[Say goodbye to "War on Terror". Say hello to "Global Struggle against Extremism". Follow the leaders!] U.S. Officials Retool Slogan for Terror War http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/26/p...ta1&adxnnlx=1122509931-buxhWno6hpVMlyeat4je7w By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER Published: July 26, 2005 WASHINGTON, July 25 - The Bush administration is retooling its slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission, senior administration and military officials said Monday. In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the nation's senior military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism" rather than "the global war on terror," which had been the catchphrase of choice. Administration officials say that phrase may have outlived its usefulness, because it focused attention solely, and incorrectly, on the military campaign. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use." Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require "all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities' national power." The solution is "more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military," he concluded. Administration and Pentagon officials say the revamped campaign has grown out of meetings of President Bush's senior national security advisers that began in January, and it reflects the evolution in Mr. Bush's own thinking nearly four years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Rumsfeld spoke in the new terms on Friday when he addressed an audience in Annapolis, Md., for the retirement ceremony of Adm. Vern Clark as chief of naval operations. Mr. Rumsfeld described America's efforts as it "wages the global struggle against the enemies of freedom, the enemies of civilization." The shifting language is one of the most public changes in the administration's strategy to battle Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and it tracks closely with Mr. Bush's recent speeches emphasizing freedom, democracy and the worldwide clash of ideas. "It is more than just a military war on terror," Steven J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said in a telephone interview. "It's broader than that. It's a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative." The language shifts also come at a time when Mr. Bush, with a new appointment for one of his most trusted aides, Karen Hughes, is trying to bolster the State Department's efforts at public diplomacy. Lawrence Di Rita, Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman, said the shift in language "is not a shift in thinking, but a continuation of the immediate post-9/11 approach." "The president then said we were going to use all the means of national power and influence to defeat this enemy," Mr. Di Rita said. "We must continue to be more expansive than what the public is understandably focused on now: the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq." By emphasizing to the public that the effort is not only military, the administration may also be trying to reassure those in uniform who have begun complaining that only members of the armed forces are being asked to sacrifice for the effort. New opinion polls show that the American public is increasingly pessimistic about the mission in Iraq, with many doubting its link to the counterterrorism mission. So, a new emphasis on reminding the public of the broader, long-term threat to the United States may allow the administration to put into broader perspective the daily mayhem in Iraq and the American casualties. Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said in an interview that if the nation's efforts were limited to "protecting the homeland and attacking and disrupting terrorist networks, you're on a treadmill that is likely to get faster and faster with time." The key to "ultimately winning the war," he said, "is addressing the ideological part of the war that deals with how the terrorists recruit and indoctrinate new terrorists."
[Factoid] During speeches/ new conferences Bush had trouble saying "the war on terrorism" so they shortened it to "the war on terror" so he wouldn't be tongue-tied. [/Factoid]
"War on Terror" was always a lame phrase....that's like "War on Violence" or "War on Full Frontal Assault" or "War on Sneak Attack." You can't win a war on a style of attack. At least this defines the enemy a little better. To be perfectly honest, I can't think of the last time the US Govt gave anything a cool name. Except Iraq 1's first name: Desert Storm. Dont mess with the USA!! Then renamed Desert Shield. Boooo. However (with respects to the servicemen serving or who have served in these campaigns): Afghanistan: Operation Enduring Freedom? (I preferred the original name, which I believe was "Infinite Justice", but not that much more) Iraq War 2: Operation Iraqi Freedom? Ok, so someone forgot to switch his word of the day calendar. Panama: Operation Just Cause. Yawn. However, was originally called Operation Blue Spoon. REALLY. Grenada: Operation Urgent Fury. Sounds like what happens after I hit Taco Cabana at 4am. Libya Air Raids - 1986: Operation El Dorado Canyon. Wha? Haiti Election Support: Operation Uphold Democracy. Humanitarian Support in Turkey: Operation Provide Comfort. (on second thought, why do humanitarian efforts have code names?) Actually, the problem is that all the cool names were used up in WW1+2 and Korea and finally Vietnam. Hell General Ridgeway in Korea used a whole bunch of badass names in three months of counterattacks after the Chinese rushed against us: Thunderbolt, Roundup, Killer, Ripper, Courageous, Audacious, and Dauntless. (Well, they get progressively weaker). Vietnam had Flaming Dart and Rolling Thunder, great names for airstrikes. WW2 had Overlord (predates Led Zep but always reminds me of them), Tidal Wave, Sledgehammer, Crossbow, and Sea Lion. (However they also had Operation Chattanooga Choo Choo.) WW1 had all the religious and mythological ones: Archangel, Mars, Achilles, Castor, Pollux, and Valkyrie.
Well, good for them. This IS and HAS been a battle against extremism and its causes, and it's good to know that the Bush administration has finally realized that without diplomatic efforts to undercut the causes of terrorism/extremism, they won't get anywhere. Let's hope they will have more success with this campaign that they have had so far in the "war on terror".
New Coke. That's right Well, changing the name from "war on terrorism" to the "struggle against extremist violence" should keep the faithful revved up for awhile-- at till the all "volunteer" army crumbles. Alternatively as seems to be the case, the Bush gang does a major pull out endangering the remaining troops to doa pretend all is ok , for the 2006 Midterms. Once even they have to admit the Iraqi caper was not worth it, the devoted will blame the liberal media and the liberals for the debacle.
