OMB Un-Disavows “War on Terror”
One interesting sub-plot thus far in the Obama administration has been the not-quite-official disavowal of the term “war on terror.” This saw another flair-up recently when a civil servant named Dave Riedel emailed Pentagon officials to tell them “OMB says: ‘This Administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT]. Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’” But according to Brian Beutler, when Peter Orszag was asked about this he distanced himself from the distancing saying “I’m not aware of any communication I’ve had on that issue. It was a communication by a mid-level career civil service.” Brian observes:
So GWOT it is. That doesn’t mean the Riedel email didn’t go out, though, and some (me, for instance) wonder if some at the Pentagon might stick with the supposedly new moniker (Overseas Contingency Operation) leading to some amusing confusion on the Hill.
This has been a problem for the government for some time, and to such an extent that even George Bush was willing to admit error. “We actually misnamed the war on terror,” Bush said in August 2004. “It ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.” Touche.
I think this is a more important issue than people realize. Names of programs matter. The fact that the Future Combat Systems project is named “Future Combat Systems” allowed John McCain during the campaign to try to get people to believe that Barack Obama had some kind of blanket opposition to funding future combat systems, rather than opposition to a specific boondogglish program. Similarly, it sounds and feels a lot more reasonable to say that Pentagon requests for money to use in overseas contingency operations need to be weighed against other priorities than it does to question funding requests aimed at winning a “Long War” or a “War on Terror.” Completely non-military endeavors have often tried to leverage the term “war” into increased funding (War on Poverty, War on Drugs) but obviously this works a lot better for the military which is in the business of fighting wars.
But reducing the world’s exposure to terrorists is neither an enterprise with a defined beginning and end, nor is it mainly a military undertaking. “War on Terror” and “Long War” thinking distort our policy approaches, distort our budgetary priorities, and encourage the problematic idea that we need to fight a hazily defined “global counterinsurgency” and can’t afford to think about the costs of doing so.
16 Responses to “OMB Un-Disavows “War on Terror””
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March 25th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Interestingly, the Obama administration appears to have dropped the “War on Drugs” rhetoric as well, but it’s not official policy either.
March 25th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
I think that they were absolutely right to drop GWOT and the Long War…But what they came up with minimizes the effort and the potential sacrifices that might be necessary (Afghanistan being one of them).
I’m afraid that what you have is a bunch of Wilsonians going back to this idea that this is simply a police action. Obviously, it’s not some crazy crusade as the previous administration would have us believe…but when you’ve got a million drones flying around that may have the unfortunate task of killing innocent people, it’s a bit more than a police action.
This ought to be based on consequences, so that the American people understand (or at least are informed) as to what is at stake.
March 25th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I always thought “Long War” was especially boneheaded because that was the name the Provisional IRA came up with in the 1970s for their long-term strategy. When the Bushites came up with it, that was a pretty good signal that the masterminds of their anti-terrorism strategy had not, you know, actually studied the history of terrorism. (Though there may have been one or two other hints of this failure as well…)
March 25th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
135 134 F-22’s in service.
Maybe it got lost searching for a mission?
March 25th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
“Long War” came about as a result of a push by the Heritage Foundation (the analyst that came up with it was Jim Carafano). Smart guy…good guy…but yeah, that just didn’t work in my opinion.
March 25th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Afghanistan is not worth anyone’s sacrifice.
Certainly not the US taxpayer.
And, yes, Afghanistan would be classed as a “police action”. Korea was and that was considerably hotter than Afghanistan will ever be.
Afghanistan is a low level counterinsurgency – and as I’ve said numerous times, the history of COIN is that it cannot be done by foreign troops in a country whose language and customs they do not know. COIN must be done by the local state in question. If it can’t, it falls and is replaced by another local state that can.
The US is utterly incapable of changing the fortunes of Afghanistan. The notion that the US can stop small terrorist groups from finding and utilizing “safe havens” by overthrowing countries is stupid by all measure.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
“flare-up”, Matthew.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:31 am
I dunno, people are pretty sick of George W. Bush’s “Global War On Terror” these days. I think a lot of legislators would prefer to fund Overseas Contingency Operations over GWOT at this point.
Which is not to say that it shouldn’t be renamed, but rebranding can be used in a lot of different ways…
March 26th, 2009 at 4:56 am
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March 26th, 2009 at 9:39 am
And the most important reason of all is that desire by the Cheney cabal (as Col. Larry Wilkerson called it) to achieve their decades long goal of creating an imperial “unitary” presidency hinged on turning George W. Bush into a “war” president so that he could use the “inherent” war powers as commander in chief that John Yoo and others said the executive has under the constitution. And that required America actually be at war, even though it was largely a semantic one.
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March 26th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
There’s a bit of linguistic ju-jistu going on here that’s useful to bring up.
When one uses a word like ‘war’, it has the side effect of dignifying your enemies as ‘warriors’. For all its awfulness, ‘war’ is (to quote Chris Hedges) ‘a force that gives us meaning’. Tribal identity pivots on questions like, “Who is my enemy?” War implies victories, parades, glory, shared suffering, and so on. By using the word ‘war’, the US subtly encourages potential warriors.
Boring and ugly words like ‘criminal’, ‘thug’, ‘nut-job’, by contrast, convey little glamor. Calling our enemies ‘deluded criminals’, ‘confused people’, and taking a strategy that de-glamorizes them (public trials, awkward, direct, on-camera questions) is probably going to be much more effective than dignifying them.
Doesn’t mean we need to change the ‘on the ground’ approach. Just the language.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
There’s a bit of linguistic ju-jistu going on here that’s useful to bring up.
When one uses a word like ‘war’, it has the side effect of dignifying your enemies as ‘warriors’. For all its awfulness, ‘war’ is (to quote Chris Hedges) ‘a force that gives us meaning’. Tribal identity pivots on questions like, “Who is my enemy?” War implies victories, parades, glory, shared suffering, and so on. By using the word ‘war’, the US subtly encourages potential warriors.
Boring and ugly words like ‘criminal’, ‘thug’, ‘nut-job’, by contrast, convey little glamor. Calling our enemies ‘deluded criminals’, ‘confused people’, and taking a strategy that de-glamorizes them (public trials, awkward, direct, on-camera questions) is probably going to be much more effective than dignifying them.
Doesn’t mean we need to change the ‘on the ground’ approach. Just the language.
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