It's a war......no it's a struggle

newyorker: Name Calling

You had to be a careful reader of the inside pages of the Times last week to notice that America is no longer fighting the global war on terrorism. The Administration has replaced, or revised, or expanded the G.W.O.T. with a new phrase: "a global struggle against violent extremism." The war is now a struggle. The terrorist enemy is now the violent extremist enemy. The focus has shifted from a tactic to an ideology. In a major new strategy document quoted in U.S. News & World Report, the Pentagon is even more specific (and more accurate), venturing onto delicate ground by calling the threat "Islamist extremism" and "extremist Sunni and Shia movements that exploit Islam for political ends." In June, a Marine lieutenant general, Wallace Gregson, floated the new thinking in a speech: "This is no more a war on terrorism than the Second World War was a war on submarines," he said. "The decisive terrain in this war is the vast majority of people who are not directly involved but whose support, willing or coerced, is necessary to insurgent operations around the world." On July 12th, Donald Rumsfeld used the new language in a press conference, repeating the word "extremist" or variations of it eleven times. On July 23rd, two top White House officials followed up with an Op-Ed in the Times: "At its root, the struggle is an ideological contest, a war of ideas that engages all of us, public servant and private citizen, regardless of nationality." The President's chief of staff, Andrew Card, once said of war planning for Iraq, "You don't introduce new products in August," but the rebranding of the war formerly known as G.W.O.T. has all the earmarks of a full-blown summer marketing campaign. What's going on here? Read more

db: Global Struggle Against People Who Are Not With Us?