ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the administration's ambivalence in waging war against global terror resides in: the difficulty in identifying and articulating the nature of the threat; the highly uncertain outcome of Iraq's rehabilitation; and, the tentative and yet highly ambitious nature to reform political institutions and processes in the Arab-Islamic world. Apparent militancy of the Bush Administration and President Bush himself, the United States remains ambivalent towards the war against global terror it declared in the aftermath of the destruction of the twin towers and the attack on the Pentagon. Contrary to the policy of containment, the United States has yet to develop a comprehensive policy towards Islamism. Islamism an ideology compatible with American values. Terrorism is not impersonal: it represents a method that an antagonist uses to reach an end. In the case at hand, terrorism is used by a set of radical Islamist movements, or more exactly Jihadists, who espouse the most extreme form of Islamism.
