The United States has entered an endless labyrinth by attempting to solve the Middle East’s societal and political problems through inefficient and costly counterterrorism tactics of drone strikes, interrogating, and improper use of funds. Additionally, due to what can only be ascribed to gross negligence and government incompetence, there have been many cases where the United States has simply failed to allocate military funding in a timely manner and thus resulted in multiple international catastrophes due to civil wars and political unrest. But, these results don’t solely to the United States; the Middle East’s authoritarian governments and rigid social structure have also contributed to the severity of these situations. However, these costly mistakes have not only contributed to the recent and drastic increase in the United States debt, but these mistakes have also led to an increase in both the size and prevalence of radical Islamic terrorist groups across the entire world. These violent organizations have been able to use propaganda techniques and ill-advised actions of the U.S military to effectively recruit huge swathes of young adults that seek to fulfill the empty promises of revenge against a country they have been bred to hate since they were born: The United States of America. As terrorist numbers are growing, attacks in Europe and the Middle East have surged due to this constant tension that was created in large parts due to the United States’ bully-like behavior in the Middle East. The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism recorded 14,806 attacks in the Global Terrorism Database in 2015, which averages to 41 attacks per day (Fox). The world is in dire need of a viable solution to this problem instead of continuing the current practice of neglecting these sadistic terror attacks that seem to transpire daily. The world’s ignorance to these daily 41 terrorist attacks could cause the attacks to increase exponentially if the issue is not dealt with accordingly. These attacks also unveil to the world that terrorism is a surmounting issue that needs to be acted upon promptly to prevent any more innocent lives from being lost.

The world watched in horror on September 11th, 2001 as five planes smashed into various locations around the United States and claimed over 3,000 American lives. The Bush administration received heavy pressure from the public to counter and seek revenge for this malicious attack on U.S. soil. President George W. Bush was willing to take any measure to gain information on the origin of this attack and where that terrorist faction may be hidden. Thus, the Bush administration created legal loopholes to bypass human rights and didn’t take morality into account. The Bush administration immediately removed most of the protocol for interrogations and resorted to intense waterboarding as their means for extracting important information. They attempted to avoid the public eye and performed most of these inhumane interrogations at undisclosed C.I.A prisons (Morrison). President Bush’s administration also saw fit to enact the Military Commissions Act of 2006; this bestows unlimited authority to the president “in establishing and conducting military commissions to try persons held by the U.S., and considered to be ‘unlawful enemy combatants’ in the Global War on Terrorism.” (Longley). This allowed for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who fell into the broad category of “enemy combatants” as well as the ability to try these prisoners by military commission; this permitted less lenient trials and punishments for potential suspects. President Bush’s administration is also notorious for their attempt to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, a natural human right that should not be removed. Many atrocities also occurred at Guantanamo Bay and have yet to receive attention from the public eye. In July of 2002, O.K., A fifteen-year-old boy, was captured by U.S officials and sent to Guantanamo Bay over the possibility that he may contain valuable information. O.K. reported of being carried into interrogations on a stretcher, having barking dogs spit drool into his face, cold water being thrown, and tying his hands to a door frame for hours. U.S military officials also demanded he pick up trash, empty it, and then proceed to gather the trash he recently poured onto the floor. During a separate interrogation session, O.K. was not allowed to use the restroom and the officials found it time-saving if he would simply urinate on himself (Report on Torture). This is inhumane to treat a child with such physical and psychological abuse over information that has a likely possibility of not even being of value. The worst factor of this situation is that a young teen is being mistreated as a high-value prisoner for simple information that probably won’t contribute to the global war on terrorism. In its history, the United States has fought tooth-and-nail to pass child labor laws and other acts to promote the well-being of children, but the Bush administration threw morality out-the-window when they witnessed Al Qaeda terrorists plunge the recently-conquered planes into various U.S locations. 

