TerrorismS18G2

Erika Dennery Professor Shirk Global Politics of Terrorism April 22nd, 2018 The War on Terror: Increasing Airstrikes It is widely known that the United States has been fighting an international military campaign known as the War on Terror for over ten years now, and there is no indication that the fighting will stop anytime soon. This is in part due to the fact that the threat of terrorists overseas committing acts against the United States is unpredictable and it is hard to determine a way to prevent these acts from occurring other than simply attempting the fight the terrorists at the very source through the use of airstrikes. While these strikes seem logical and like an ingenious way to protect the citizens of the U.S., it turns out that air strikes are responsible for a large amount of civilian deaths and they may not be entirely useful in preventing the threats we perceive as real; therefore, if airstrikes are not doing any good, then what is their purpose and why is...

On September 11th, 2001, the terrorist group known as Al-Qaeda infiltrated American airports across the country, crashed two planes into the Twin Towers, one plane into the Pentagon, and planned on crashing a fourth plane into the White House, but failed to do so. This fourth plane was overrun by civilians and crashed in Pennsylvania instead. A little less than 3,000 Americans were killed in this act of terror. On September 16th, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a ‘war on terror’. Two years later, using the language of the so called ‘war on terror,’ the United States government, under the prerogative of Bush, invaded Iraq. Relatively recent unveilings regarding potentially false pretenses leading to the invasion, calls into question the validity of the war. In all actuality, Bush used the threat of ‘terrorism’ to justify his own political agenda: the usurpation of Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein.             Bush claimed th...

Patrick Dancoes POL-357 Prof. Shirk Blog – Al Qaeda  4/23/18 Religious vs Political Terrorism: How Al-Qaeda was Formed on a Religious Foundation           The aims of Al-Qaeda were forged from Osama Bin Laden’s Islamic beliefs. The manifestation of these beliefs produced a targeted goal of bleeding American resources dry. Al-Qaeda hoped to drive the US into bankruptcy, and in-turn force the US to withdraw from the Arabian Peninsula and cease Israeli aid. Al-Qaeda’s ambitions seem to be economical and political in regards to their terrorist motivation; however, the group’s tactics which implored the use of devastating violence speaks more to their core ambitions as religious terrorists. Al-Qaeda cloaked legitimacy over its activity by deeming actions their divine duty, carried out in direct response to their Islamic imperative. This makes it clear that the motives of Bin Laden, and in essence Al-Qaeda stem from a religious foundation. Be...

The widely known fact that the NSA uses electronic surveillance over actual human technology is troublesome. Today, the primary way that the United States locates terrorists and authorizes attacks is through the information received from surveillance devices such as drones and cell phone SIM cards, but this creates a huge problem in that the technology has been found to be unreliable. Because the use of such technologies has been continued without a second thought given to the innocent lives that are being taken in the process, it seems as if the United States has no regard for the death of innocents when in the process of killing terrorists. That begs the question of which is the greater evil, killing terrorists and sacrificing innocent lives at the same time, or letting terrorists go free so that innocents can live? The thing about technology is that it can never be quite as reliable as human intelligence is. This is shown when terrorists or people being watched by the CIA might...

Patrick Dancoes Prof. Shirk POL-357B Critically Examining OBL  4/12/18 The Persuasive Rhetoric of Osama Bin Laden Up until the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden was not a name known to the American public. But four years later the book, Messages to the World revealed to American audiences the reasons why Bin Laden himself waged war against America. In his statements he many times employed persuasive language to explain his beliefs, while simultaneously used rhetoric that placed the entirety of the blame onto America. The importance of recognizing and understanding his rhetoric is that it can ultimately help us understand the motivations, not only of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda but also other groups who have pitted themselves against America. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the pointed language of Osama Bin Laden, being a prominent terrorist figure who seeks to sway listeners with his words; and how his anti-American ideology could be dangerous because of its persu...

Patrick Dancoes POL-357 Prof. Shirk Domestic Terrorism Is Domestic Terrorism in the US Different than Elsewhere? How Oppression Seems to be a Constant          Domestic terrorism in the United States has a long history dating back to the nation’s origin. Native Americans were murdered in the 18th century, the assignation of president Abraham Lincoln happened in the 19th century, MLK and many other African-Americans were killed in the 20th century, and the Earth Liberation Front attacked in the 21st century. So how do all of these events connect? Each one of these terror attacks was hinged on an actor/s inability to cope with the current order of America at large. These events developed from the perpetrators’ heeded sense of oppression they felt America burdened them with, and so reacted with violence and lethal tactics. Important to note, this is a framework that directly ties the emergence of domestic terrorist cells with cu...