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The War on Terror

The current war on terror' is being waged by a coalition led by the USA and it is surrounded by rhetoric and political influences. In order to win' such a war, one must cut through rhetoric, political and religious ideologies to understand the situation as it is on the ground'. The nature of the enemy' and the resources available to them must be known in order to combat them. This becomes even more important when the enemy consists of non-state actors which have the ability to move and act in a relatively undetectable manner. Only then can one develop and implement strategies that will accomplish the expressed aims of a war on terror'. With insidious adversaries consisting of individuals, small groups or global networks, direct physical combat becomes almost impossible. As such, the main course of action must be to identify the resources that can be addressed in order to reduce the terrorists' capabilities. These resources are not only physical finances, arms, personnel but also more abstract opportunity, possible impact, ability to succeed politically. It is through this process that one can realise the best possible way to fight the war on terror'.

What is the War?

To fight what President George W Bush has termed a war on terror' one must first understand what that war entails. The most recent war on terror' was proclaimed by US President George W Bush on the 20th of September 2001, nine days after al Qaeda terrorist attacks in America killed 2,973 (AP 2006). When analysed from an academic standpoint the phrase war on terror' is misleading on a number of levels. Firstly, on a grammatical level, terror' is an abstract noun which describes an emotion; it is obvious that the states united in this war are fighting something more specific than an emotion. We can therefore assume that terror' is being used as a synecdochic metaphor for the method and effects of terrorism'. However, war cannot be fought against a method, so one can assume that the war is actually against practitioners of terrorism and those who support them (Colonel Martin, J. 2002 p.7).

Though the current US administration has fought the war on terror' through more conventional wars against Afganistan and Iraq, the actual war on terrorism is an irregular conflict' (Miles 2006). In this form of warfare the targets are terrorist networks, insurgents and other non-state enemies. Bush outlined the scope of the war in his state of the union address, "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda,

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