The War on Terror is More Important than the War on Poverty - Essay Example

The War On Terror Is More Important Than The War On Poverty. Discuss. War on terrorism was started by the Bush Administration after the 9/11 attacks. Terrorism has always existed in some form or the other. This phrase has been used by the Western press when talking about the attempts made by the Russian, European and the U.S. government to prevent and stop attacks against international political leaders. This phrase was again extensively used in the 1940's when the British colonial government was trying to fight Jewish attacks on the British Mandate of Palestine. Leaders around the world use this phrase when they refer to perceived terrorist activity, Ronald Reagan, US President made frequent use of this phrase during the 1980's. Finally, the phrase was again used in 2001 and still is being used. An operative definition in US foreign policy under the Federal Criminal code and stated by Bush as, "today's war on terror is like the Cold War. It is an ideological struggle with an enemy that despises freedom and pursues totalitarian aims....I vowed then that I would use all assets of our power of Shock and Awe to win the war on terror. And so I said we were going to stay on the offense two ways: one, hunts down the enemy and brings them to justice, and takes threats seriously; and two, spread freedom." The British have some objections to the phrase 'War on Terror.' The Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service in the UK, Ken McDonald has stated that the places where these attacks are carried out are not battlefields and the people who die are not victims of war. Also, the people who carry out such terrorist activities are not soldiers, they are criminals. The war on poverty was first introduced by Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States. The legislation was a reaction to the high economic poverty rate. This led to the development of Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) which helped in targeting funds towards the poor and managing the poverty level that existed in the country at that time. The concept of war on poverty waned around the 1960's. The budget towards the impoverished people diminished and there was some de-regulation which led to this. There are many view points which are very subjective to every individual. Many leaders, economists and politicians have commented on this. To some, the war on poverty is important to be victorious in the war on terror; to others finishing terrorism is more important while still to some finishing poverty is more important. One very important factor to not is that to fight such wars, institutional structures need to be created which can help fight the war, this is as important as the conflict itself. The world has failed to win the war on poverty. This can be blamed to the political system and the judiciary. In my opinion, the upper class of society needs to be blamed more; they should make more contributions towards the poor to help diminish the huge gap that exists between the different classes of society. The power that the government has is limited, they can not make all people rich or provide them with the money they need. They can only make a few changes in the policy to help these people get a job, get better pays or start a business. The government can not ban legitimate products and not raise wages across the nation; they have other things to consider such as inflation. On the brighter side of the picture, many new policies and legislations were made which opened new doors for the lower class of society, labour laws were introduced, minimum wages were set and there is strict control over these policies. Thus in the US much improvement has taken place and we can easily say that they have achieved some yards in this war. According to Hilary Benn (2007), by giving a name to the war on terror, we are not only giving all such groups an identity, a common identity but also it leads to using one uniform approach towards fighting them. All such groups need to be handled individually, with policies and strategies custom made for them. An altogether opposite approach would be to use soft power, or in other words peace and prosperity. War on terror is not a solution; it is a cause to a much bigger problem. The war on terror may not just be to finish terrorism in the world but for other reasons as mentioned by Thomas Friedman (Hilary Benn 2007), "part of the solution almost certainly lies in the intimately allied problem of energy hunger. There is a direct relationship between the price of oil and tyranny in oil-producing countries - tyranny historically supported by other (mainly western) countries hungry for the oil there produced." What the world or the super powers of the world do not realise are that there are many other major problems, not just poverty but climatic change because of pollution, drinking and drugs that need to be taken care of before moving on to problems that are self created. The budget that each and every country allocates for war and defence is more than triple what it allocates for health, education and other benefits for the poor. