The Specter of Terrorism - Essay Example

Example: Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Taliban, Hezbollah, Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan and Armed Islamic Group of Algeria. Offensive acts commonly committed by groups of terrorists are bombing in public places, raping women, kidnapping, torturing, wounding and murdering of civilians, political leaders, journalists and other distinguished characters in the society. Initiatives taken by the nations for abolishing terrorism can thus be highly justifiable. Particularly the United States and United Nations are giants and play significant roles in controlling the acts of terrorism in today’s world.

This paper examines the increasing of terrorism in America and Middle East and the role on UN in resolving the problems associated with world terrorism. Involvement of US and UN in the security and political matters of other countries especially in the Middle East seems to have lead by other interests than terrorism. Example: US army invading Iraq in March 2003 is highly obscure. Initially Iraq was presumed to cause a significant threat on the regional security of Middle East. Allegations made against Iraqi president were developing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) example, nuclear and chemical weapons and not cooperating with the international observers who were agents of the United Nations.

Saddam Hussein who was the president during that time rejected all the allegations made by the US. Regardless of the president’s rejections UN placed sanctions upon trading with Iraq and later the war was declared. After a year Charles Duelfer who is an adviser of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) stated that Iraqi nuclear program was actually eliminated in 1991 and Saddam Hussein was right in rejecting the allegations made by the UN. One can argue that the former president of Iraq died fighting to protect the rights of his country’s sovereignty.

And that US army was the actual terrorist who unlawfully used weapons against Iraqi population and its president. Further, no effort was taken to compensate the injustice caused by US against Iraq during the war. In a household survey carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Iraqi health ministry in 2007, it was revealed that the cost of human lives which were lost during the war is much higher than the cost of terrorism operated in Iraq. Initially the number of Iraqi civilian deaths has been not recorded by the international organizations.

The actual cost of destroying the physical infrastructure and human capital had been carefully excluded from all the war accounts. Nevertheless the above survey revealed that US troops had killed civilians during the first two years of the war much more than the terrorist group al-Qaida ever did in Iraq (Steele and Goldenberg, 2008). The death toll of Iraqi civilians in fact exceeded one million. Moreover, the death toll of Iraqi children during the trade sanctions placed by the UN was half a million which exceeds the killings of actual nuclear bombing occurred in Hiroshima (Albright, 1996).

The opportunity cost of fighting in Iraq was substantially high for America as well. Example: The cost of fighting ten days in Iraq is equal to funding the continent of Africa for a year and eliminating illiteracy in the world (Crawley, 2008). Clearly the approach adapted by international governing bodies for ending the terrorism in the Middle East has many drawbacks. It is provocative and unjust in many ways. In a global economy where people die in starvation pumping millions of dollars