Even the Guantanamo Bay doctors and psychologists were lured into the evil scheme orchestrated by the United States military. Guantanamo medical personnel violated medical procedures by disclosing prisoner’s confidential medical records with interrogators for use of extracting information. Former prisoners also recalled that their information was essentially the camp currency, and that the interrogators controlled the access to medical help for prisoners and utilized the access as power to extract information. The amount of medical treatment that a prisoner was given also depended on his level of cooperation with interrogators and officials. Interrogators even stooped to an inhumane level as they would confiscate the arms of prosthetic prisoners until they would cooperate (Report on Torture). The United States, a country known for being a worldwide force for peace and justice, disregarded its foundational principles of liberty and individual justice for all as it repeatedly violated the most basic human rights. This unjustified and inexcusable treatment of prisoners has tarnished the United States’ reputation around the globe while also decreasing public trust in the federal government. These multiple reports of Guantanamo Bay prisoners enduring inhumane confinement, unspeakable torture, or medical wrongs help reveal that our nation has committed unspeakable misdeeds behind closed doors. National security intelligence is a key factor in the United States’ well-being, but should not come from the expense of human rights. 

Some interrogations also contributed invalid data that was solely meant to further complicate the United States’ goal to stop terrorism. Faulty information from terrorists and the raw emotions of the American public led the United States on an embarrassing “wild goose chase” for “weapons of mass destruction.” President Bush’s rash decision was to simply invade Iraq and Afghanistan in hopes of rooting out these “weapons of mass destruction.” Thus, thousands of U.S. intelligence operatives, American soldiers, and countless dollars were then diverted from the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist factions to pursuing a phantom threat that was based on faulty information that stemmed from interrogation. After the completion of Bush’s tenure in office, his administration was responsible for the loss of over 5,000 American lives and, on his way out, he presented the American taxpayers with a $811 billion bill for a war that produced insignificant results. Soon after the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, suicide bombings in Afghanistan had doubled and roadside bombings have increased by 30% (Rhode). Over 200,000 Middle Eastern civilians were also lost from a direct result of these wars and this number of innocent casualties is inexcusable for a nation of our magnitude to commit such humiliating mistakes (Rhode). The only situation worse than waging war to destroy weapons of mass destruction is waging war and not even discover these alleged weapons. These military blunders in the Middle East have only intensified the political and social unrest that Iraq and Afghanistan was experiencing previously. The United States government gained minimal success from the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars, but they somehow managed to further worsen the tension in these “loose-cannon” Middle Eastern countries and harm countless Middle Eastern civilians.

The Bush legacy was tainted with ill-advised military procedures that proved to be uneconomical and demoralizing to the people of Afghanistan and the United States. The Democrats took advantage of this administration’s calamity and utilized it to aid in securing Barrack Obama’s presidency in 2008. President Barrack Obama immediately began to act as the redeemer for the United States’ global reputation and eradicated the works of the previous Bush administration. He barred the classified C.I.A prisons that held inhumane interrogation tactics and revoked many of the questionable acts that the Bush administration had managed to squeeze through Congress (Delman). President Obama kept his promise to the American public and withdrew most of U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East, effectively ending Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. The termination of these overseas operations served as both the symbolic and physical end to Bush’s legacy: a noble, yet misguided quest to restore order to the Middle East that ultimately resulted in one of the largest and most expensive conflicts in its short history. President Obama also was responsible for the death of Osama Bin Laden, a key superior in the Al Qaeda organization and the mastermind for the attack on September 11th, 2001 (Delman). President Obama took many steps to legislatively rectify many of the wrong-doings of the Bush administration that violated both morals and natural human rights. But, these eradications of Bush’s acts and plans resulted in further unintended consequences. President Obama’s removal of the Bush-era American troops in the Middle East created a vacuum that, rather than being filled with a stable and democratic form of government, was engulfed by the Islamic State group and other terrorist factions. Learning from previous mistakes of the previous administration, President Obama took Bush’s invasive approach into account and approached an indirect tactic to war and thus tended to favor drone strikes and other automated methods over risking American soldier lives. This indirect warfare tactic resulted in 2,000 U.S casualties and a satisfied Congress, considering that the Bush administration’s invasive tactic resulted in the loss of 5,000 American troops (Delman). This tactic has also proven to be more effective in minimizing American casualties, but it has hacked a larger portion of the federal budget than the previous Bush administration. President Obama claimed that the Iraqi war was an “exorbitant cost” to the American people, yet his indirect tactics amassed $866 billion in military spending on these lavish counterterrorism tactics (Delman). President Obama also clearly revealed that he didn’t mind pinching the American taxpayer’s wallet by doubling the U.S military’s presence globally and deploying troops in multiple theatres for various international conflicts.  He conducted drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen; the ant-ISIS campaign in Syria and Iraq; and two “advise-and-assist” missions in Cameroon and Uganda. President Obama also welcomed the strategy of U.S. special-operations forces and deployed them to various missions in over 133 countries, which is roughly 70% of the entire Earth (Delman). These tactics are excessive, profligate, and archaic for the current U.S economy that holds a $19 trillion debt that is increasing hourly. 

