national security, but also could precipitate the fall of the American Empire. Instead, law-enforcement has proven itself to be an efficient counter-terrorism tool that results in the capturing of terrorists, acquisition of intelligence, and spurring of cooperation with allied countries.

Our nation’s actions toward seeking justice and preventing any attacks of this scale from happening again came with quick notion, “Less than a week later (following the 9/11 attacks), Congress authorized the President to use military force ‘against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks,” (Yin). In essence, Congress gave the president the ability to use the military to seek out and detain terrorists responsible for 9/11, showing our country’s dedication to ending these attacks and those who initiated them for good. Overall, this tragic event revealed the need for stricter defense regulations against non-state actors (terrorists). For this reason, 9/11 was the catalyst for the beginning of the War on Terror and, consequently, the opening of Guantanamo Bay.

“Fellow citizens, we’ll meet violence with patient justice, assured of the rightness of our cause and confident of the victories to come.” These were the words spoken by President George W. Bush the evening of the attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and the plane that was forced down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. After the attacks on September eleventh, the U.S. Government responded swiftly and decisively with actions through Federal Administrations, Congress, and the military that would have both short and long term effects on both the United States and the Middle East. Shortly after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, the Federal Aviation Administration, or the FAA, took the

On September 11th,2001 members of the al-Qaeda seized control of four commercial planes and crashed them. Two of the planes crashed into the twin towers one of them crashed in the pentagon and the last one in a rural field in pennsylvania when passengers tried to regain control of the plane. The U.S response to “9/11” was appropriate because they made the security at airports,sporting,events,public places more strict to ensure there were no attacks.

At the height of the Vietnam war, seven out of 10 Americans saw it as the largest issue in the nation at the time, but during the height of the recent Iraq war, only one-to-three out of ten Americans saw it as the most important issue (Newport). Why was the response to the Iraq war so much lower than that of the Vietnam war? Should it have been higher? Protesting a war is one way to show your disapproval for it, and the more protests a war had, the more it’s considered an important issue to the public. Both the Vietnam and Iraq war had a number of protesters for many varied reasons. The reasons for protest of the Vietnam war were much more justified: The was was poorly fought leading to many unnecessary American deaths and things like the mandatory

In the international arena, there is no hierarchical rule to keep states in line or behaved; meaning that the international system is constantly in anarchy, aka the state of nature. This lack of rule enforcement puts states in a constant state of war, in a constant state where they need to stay on guard and in a tactical advantage otherwise the safety and well being of their state will be in jeopardy. In this scenario, the state’s number one priority is to protect itself and act in its self interest when need be, despite if it would typically be deemed immoral. (Donnelly 20)

In President Barack Obama’s speech addressing the action taken in Libya, he said that the United States reserves the right to unilaterally use military force to address direct threats to "our people, our homeland, our allies, and our core interests" (Morici). To save the collapsing rebellion, air attacks had to target Gadhafi’s tanks, artillery, motorized columns, and government installations (Hanson). The problem that Congress faces is the question of whether unilateral action is constitutional. Unilateral action

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks have represented the end of the warfare system built in the aftermath of the Second World War. On the other hand, the tough US reaction culminated in the creation of a new order shaped by the terrorist threat and characterized by the so-called “war on terror”: an unprecedented way of doing politics and conducing conflicts. This scenario brought new challenges and perils to the legal framework aimed at regulating the relationships within international actors: international law, international humanitarian law and human rights law. New tendencies on behalf of States jeopardize the international system as a whole.

Many perceive humanitarian intervention as a way to provide protection for people in instances of gross human rights violations, however, the concept has become increasingly contentious (Rashid, 2012). Contentions concerning humanitarian intervention are multifaceted; humanitarian intervention infringes upon state sovereignty which is perceived as a crucial basis for international order, yet, infringement is often justified by contentions focusing upon the universality of human rights and a responsibility to protect and promote them (Atack, 2002). While there are alternative definitions, for the purposes of this paper humanitarian intervention will be considered to be, ‘the threat or use of force by a state (or group of states) across another state’s borders which aim to prevent or end widespread violations upon the fundamental human rights of individuals … conducted without the

State-sponsored terrorism is controlled by state actors to achieve the goal of political gain. In such instances, “countries which perceive themselves as the victims” (Demir 47) of some global injustice support acts of violence to motivate change by fear. Terrorism itself poses an issue for the realist paradigm as its main actors are non-state. Though it is the response and decisions of state players that dictate the outcome on interactions between nations, non-state actors participate in the actual acts of terror. Non-state actors (NSA) are organizations, or individuals, that hold political influence, but have no standing as a country. Terrorist groups are a subset of NSA’s who use violence and scare tactics against non-combatant targets to bring about political manipulation. Even though the non-state actor carries out the attack, the state-centric approach emphasizes the dominant

All these important questions about terror and insecurity are a considerable part of the subject of international politics. In this regard, scholars have dedicated decades for understanding the relations between states in political, economic, social, and other

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 altered the environment of international relations, as the world saw first hand the damage a non-state actor can inflict on a regional hegemon. While non-state actors have always existed, for example maritime pirates or private mercenaries, the events of 9/11 provided non-state actors, in the form of terrorist organizations, the platform needed to expand their influence. Despite the urgency posed by the rise of non-state actors, the field of international relations continues to use an interstate framework to analyze conflict. This is the natural result of a long history of state-centered analysis that came to formal fruition post-WWI and dominated through the Cold War. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, this discipline remained intact. However, as most conflicts today involve non-state actors, such as terrorist organizations in the mountains of Afghanistan and pirates off the coast of Somalia, this state-centric framework is deteriorating.

The growing scope and complexity of international terrorism, particularly the threat to diplomats and diplomatic facilities, has caused widespread concern among members of the international community and prompted a lively debate on the measures appropriate for their protection. Consideration of this matter, however, has been greatly complicated not only by differing interpretations of the nature of terrorism but by the involvement of states themselves in terrorist activities.