LOL! Nice research done on operation names there. Maybe we need a War on Badass Names. Well we may never run out cool names, thanks to American Military Operation Name Generating Device. Here're some thought-provoking operation names it has generated: Operation Provoked Sweet Baby Jesus Operation Ready-for-CNN Lion Operation Don't Mess With Our Middle Class Operation Smoldering Defense Industry Operation Merciful Diplomacy Operation Bipartisan Soldier Operation Perpetual Oilfield Operation Expect No Mercy From Our Crusade Operation Underwear-staining Senate Operation Long-term Democracy
A friend of mine used to call going out and getting drunk "Operation Inebreation" Seriously though I would agree with the name "Struggle against violent extremism" a lot more if the admin. wouldn't make such extremists statements as "If you're not with us you're against us."
Desert Shield was the massive buildup of forces and was renamed Desert Storm when the offensive campaign broke out HA!
Al Kamen writes in his Washington Post column: "Former State Department counterterrorism official Larry C. Johnson reported on his blog yesterday that the Global War on Terrorism, or GWOT, or The WOT, 'may still be alive.' "A couple months ago, our colleague, Susan B. Glasser , reported that the Bush administration was undertaking a major review of its strategy on counterterrorism, and that officials wanted to change the name GWOT to something like GSAVE -- Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. That would take into account the changed nature of the battle against international terrorism. . . . "Apparently nobody told President Bush. At a White House meeting of senior officials Monday, Johnson wrote, 'Bush reportedly said he was not in favor of the new term. . . . In fact, he said, 'no one checked with me.' That comment brought an uncomfortable silence to the assembled group of pooh-bahs. The president insisted it was still a war as far as he is concerned.' " http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html I guess being the "War President" sounds better than the "Struggle President."
President Makes It Clear: Phrase Is 'War on Terror' By RICHARD W. STEVENSON GRAPEVINE, Tex., Aug. 3 - President Bush publicly overruled some of his top advisers on Wednesday in a debate about what to call the conflict with Islamic extremists, saying, "Make no mistake about it, we are at war." In a speech here, Mr. Bush used the phrase "war on terror" no less than five times. Not once did he refer to the "global struggle against violent extremism," the wording consciously adopted by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other officials in recent weeks after internal deliberations about the best way to communicate how the United States views the challenge it is facing. In recent public appearances, Mr. Rumsfeld and senior military officers have avoided formulations using the word "war," and some of Mr. Bush's top advisers have suggested that the administration wanted to jettison what had been its semiofficial wording of choice, "the global war on terror." In an interview last week about the new wording, Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said that the conflict was "more than just a military war on terror" and that the United States needed to counter "the gloomy vision" of the extremists and "offer a positive alternative." But administration officials became concerned when some news reports linked the change in language to signals of a shift in policy. At the same time, Mr. Bush, by some accounts, told aides that he was not happy with the new phrasing, a change of tone from the wording he had consistently used since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It is not clear whether the new language embraced by other administration officials was adopted without Mr. Bush's approval or whether he reversed himself after the change was made. Either way, he planted himself on Wednesday firmly on the side of framing the conflict primarily in military terms and appeared intent on emphasizing that there had been no change in American policy. "We're at war with an enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001," Mr. Bush said in his address here, to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of state legislators. "We're at war against an enemy that, since that day, has continued to kill." Mr. Bush made a nod to the criticism that "war on terror" was a misleading phrase in the sense that the enemy is not terrorism, but those who used it to achieve their goals. In doing so, he used the word "war," as he did at least 13 other times in his 47-minute speech, most of which was about domestic policy. "Make no mistake about it, this is a war against people who profess an ideology, and they use terror as a means to achieve their objectives," he said. Gen. Richard B. Myers of the Air Force, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on July 18 in an address to the National Press Club that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." General Myers said then that the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use." On Wednesday, in its efforts to hammer home the point that the "war" phraseology was still administration policy, the White House sent e-mail messages to reporters after Mr. Bush's speech with some excerpts of an address delivered Tuesday by Mr. Rumsfeld. In that speech, Mr. Rumsfeld backed away from the new language he had been employing in recent weeks. "Some ask, are we still engaged in a war on terror?" Mr. Rumsfeld said. "Let there be no mistake about it. It's a war. The president properly termed it that after Sept. 11. The only way to defend against terrorism is to go on the attack." In a telephone interview on Wednesday evening, a spokesman for the Pentagon, Lawrence Di Rita, sought to play down any disagreement between Mr. Rumsfeld and the president, citing the secretary's speech on Tuesday, in Dallas. "The secretary doesn't feel this is push back," Mr. Di Rita said. "He feels it's an important clarification." In introducing the new language, administration officials had suggested that the change reflected an evolution in the president's thinking nearly four years after the Sept. 11 attacks and had been adopted after discussions among Mr. Bush's senior advisers that began in January. The new slogan quickly become grist for late-night comics and drew news coverage that linked it with the emergence of a broad new approach to defining and attacking the problem of Islamic extremism through diplomacy and efforts to build closer ties to moderate Muslims, as well as through military action. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/politics/04bush.html
Wow, I clearly see Bush is da Man. Make no mistake about it. President Bush used the phrase "war on terror" five times Wednesday in a speech to the American Legislative Exchange Council in Grapevine, Tex.
