America's War on Terrorism Since the Attacks Essay

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America's War on Terrorism since the attacks of September 11th, 2001.

America's war on Terrorism since 9/11 has largely been conducted in intensifying domestic security in all areas. The highlight has been capturing Osama bin Laden, followed by a phased extraction of the American Army out of Iraq. Nonetheless, security alert is on an all-time high and Defense receives a high proportion of fiscal allocation and focus.

government has also stepped up its surveillance system constructing a highly intricate and controversial eavesdropping data-system base that is run by the National Security Agency and contains trillions of e-mails, web searches and commercial transactions." (McGregor 2011)). A similar system, on as massive a scale, will almost be complete in San Antonio, Texas. Both of these systems support the NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland and house everything "from records of phone calls to and from Iran to credit card purchases by potential suspects at home" (ibid.).

The NSA has intensified its grip on surveillance and does this by closely magnifying each and every footstep of the enemy. According to James Bamford, cited by McGregor (2011), the NSA intends "to store data roughly equal to a septillion -- a 1 followed by 24 zeroes -- pages of text by 2015" (ibid.)

Spending for Defense security and intelligence projects has increased a thousand-fold following 9/11 despite America's recession. Public furor, too, resulted from revelations of government flaws in bureaucracy that prevented the various departments from sharing their information. This flaw resulted in vulnerability to the 9/11 attack. America learned its lesson and their intelligence establishment aimed to fix this huge flaw by bringing the various Departments closer to one another and encouraging them to mutually share information and assist one another.

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The post-9/11 era intensified the desire for security at home modifying the military-intelligence establishment, reforming much that was flawed and corrupt, and, in many ways, creating a body that was hugely different to that which it had been before. The Central Intelligence Agency was one of the institutions that were created and America sharpened its assertiveness both at home and abroad. Another institution has been the Department of Homeland Security, formed from an amalgamation of 22 agencies, from customs to the coast guard. Security at U.S. airports and other transport nodes increased and America demanded the same level of vigilance abroad.

Spending for defense became one of America's largest -- if not its largest -- priority. William Hartung of the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank observed that:

The Pentagon budget rode on the coat-tails of 9/11. Pretty much whatever they asked for was given, because we were at war … In absolute terms, military spending is higher than it has been since world war two -- it is higher than during the Korean War. (McGregor 2011)

Barak Obama largely retained Bush's security implementations changing little whilst extending America's presence in Afghanistan before planning a phased withdrawal following the capture of Osama bin Laden. Allocation for Defense spending, too, has been mostly retained at its former high levels.

American efforts to intensify security seem to have been successful since no major terrorist attack has occurred in this nation since….....

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"America's War On Terrorism Since The Attacks" (2012, October 11) Retrieved May 16, 2024, from
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"America's War On Terrorism Since The Attacks", 11 October 2012, Accessed.16 May. 2024,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/america-war-terrorism-since-attacks-82560