War on Terrorism
Overview
 
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as well as non-NATO countries. Originally, the campaign was waged against al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...

 and other militant organizations with the purpose of eliminating them.

The phrase 'War on Terror' was first used by US President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 and other high-ranking US officials to denote a global military, political, legal and ideological struggle against organizations designated as terrorist and regimes that were accused of having a connection to them or providing them with support or were perceived, or presented as posing a threat to the US and its allies in general.
Quotations

I Define a “terrorist” as a non-state actor who attacks civilian targets in order to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy community.. A “state terrorist” is a state doing the same thing.

Michael Mann, Professor of Sociology, UCLA in ‘Incoherent Empire’, p 159

"I think they very much see the world in a black and white way, us against them, Muslims against infidels."

Dr Sidney Jones, South-east Asia director of the International Crisis Group commenting on the suicide bombings in Bali. Late Line Australian Broadcasting Commission, 03/10/05

You know, terror is an idea. You don’t fight an idea with a conventional Army. To win a war on terror you have to win the hearts and minds of people from whom, from where the terrorists are operating from. If you win their hearts and mind and get them on your side, you’ll win the war. If those people start regarding the terrorists as freedom fighters, history has told us that you can’t win the war.

Imran Khan interview with Andrew Denton, Enough Rope, ABC Television, 13 October 2008

I’ll give you an example of (George Bush's) war on terror. He’s spent something like almost a trillion dollars. The estimates are that anything up to a million people have died and has he made the world a safer place? In my opinion he’s made the world a far more dangerous place. These are now nurseries for future terrorists.

Imran Khan interview with Andrew Denton, Enough Rope, ABC Television, 13 October 2008

There are some Arabs who think that the Germans did the right thing by the Jews. This makes it easy to recruit Arab terrorist.

John le CarréInterview with Ramona Koval|Ramona Koval. The Book Show, Australian Broadcasting Commission Radio National. (19 November 2008)

 
x
OK