Matt Yglesias

18 Responses to “The Importance of “GWOT””

1. Thomas Says:
   April 1st, 2009 at 9:20 am

   Very nice. Now, what’s the legal basis, or even the conceptual basis, for the expansion of the–what’s the word?–war in Pakistan?

2. Arnold Evans Says:
   April 1st, 2009 at 9:24 am

   To the degree the cold war was a war. And to a much greater degree than the war on drugs is a war, or the war on poverty, the US is engaged in a war.

   The other side isn’t terrorism – as is clear if, by nothing else, by the US support for MEK, a group the US considers terrorist but is using to run operations in Iran in support of its war.

   The other side is militants and other parties who believe, at base, that Israel as a Jewish state is not legitimate.

   The US’ opponents in this “war” include Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, anti-Western Iraqi nationalists, Iran, anti-Western factions in Pakistan – despite their popularity.

   And we’re talking about an undertaking nearly as broad in scope and comparably expensive as the conflict with communism, but one that would be ended if the West advocated a South Africa-style settlement of the Palestine dispute that protects individual rights of Jewish and non-Jewish people in or who have claims to be in that territory.

3. Craig Says:
   April 1st, 2009 at 9:36 am

   I would still like to see a clear declaration that preemptive attacks are not an acceptable or effective means of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons. I think that sometimes humanitarian crisis like Kosovo require military action without UN approval, but at least in the narrow case of nuclear proliferation we should commit ourselves to exclusively working through the UN and insist that other countries do the same.

4. DaveinHackensack Says:
   April 1st, 2009 at 9:43 am

   As your former colleague Clive Crook wrote recently:

   On Iraq, things are moving much as they would have done if Mr Bush were still in office. Likewise in Afghanistan, where the administration is proposing a surge not unlike the one in Iraq – overseen by the same general, under the political supervision of the same defence secretary – which Mr Obama found so unimpressive last year.

   On Iran, Mr Obama has for the moment adjusted the rhetoric, but not the underlying condescension, the key demands, or the implicit “do as we say or else”. “War on terror” terminology is used less often and less eagerly than it was by the Bush administration. This has not stopped the US attacking targets in Pakistan, a legally dubious enterprise to put it mildly, and one that looks a lot like waging war on terror. Lately the administration has even wanted North Korea’s leaders to believe that the US might shoot down the rocket they are preparing to launch. How George W. Bush can you get?

   [...]

   This strategy of mostly persisting with the foreign and security policies of Mr Bush while insisting that those policies have been overthrown has not yet met organised resistance from US allies. The fact that Mr Obama is so much better liked buys him a great deal of goodwill, and the desire to suck up to him still predominates.

   Nonetheless, as the new president continues to seek material support for his fundamentally Bush-like security policies – more European troops in Afghanistan, a united front in dealing with Iran and other troublemakers, overseas dispersal of the G-Bay detainees – he is often going to come up empty-handed, leading to disillusionment on both sides. Friction with the allies is likely to increase.

5. DaveinHackensack Says:
   April 1st, 2009 at 9:50 am

   It might save everyone time if Matt added a little icon of a bucket with water splashing out of the top next to the posts where his main purpose is to carry water for the Obama administration. Then casual readers could just skip to the un-bucketed items.

6. Rich in PA Says:
   April 1st, 2009 at 10:01 am

   They should change it to GWAR and dress up Hillary Clinton in one of those cool costumes.

7. Stefan Says:
   April 1st, 2009 at 10:39 am

   Similarly, everyone understands that you can’t hold people indefinitely without trial or evidence.

   I’m not sure that everyone understands this. In fact, I’m pretty certain that at least a third of the country doesn’t.

   And everyone also understands that the president has special “war powers” that let him do stuff that would normally be illegal.

   Huh??? What would those be, exactly?

8. Sacterre Says:
   April 1st, 2009 at 10:40 am

   Well as long as the “GWOT” is carried out on beautiful sunny mornings in the calm rolling chaparral of California, I’m ok with it.

9. Don Williams Says:
   April 1st, 2009 at 11:20 am

   The problem with the “War on Terror” –as opposed to specific, identified enemies who have actually committed hostile acts against the people of the United States — is that Bush and his lawyers then defined “Terrorist” as everyone up to and including the Founding Fathers. Certainly the NRA would have been covered. Probably the Special Forces as well.

   One of the salient examples of how our News Media is a deceitful pack of whores is that they never pointed out the Bush Administration’s extremely vague and broad definition of terrorist.

