The phrase "war on terror" became a globally recognized term and part of everyday language following the September 11, 2001, attacks. While the concept of a "war against terrorism" had existed in North American popular culture and U.S. political discussions prior to 9/11, it was these devastating events that propelled the specific phrase into prominence. The term was initially used to describe the military campaign led by the United States, the United Kingdom,
and their allies against organizations and regimes they identified as terrorist, typically excluding other independent counter-terrorist operations by nations like Russia or India.
On September 16, 2001, President George W. Bush first publicly used the phrase "war on terrorism" in an unscripted comment at Camp David. He described the situation as "a new kind of evil" and stated that "This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. I'm going to be patient." This reference to a "crusade" drew significant criticism due to its controversial connotations within the Muslim world and historical Muslim-Christian relations. Just four days later, on September 20, 2001, during a televised address to a joint session of Congress, Bush declared, "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." Both the term and the policies it represented quickly became sources of ongoing controversy.
Early Criticisms and Alternative Terminology
From its inception, the "war on terror" faced scrutiny. Critics, including organizations like Amnesty International, argued that the phrase was used to justify unilateral preventive war, human rights abuses, and other violations of international law. Political theorist Richard Jackson characterized the "war on terrorism" as both a set of actual practices—including wars, covert operations, agencies, and institutions—and an accompanying series of assumptions, beliefs, justifications, and narratives, effectively an entire language or discourse. Administration officials often depicted "terrorists" as hateful, treacherous, barbarous, mad, twisted, perverted, without faith, parasitical, inhuman, and evil, while portraying Americans as brave, loving, generous, strong, resourceful, heroic, and respectful of human rights.
Osama Bin Laden, in an interview on October 21, 2001, denounced Bush's remarks, stating that the events proved the extent of terrorism America exercised globally. He criticized Bush's division of the world into two camps—Bush and his supporters versus any country not joining the "global crusade"—and questioned what terrorism could be clearer than this, noting that many governments were forced to support this "new terrorism." The conflict was also referred to by other names, such as "World War III," "World War IV" (assuming the Cold War was World War III), "Bush's War on Terror," "The Long War," "The Forever War," "The Global War on Terror," "The War Against al-Qaeda," or "The War of Terror."
Shifting Official Language and Eventual Abandonment
The official use of the phrase began to decline in the mid-2000s. In April 2007, the British government publicly announced its abandonment of the phrase "war on terror," deeming it "less than helpful." Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, later explained in her 2011 Reith lecture that the 9/11 attacks were "a crime, not an act of war," and therefore she never found it useful to refer to a "war on terror." In the United States, President Barack Obama rarely used the term. In his inaugural address on January 20, 2009, he stated, "Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred," but avoided the specific phrase.
By March 2009, the Defense Department officially changed the name of operations from "Global War on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operation" (OCO), and the Obama administration requested that Pentagon staff avoid the term. While the phrase was dropped, basic objectives of the Bush administration's counterterrorism efforts, such as targeting al-Qaeda and building international alliances, remained. In May 2010, the Obama administration's National Security Strategy document explicitly dropped the Bush-era phrase and references to "Islamic extremism," stating, "This is not a global war against a tactic—terrorism, or a religion—Islam. We are at war with a specific network, al-Qaeda, and its terrorist affiliates who support efforts to attack the United States, our allies, and partners." The term was officially discontinued again in May 2013, when President Obama announced that the "war on terrorism" was over, emphasizing that the U.S. would not wage war against a tactic but would instead focus on specific terrorist networks. Despite these official pronouncements, the phrase "war on terror" has persisted in U.S. politics, with figures like Vice President Mike Pence using it in 2017 to describe the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing as "the opening salvo in a war that we have waged ever since—the global war on terror."
Defining the End of the Conflict
In December 2012, Jeh Johnson, the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, articulated a potential end point for the conflict against al-Qaeda. Speaking at Oxford University, Johnson stated that the war would conclude when the terrorist group had been weakened to the point where it was no longer capable of "strategic attacks" and had been "effectively destroyed." At that juncture, he suggested, the conflict would no longer qualify as an armed conflict under international law, and the military fight could transition into a law enforcement operation. In May 2013, two years after the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama delivered a speech that, while acknowledging ongoing threats, framed the effort not as a "boundless 'global war on terror,'" but as a series of "persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists." He affirmed the legality of U.S. military actions, stating, "Under domestic law, and international law, the United States is at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces... So this is a just war—a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense." However, the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014–2015 led to Operation Inherent Resolve, an international campaign against the group, which was also considered by some to be another campaign within the broader "war on terror."