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. talks about the money that has been spent on this war on terror by the US government, in his article 'The War the government cannot win,' (2007) "Operation Enduring Freedom, in Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror, could easily top $600 billion this year. The overall expenditure is exceeding almost $2 trillion. The annual congressional appropriations for the wars which average about $127 billion are more than the market for gambling, heroin or soap and we're talking about global markets. The spending is growing. Now the figure is closer to $8 billion per month. War on terror has consumed more lives than any disease or any famish has. Fighting this war has caused the terrorist groups to retaliate, which has led to a larger number of attacks and more lives being lost. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. also gives some figures in his article; terrorism related activities increased by 28.5 percent from 11,153 in 2005 to 14,338 in 2006 after measures to stop such groups have been taken. The number of people dyeing in terrorist activities has gone up from 14,618 in 2005 to 20,498 in last year. These figures plainly show us that fighting this war will lead to nothing but more disaster and loss of more lives. One attack from us will lead to two from them. The war against terrorism is increasing the number of people involved in terrorist activities. There are far younger Muslims engaging in such activities than there have ever been before. In the 10 years of war against Russia there have not been as many suicide bombings as there are now. Poverty has affected so many lives that we can not count, it is these people that we can help. War on terrorism is not helping people but just killing more people. In Asia alone, there are 900 million people living below the poverty line of one US dollar per person per day. These people do not get the basic necessities, food, clothing and shelter to fulfil their daily needs. Helping these people would mean helping the world to make it a better place. Poverty is multi-dimensional; it is not just about getting food, it about feeling helpless, being dependent, feeling shame to ask somebody for help all the time. Manila Bulletin asks a woman about her view on poverty; the Cambodian woman says "Poverty means working for more than 18 hours a day, but still not earning enough to feed myself, my husband and two children." Most of these people can not send their children to school, although the children have a thirst for knowledge, they do not have the finances and the infrastructure to go to school. Healthcare is minimal and almost non-existent. These people dread ill-health because they will loose out on income during these days. This leads to them going to work even if they are sick and then becoming sicker. In more than half the world, poor people do not get their rights because of extensive corruption, the government employees are rude to them, and they humiliate them and harass them. Poverty affects the family life as well; the parents are usually stressed out. This will lead to fights in the household and many families breaking up as a result. In my opinion, the war on poverty is more important than the war on terror. As Benazir Bhutto wrote in her article 'without a war on poverty we will never defeat terror,' "that the neglect of rising poverty against the background of religious extremism can only complicate an already difficult world situation." In other words, when we finish poverty people will not be frustrated and angry at the rich nations or the rich people in their nations or the politicians for not being able to provide them with the basic necessities. They will automatically be satisfied and control their emotions. They will become busy in their own lives and will forget about such minor things. Currently, with no education, no food, no water, no shelter and no healthcare they have no where to go. The only thing that comes to their mind is that there are hundreds of thousands of people who have all these things. They live their lives happily filling up their pockets; they don't even think about these people. Works Cited 1. Bauer, Kane A War on Poverty http://hubpages.com/hub/A-War-On-Poverty 2. Benazir Bhutto (2004) Without a war on poverty, we will never defeat terror http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/aug/09/pakistan.comment 3. Benn, Hilary (2007) A war on the war on terror. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ac_grayling/2007/04/hilary_benns_war_on_war_on_ter.html 4. Bulletin, Manila (2001) Waging war against Poverty http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/eap/eap.nsf/2c4ea74c4d42fe8d852568b60074a864/a7dcf048d1d3db2c85256ad60020033b/$FILE/Waging%20war%20against%20poverty.pdf 5. Fallows, James Declaring Victory http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/fallows_victory 6. Fighting a Real War on Terrorism, from Political Gateway http://www.politicalgateway.com/main/columns/read.htmlcol=513 7. Jencks, Christopher (2000) Did we really Loose the War on Poverty http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.18869,filter.all/pub_detail.asp 8. Levine, Robert A. (2002) Lessons for the War on Terrorism http://rand.org/commentary/072602IHT.html 9. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. (2007). The war the government cannot win http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/war-govt-nowin.html 10. Sengupta, Kim and Cockburn, Patrick (2007) The War on terror is the leading cause of Terrorism, The Independent UK. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/48620/ 11. The Impact of war on Poverty (2007) Speech at Micah Challenge Conference http://gstoltzfus.blogspot.com/2007/06/impact-of-war-on-poverty.html 12. The Global War on Terrorism (2001) http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/100dayreport.html Read More