10. skeptonomist Says:
    April 1st, 2009 at 11:39 am

    Constitutionally, whether we are at war or not is supposed to be decided by Congress, not some incompetent semanticists in the bureaucracy (who in the real world would propose “Overseas Contingency Operation”).

    The real question is whether Congress will recover its Constitutional role. It can explicitly withdraw any authority it gave to Bush – the decision should not be in Obama’s hands or whoever came up with the new term.

11. DZaleznik Says:
    April 1st, 2009 at 11:45 am

    What’s in a name, “The Global War on Terror?” Well, the entire pseudo-legal basis of Bush policies were generated by the assumption that we were literally at war, and that the battlefield was literally global. Yoo’s memos explicitly reference presidential wartime powers. If you’ve heard what Sy Hersh has had to say about the executive assassination ring, its power to target anybody anywhere was assumed because the war is “global.” (Democracy Now, 3/31)

    So to speak to Bowers point, changing the Name “War on Terror” cannot but assume a drastic change in policy, acknowledging the legal vacuity of the most extreme Bush policies. What is terrifying is that only the most uncritical of minds could fail to see the fallacy of equivocation taking place between a “War on [bad-thing]” and an actual war.

12. joe from Lowell Says:
    April 1st, 2009 at 12:18 pm

    the real question is whether President Obama will continue the various policies associated with the GWOT.

    No, the real question is whether President Obama will continue to view the diverse actions the Bush administration lumped together under the rubric “War on Terror” – invading Iraq, Secret Squirrel-type stuff against al Qaeda, the war in Afghanistan, our Somalia policy, actions like backing up the Philippines government against their Muslim rebels- as a cohesive policy against a unitary enemy, or whether he’s going to look at eat particular challenge on its own terms.

    True story: there can be bad guys who are Muslim that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Srsly.

13. Don Williams Says:
    April 1st, 2009 at 12:45 pm

    Plus our ass-licking Republican Congresses REFUSED to install any checks, balances, or oversight on the Bush GWOT. The only Republicans I recall ever even raising the issue were Senators Larry Craig and Lincoln Chaffee.

    Whatever happened to them, by the way?

14. Mike Says:
    April 1st, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Here’s Hillary:

    “I haven’t gotten any directive about using it or not using it. It’s just not being used,” said Clinton during a briefing with reporters aboard her plane to the Hague to attend an international conference on Afghanistan.

    “The administration has stopped using the phrase and I think that speaks for itself,” she said at a different point during her trip. “Obviously.”

    Just imagine if the PUMAs had gotten their way (well, okay then John McCain would be president. If Hillary Clinton had gotten her way.) We would have to lbe listening to and parsing these evasive ‘not-x, but not-not-x’ statements all day, every day. Thank god.

    Separately, am I a bad liberal if I never had a problem with the “War on Terror”? “Global War on Terror” is a little more problematic, because that gets into the Bush comprehension of the world as a battlefield. But it was obvious to me on 9/11 and after that we would be going to war in some real sense. And we face a threat of terrorism. Apparently ‘terrorism’ is one-and-a-half syllables too long, so they went to ‘terror.’ War on an emotion does seem a bit silly, but I never got why I should laugh off the idea of a war, so to speak, on a violent political tactic. In the “War on Poverty”/”War on Drugs” understanding — that is, something of a national, all-hands-on-deck effort to combat a societal/international ill, a “War on Terrorism” was more or less exactly what I expected of my government after (and, retrospectively, before) 9/11. The fact that I endorse such an effort in no way pre-commits me to endorsing all decisions mad by the government in that effort, nor does the acceptance of the term by the public give the government a justification to commit strategically unsound or illegal acts (such as invading a country uninvolved in terrorism on the United States, torturing detainees, or suspending habeas corpus).

    So I guess that puts me squarely in the get the policies right’ camp. That doesn’t mean they can call it whatever they want as long as they call it a War– I wouldn’t support the EWEFFCE (’Endless War to Extend Freedom to the Four Corners of the Earth”) partly on aesthetic, but mostly on pragmatic, grounds — but I can honestly say that in 2001 and part of 2002 a war on terrorism was something that I, after due consideration of the “You can’t make war on a tactic” bumper stickers, did fully support. And I considered, and consider, myself a liberal throughout that time.

15. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    April 1st, 2009 at 7:08 pm

    “It might save everyone time if Matt added a little icon of a bucket with water splashing out of the top next to the posts where his main purpose is to carry water for the Obama administration.”

    Good point. This post was so incoherent I couldn’t tell what Matt was arguing for. It seemed that he was saying, “Well, yes, Obama hasn’t done anything other than what Bush did – but he’s using a more nuanced language, so we should cut him some slack.”

    In other words: suckers.

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