The War on Terror 101

One of the most important keys to waging a successful war is to have a strong and effective strategy, with a variety of tactics to use against the enemy. Both sides of the conflict know this and follow strict rules of practice to ensure themselves success.

 

    The US has a general overarching strategy to cover the War on Terror, but it is loose and and encompases only the general activities and goals for the war. The main goals of the US in the war on terror include preventing attacks from terrorist networks, denying terrorist groups access to resources and sanctuary rogue states, and setting up free democracies along the way as an antidote for terrorism.

    To pursue those goals and to further the interests of America, the American format for deciding on targets of war follows a list of qualifications. The targets pursued by the US fall under one or more of the following categories:

 

1. Leaders: As in any organized structure, leaders of terrorist organizations mainly serve as figureheads for rallying, discipline, and the image that their followers idolize and wish to become.

2. Foot Soldiers: The immediate danger to life and the country are the many hundreds of thousands of men who fight on the ground. They are the main cause of fear in many civilians and opposing militants alike as they are the ones who shoot and kill the opposition.

3. Weapons: The enemy cannot fight effectively without weapons, so destroying as many of them as possible is crucial to controlling the terrorist groups danger.

4. Funds: Like weapons, terrorist organizations need funds to function effectively, especially in the realms of recruitment, propaganda, and dealing with weapons.

5. Communications: The main reason that the major terrorist organizations are so difficult to neutralize. Advanced communication networks allow them to remain hidden and still retain control of many different aspects and areas within the organizations.

6. Propaganda Operations: A growing issue with larger terrorist groups, especially in recent years with the growing of ISIS, extreme levels of widespread and highly advanced propaganda are spread every day through news, social media, and the internet in all too successful recruitment and population manipulation campaigns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    To engage and elimnate these targets, armys from nations around the world, mainly the United States, employ the use of special forces soldiers in operational fields with extensive backup from heavy land vehicles and complete domination of the sky. Recently, the United States has developed and deployed unmanned areal vehicles, or UAV's, use as surveylence and tactical strike platforms.

     The United States has also placed high priority on the denial of entry of foreign terrorists into the country in an effort to limit the chances of future attacks inside the borgers. This has led to a sharp increase in airport security coming from outside nations, especially from the Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq and Libya. Along with denial of access into the country, the US has also been working to disrupt international travel by terrorist organizations and their figureheads to try and limit the reach of power and resources that is available to the organizations.

    The final piece of military strategy in the United States is to defend locations and figures of importance to the fight against terrorism and other American interests. These areas tend not to be locations such as official government buildings with high security and higher priority targets, but smaller and more symbolic locations such as churches or schools that are usually intended to cause the most deaths or economic damage.

 

    On the other side of the conflict, the major terrorist organizations of the world have even less distinctly defined strategies for conflict, but they all follow the same basic principles of spreading their ideology, defending their sacred locations, and eliminating anyone who does not conform to their standards.

    The primary methods enlisted by the larger organizations for spreading their ideology and recruiting more soldiers are propaganda and the physical migration of Muslim groups. Many people are familiar with the Islamic State, and this is largely due to their extensive advertising campaign. IS has one of the most successful and well developed media campaigns in the world due to much work by psychologists and advertising professionals. The campaign is conducted as a corporate advertising campaign selling a product with media posts in the news, many online videos, picture ads on websites, and even large developments on social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Overall the media is all highly professional.

    The other method of spread, the migration of the masses, has been even more successful because many primary targets for terrorist organizations, such as France, have open borders and have outlawed any kind of informational study on the population involving race or religion. This has made it extremely easy for large amounts of Muslims to enter western countries as "refugees" to spread their ideology by inhabitants and then breeding extremely fast to out-populate the native populations. As an example of this occurring in light of the recent attacks in Paris, the estimated average fertility rate of Muslim women in France is 2.8 while non-Muslim women are at an estimated average of 1.9. In addition to the fertility gap, M=more than 90% of Muslim immigrants are on food stamps and almost 70% are on cash welfare in the US, thus encouraging more refugees from the Middle East to immigrate. The major radical Islamist terrorist groups of the world actively encourage and advertise migrating to other countries to spread Islam and make it easier to spread their radical ideologies.

    The action of defending sacred sites is also a very strong goal of most terrorist organizations. This goal is also accompanied by the belief that only Muslim forces may defend such sites, encouraging the sale of arms to Islamic groups for "defensive purposes." The turn of Al Qaeda to attacking the US was actually caused largely because America had forces in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War defending the area from the Russians in 1991.

    The third major outlining action of the major terrorist organizations around the world is killing and causing as much damage to the society of anyone who opposes them. The majority of attacks are targeted at groups and nations that continuously oppose their power within specific regions of their control with military power. The reason that America is a target is mainly dues to the US's constant arming of opposition forces and occupation of much of the areas of interest to the organizations, such as Syria and Saudi Arabia.

    An essential tactic used by terrorist organizations around the world is to attack unguarded or otherwise vulnerable civilian targets. The most sought after targets are the ones that would result in the greatest loss of life or economy to their enemies. These targets are easy to attack and would have the highest success rates, as well as force the enemy to withdraw or surrender to avoid losing lives and economic stability. The insurgent groups also mingle with large crowds of civilians to discourage direct military confrontation from its enemies. The foundation of the military strategy of all terrorist organizations is the use of empathy and value of life against their opponents, this is what makes them terrorists.