Rendering №7

       The article published on the website of the newspaper "The National Security" on September 10 is headlined "Three wars on terror". The author of the article reports at length that one of Barack Obama's earliest acts as president was to discard the phrase "war on terror," yet he has been waging just such a campaign these past four years -- with a skillful mix of subtlety and ferocity.
     In resolute terms, the author of the article John Arquilla makes it clear that in the history of the USA there were 3 different wars on terror which were lead by Ronald Reagan, by George W. Bush and by Barack Obama.
     There is a lot of comment on the difference in the approaches taken by American two most recent presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Speaking of these differences. it is interesting to note that Bush chose to attack other nations in his attempt to create a less permissive international environment for terrorist networks, and Obama has decided to take the more direct approach: going straight after the networks. As a result, it was revealed that Bush's strategy proved exceptionally costly and highly problematic in Iraq, and even his initial success in "going small" in Afghanistan was all too soon overtaken by a stalemate-inducing impulse to send large numbers of troops there. Besides, there are indications that Obama's concept of operations, on the other hand, has been working well, and will never break the bank or exhaust our military -- especially in the wake of his realizing, and reversing, the folly of surging more troops into Afghanistan, as senior military leaders persuaded him to do early in his presidency.
     In addition, in vigorous terms John Arquilla expresses the view that the  campaign that Obama is now pursuing strongly resembles Reagan's after the October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 242 Americans. Speaking of this first war on terror, it is necessary to note that the signal success of  it came in a campaign against the Abu Nidal Organization -- the al Qaeda of the ‘80s -- which was conducting terrorist hits for hire on behalf of Iraq, Libya, and Syria. However, giving the appraisal of the situation it's necessary to point out that despite this success, and for all of Reagan's enthusiasm  little else came to pass. This was because many senior military leaders worried about the ethics of Reagan's war on terror, afraiding that it could lead to the deaths of innocents.
In this connection it is worth while mentioning the fact that  Barack Obama has done much better by hewing close to the concept that Reagan initially embraced. But, John Arquilla condemns, that as was the case with Reagan, there is now a similar battle going on for Obama's strategic soul. For all the nimble, networked operations he has overseen, Obama did allow senior military advisers to talk him into surging large numbers of conventional forces into Afghanistan -- at great cost and, at best, with mixed results.
     In the conclusion the author suggests that in the battle for Reagan's strategic soul, the conventional thinkers won out because they convinced him that there was far too much of the "dark side" in the  plan. In the battle for Barack Obama's strategic soul, the "overwhelming force" approach has not yet carried the day - and with luck it won't.
     As for me,   I think it is difficult to change the situation with terrorism unless some countries and their governments stop playing double, intruding into other countries' own affairs and when social disruption and bureaucracy will be reduced...I don't consider the USA is able to liquidate world terrorism and think that only collaboration of different countries together can change the situation for the better.