September 11th: The War on Terror for America
September 11, 2001 represents a date in history that none of our contemporaries will forget. This day is the day when the American society, if not the Western world, changed completely and was forced to face the threat of terrorism. After September 11 the whole world changed and this statement can be made with responsibility and not in dramatic terms, using sentimental approaches to describe the beginning of an ongoing war with terrorism. The great change that followed September 11 was a change in the American society as a whole, but perhaps the greatest change of all can be identified in the "war on terror" declared by President Bush. This war is more than a revenge of a deeply hurt nation - it is seen as a duty which resides in the historical American nationalism. Perhaps if America was not so deeply nationalistic the war on terrorism wouldn't have been so determined and long-lasting. Samuel Huntington presented in his famous work, "The Clash of Civilization" that the world's biggest future conflict will be between the civilizations that he identified, predicting a conflict between the West and Islam. Although he was correct in his predictions, he did not correctly identify the roots of the conflict. The relation between US
American definition of freedom resides in the support for political democracy, for free markets, for limited government, and for individual freedom. Civil liberties of non-citizens were disregarded, although America was supposed to be the defender of democracy. Supporters of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq believed in the progress that can be made in defending freedom and democracy anywhere in the world. The change in Muslim societies should be made in the way they perceive freedom, which is essential to democracy, which proved to be a prosperous political system. US took on the role of the leading nation and justified the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan as being legitimate because they were operations intended at promoting democracy all over the world. The Taliban regime was removed from Afghanistan. The greatest obstacle that stands in the way of the American's intention to promote democracy in Muslim countries is the gap in ideological beliefs. The belief that US is right and the rest is wrong, that America loves freedom while those that do not support democracy hate it is the reason for the inefficiency of the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The main reason for this inefficiency was that in the struggle to promote democracy, US used some very undemocratic means. September 11 and the aftermath of it led to an even more complicated situation in terms of international affairs. There is no doubt that the American response had its economic and strategic interests, but the essential reason for US' actions following September 11 seemed to be the defense of freedom. Eric Foner identifies that the "invocation of freedom as an American rallying cry"1 has deep historical roots, as the Americans image of themselves as being the guardians of freedom in an oppressive world has roots in the American Revolution and the Civil War. Terrorist groups exist in democratic societies (see for instance Spain or Ireland) and they are extremist groups. Several years later it proved that the war against terrorism was not so simple to be won and that a hidden enemy is very hard to fight. "Civil liberties have been severely abridged during previous moments of crisis, from the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 to the jailing and deportation of socialists, labor leaders, and critics of American involvement during and immediately after World War I, to the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans, most of them American citizens, during World War II, and McCarthyism during the Cold War.
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