The War on terror has done more harm than good. Do you agree?

The War on terror campaign set out by the United States after the September 2001 attack on
the World Trade Center has been continuously going on since it started. Its main aim was to
eliminate al-Qaeda and other militant organizations, thus ensuring safety from any other terrorist
attacks. However, since the war started more than 110.000 civilians have been killed, and many
others have been wounded, left homeless or suffered from the war in other ways. The US calls this
collateral damage of the war. So, has the war done any good? I believe that it has done more
harm than good, and there are several reasons for this.
The first reason is that this war on terror has created more fear on people, who live continuously
afraid of terrorist attacks, and also a great prejudice against Muslim people. US and other
countries media have been exposing news in such a way, since 9/11, to increase the publics fear
of terrorists attack. For example, the US flag over the Brooklyn bridge was changed by a white one
recently, and even though this was done by German artists, many US newspapers were claiming
that a white flag was the first step, and the next would be a bomb. Researchers in the area of
communication studies and political science have found that American understanding of the war
on terror is directly shaped by how news media reports events associated with the war on terror.
This fear is directly related to the prejudice created against Muslim people, who have to suffer
from insults and discrimination. The American Arabic Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has
recorded 520 incidents of violence against Arab Americans only during a one year period.
The second reason is that the War on terror, civilians suffered the greatest number of deaths. The
Iraq Body Count documented between 100 and 110,000 civilians who died violent deaths since
and there are studies that suggest that this number is even higher. This is caused mainly because
the US fails to differentiate citizens from actual terrorists, taking innocent people into custody and
torturing them, aswell as failing to hit their actual targets with their air strikes. There has been a
great increase in the death toll of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan citizens since the
introduction of drone air strikes, and their bombing of cities. So, the war has actually killed more
innocent people than terrorists, being the stop of these the main aim of the whole operation.
The third reason is that the war has had the complete opposite effect of what was intended. There
is data from an extensive terrorism database that argues that by increasing military occupations,
the US government is increasing terrorism. In 2006, a National Intelligence Estimate stated that
the war in Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism. The estimate was put together by 16
intelligence agencies and was the first assessment of global terrorism since the start of the Iraq
war. This is not only a threat, but there has also been an increase in suicidal bomb attacks. This
war and war enthusiasm created by the American government, particularly the Bush
administration, has created a strong anti-American feeling in most Muslim countries, and other
places too, resulting in a hate circle, in which Americans will invade and hate Muslim states, and
Muslim extremist groups will attack and hate Americans.
In conclusion, this US-led war on terror has created a much greater harm than it will ever create
good. The use of media, and the collateral damage, as the US calls it, aswell as the factual
increase of terrorism has damaged not only the population of several countries, but the whole
economical system, globalization progress for those countries, and created a hate towards the
Muslim population that is mostly unjustified. Although Obama has taken some of the US troops
out, the war still continues, and people continue to suffer.