War on Terror

I know why the war on terror was started, but I don’t know why it has gone on as long as it has. The Bush administration acted quickly and probably reacted as most humans would to a huge attack on civilians. I don’t really think they thought through the decision to start the war very well though. I do believe that some form of retaliation was necessary. They couldn’t let the al-Qaeda get away with killing thousands of our innocent citizens. They had to show the rest of the world that we are still dominant and not to be messed with. I think that not choosing war would have made an even greater impact on the world though. I understand why they chose war and I’m not necessarily condemning them for it, but I think that there are better ways to handle things. You can still be assertive and send the message that your country is not to be messed with without declaring war. I think that, had the war option not been chosen, the United States would have shown the rest of the world that we are powerful, strong, and respectful enough to think things through a little more carefully and come up with a better option. This wouldn’t have been something normal for the United States to do, and that may have shocked the rest of the world into being more respectful and stopping the violence for long enough that a resolution could have been made. The fact that the war option was chosen is sending a mixed message. The United States is sending a message that says, “We are fighting war on terror by killing thousands of innocent people in a naïve attempt at finding most al-Qaeda members.” It’s very hypocritical and backwards. They are trying to fight fire with fire, and all it has done is create a bigger fire. When we went to the Middle East in search of the terrorists, we killed lots of innocent people. This angered many other groups of people there, and then they got involved. This has created a huge, nasty war where our soldiers are fighting multiple groups of people. In these multiple groups of people, there are people who switch sides daily. This changes the way the war has to be fought so that all of our soldiers don’t get killed, and it’s impossible to keep track of the numbers on each side. This all goes back to the theory of thinking things through a little more carefully. If the Bush administration had done enough research to know about the multitude of political and religious groups in the Middle East, as well as these groups’ behaviors and beliefs, there wouldn’t be as big of a mess right now. They may not have chosen war, and even if they still had chosen war there wouldn’t be this huge mess. We are fighting terrorism with terrorism. I don’t agree with it at all and it is not making the United States look good to the rest of the world. I know a lot of people justify the fact that we don’t look good by saying that people are scared of us. That may be true, but is that really what we want? Also, I don’t believe that every country is scared of us. I think some countries think that we are somewhat cowardly. In this whole terrorism situation, I think that braver thing to do would have been not choosing war.