The indirect methods of air strikes and drones have also experienced heavy criticism due to the inability to guarantee no civilian lives are lost. This criticism emerged from the Obama administration launching an airstrike-based mission, called “Operation Haymaker”, in northeastern Afghanistan. U.S Documents that covered casualties from 2012 to 2013 disclosed that U.S special operations airstrikes claimed over 200 lives in Afghanistan; Of the two hundred people who died from the Operation Haymaker airstrikes, only thirty-five were intended targets. During a five-month period of Operation Haymaker, documents revealed that 90% of the airstrike casualties were not intended targets (Fang). The fact that the most powerful and technologically advanced nation was the cause for over 90% civilian casualties during a five-month period of Operation Haymaker is both appalling and utterly humiliating. A report in December of 2013 also revealed that a United States drone strike killed fourteen Yemen civilians that were returning from a wedding; U.S military officials that were responsible for the drone strike accidentally mistook the vehicle for one that belonged to an Al Qaeda member (Fang). These reports have unveiled how utterly sickening it is that the most technologically-savvy country in the world has made such crude mistakes, especially with the immaculate amount of technology that the United States has access to.

Failure to act in a timely manner has also surfaced as a recent trend in U.S government military operations. In 2012, The Assad regime of Syria was faltering and on the brink of collapse due to political unrest and opposition. Robert Ford, the U.S ambassador to Syria, urged Obama to aid the Syrian opposition and help counter the splintered Syrian government and humanitarian disaster that was spreading across the eastern hemisphere (McKelvey). Much of the White House embraced the proposal to provide military aid to help counter the unrest, but the event intensified due to President Obama’s negligence of military aid to Syria. The civil war of Syria flourished and continued to wage chaos and fear throughout the country as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad desperately tried to sustain his power against a political uprising.  Rather than providing weapons, The U.S government only provided food, medical kits, and other humanitarian aid. This lack of military power in Syria has allowed the Islamic State group to entice the Syrian rebels with financial and military means and lure them into the terror. The Civil war in Syria resulted in over 200,000 Syrians killed and four million displaced; (McKelvey). The United States’ hesitation to properly fund the Syrian rebels only further escalated Syria’s war. The United States played a role in the inexcusable and unfathomable loss of human lives in Syria and this war should be a crystal-clear indicator for the United States to “go back to the drawing board” in the aspects of counterterrorism and look to other potential strategies.

