Vanderbilt Political Review Fall 2015 | Page 31

FALL 2015 the reactions to the War on Terror have certainly been more drastic and perhaps more unnecessary than ever before. Why Such a Difference? This distinct shift in national security and military policies is key to understanding the national psyche regarding the War on Terror. In theory, the threats of the Cold War and the War on Terror are quite similar: bombings by our enemies and ideological infiltration both at home and abroad. However, the differences between these two conflicts and their perpetrators are far more significant than their similarities. During the Cold War, the United States fought an established system of government. Communism threatened to wreak economic and political havoc on the West. Yet, communism had developed out of the nineteenth century and had been created in the West by Western thinkers, making it somewhat comprehendible to Western democratic societies. Terrorism, as we fight it today, is a foreign concept to the United States. Gone are the days of military action on American soil, as in World War II, and even the days of the red telephone and the space race. Terrorist movements are, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s John Tirman, “largely a cry against alleged Western mistreatment… Since the spectacular attacks of 9/11, al Qaeda has provoked little actual violence in the West. The London and Madrid bombings, small in scale, were the work of local, self-styled malcontents.” No longer is one country mobilizing against another. Instead, the United States has targeted an enemy that is an abstract, secretive, fluid force. Terrorist operatives often act independently on behalf of his or her larger cause; “troops” largely lack the organization and training of a formal military and guerilla fighting is prevalent. In turn, the majority of the War on Terror has involved preventative measures and nation building; in short, the United States has worked to head off INTERNATIONAL a threatening force rather than to fight them outright after an attack is made. While the ideological nature of the two wars in question suggests similarity, the two conflicts are in fact quite different, inspiring different American policies. Power in Public Opinion American national security policy alone was not enough to inspire such a distinct public reaction. While international threats have certainly developed and changed over past decades, the changing opinions of the nation are disproportionate when compared to the actual increase in danger. According to the Pew Research Center, Americans have viewed the United States as growing weaker since the fall of the Soviet Union. Also according to Pew, American approval for international intervention hit an all time high of 70 percent during the early years of the War on Terror, compared to a low of 57 percent during the Cold War. Of course, the American people of the Cold War era were made aware of the threats to the nation, complete with bomb drills in schools and propaganda posters, among other warnings. On the other hand, today’s American public is exposed to both more drastic policy and more rampant commentary about it. Such an environment results in a new American perspective. While public opinion polls show that many people in today’s society argue that the world is a more dangerous and concerning place, comparisons between the physical impacts of the Cold War and the War on Terror on the United States show that, in many ways, it is only the perception and presentation of current conflicts that has shifted. Of course, the Cold War lacked the pervasive news media of today. Americans at the time had only newspapers, the radio, and television news broadcasts. In the informatio