Terrorism and Poverty Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Terrorism and Poverty - Essay Example 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