Is it Time to End the American Global War on Terror?

[rangerrebew]

 
Is it Time to End the American Global War on Terror?
BY Robert Bruce Adolph / November 2, 2025

Terrorism isn’t an enemy to be defeated, it’s a symptom of despair and miscalculation—and until America accepts that truth, every strike it makes will plant the seeds of the next war.


A masked extremist stands before the black flag of ISIS, the face of a movement that wields fear as its most accessible weapon. Image Credit: CNN
If you know the enemy and yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. – Sun Tzu
 

While serving in the US Special Operations Forces, I supported counterterrorism. While serving with the United Nations, I worked in antiterrorism. While in Baghdad, Iraq in August of 2003, I became an actual victim of terrorism in a vehicular jihadist suicide bombing attack. These varied experiences forced me to think more critically about the people labeled terrorists in the aftermath of 9/11.

To begin, and simply put, terrorism is a tactic — among others — used by what could also be called fanatics in the attainment of group goals. But everyone has a different take on the meaning. The UN alone has identified over one hundred wildly differing definitions. The problem is that terrorism is, and always has been, part of the human condition, perhaps more correctly terrorists should be labeled extremists instead.

 https://sofrep.com/news/is-it-time-to-end-the-american-global-war-on-terror/

[rangerrebew]

Europe already has.  How does it seem to be working for them?

[Timber Rattler]

It pretty much ended with the rout from Kabul in 2021.

[Smokin Joe]

But if you label terrorists "extremists", where does that leave anyone who has read the Constitution?

Their rhetoric intersects because of the way they have defined the Right.

OH, Hell no! Quit playing games with the language!

Terrorists use terror (the very real bloody, deadly, kind not some snowflake wetting their pants over simply being disagreed with) to further their political aims. Sure, it's a tactic, but it is also a mindset (that murder is justified by their cause), and it is strongly adopted by a host of groups including those whose religious beliefs mandate that they kill their enemies, convert them to their beliefs, or crush them in subjugation, using any tactics against any target.

As such, those are the groups we are at war with, no matter how small or large, and some are of considerable breadth, whether that scope is commonly acknowledged or not.

They are not the people who know the founding documents and principles of our government but have, regardless of their peaceful actions and intent, been labelled extremists by those on the Left who riot, protest, and burn neighborhoods when they don't get their way.

Unless they specifically, individually or as a group, adopt and approve terror tactics or beliefs that endorse them, they are not terrorists. Others, by professing beliefs specifically linked to terrorist actions, and not condemning those actions, may well fit the definition.