One strategy that has proven to be extremely successful is military campaigning indirectly by providing weapons, vehicles, and other arms to nations or allied insurgents that lack military force. Plan Colombia, an operation that was initiated by President Clinton and later expanded by President Bush, provided U.S advisors and arms to strike F.A.R.C, an extremist drug cartel that was wreaking havoc in Colombia. This operation was very efficient and revived Colombia from its failed state in the 1990s (Wechsler). Less well known, but just as successful, was the effort provided by the Joint Special Operations Task Force in the Philippines under President Bush and Obama. Within ten years of the operation’s existence, the Al Qaeda and Islamic State threat reduced sharply and the Philippines armed forces gathered enough military authority to fight the terrorists that remain (Wechsler). The United States is also utilizing this counterterrorism tactic throughout Africa. “Campaigns led by U.S. special-operations forces are successfully supporting counterterrorism operations by the African Union in Somalia, by the French and their partners across the Sahel, by the Ugandans against the Lord’s Resistance Army, and, most recently, by a multinational West African force in Cameroon against Boko Haram” (Wechsler). The ends of these multiple campaigns are far from completed, but they have made substantial progress and sharply reduced the extremist threats in these various countries. 

Many Americans dispute that the amount of funding and troops is too lavish and costly on the American taxpayer. One can admit that attempting to train and bolster a foreign nation’s army is no simple task. However, by efficiently training and assembling small groups of local task forces, those forces can instruct their peers and minimize the amount of U.S. involvement in international disputes. A relatively small amount of U.S troops can easily guide local military forces throughout multiple operations and give them invaluable experience for the future. By providing a full overview of the factors in military operations, the local forces can enhance their effectiveness and hasten the time in which the country can combat independently against future threats. 

Generally, those who oppose prioritizing the eradication of global terrorism claim that terrorist attacks are rare occurrences that pose only a negligible threat to the safety of people They claim that funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to combat a phantom enemy is imprudent and needless when the possibility of a terrorist attack is infinitesimal. Michael Cohen, a columnist for the Boston Globe, approached his article by recalling numerous statistics of deaths from unlikely causes. “Heroin overdoses kill about 13,000 every year. Even unintentional drowning – in bathtubs, lakes or swimming pools – kills more than 3,500 people every year, a number approximately 1,800 times larger than the number of people killed by terrorism in the United States in 2015” (Cohen). While these statistics proved validity, other studies show that terrorism is exponentially rising as a threat globally. According to the 2015-2016 Global Terrorism Index, fatal terror attacks have risen 650% in the world’s biggest economies. The Islamic State terrorist organization has also expanded its influence and activity by doubling the amount of countries that it remains active in (Fox). Cohen remains correct on the probability of a terrorist attack, but he doesn’t consider that terrorist attacks are escalating at an exponential rate and there is an evil organization that is intensifying daily from a lack of military presence. Also, with the chances of a terrorist attack are next to miniscule, any refuter of counterterrorism needs to approach the issue from the perspective of the victim. If a loved one of any person’s family was lost to a terrorist attack, any person with morality would surely possess raw emotions and a blind hatred for these terrorists that have harmed their loved ones.

The United States hasn’t contributed to all the unrest of the Middle East; a rigid social structure, lack of economic opportunity, and authoritarian rule has played a role in hindering the Middle East from progressing economically and socially. But, after years of deployments for invasions and the United States patiently maintaining a militant “light footprint” through drone strikes and special forces raids, it is evident that the Middle East is still in a constant state of turmoil. The United States could distribute small, local forces globally that could help educate and prepare other foreign nations for the rising terrorist threat, while minimizing the number of “boots-on-the-ground” and then allowing saved defense spending to be reallocated to domestic U.S issues. The United States’ past and current counterterrorism tactics have unveiled that they are in dire need of reformation due to the mounting collected debt, immoral wrongs, and civilian lives lost. How many more innocent Iraqi, Afghan, and American lives have to be lost in order to come to the realization that the current U.S counterterrorism strategies are inept? This inexcusable trend in the United States’ military history has shown that the United States’ tendency to go “partly at war” in the Middle East will produce only partial results. 
