War on terror

The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is a global military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks in 2001, and is one of the most recent global conflicts spanning multiple wars. Some researchers and political scientists have argued that it replaced the Cold War.

The main targets of the campaign were militant Islamist movements such as al-Qaeda, Taliban and their allies. Other major targets included the Ba'athist regime in Iraq, which was deposed in an invasion in 2003, and various militant factions that fought during the ensuing insurgency. Following its territorial expansion in 2014, the Islamic State also emerged as a key adversary of the United States.

The term "war on terror" uses war as a metaphor to describe a variety of actions which fall outside the traditional definition of war. U.S. president George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 September 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. Bush indicated the enemy of the war on terror as "a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them". The initial conflict was aimed at al-Qaeda, with the main theater in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a region that would later be referred to as "AfPak". The term "war on terror" was immediately criticized by individuals including Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and eventually more nuanced terms came to be used by the Bush administration to define the campaign. While "war on terror" was never used as a formal designation of U.S. operations, a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal was and is issued by the U.S. Armed Forces.

With the major wars over and only low-level combat operations in some places, the end of the war in Afghanistan in August 2021 symbolizes the visible ending of the war, or at least its main phase, for many in the West. The American military ceased issuing its National Defense Service Medal on 31 December 2022. As of 2025, various global operations in the campaign are ongoing, including a U.S. military intervention in Somalia. According to the Costs of War Project, the post-9/11 wars of the campaign have displaced 38 million people, the second largest number of forced displacements of any conflict since 1900, Syria and Yemen. They also estimate that it has cost the US Treasury over $8 trillion. 

While support for the "war on terror" was high among the American public during its initial years, it had become deeply unpopular by the late 2000s. Controversy over the war has focused on its morality, casualties, and continuity, with critics questioning government measures that infringed civil liberties and human rights. Critics have notably described the Patriot Act as "Orwellian" due to its substantial expansion of the federal government's surveillance powers. Controversial practices of coalition forces have been condemned, including drone warfare, surveillance, torture, extraordinary rendition and various war crimes. The participating governments have been criticized for implementing authoritarian measures, repressing minorities, fomenting Islamophobia globally, and causing negative impacts to health and environment. Security analysts assert that there is no military solution to the conflict, pointing out that terrorism is not an identifiable enemy, and have emphasized the importance of negotiations and political solutions to resolve the underlying roots of the crises.

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