When will the War On Terror end? It’s a crucial question, and one that everyone should spend some time seriously considering. Can victory be achieved through the physical eradication of those deemed the enemy? Can it be achieved when a variety of radical and militant ideologies are replaced by others less foreign to us? Will it end when American hegemony, or that of another global power, has wrapped the globe?
One of the greatest dangers facing us today is the ambiguity of this question’s answer. For if there does not exist a reasonable response to it, then we must soberly face the reality that a global war in perpetuity exists, one that could very well become a generational affair and create an atmosphere in which arms proliferation and the decline of the democratic façade outweighs the safeguarding of human rights standards and protections for those regions traditionally exploited by the world’s foremost economic powers.
There is no questioning that militant radicalism should be viewed as a very valid security concern. But therein lies the paradox of the position of the world’s notable powers. The definition of militant radicalism itself cannot be limited to those who adhere to a highly warped religious perspective and would use violence to champion it.
Unlike most radically militant organizations, the United States, as an example, operates some 700 military instillations worldwide (not including secret sites). It, along with the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, represents the world’s largest arms manufacturers. Among them, the US and Russia have enough nuclear weapons between them to decimate all life on earth. Furthermore, the United States remains the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons in wartime, the results of which ultimately took the lives of some 400,000 people, an estimated 95% of them civilians.
So how are we to define radicalism? As something that does not adhere to our own view of ‘an acceptable militarism’? If Osama Bin Laden is to be considered the mastermind behind 9/11, and therefore a murderer, then how should Henry Kissinger be viewed? If Ayman al-Zawahiri is to be labeled a threat because of his rhetoric, then why is a man like Pat Robertson allowed to do basically the same thing on national television? Like al-Zawahiri, Robertson has called for the killing of others, not to mention telling the people of Dover Pennsylvania that they had rejected God because they voted against Intelligent Design. How is Robertson’s rhetoric any less radical than al-Zawahiri’s?
Al-Qaeda, of which al-Zawahiri is a spokesman, masterminded 9/11. The Bush administration illegally invaded another country under false pretenses with men like Robertson preaching the righteousness of it to millions of Americans. Ironically, the similarity of the radicalism behind both is lost on most.
The answer to the question posed in this entry has more to do with coming to terms with how militant radicalism is universally defined. It has little or nothing to do with the eradication of one form of it by another.