Attitudes Toward War

According to the Council on Foreign Relations (2006, p. 1), terrorism is defined by the State Department as, "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." Four key elements of terrorism are said to be that it is premeditated, designed to change existing political orders, aimed at civilians rather than military targets, and is carried out not by the arm of a country but by a sub-national group. The United States is currently conducting a "war on terrorism" which Moseley (2002) has noted brings up the question of what precisely is meant by the term 'war.'

According to Moseley (2002), this question is quite reasonable given the differing definitions of war that have been conceptualized over the centuries. In his examination of classic definitions of war, extending all the way back to the Greeks, Moseley concludes that the most basic definition is that war is any active, armed hostility or struggle between states. However, this is too narrow a definition of the war on terrorism which is an effort by the governments of the United States and its principal allies to search and destroy groups deemed to be "terrorist" most of which are radical Islamic groups which may be, in some cases, state supported but are not states or countries themselves. In cases s

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In order to verify whether the assumptions of support for war varying in relation to the 'enemy's ethnicity' it is necessary to conduct a study that assesses degree of racism and ensuing support for war in general and specific wars in particular, e.g., the war on terrorism, war in Afghanistan, etc. Islamophobia and Attitudes Toward War Verkhovsky (2004) defines Islamophobia as a form of religious prejudice associated with fear and hostility toward the adherents of Islam. Are people more or less inclined to support war and/or the war on terrorism if they are Islamophobic? Unfortunately, an examination of several data bases for attitudes toward war/war on terrorism and measures of Islamophobia in responders revealed that this relationship had been assumed in various studies but not directly assessed. There is some suggestion in a study conducted by Sheridan (2006) that Islamophobia may increase in terms of a specific attack perpetrated by Muslims. In this regard, Sheridan examined the attitudes of a sample of 222 British Muslims as to their personal experiences of racial discrimination following the attack on America on September 11, 2001. They reported an 82.6 percent increase in their experiences of covert discrimination and
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Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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