As said, “war on terrorism” is cheap, manipulative rhetoric, nothing more.
True or not, that’s rather insulting to the “population”, saying that they are that gullible.
There has been terrorism as long as humans have been humans, and there will be as long as we continue to be humans. Declaring war on terrorism is like declaring war on ambushes. It’s a tactic. Even if you killed every last terrorist, erased all memory of terrorism from humanity’s collective mind and histories, it would almost immediately be reinvented.
As for whether or not a “true interpetation” of Islam supports terrorism; Islam has no objective basis, so any interpetation you choose is as “true” as any other.
The war on terror is an accurate enough description, at least since “The war on terrorists groups who form a loosely aligned global coalition, receiving state sponsorship in various ways from countries as diverse as Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose goals are numerous and often contradictory between and within schisms, but who still want to bring death and ruin to the western world through military means, who are motivated by fundamentalist Islam and whose M.O. is often typified by civilian targeted attacks” is a bit too long to fit into a soundbyte.
The Second World War was not the second in a series of wars against the globe, trying to teach the damn thing to be square.
The Cold War was not a war waged against low average kinetic energy among constituent molecules.
The war on terror is not a war against a tactic.
No, it’s a catchy buzzword type phrase. Doesn’t mean that there really isn’t a war going on against terrorist organizations…or that THEY don’t see it as a war at least. AQ especially DOES see it as a war against the ‘West’…and they use the same kind of rhetoric when describing their great struggle against the West and the US.
It’s not the same thing at all. The ‘war on terror’ is really a war on ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALIST TERROR GROUPS. And yeah, there really is a war pitting the nebulous ‘West’ against the equally nebulous ‘Islamic Terrorists’. Because THEY see it that way…and after 9/11 we see it that way as well. It’s pretty much the same thing as The Cold War…which is really just a buzzword for the geo-political maneuvering that took place between the US/West and the Soviets/Eastern Bloc/China/Cuba/North Korea/etc etc. Just because The Cold War™ is a nice little buzzword phrase doesn’t mean that there really wasn’t a struggle going on between the nebulous Communists and the equally nebulous Capitalists.
:dubious: It doesn’t matter what a ‘true interpretation’ of Islam may or may not be…that’s objective. What matters is what someone of the faith who has influence with others of the faith THINKS their interpretation is…as long as they can convince some non-zero percentage of the faithful that their interpretation is correct.