Momentum is building among evenPresident Bush’s most loyal allies to change the name of the war the United States has fought for more than five years. One Republican said use of the term “war” elevates mass murderers to the status of a standing army.
The British government, Bush’s most loyal partner in combating Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda group, said last month it is dropping the “war” title because it does not capture the struggle’s full dimensions.
The Pentagon coined “The Global War Against Terrorism,” or GWOT, while the building still displayed a deep gash from the al Qaeda strike on Sept. 11, 2001. Bush, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, called it simply “the war on terror.”
Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, a Bush loyalist and ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Examiner he has lobbied the White House to follow the British lead.
“Language is important, and I’ve told [National Security Adviser Stephen] Hadley and the president the past year and a half that I think the ‘war on terror’ is a terrible idea,” Hoekstra said.
“Going back to 9-11, we shouldn’t dignify these 19 [plane hijackers] by calling them warriors and saying that they’re involved in a war,” he said. “These are not warriors. These are cold-blooded terrorists and murderers, and that’s all we should dignify them with.”
John Brennan, a former senior CIA officer who directed the U.S. National Counter Terrorism Center, also believes the word “war” should be dropped.
Brennan said the term connotes only military force that is required defeat radical Islam, when in fact a lot of tools, including public relations and diplomacy, are needed.
“A worldwide ‘campaign’ against terrorism would be a more accurate depiction of the multidimensional scope of the effort,” he said.
Finding just the right words for a fight that encompasses ideological battle and armed combat has proven illusive.
The White House national security staff in 2005 weighed a name change, but decided against it.
U.S. Central Command, which is doing most of the battlefield fighting, came up with the term “long war” as a more precise term. But Navy Adm. William Fallon, the new CentCom commander, canceled the phrase. His staff is now searching for a new one.
Meanwhile, Gen. George Casey, the new Army chief of staff, has starting uttering the term “persistent combat” to describe Iraq and Afghanistan, and what his soldiers may face in the future.
As for Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ view, a spokesman referred to his speech last week in Dallas in which he referred to “the war on terror.”
