Observing Senator Barack Obama during his recent international trip was generally refreshing. Here is a potential commander-in-chief who seems to understand the broader strategic challenges that the country faces politically and militarily. His insistence that we focus on "finishing the fight" in Afghanistan and western Pakistan is head-smackingly obvious. Afghanistan served as the staging area for the attacks on 9/11 and an attack on those who planned that attack was just and a commonsense response.
The all-encompassing "War on Terror" became the pithy slogan the Adminstration repeatedly deployed to conflate the just conflict in Afghanistan with that destructive and ill-concieved military adventure in Iraq. Indeed, surveys still find disturbing numbers of Americans that believe Saddam Hussien was the 9-11 mastermind or that Al Qaeda had ties with the Iraqi government. Too many Americans reconciled their cognitive dissonance as to the decision to attack Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, and with no ties to terrorism, by repeating these three little words. What if we never had those three little words?
Maybe diction is an insignificant or even strange place to start, but haven't we heard again and again in this campaign that "Words Matter". Obama has very successfully at time sought to challenge "the mentality that got us into the Iraq War." Part of that has been his rejection of the conventional wisdom that says Democrats have to act and talk like Republicans when it comes to terrorism.
So as long as we're challenging that conventional wisdom, why not challenge that very term which so easily serves to justify the parade of evils we've recently observed: indefinite detention, warrantless wiretaping, and massive civilian deaths.
I am not the first to observe the perniciousness of the term. As George Lakoff observed on Alternet.org, the term is perhaps most successful at consolidating executive power, but counterproductive in dealing with the real threat. Dan Froomkin last year detailed on NiemanWatchdog.org that the United Kingdom has abandoned the phrase. And the Recent RAND study endorsed that approach.
The reason: What these groups want is to force their individual and narrow values on others without dialogue, without debate, through violence. And by letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength
Dan Froomkin concluded that the only thing legitimately holding the American media back from wholesale abandonment of the phrase was the absence of a suitable and widely agreed-upon alternative. He opined that the "campaign against radical Islamic terrorism," though not catchy, might be the most right. Such a formulation would have its own difficulties and risks making the disparate and scattered groups more attractive and united while at the same time turning off moderate and progressive voices in the Muslim world.
I suppose my suggestion would be, why bother constructing a term to refer to all counter-terrorism activities?
Barack Obama should call this renewed focus on Afghanistan and the lawless regions in western Pakistan by its proper name: The 9-11 War.
It is The 9-11 War which sensibly seeks to defeat those who had a hand in planning and supporting the devastating attacks on our country 7 years ago. In Afghanistan, The 9-11 War seeks to dismantle the Taliban, which provided Bin Laden and Al Qaeda sanctuary and a base of operations. It seeks to reclaim the rights of those that suffered under the extreme rule of the Taliban and create a free, pluralistic, and democratic society. In Pakistan, The 9-11 War seeks to eliminate what is widely believed to be the new sanctuary and base of operations for Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. We will work to destroy terrorist training camps where young disaffected Muslim men are brainwashed and sent out to kill. We will bring the rest of the people responsible for 9-11 to justice. In this way, The 9-11 War provides our country, our military, and the rest of the world a defined and measurable objective with respect to our foreign policy.
Other counter-terrorism activities should of course continue, just without the ominous name. The choice between waging The 9-11 War and conducting other counter-terrorism activites is a false one. The other activities are something else entirely. They are not directed against a discrete group of people with a unified ideology. Instead, those efforts seek to root out the efforts of disparate and diverse groups who in their own unique circumstances would seek to violently disturb the legitimate political process whether because of their desire to accomplish their own political aims or simply to destroy and disrupt the civil order.
Barack Obama should slowly begin to extract himself from the sloppy and unproductive rhetoric that Mr. Bush has tried to saddle us all with in his efforts to continue his policies in Iraq and his expansion of executive power at home. Is it possible for a candidate and eventual President Obama to deliver us from the "War on Terror" rhetoric?
That would be refreshing.