AustLit

'Students entering Australian universities today have lived their entire lives in the War on Terror (WOT). Declared in September 2001, following attacks on the US mainland by militant Islamist terrorists that claimed over 3,000 lives, the WOT is defined by both its conceptual vagueness—as American commentator Michael Moore has asked, how can you wage war on an emotion?—and temporal fluidity. US Vise President Dick Cheney famously declared: “It [the WOT] is different than the Gulf War was, in the sense that it may never end. At least, not in our lifetime.” If earlier conflicts had been total—mobilising a nation’s manpower and resources—the WOT would be forever.' (Introduction)